Springfield City Council President and Ward 5 Councilor Marcus Williams will resign both positions, thus triggering a new succession process. Just over a year ago, Williams oversaw the filling of now-State Senator Adam Gomez’s Council seat.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively settled a lingering question. Who really controls the government of the city of Springfield? The justices of the commonwealth’s highest court clearly, decisively and unanimously found in favor of the separation of powers. The City Council shares that power.
This week Springfield City Council President Marcus Williams released his committee assignments for the municipal legislature. It comes days after beginning his second year atop the Council and his fourth term as the Ward 5 Councilor.
After 15 years leading the Springfield Law Department, City Solicitor Ed Pikula is filing a motion to withdraw—metaphorically. The longtime city lawyer will retire this year.
Cities up and down the Pioneer Valley swore in their new governments Monday. In two cities new mayors took office while a third formally began his full term.
In the end, for Springfield, 2021 may have come to define the city’s limits. Some of those limits were long overdue. Courts ruled twice on the limits of Mayor Domenic Sarno’s power and the coronavirus revealed the limits of his influence. But those limits also
BOSTON—The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on Monday has not yet crushed Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno’s belief in his sweeping power over the city during oral arguments for his appeal of a lower court’s greenlight of the Police Commission’s revival.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has received the briefs in Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno’s appeal of a decision that found he must appoint a Police Commission. On April 16, Hampden Superior Court Judge Francis Flannery found that the Springfield City Council was within its rights to revive the former police panel.
Anybody looking for drama in the midterm elections in Springfield last week only found disappointment. No incumbent seeking reelection lost their race despite several facing not-a-joke challengers.
While the legislature lumbers through its own district maps for the next ten years, the same process is playing out on the municipal level. Wards and precincts are changing only slightly as Springfield’s population was largely stable.