If you look closely at Sherman, Connecticut, its demographics, its population, its isolated geographical charm, you inevitably come to a specific conclusion. It is a town filled with extremely capable individuals, many of whom migrated from New York City seeking a quiet sanctuary away from the exhilarating, high-tension thrust of the Big Apple. By design, Sherman maintains a sleepy, untouched appeal.

But that facade is cracking. The town is currently undergoing a massive wave of development. There is the Trinity Chapel endeavor, a proposed $3.5 million Senior Center project, town beach dock upgrades poised to cost millions more, and looming over it all, a staggering $50 million municipal school venture. While each of these projects technically possesses its own segmented coordinators and coalitions, one figure consistently inserts himself into the center of the frame: First Selectman Don Lowe.

The Illusion of the Architect

To this day, Lowe works to cultivate a reputation as a meticulous fiscal steward. There is a temptation, when observing a local government operate with such profound obfuscation, to assume the presence of a mastermind, a calculated, strategic architect pulling the strings from the shadows. A comprehensive examination of his political and personal timeline, however, reveals a vastly different and far more alarming reality.

To understand the depth of this municipal failure, one must look closely at the man at the helm. First Selectman Don Lowe is not a financial mastermind. He is a local musician and former community college creative writing instructor who enjoys the professorial reverence of small-town office. But underneath that carefully curated, folksy facade lies a bumbling executive paralyzed by hesitation, a leader who continually drags his feet on virtually every major issue while attempting to safely gauge the temperature of the political waters.

The human cost of this indecision is measured in tens of millions of dollars. Consider the K-8 school renovation. Because the administration refused to act early and decisively, we watched the projected cost of the project march steadily and ruthlessly upward through the years. In 2019, estimates of $9 million were casually floated. By 2021, that figure had ballooned to $22 million. In 2024, the town was staring down a $42.8 million proposal, and by 2025, the residents were asked to shoulder a staggering $50 million total package. Only then, at the absolute height of the financial curve, did Lowe decide it was a good idea to proceed.

Had the town moved with competence and urgency, the price would have been exponentially lower. Instead, by delaying, the administration absorbed the devastating inflationary spikes of the COVID-19 era and allowed opportunistic contractors to feast on the compounding delays. And let us be entirely honest about the precariousness of this situation: the project is far from finished. For the first time yesterday, quiet references to a looming $60 million total began to circulate, a grim reminder that when infrastructure projects are managed through hesitation, the final bill is rarely the one promised at the ballot box.

In doing so, Lowe inadvertently walked the taxpayers of Sherman into a generational debt trap, a scenario that eerily and tragically mirrors the Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy he filed just weeks before taking office. To mask the immediate severity of this burden, the administration is relying on fiscal sleight of hand to artificially suppress the initial mill rate bump. The approved financing plan dictates draining $500,000 from the town's available fund balance and burning through $1.6 million in projected bond premiums over the first several years to offset the true tax impact. But this is a fleeting illusion. These financial buffers are entirely exhausted by the 2030/2031 fiscal year, yet the town will remain chained to this staggering repayment schedule until the bonds are finally paid off in 2052/2053. It begs a terrifying, unanswered question: what are the taxpayers of Sherman supposed to do for the ensuing two decades after the town's surplus offsets are completely wiped out? We now desperately need someone to save us from Don Lowe's debt trap.

If a municipality is going to spend colossal amounts of money on big infrastructure projects, it requires substantial, intelligent, long-term planning. It demands a sophisticated understanding of financial ledgers and physical architecture. Don Lowe possesses neither, regardless of his frequent public assurances. We cannot navigate this crisis with administrative Band-Aids. We need a concrete plan.

The Origin of the Deficit

To understand how Sherman arrived at this precipice, one must trace Lowe's involvement back to the beginning. From 2000 to 2010, Lowe sat on the Board of Education. During this decade, while his own children attended the school, he watched the building's infrastructure steadily deteriorate without exercising the necessary oversight to maintain the facility. This early culture of deferment set a dangerous precedent that eventually metastasized. By 2015, this ethos of austerity had escalated to the point where the school board was routinely diverting approximately $500,000 a year back into the town's general surplus rather than addressing the mounting decay.

The consequences of this continuous neglect accelerated dramatically. The most glaring anomaly in the town’s financial history is the sudden elimination of the personnel responsible for keeping the municipal buildings standing. In the 2015/2016 budget, the town entirely defunded the $25,000 "Facilities Manager" line item. The position simply vanished. It did not reappear in any meaningful capacity until the 2021/2022 budget, and even then, it was tucked under the Emergency Services Facility (ESF) for a meager $5,076, funds explicitly designated away from general town or school maintenance. Even looking ahead to the proposed 2025/2026 budget, this ESF management role remains funded at a paltry $10,000.

For the exact decade during which the school’s infrastructure actively decayed to the point of a $50 million crisis, the town budgeted essentially zero dollars for dedicated municipal facility management. It is hardly a coincidence that the K-Wing was shuttered in 2015, the very same year the Facilities Manager was unceremoniously cut.

The Financial Ledger

While the buildings were left unmanaged, the Board of Education was placed on a financial starvation diet. During an inflationary decade where the costs of basic goods, services, and construction skyrocketed, the BOE operating budget was flatlined. The budget sat at $9,298,106 in 2015/2016, only to decrease to $9,380,589 by 2020/2021, and drop further to $9,233,865 in 2022/2023.

To grasp how the school fell into such catastrophic disrepair, one only needs to examine the money the taxpayers authorized versus the money the administration actually spent on the building:

The budgets confirm that from 2015 to 2025, the administration transferred half a million dollars annually out of the operating budget and placed it in a "Reserve for Capital Exp." They possessed the liquidity to address a $9.7 million K-Wing repair plan identified in 2021. They had the money to fix the roof. Instead, they chose to retain a $2.3 million surplus, allow the building to fail entirely, and drop a massive, bonded mega-project squarely onto the backs of the taxpayers.

Paving Roads and Padding Salaries

Statutorily, the Board of Education maintains ultimate authority over how its operating funds are spent. But the First Selectman holds the most powerful executive bullhorn in Sherman. At any point during this decade of decay, Lowe could have used his public platform to call attention to the collapsing roof. He could have blown the whistle on the financial starvation diet the school was placed on. Instead, he remained silent. He had the executive power to say that enough is enough, and he chose not to.

Municipal failure occurs when leadership prioritizes highly visible, cosmetic projects over the invisible, foundational rot of a primary school. The administration made a clear fiscal choice: they prioritized the smooth paving of the beach parking lot while ignoring the failing roof over the town's children. Road maintenance expenditures jumped from $295,596 in 2017 to a proposed $325,000 in 2025, with budget rationales explicitly stating these funds were used to pave roads and beach parking lots.

But the most startling allocation of public funds was reserved for the First Selectman himself. In a public appeal to voters, Lowe attempted to frame his role as a profound financial sacrifice, stating, "Believe me, I can make more money doing many other things than working 60 hours a week on a Sherman First Selectman salary, by the way, among the worst salaries of Town CEO's in the 169 Connecticut towns."

The math behind that 60-hour claim warrants immediate scrutiny. Mallory Town Hall is only open to the public Tuesday through Friday, operating on a strictly abbreviated schedule of 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. That is a 24-hour operational workweek. For a municipality with a population of less than 3,000, the office of First Selectman was inherently designed to be a part-time civic duty. Yet, Lowe has engineered it into a highly compensated, full-time career politician position. To bridge the gap between a 24-hour Town Hall schedule and his 60-hour claim, Lowe has adopted a strategy of persistent boardroom attendance, inserting himself into commission meetings where he lacks both direct jurisdiction and professional expertise. Expanding his presence across town operations provides a convenient correlation to a surging executive salary.

The public record stands in stark contrast to his financial narrative. On September 29, 2017, right in the heat of his campaign for the town's highest office, Donald T. Lowe filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. He said absolutely nothing about his financial collapse to the voters. It was only after being called out by a local newspaper that he was forced to address the insolvency, swiftly dismissing the revelation as a partisan "Republican attack."

But federal bankruptcies are public record by design. They are a documented history of spending money that simply does not exist. That is a deeply precarious precedent for an individual campaigning to become the primary financial steward of a municipality with nearly $1 billion in real estate assets resting at the tip of his fingers.

Upon securing the seat just weeks after declaring insolvency, Lowe's municipal compensation violently detached from the standard rate of inflation. In 2015/2016, the salary was $49,988. By 2021/2022, it had surged to $65,882, accompanied by a note claiming a 7% adjustment was needed to "align with area census." By the proposed 2025/2026 budget, the figure sits at $83,202, with a planned bump to $89,000 in early 2026.

From 2015 to the proposed 2026 rate, the First Selectman’s salary increased by roughly 78%. While the school was starved of essential maintenance funds, executive compensation was aggressively and continuously inflated, shifting the financial burden directly onto the Sherman taxpayers.

The Response to Inquiry

When the facade begins to slip, the instinct of a fiefdom is to attack those holding the mirror. Multiple town residents have recently come forward with varying storylines that boil down to a disturbing consensus: a Town Hall that is resistant to public inquiry and focused on controlling information. For Selectman Lowe, tactics include levying accusations of baseless misconduct without citing specific statutory violations, and referring a journalist directly to state and federal authorities.

The administration's preference for unrecorded proceedings is not a rumor; it is a documented policy. When citizens attempt to retrieve public communications via Freedom of Information Act requests, Lowe actively shifts municipal business off digital platforms to avoid creating a traceable public record. In a documented communication, Lowe instituted a strict blackout on digital correspondence specifically to evade FOIA scrutiny. Citing a records request from Sherman CT News, Lowe established the new rule in writing, stating: "Since there has been the unfortunate circumstance of contact with Mr. Washabaugh, there can no longer be email contact." He then explicitly directed that future correspondence be conducted via phone calls or certified mail instead. Instituting a direct, retaliatory blackout on municipal email to circumvent public transparency is a staggering abuse of power.

This aversion to transparency culminated in a revealing physical confrontation on February 11. After Sherman CT News pointed a camera at the site to document the tarp-covered school roof, the administration's panic manifested physically. Following a bizarre series of interactions with a State Trooper in a private driveway, a subsequent visit to Town Hall to seek answers resulted in First Selectman Don Lowe abruptly escalating a quiet conversation about municipal zoning into a hostile confrontation.

At the absolute forefront of these staggering overreactions against a taxpaying resident was Don Lowe. What initially appeared as an isolated lapse in executive judgment has coalesced into a disturbing pattern. This publication has now received numerous reports from a growing contingent of citizens detailing the First Selectman’s anger issues. Residents have explicitly contacted this paper to describe the current atmosphere inside Town Hall as "angry" and "retaliatory". The fundamental art of public office requires the temperament to know when a reaction is warranted, and the wisdom to know when it is not. On all counts, Don Lowe seems to get it entirely wrong.

The real harm being done in Sherman is not a publisher asking questions. The real harm is a chief executive who presides over a $50 million infrastructure deficit, continuously underfunds school maintenance while building a surplus, secures a 78% salary increase following a personal bankruptcy, and utilizes law enforcement against inquiring journalists. In any standard political environment, an official responsible for this volume of miscalculations would face intense public scrutiny.

Instead, the administration clings to its authority using a shield of digital blackouts and retaliatory posturing. By adhering to these tactics, leadership is not only compromising the town's physical infrastructure; it is risking the town's financial future on devastating First Amendment lawsuits. The truth, laid bare by the municipal ledgers, is that Don Lowe is not, and never was, the man for the job. The facade has collapsed, the rot is structural, and the taxpayers are left holding the bill.