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.
SPRINGFIELD—With a lighter agenda on Monday compared to recent weeks, the City Council dispensed with a series of financial orders and legislation before the home stretch of the election.
SPRINGFIELD—With no prelim of its own this year, the general election for municipal races in Springfield is taking off after all other Western Mass preliminaries conclude. The lack of a preliminary here has not happened in two decades.
The highest court in the land—of Massachusetts at least—will hear and likely resolve one of the most vexing controversies in the City of Homes. On Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court accepted direct review of Hampden Superior Court Judge Francis Flannery’s ruling that Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno must appoint the Police Commission.
SPRINGFIELD—This week the City Council revisited a troubled revision to a drive-through special permit that had hit the skids earlier this year amid an abutter’s complaints. The item has still not achieved passage amid a sluggish review. Frustratingly, the once-complaining neighbor has been MIA, leaving councilors to straighten things out alone with the applicant.
SPRINGFIELD—At its June 7 meeting last Monday, the City Council cut itself off. After some members had spent a third of their day in Council Zoom meetings—the body remains virtual for now—councilors agreed to execute the 10pm drop-dead rule.