Transitions are underway at the second largest (non-school) department in the City of Springfield. Fire Commissioner B.J. Calvi is hanging up his fire hat and retiring on July 24. A longtime public safety professional who initially built his firefighting career outside the city, Calvi led
At its June 15 outing, the Springfield City Council took a significant step toward curbing councilors’ remote participation at meetings. Formally, the item was a resolution and not a rule change. Therefore, the body did not bind its members. Yet, the push marks an attitude shift for the body, which was among the last to return to any in-person operations.
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,
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.
SPRINGFIELD—The City Council sped through a thin agenda Monday that included a final realization of the new tree ordinance. Earlier this year, the Council approved a revamped arboreal code including fines and fees for removing public trees. However, the creation of the fund to use
Slowly but surely, Mayor Domenic Sarno is backfilling the parade of retirements and reassignments that have emptied leadership in Springfield city government. Since his reelection—or before if you count former finance czar Timothy Plante—multiple high-ranking and long-serving department heads have exited.
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.
When word got around that now-former Ward 5 City Councilor Marcus Williams was resigning, councilors winced at what lay ahead. Last year, they had to appoint a replacement for Senator Adam Gomez after he resigned his Ward 1 seat.
Little did anybody in City Hall realize, councilors’ role in filling vacant ward seats no longer existed.
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
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.