A little more than a week after Springfield City Council President Jose Tosado announced his plans to run for mayor this fall, the man he hopes to replace more or less kicked off his own campaign.
In truth, the speech incumbent Mayor Domenic Sarno delivered last week wasn’t a campaign event—it was a State of the City address. Still, it was hard not to see the event as a warm-up to the campaign season, an incumbent’s-perk opportunity for the mayor to talk about what he’s done for the city so far and what he’d like to do in the future—if voters re-elect him for another term, that is.
(Interestingly, while Sarno has delivered similar speeches at his inaugurations in 2008 and 2010, this is the first time he’s delivered a mid-term State of the City address. The timing raises the question of whether Tosado’s recent entrance into the race in any way inspired Sarno’s decision to give the speech—and, if so, why he didn’t feel a need to do the same two years ago, when he faced a challenge from then-City Councilor Bud Williams. This year, in addition to Tosado, School Committee member Antonette Pepe has said she’s also considering running for mayor.)
Sarno delivered last week’s speech before an audience composed largely of City Hall employees. Of the 13 city councilors, only one, Ward 3’s Melvin Edwards, attended. While the absence of the remaining councilors may very well have had to do with the timing of the speech—10:30 on a Monday morning, when at least some presumably had work or other commitments—their sparse attendance did not go unnoticed among political gossips.
Sarno’s speech was, in keeping with his general approach to the job of mayor, decidedly upbeat. “I am very pleased to report that the state of our beloved City of Springfield is strong and is steadily improving,” he began. “This is no small accomplishment. Just a few years ago, we lost our fiscal autonomy to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But, as a result of making tough choices and with persistent hard work, we have regained our financial independence. We have moved forward decisively and we have generated substantial momentum in every dimension of city government. And we did this in the face of the worst global economy since the great depression.”
Sarno’s speech touted a list of accomplishments that we’re sure to hear repeated on the campaign trail: improvements in the city’s bond rating; the repayment of the $52 million loan Springfield received from the state in 2004, as part of a financial bailout; the hiring of new police officers and firefighters. Sarno talked about school renovation projects, redevelopment efforts in neighborhoods and on Main and State streets, the new “state-of-the-art” firehouse on White Street. He also used the speech to highlight some efforts that don’t always get much attention: a health clinic for homeless people; a teen pregnancy prevention campaign; expansion of a Pioneer Valley Project program that tries to build relationships between city school teachers and students’ families through home visits.
The mayor’s optimistic attitude was particularly striking given that many of the city’s accomplishments are hard won and tempered by the less cheery context in which they’ve taken place. On the issue of public safety (a favorite of Sarno’s since his days as a city councilor; “As I have said many times, we can speak about many grandiose development ideas for the City of Springfield. But if our residents do not feel safe in their community, we will not be able to capitalize on our tremendous development potential,” the mayor said in last week’s speech), good news about the drops in certain crime categories exists in the shadow of last year’s 16 murders, many of them drug- and gang-related.
Sarno spoke of improvements in the MCAS scores of city school kids while acknowledging: “Our graduation rate is too low. … Our drop-out rate is too high.”
On the issue of economic development, meanwhile, a number of the high points—the new state data center in the former Tech High, the redevelopment of the former federal building on Main Street—were funded largely by taxpayer dollars, not private capital. And a few of the economic development highlights cited by Sarno actually represent potential vulnerable points for the mayor during the campaign season: his administration’s decision to move the city’s School Department into the former federal building, for instance, has been criticized by some for the city’s failure to seek competitive bids for the lease. Meanwhile, a tax deal granted to Smith and Wesson in exchange for the addition of 225 jobs and about $49 million in facility upgrades has been criticized by veteran Councilor Tim Rooke, who maintains the company should first repay the city for a mid-1990s tax break it received based on a job-creation commitment that was not met.
Another point to quibble with: while the mayor spoke of his administration “set[ting] in motion a process for relocating the Mason Square library to its former location in the heart of this community,” many community activists have charged that the administration was sluggish, at best, about getting the Urban League to move out of the library building after it was taken by the City Council by eminent domain. Meanwhile, it will be fun to see Sarno and Tosado fight for credit for efforts to get payments in lieu of taxes from the city’s larger nonprofits—both have called for the city to create a so-called PILOT program—while at the same time taking care not to alienate those often-powerful institutions.
Notably absent from Sarno’s speech was an especially sore issue for his administration, one that’s sure to resurface as the election day draws nearer: the controversial residential trash fee. To recap for those who’ve lost their scorecard: Sarno first ran in 2007 on a pledge to rescind the fee, then, after taking office, announced that he now believed the city needs the revenue it provides; Tosado voted for the fee when it was first proposed by the state-imposed Finance Control Board, but now says he thinks it’s time to eliminate it.
“I am proud of all that we have accomplished together. And I hope you are, too,” the mayor said near the end of his address. “But my administration will not rest on its laurels. There is more work to be done.”
Indeed. Come November, which candidate will Springfield voters choose to do that work?
