UPDATED 4:30PM: An earlier version of this post indicated the Springfield City Council will vote to approve the budget this week. That vote will actually be later in June.
Springfield is set to emerge from the pandemic in relatively fiscal good shape as the city’s various organs come together to approve the budget.
HARTFORD—The signs of Connecticut’s largest paper still linger around downtown side streets within view of the State Capitol. The name is everywhere. Lights flash on idled shipping docks. Signs denote parking for Hartford Courant employees though nobody from the paper works at the Broad Street
SPRINGFIELD—Ranking at or near the bottom by various wealth metrics, the City of Homes looked like a sitting duck as the pandemic crashed upon the United States. In the weeks after the City Council’s March 16 meeting, its last in-person since then, Massachusetts and Connecticut
UPDATED 3/13/21 12:09PM: To include demographic data of Springfield vaccinations. SPRINGFIELD—After weeks of pleading, the city Health & Human Services Department here will soon have its own clutch of COVID-19 vaccine to distribute to neighborhood residents. Over the course of four days between now and
SPRINGFIELD—Beyond selecting a new colleague, the City Council’s Monday night remained within the normal. Still, there were a few standout items. The Council approved the first components of the city’s new master plan for downtown, namely around MGM and the MassMutual Center. A discernable vision
UPDATED 11:35PM: To include comment from Mayor Narkewicz about the rest of his term. One month after it suddenly became wide open, the Northampton Mayoral race appears to be rumbling to life. City Council President Gina-Louise Sciarra is expected to formally enter the race to
In a windowless State House room on March 4th, State Senator Jo Comerford chaired a Joint Committee on Public Health hearing on COVID-19 preparedness. Diligent but never overwrought, she grilled health officials including Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel. Unbeknownst to participants, the prior week’s Biogen
SPRINGFIELD—At the start of last week, the mass vaccination site here was a mess. Confusion and a breakdown in communications led to a dangerous situation. Elderly vaccine-seekers were waiting in the cold outside the husk of the former Macy’s. As complaints about the vaccine rollout
SPRINGFIELD—Despite its world-class healthcare assets, Massachusetts had been milling around the bottom of vaccine distribution in the United States. That has begun to change as Governor Charlie Baker loosened criteria to inoculate an individual. Still, access is spotty, particularly in Western Massachusetts, and the mass
by Adam Bass Correspondent-intern State Representatives and Senators have expressed growing frustration and concern over the rollout of the vaccination program that Governor Charlie Baker’s administration has undertaken. When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines received approval, Baker said the state could distribute these shots in