Hodges First Nine Months in Dracut Make One Thing Clear: We’re Awfully Lucky That She Left Lancaster

 

During her time in Lancaster, Kate Hodges struggled to maintain professional relationships.  Nine months into her new job, she’s threatening to deploy the police inappropriately and the School Superintendent is threatening to sue her.  For people in Lancaster and Concord, it all sounds very familiar.

Russ Williston
10/11/2025

On March 28^th, 2022, Lancaster opened its wallet to make a competitive bid for a new Town Administrator.  In 2019 experienced Town Administrator Orlando Pacheco had earned a salary of $134,963 for the job but the town offered Kate Hodges $175,000 for her first year.     She’d been sourced with the help of a professional search firm, Community Paradigm, and had most recently served as Deputy Town Manager in Concord.    This was to be her first year in the top role, and from the start there was grumbling about whether her experience merited that salary.  But she interviewed well, and optimism and unrealistic expectations abounded.

It was to be a brief engagement: in November 2024 she accepted a new job and was headed out the door.  Kate Hodges spent thirty-three months in Lancaster.

Those thirty-three months were an unbelievably turbulent, bizarre, and traumatic experience for employees and volunteers alike in Lancaster.    There are enough “Kate Hodges Stories” to fill a dozen blog entries.  

Do you remember the time Kate Hodges “found a death threat on her car” and reported it to the fire chief?

Do you remember the time Kate Hodges tried to get the director of the Council on Aging fired, and the town held a multi-part public trial over an abandoned brownie in the old town hall?

Do you remember the time Kate Hodges accused the Government Studies Committee of wiretapping her?

And on and on.

Sticking to the hard numbers: from the budget adopted prior to Kate’s arrival (FY2022) to the budget passed during her last year (FY2025) the town’s budget for non-school salaries and expenses jumped 27%, from $5,259,065.14 to $6,664,088.00.     Departments were organized, merged and re-organized.  New roles were established, re-allocated, and discontinued.    If you were a town employee when Kate Hodges started in 2022, by 2025 you were likely not.   At one point the town expanded to include an Assistant Town Administrator, and an Assistant-To-The-Assistant Town Administrator.   The town was asked to approve a $1.2 million levy limit override, and the budget was expanded to levy every penny of that new limit.    The Prescott upper floor of the building was remodeled to accommodate the new staff. 

Since Hodge’s departure in January, the town government has mostly returned to its pre-2022 form.   The additional staff – hired with a budget plumped with override money and then buttressed with $2.2 million of federal pandemic recovery money that covered capital expenses for a few years – was not practical to maintain.

Hodges started a three-year contract in Dracut this year, on January 13^th.   She was also a finalist in Bellingham but accepted the Dracut gig before their interviews began. 

What went wrong for Hodges in Lancaster?   I could write a lot of articles to summarize individual incidents.  The best way to sum up where things were in late 2024 is by providing some samples.

On September 5^th, 2024, she wrote a scathing email to Ralph Gifford, who had just joined the Select Board in May.

“Since beginning my time in Lancaster, I have endured some of the most horrific abuses and mistreatments imaginable. I have had my life threatened more than once, I have had very nasty messages left on my personal vehicle, and at least one person took a photo of my family’s home and distributed it for some unknown purposes. While some of that is expected for a public official, as a Select Board Member, I expect you to operate above that – after all, you are my supervisor. You are meant to treat me, as your staff, with the professionalism and respect consistent of a manager at my level. This is how I always have treated you. Lastly, while I cannot understand why you would be so cruel and uncaring towards me, or any employee for that matter, the reasons matter not.”

This is an unhinged email: if you’ve met Ralph Gifford, you know that he has a temperament roughly equivalent to “Fred Rogers after a relaxing spa day.”   It’s simply not possible that he did anything to justify that kind of vitriol after three months in office.    If there’s some doubt, the Select Board meeting that precipitated this email is recorded, and there’s no interaction that would seem to justify this kind of reaction.

What was it like in 2024 for paid town employees?   Take it from one employee who reached out after leaving:

“In my experience and opinion, Kate Hodges is a manipulative, narcissistic bully. She will not be questioned and she surrounds herself with employees whose loyalty has been purchased with taxpayer funds.”

From all available data, that was exactly what Kate Hodges did during her 2+ years in Lancaster – she surrounded herself with employees whose loyalty was purchased with taxpayer funds.

Kate Hodges hired Kelly Dolan as “Director of Health and Human Services” in September 2022.    This was a new role created by Hodges specifically for Dolan.   In July, 2024 Dolan was promoted to Assistant Town Administrator.   Lancaster had never previously had an Assistant Town Administrator, and once Dolan no longer needed it the “Director of Health and Human Services” role was discontinued.

After Hodges promoted Dolan she established an “Assistant” role for that “Assistant Town Administrator” role and set Dolan out to fill it.     On September 30, 2024 Hodges filed an “Appearance of a Conflict of Interest” form with the town:  Hodges anticipated that her newly appointed Assistant Town Administrator would hire Hodges former administrative assistant from Concord as her assistant.

“I will ultimately receive a request to hire an individual from the Assistant Town Administrator.   Laurie worked for me when I was employed by the Town of Concord, a period of about five years.”    

This prediction proved prescient:  Laurie Giovino was hired as the “Assistant to the Assistant Town Administrator” in November 2024

After Hodges left, her hiring spree was quickly unwound.   Lancaster no longer has an “Assistant Town Administrator”, much less an “Assistant-To-The-Assistant Town Administrator.”    Lancaster no longer has a “Director of Health and Human Services.”    Lancaster unwound its Public Safety Commissioner role and hired an independent Fire Chief to once again lead that department.

The ”Assistant to the Assistant” that Hodges and Dolan hired last November followed Hodges to Dracut after her role in Lancaster was discontinued.   According to her LinkedIn profile, she worked for Lancaster through June and started with Dracut in March.

In her Dracut interview in November 2024 Hodges described Lancaster as “a town where politics drive every decision.”   I have bad news for Kate: I think Lancaster is probably about as sleepy a town as you’ll find.  She suggested that a larger town might fit her better, but just nine months into her Dracut contract she’s begun a bitter fight with Dracut’s school committee.  

Trouble in Dracut

Kate Hodges new job in Dracut has been rocky, already.

Last week things boiled over, as the Chair of their School Committee announced her intention to sue Hodges for defamation.     Hodges is accusing them of contract violations, and there’s friction over retirement benefits.

“DRACUT — Superintendent of Schools Steven Stone intends to sue Town Manager Kate Hodges and Board of Selectmen Chair Josh Taylor, alleging defamation of

character and abuse of power.”  ( Dracut school superintendent threatens to sue town officials, The Lowell Sun, 10/4/2025)

That follows a protracted squabble through public meetings (and over Facebook) after Hodges picked a fight over a building contract.

“Town Manager Kate Hodges refused to sign a one-year renewal until the matter was resolved, but suggested the short-term license as a workaround.

Hodges’ insistence on following state law and her vote against a new Campbell School — which occurred at a School Building Committee meeting — has drawn the ire of some school officials. She said she has been “vilified” by some in the district.

“What I’m looking for is to comply with the law. I want clear processes, and I won’t be vilified by following the law,” Hodges said.

Superintendent of Schools Steven Stone said the department has been following the procurement process that was in place before he arrived.”

(Dracut School Committee to Review Procurement Practices After Park Avenue School Lease Snafu, The Lowell Sun, 9/17/2025)

Finally, this week school staff members who received paper checks went unpaid due to another squabble with Hodges.    She threated to deploy the police – something that will ring familiar to Lancastrians. 

“DRACUT — Nine Dracut School Department staff members were still unpaid on Wednesday morning, several days after checks were printed thanks to human error and a breakdown in communication between Town Hall and the school system’s business office. Relations between the School Department and Town Hall over this issue became so tense that Town Manager Kate Hodges said she would send the police to get the needed documentation.”  (“Paycheck Snafu Leaves 9 Dracut School Employees Unpaid for Days”, The Lowell Sun, 10/3/2025)

 

Problems at her Previous Job, in Concord

Personnel disputes were a problem for Hodges before she ever arrived in Lancaster.

Prior to taking a job in Lancaster, Hodges worked in Concord – there she was Assistant Town Manager from February 2015 to December 2018.    In 2018 the long-time Town Manager, Christopher Whalen, announced that he would shortly retire and promoted Hodges to the newly established role of “Deputy” town administrator – almost certainly a move designed to burnish Hodges credentials as they looked to fill his position.  Hodges, however, was not announced among the three finalists to replace Whalen.

When the subsequent Town Manager announced his intention to resign in 2022, Town Finance Director Kerry Lafluer – who had been a finalist for Town Administrator in 2019 – announced her intention to pursue the top job again and was subsequently selected.   Hodges began interviewing elsewhere and accepted the Town Administrator job in Lancaster.

Hodges career in Concord had been marred by interpersonal disputes.  Most publicly, a staff lawsuit accused her of retaliating against an employee using FMLA leave.   Pamela Higgins sued Hodges and the town in 2016.    The town settled for $230,000 in 2019.

“My only hope now is that going forward some good will come of this and no other Town of Concord employee will have to go through such a horrific ordeal that my family has had to endure. “

Her husband was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2015, and according to the statement from Sulman's office, in January 2016, she received notice of her rights to take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to attend her husband’s medical appointments.

She was disciplined for the first time in her career within a week of receiving the notice, according to Sulman, and then placed on paid administrative leave five weeks later, pending termination. She filed a federal lawsuit in 2016 against the town and the individual defendants for retaliatory discharge under the FMLA.”

(Concord Journal, February 27 2019, “Town, Higgins settle suit”)

 

What will the next three years bring for Lancaster and Dracut?

Our new Town Administrator seems a lot more down-to-earth and practical.   By all accounts, he’s refreshing to work with and seems much more likely to maintain positive relationships with the town staff.    He came to town after a successful career at the Holden DPW and has deep family connections to Sterling – he has ever reason to want to succeed here and maintain his reputation.

Dracut:  you have a difficult decision on your hands.   If history is any guide, I’m not sure this is a story is likely to have a happy ending.