Tonight Springfield voters approved MGM’s plan for a “resort style” casino. The Yes vote won by 16 points for a 58-42% win. By most measures this would be a dramatic victory for MGM and its supporters and an ignominious loss for the opponents. While it
EDITED 7/12/13 2:01 PM: For grammar The casino vote is nearly upon us. It is, in a way, one of the most important in the city in a long time, including actual elections for office. Faced with such a situation, the only approach for us
SPRINGFIELD—Although long, the City Council’s agenda was not particularly controversial or compelling. A few items offered councilors the typical, out-of-context grandstanding, but even that was fairly spare given limited opportunities. At-large Councilor Kateri Walsh was absent from Monday’s meeting. The Council’s agenda was largely transfers
UPDATED 5/8/2013 10:45PM : To reflect a correction. An earlier version of this post attributed to John Lysak an effort to move the Boston Road bonding to committee, which was incorrect and attributed to a misunderstanding; for clarity and grammar; and to add new details
After months of sniping and one-upsmanship, MGM, the Las Vegas-based casino developer, beat out Penn National to forge a community host agreement with the City of Springfield. Mayor Domenic Sarno, in an at times mushy and naïve announcement, said that the South End proposal would
Shortly after the Springfield area’s most visible and arguably influential media source became a potential benefactor in the area’s competition to build a casino, The Boston Globe lamented that the area was losing a key voice in the debate. The Republican had promised to limit
On Thursday night, the Springfield License Commission continued its deliberations and in doing so delayed a vote on Mayor Domenic Sarno’s 1 a.m. closing proposal for bars in the city. Sarno’s proposal had been submitted to counter crime, but during a February hearing, it was
In a bruising and revealing profile of power in Springfield City Hall, The Republican’s Stephanie Barry laid bare the relationship between Mayor Domenic Sarno and political kingpin Charlie Kingston. Indeed, as Barry wrote, “talk of Kingston’s sway has festered among City Hall insiders for years.”
The recent political explosion in Holyoke over Mayor Alex Morse’s reversal on casinos may have been one of the few news stories that was able to actually muscle the gas explosion in Springfield out of the headlines for a bit. Fighting two fronts between each
First, a note to our readers. We apologize for failing to post on the last two city council meetings. On balance, there was not much lost in our failure, however, we still regret our failure. There is at least one issue that merited some further