Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno says that his preference for buying a new building for the long-missing Mason Square branch library—rather than taking the old site by eminent domain—is untainted by the base concerns that might guide other, lesser leaders.
"I'm not going to play politics," Sarno insisted at a press conference announcing his plan to spend $950,000 to buy Muhammad's Mosque #13, just up State Street from the old library.
It's hard to say what political game-playing, exactly, he was referring to; Sarno doesn't take calls from the Advocate, so we can't ask him. Perhaps the first-term mayor was taking a swipe at his former colleagues on the City Council, who passed a resolution in July calling on him to take back the original branch building, which was sold to the Urban League under dubious circumstances in 2003.
Presumably Sarno isn't keen for residents to consider another political angle: the support he receives from Urban League President Henry Thomas, who earlier this summer—as public support for the eminent domain option mounted—gave the mayor a $500 campaign contribution, the annual maximum allowed by law, and a particularly impressive figure considering this is not an election year.
Sarno's decision has no real weight; the purchase needs the approval of both the Finance Control Board and the Springfield Library Foundation. The latter controls the trust fund, created by the late Annie Curran and earmarked for a Mason Square library, that Sarno wants to tap to pay for the building. The foundation—which is headed by former Mayor Charlie Ryan, whom Sarno defeated in last fall's election—has a number of concerns it wants addressed before it releases the funds, starting with why it should pay $950,000 for a building whose worth city assessors place at just over $400,000, and which would need renovations to turn into a functional library. There are also questions about how Sarno "brokered" a price with the mosque owners without first getting a professional appraisal.
Sarno's announced plan bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the circumstances of the original branch sale. He wants to buy the mosque for more than double its assessed value; in 2003, the Springfield Library and Museums Association—the private group that ran the city libraries at the time—sold the old branch to the Urban League for $700,000, despite the fact that it had undergone a $1.2 million renovation, funded in part by the city, just two years earlier. The SLMA made the sale secretively, without consulting neighborhood leaders or its own advisory board; Sarno's decision also cut out community members, as well as city councilors and the foundation that controls the trust fund. And Sarno's apparent conflict of interest in taking money from Thomas recalls a conflict from the 2003 sale: the SLMA's president, Joe Carvalho, also sat in the Urban League's board.
Outrage over that deal helped prompt a successful campaign, led by then-private citizen Ryan, for the city to take control of the libraries. Ryan was re-elected mayor that fall, and in 2004, his city solicitor, Pat Markey, sued the SLMA over the sale and won a settlement that included $334,000 for a new library.
The mosque had been proposed for the new library site last year by a search committee put together by Ryan. At the time, a $1 million price tag had been tossed around, although that was simply a starting point for negotiations and was not based on an appraisal or other assessments, said Markey, who sat on the committee and is a member of the foundation that handles the Curran trust fund.
Mosque leaders changed their minds about the deal before negotiations took place, leaving the city once again looking for a site. By the fall, City Councilor Tim Rooke and Mo Jones, a former councilor who was in the midst of an unsuccessful re-election bid, began calling for the city to take back the old library by eminent domain, using the settlement from the SLMA lawsuit to pay the Urban League fair market value. Rooke is critical of Sarno's plan to buy the mosque, noting that the mayor failed to get appraisals, renovation estimates and other necessary information before announcing plans to pay $950,000 for it.
Markey, who was elected to the City Council last fall, still considers the mosque a good site for the library, with its ample parking and large, open floor plan. But he, too, has concerns about the hefty price tag.
"I just don't want to be taken, that's all," Markey said. "We've got a fiduciary duty as the handlers of the Annie Curran fund to not squander anything." To that end, the foundation has hired an architect to assess the building and determine the renovation costs.
Not everyone is ready to give up the idea of seeing the old library reclaimed. "If they don't go along with eminent domain and put that library back where it was originally, the city of Springfield is going to show it doesn't have a soul," said Jones, who called the mosque site "a hand-me-down concept of a library."
Like many in the neighborhood, Jones is especially displeased with Thomas, whom he feels put his agency's desire for a nice—and relatively cheap—building ahead of Mason Square's need for a library. "It's the king or the kingdom," Jones said. "King Henry feels as though he's got political clout & and to hell with the damned kingdom." (Thomas did not return calls about the library from the Advocate.)
Others in the community simply want the matter resolved. "I have maintained for years that my goal is a library, not revenge," Liz Stevens, a member of the Mason Square Library Advisory Committee, told the Advocate. But when the mosque backed out of the deal last year, she said, "we ran out of buildings to consider," heightening interest in an eminent domain taking.
"If taking the building back by [eminent] domain would cost us $1.5 million and $500,000 in court costs (no renovation required), but buying the mosque and renovating it would cost $3.5 million, which way we should go will ultimately be a political decision. I do not expect Domenic Sarno to ever agree to take the building back, although it would be the most sensible thing to do and create a lot of community healing," Stevens said. "If the difference between the two is only $500,000, it would be hard to make a case for starting a political struggle when all we want is a library.""
mturner@valleyadvocate.com
