Curses! Foiled Again
by Bill Dusty
Here we go again: Mayor Domenic Sarno spent months of due diligence utilizing his now-famous methodical process to come to the conclusion that the purchase of the Mohammad Mosque #13 building, located on State Street, for a new city branch library would be the best move for the Mason Square community. As usual, his decision, made back in August, was once again met with surprise by the community at large and question marks by City Hall watchers.
Why on Earth would we purchase a building for close to a million dollars, said detractors, only to have to spend another several million dollars to renovate it, when a perfectly good former-library already exists just up the street? The former branch library that is now the home of the Urban League of Springfield could have been taken by the city via eminent domain proceedings, said supporters of the idea, for just as much money – and without any renovations needed, since the building already was a library as recently as 2003.
Now there is this: News came out earlier this week of a little-known stipulation in an agreement between assistant state attorney general Jamie Katz and the Urban League at the time of the latter’s purchase of the State Street building (June, 2003). According to this Republican story on the new development, the city can take the Urban League property at a ceiling price of $700,000, plus inflation. This would make the selection of the Urban League building millions of dollars cheaper, since the reported purchase price of the Mosque building was over $900,000 – plus an additional $3.15 million needed to renovate the property. Ouch.
Sarno himself was apparently steamed at the news, with the Republican reporting that he asked several times at a meeting, “And no one knew about it?” The Mayor will reportedly have the city Law Department look at the long-lost document before making any further decisions.
This is not the first time, unfortunately, that the Mayor’s Office has found itself on the hot seat after apparently careful deliberation of its proposals and policies. Early last spring, the Mayor opted to hold confidential budget proceedings rather than allow the City Council participate in City Department reviews. This at a time when the City Council was being charged for the first time in several years with reviewing and approving the city’ budget. At the time, City Councilor Timothy Rooke said it would be impossible to meet the Finance Control Board-imposed deadline in June for submitting the final budget. How could the City Council accurately gauge the proposed budget numbers, Rooke asserted then, when the Council wasn’t privy to knowing each Department’s individual needs? The Council would be forced to conduct its own, separate hearings, which would make meeting the June deadline unrealistic. The Finance Control Board eventually agreed with this assessment, and the budget submission date was pushed back by a couple of weeks.
Then in late May of 2008, a real bombshell rattled Springfield as city blogger Heather Brandon broke the news of Mayor Sarno’s intention to implement a pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) system to replace the current, Finance Control Board-imposed $90 per-year trash fee. This was in direct conflict with his election-year promise to rid the city of the hugely unpopular annual expense. Soon after this surprise announcement, however (the Mayor would confirm the decision at a Control Board meeting), the plan quickly began to unravel. The Mayor’s allies muted their praise as critics began to pile on board the Bash Wagon. Within a month, the plan was scrapped altogether. And so the one issue above all others that most observers believe truly cost former Mayor Charlie Ryan his job turned out to be a municipal illusion: The trash fee was here to stay.
August brought along with it hot weather and easier times at City Hall, as councilors and other folks took time off to vacation and enjoy the summer. But it turned out to be a brief respite from controversy for the Mayor’s Office. By September, the Sarno Administration was under the microscope once again after the announcement of the hiring of new Deputy Director of Neighborhood Services, Eddie C. Whitley Jr. It didn’t take long for folks with sore memories to protest the hiring of Whitley, who at one time had allegedly been a long-time slum lord on Central Street, in the Maple High-Six Corners neighborhood.
But the backlash wasn’t merely due to the hiring of Whitley himself – a disturbing irony on its own, as Whitley would now be charged with overseeing the same ordinances that he himself reportedly ignored for quite some time. Rather, the real heat came on after the president of the Maple High-Six Corners Council, Melvin Edwards, sent a letter to Mayoral chief-of-staff Denise Jordan criticizing Whitley’s selection for the job. Jordan was not only unapologetic and unsympathetic to Edwards’ concerns, but in fact appeared to lash out at him for even questioning the process that brought Whitley his job. Jordan seemed insulted, too, by the mere suggestion that “politics” had any role at all to play in Whitley’s hiring – this despite the fact that, back in 2005, Whitley was a coach on a community program headed up by Jordan.
And now this. Months of secretive deliberation and planning on the future of a branch library in Mason Square have seemingly come crashing down all around the Mayor’s Office.
‘You have got to be kidding me,’ Sarno must surely be thinking.
Foiled again.
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5 Responses for “Curses! Foiled Again”
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Longhill…. Mason Square…. If the Mayor gets any more “methodical” we will be back in the ice age.
Thanks for mentioning the Deputy Director of Neighborhood Services debacle again. The folks in the Maple High Six Corners neighborhood who remembered the piles of trash and debris at 444 Central Street were hopeful that a couple of the City Councilors who spoke out against Mr. Whitley’s hiring would pursue the matter but, to the best of my knowledge, have not.
Perhaps we will receive better city services once Ward Representation is in place.
Linda, let’s focus on regaining a suitable home for the Mason Square Library right now and wait until that job is done before moving on to the important, but larger question of civic engagement in Springfield.
To me, the struggle to gain control of and preserve our library system shows what the Springfield grassroots can do when it puts its mind to it. Having said that, once the Mason Square library is back in its rightful home, the way city residents have fought the library wars shows us the way to revitalize civic engagement across the board. The library war has laid the groundwork for enhanced civic engagement in Springfield.
The library fight, long-running and successful beyond anybody’s imagining in 1995 when it began, is an example of what city residents can do by working together, staying in touch in the face of defeats and frustration, being willing to learn and adapt, change tactics and never lose hope.
Once the Mason Square library is back in its proper home, the time will be right to refocus on the larger civic engagement picture in Springfield.
I propose putting together a representative, city-wide, can-do group committed to finding the means to bring a well-qualified community organizing consultant to Springfield to assess our overall civic engagement landscape–not just neighborhood associations, but branch library advisory committees, community police beat management teams, school based teams–all the opportunities we have where people can work together to impact conditions where the private and public spheres come in contact.
We need help asking and answering questions such as: What are existing groups doing right? Where can they do better? Who’s left out and needs to be included? What kind of financial and bureaucratic support from the city would encourage robust civic engagement from all corners of Springfield?
And I think we already have the answer as to what the councilors who spoke out about Mr. Whitely’s appointment will do: they will do nothing. And, as for the change to ward representation, we cannot know what this change might mean, but what the long library war has taught us over the last 13 years is the power of citizens to succeed by taking action on their own.
What do you say?
Sheila: Where do you stand on civic engagement on the Longhill Gardens project? STILL NO PUBLIC MEETING…
The evidence continues to pile up against Sarno. Is he trying to channel the spirit of corruption and incompetnece that Albano so sucessfully demonstrated?
Time to ensure the Feds are investigating and that no incriminating documents are destroyed.
Too bad, Springfield needed a competent mayor and got this loser instead.