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News in Review

by Bill Dusty

REMINDER REMINERS:
The last two editions of The Reminder have featured headlines that I wanted to link to here at the Intruder, but back-logs of work at “the assignment desk” have delayed me.

- From April 16th Edition: Open Pantry May Close Some Doors.
The Open Pantry is short some $400,000 in funding this fiscal year due to cutbacks in state aid. According to the Reminder story, the funding shortages primarily affect the homeless agency’s payroll. Open Pantry executive director Kevin Noonan also reportedly asked that residents in the Greater Springfield area make donations to the Open Pantry and contact the state about restoring the state aid money. “I’m not ashamed to say we’ve been under-funded for years,” says Noonan in the Reminder article.

One wonders if he’d be ashamed to announce the Open Pantry’s salaries in light of the agency’s funding crisis, since one possible short-term solution to help ease the burden could be salary cuts rather than service cuts – or a combination of both.

- From the April 23rd Edition: Sarno’s First 100 Days.
This story profiles a report released by the Mayor’s office detailing progress made by the Sarno Administration during its first one hundred days. As the story mentions, the three “Grand Openings” listed in the Sarno report were already in progress before he cam into office, so taking credit for them is bit much. But they did open while he was mayor, so I guess technically…

The first 100 days of a mayor’s term in office isn’t really much of a gauge of progress – unless, of course, the mayor is such a buffoon that he or she screws up terribly and makes a disaster of it all. The city budget isn’t due until this June, and with Mayor Sarno working behind closed doors and the City Council on their own, we won’t really get a good idea of how things are until the Finance Control Board receives the budget and either accepts or rejects (or makes adjustments to) the submitted numbers.

I’ve been asked several times already how I think Mayor Sarno is doing thus far. The answer is the same: Too early to tell, but he hasn’t screwed up anything yet, so that’s a plus for him.

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MINI-CONTROVERSY OVER CHURCH AUCTION:
As reported the other day, the Springfield Museums Association is “miffed” at the Old First Church for their plans to auction several items of church property at today’s (Friday) auction. The Association had hoped to acquire a few items for itself, including a couple of paintings. According to the Republican article, the auction is starting at 6:00pm at Douglas Auctioneers on 241 Greenfield Road, in South Deerfield, MA.

From the Republican article:

Joseph Carvalho III, president and chief executive officer of the Springfield Museums Association, said that he was miffed at the vagueness of church officials, but that association members will attend the auction and bid on the items.

“I guess we’ll have to,” he said.

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TRANSITION TEAM REPORTS:
The Mayor’s office released a report submitted by the Mayor’s Transition Team yesterday. You can read that report here. Also check out commentary on the report over at Urban Compass.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Apr 25th, 2008 and filed under City Hall, Feature Stories, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.