SPRINGFIELD—The City Council’s first meeting of 2024 quickly morphed into an opportunity for councilors to quench their inquisitive thirst for a wide range of departmental libations. Although in attendance for fairly mundane items, department representatives faced a barrage of questions. In at least case, a police gang suppression grant, it was councilors first chance to raise the record homicide count last year.
SPRINGFIELD—Mayor Domenic Sarno began his six term of office Monday alongside the City Council with promises to deliver essentially what he campaigned on: the status quo. His less than 20 minute address thanked family, friends and supporter and list many of his accomplishments in prior terms. Nearly all of the City Council took the oath just before Sarno did.
The event was small.
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.
SPRINGFIELD—The final City Council meeting of 2023 and of the current term ended with the usual goodbyes and acknowledgements. The year’s final meeting also includes an unofficial selection of the council president. That yielded some drama if not suspense.
The Springfield City Council authorized the renaming of a McKnight neighborhood street after former Ward 4 Councilor E. Henry Twiggs. It was poignant recognition of their late colleague, whose activism contributed to the revival of the ward representation. In a more ironic turn, the Council punted on a new labor contract for police supervisors.
The allegations of vote-buying occurring right outside Springfield City Hall have dropped a hand grenade into a historic but quiet municipal election. It has set off a wave of condemnation, conspiracies and snickering across Springfield and within its political class.
The SuperPAC homecare mogul Cesar Ruiz funded took a prominent role in municipal preliminaries. The Hispanic Latino Leaders Now Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee (HLLN) filed a new report with state campaign finance regulators that shows it is spending to support a clutch of City Council candidates.
Was the defining issue at the October 16 meeting of the Springfield City Council for naught? It certainly seems possible. The debate collapsed into confusion and hand-wringing until its lead sponsor, Council President Jesse Lederman untied all the knots.
SPRINGFIELD—In the waning weeks of the preliminary campaign here, candidates for the five at-large City Council seats face a big challenge: standing out. Two Council retirements and a competitive mayoral race has yielded a historic 20 candidates for the September 12 at-large preliminary.
On June 20, for the first time since the shroud of the coronavirus fell upon Springfield, city councilors confronted Mayor Domenic Sarno, faccie e faccie, in chambers as he presented his budget for new fiscal year.