The headline of the press release announcing a recent poll on the quality of life in Springfield offered at least a partially positive outlook: “Residents & Express Optimism for the Future.”
Indeed, almost half of respondents to the poll—conducted by Western New England College’s Polling Institute—believe that conditions in the city will be “somewhat better” or “much better” five years from now; only 21 percent predicted that things will be worse.
That’s heartening news. But it’s also at odds with some of the other findings in the report, which incorporates the results of phone interviews with 502 adult Springfield residents, and 540 residents of other communities in Hampden County. (According to WNEC, the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. Some questions were also asked of 2,338 employees at 23 of the city’s larger companies. Full results are at www1.wnec.edu/news.)
Among the bleaker results: Fifty-four percent of city residents consider Springfield a “poor” or “fair” place to live. Those who live outside the city have an even less flattering view: 78 percent described it as poor or fair. The percent of non-residents who described it as “excellent”? Zero.
Fifty-four percent of Springfield residents overall described the city’s public schools as poor or fair; among respondents with kids in the city schools, that figure rose to 64 percent. And 44 percent of residents think the city is a “somewhat worse” or “much worse” place to live than it was five years ago. Twenty percent consider it “somewhat better”; only 3 percent chose “much better.”
Crime was identified as the city’s biggest problem by a majority of respondents: 60 percent of city residents, and 70 percent of non-residents. And 71 percent of residents think the city is doing only a poor or fair job fighting crime. Thirty-seven percent of Springfield residents, and 51 percent of county residents, chose “devote more resources to fighting crime” as their top priority for improving quality of life in the city.
Meanwhile, the issue identified as the city’s second-biggest problem— “economy/jobs/poverty”—was selected by only 17 percent of city residents and 10 percent of non-residents. Those are three complex issues to lump together in one category; complicating things further is the fact that poverty, a poor economy and high crime rates are inextricably linked through a knotty web of causes and effects.
The poll results are not without bright spots. Sixty-eight percent of city residents, for instance, described their own neighborhoods as good or excellent places to live—an indication of the city’s long history of neighborhood-based identification, and a reminder that meaningful positive change often starts on a very local level.
Still, it’s hard to avoid the bigger message: a sizeable portion of Springfield residents find living in the city a bummer, while residents of neighboring communities hold an even lower opinion of the place. In a Springfield Republican article, city leaders and officials gamely took on the results: Russ Denver, president of the Chamber of Commerce, talked of the importance of a community-wide response to the city’s problems; a spokesman for the Police Department talked about efforts to cut down on crime.
Running throughout any conversation about the challenges facing Springfield is the theme of “perception”—the insistence that it’s a perception of crime that keeps people from going downtown on a weekend night, that drives businesses out of town and keeps new ones from settling here, that spurs families with the means to head for more suburban communities. “Perception plus attitude equals reality,” Mayor Domenic Sarno told the Republican. “We need to continue to work hard to get out the good news of the city. Many good things are happening.”
Championing the city has been one of Sarno’s strong suits, an approach to governing that’s welcomed by voters tired of seeing their city written off as hopeless. But the mayor’s equation nonetheless feels a bit off. Perception and attitude might be important factors, but they can only go so far to change a reality that includes five murders in less than four months, an increase in gang-related violence, the steady loss of decent-paying jobs, the large number of Springfield residents who live in poverty.
Recently, a lifelong city resident told me about attending the wake for Conor Reynolds, the Springfield teen who was stabbed to death at a schoolmate’s birthday party, allegedly by a 20-year-old city man with a gang background. Looking at the large number of families gathered in mourning—people whose kids went to school with Reynolds, who live in his neighborhood, who are friends of his parents—he told me, he found himself estimating that at least 50 would no longer be living in the city a year from now, driven away by one reality: the senseless death of yet another Springfield kid.
