SPRINGFIELD—The City Council named the new City Clerk to succeed the outgoing Clerk, Anthony Wilson, who has served since 2016. Tasheena Davis, an associate city solicitor and the Council’s legislative attorney, was elected on an 8-4 vote. She will take office August 1. Because Wilson
SPRINGFIELD—It could be easy to overstate the stakes of the City Council’s impending decision on a new City Clerk. Aside from opening another front in the simmering battle over separation of power in city government, the decision’s consequences are hard to fully parse. But both
SPRINGFIELD—In a sign that environmental policy has become an issue for the City Council, the first major bill to emerge from the new Sustainability Committee has inched toward passage. The bill, shorthanded simplistically as a plastic bag ban, is not entirely new. However, it may
SPRINGFIELD—In a comparatively—and mercifully—short meeting Monday night, the City Council’s responsibilities were largely financial. Although many of the meeting’s fiscal items veered toward the banal, a wistful to frustrated air fell over the body around two of them. Councilors had to approve over a million
Tracye Whitfield did not think she would be on the Springfield City Council in 2018. She had run last year, hoping to catch the wave of elected women. Yet she placed sixth in the race for the city’s five at-large Council seats. However, under Springfield’s
SPRINGFIELD—Returning from its summer lull, the City Council faced an agenda that stretched their Monday meeting into midnight. Although the body notched some wins, the laborious agenda and procedural snafus mangled some items. Moreover, the meeting marked the beginning of a transition with Thomas Ashe
SPRINGFIELD—Amid a flurry of financial orders for the closing fiscal year, the City Council acted on several items Monday night, many it had considered recently. Most notably, it advanced the chief diversity office (CDO) ordinance to the mayor, prompting executive freak out. The stated reason
UPDATED 6/9/18 10:07PM: To reflect a correction on the incineration ban. Springfield will levy fines of $1-5k for first offenses. Repeat offenses yield fines up to $10k. SPRINGFIELD—The City Council Monday night took long-awaited action on two highly anticipated ordinances even as the underlying issues
SPRINGFIELD—On Monday night, the City Council delivered a blow to Mayor Domenic Sarno’s efforts to bully a church out of shelting an undocumented woman. The body unanimously passed an order to halt expenditure of city funds to interfere with South Congregational Church’s provision of sanctuary
SPRINGFIELD—The same night the City Council enacted a new rules for tax incentives, it turned one proposed break back. The moves on tax incremental financing (TIF) were unrelated and yet inextricably linked. A power struggle lay behind legitimate concerns about a TIF connected to the