At 28, that means Jesse Lederman has been active in city politics since he was a teenager. That makes his exit after three terms notable less because he was leaving so soon, but that the Council was not even his first act. By his 2017 election, Lederman had already run once, worked on several campaigns and become a prominent figure in Springfield environmental activism battling the biomass plant.
About 15 years after biomass entered the public consciousness of Springfield, the matter is still milling paper. Most recently, this took the form of a fresh defeat for the proposed project once slated for East Springfield. What now seems like beating an expired horse, is actually a reminder of how far opponents have gone.
The race for mayor of Springfield shifted into a higher gear with the entry of a third top-tier candidate Jesse Lederman, the Council President and three-term at-large councilor, declared his candidacy in a Tuesday morning press release and video.
SPRINGFIELD—City Councilors, state legislators, community activists and a United States Senator took a victory lap at City Hall after the state cut off the air for the ever-lingering biomass project. On Friday, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection pulled the air quality permit Palmer Renewable
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection may have driven a stake through the heart of the nigh-undead biomass power plant proposed for Springfield. In a five-page decision dated April 2, the department said it pulled the air quality permit amid growing public pressure and heightened
UPDATED 2/22/21 10:09AM: To include a statement from DEP and to include comments from Sen. Warren’s office. SPRINGFIELD—United States Senator Ed Markey joined opponents of the ever-undead proposal to build a biomass power plant here to voice his support for stopping the project once and
SPRINGFIELD—Aside from its atypical procedure to a select a new Council President, the City Council here glided through its last meeting of 2020. This Hell-spawned year had driven the body from its friendly-enough confines to cyberspace for nearly all of 2020. Monday was no different.
Injustice had no greater foe in the City of Springfield than Michaelann Bewsee. After co-founding what would become the city’s feistiest community organization, Arise for Social Justice, Bewsee contributed to innumerable battles for equality and fairness. She embraced the city’s cultural mosaic without losing sight
SPRINGFIELD—In politics, the City of Homes likes a comeback story. Over the last twenty years, the most successful at-large City Council challengers have made a stab at the office—or even held it—once before. That factor favors Ernesto Cruz and Jesse Lederman as they seek one of five
SPRINGFIELD—Amid the City Council’s adoption of Mayor Domenic Sarno’s $616.6 million budget was a short, typical, but potentially significant regular meeting earlier Monday night. Financial measures awaiting approval for weeks passed as did legal changes that could impact direct democracy in the city. The Council