SPRINGFIELD—There is plenty of precedent for police officers to fill the City Council chamber. Usually, it is to oppose or support some substantive policy. This past Monday the room was full, if not packed with cops. Ostensibly, they were there to support Superintendent Lawrence Akers’s body camera financial package.
Tragedy and the march of time itself undermined two ordinances before the City Council on Monday. Before the body was a proposal to automate electeds’ raises and another to double the time new hires have to move into the city. A majority of councilors present
The Springfield City Council advanced major changes to the city’s solid waste policies on October 21. The policies Public Works czar Chris Cignoli presented are fairly comprehensive and run a wide gamut of garbage in the city. However, the changes also include a cost element,
The Springfield City Council gave what appears to be the final greenlight to a major reconstruction of the X intersection in Forest Park at its meeting this past Monday. The approval for takings and underlying funding was not without its fireworks, though. Some councilors objected to the items appearing on the agenda only to have their arms’ twisted to deliver prompt action.
SPRINGFIELD—Returning from its summer slowdown that comes every August, the City Council confronted a phalanx of financial and property orders that made for a hefty agenda. However, a different kind of hefty may have defined the most compelling and complicated issue was before councilors on
As summer heats up, the Springfield City Council begins to slow down, holding fewer meetings than during the rest of the year. The body’s July 8 sitting was its only scheduled regular meeting until September. Despite the policy and finance-heavy agenda, there was little of major controversy before councilors last Monday.
The attempt to gut the Police Commission was part of a broader legislative package that would facilitate Lawrence Akers’s appointment as superintendent. Another piece was a home rule petition to let him remain a cop beyond the state’s mandatory retirement age of 65 and cap his pension. That bill, too, went to the rewrite desk. Now the original language could make a return.
SPRINGFIELD—Mayor Domenic Sarno and the City Council averted a political crisis Monday by agreeing to sunset what now amounts to suspensions of key parts of the Police Commission ordinance. The change ostensibly arose to ensure Deputy Police Chief Lawrence Akers, who would be the city’s first Black police leader, will have the same powers his four predecessors had.
However, the pair of ordinances, which reallocate most of the Police Commission’s power other than to mete out discipline, prompted sharp pushback.
The Springfield City Council’s review of legislation to clear the way for Deputy Chief Lawrence Akers to become Police Superintendent had its surprises. One of the biggest surprises was for Akers himself, who thought the home rule petition on his behalf would just let him serve until 70.
Ahead of the ascendence of Deputy Chief Lawrence Akers to Police Superintendent, the Springfield City Council considered a batch of legislation in an odd Tuesday meeting to smooth things over. Substantial changes to police leadership ordinances yielded a fractious, heated and, at times, bizarre debate.