Springfield City Councilor and mayoral hopeful Bud Williams is taking a swing at incumbent Domenic Sarno over his administration's decision not to apply for a U.S. Department of Justice grant earmarked for the hiring of police officers.
The money—from the Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPs, office—is part of the federal economic stimulus program. According to the feds, almost 5,000 municipalities have received $1 billion through the program, which funds officers' salaries and benefits for three years. The money can be used to hire new officers or rehire officers who'd previously been laid off, and covers entry-level salaries and benefits. Criteria used to select recipients included the communities' crime rates, fiscal health and plans for community policing.
In Massachusetts, 13 communities shared about $29 million in grants. Two Western Mass. cities got in on the bounty: Holyoke received almost $1.3 million, for six officers, while North Adams received just shy of $200,000, for one officer.
Springfield, however, didn't apply for the program—a decision Williams, in a statement released last week, called "a serious mistake in judgment," given the city's crime problems. "The Mayor had a unique opportunity to make our neighborhoods safe and he failed the test," Williams criticized.
"[M]y administration will never pass up an opportunity to put more police officers on our streets," he went on. "We will leverage every available dollar to make Springfield a safe city."
Williams' attack goes directly to one of Sarno's pet issues, going back to his time on the City Council: public safety. But Sarno suggests the situation is not as straightforward as Williams presents it.
"Obviously we wanted to pursue that money during the time of the budget crisis and potential layoffs looming," the mayor told the Advocate. Sarno said he consulted Police Commissioner Williams Fitchet about whether to apply for the money but ultimately decided not to, due to a potentially costly provision in the grant program: while the federal money would cover officers' salaries and benefits for the first three years, the municipality would have to pick up the costs for at least one year after that.
"We agonized over it but felt it was not the right thing to do," Sarno said. If a city couldn't cover the cost of the new hires at the end of the three-year period, "you'd have to eat all three years of the money," said the mayor, adding that he didn't want to hire new officers who might have to be laid off once the federal money dried up.
Williams dismissed such concerns, suggesting that hiring new officers would drive down the crime rate, which would in turn bring more businesses to the city, resulting in new tax revenues that could cover the police costs.
The councilor said he intends to appeal to federal legislators, including Rep. Richie Neal, to see if Springfield can be reconsidered for the program. That, however, seems unlikely. According to the Justice Department, 7,300 communities applied for the program, seeking a total of $8.3 billion—more than eight times the amount of money in its budget."
—Maureen Turner
mturner@valleyadvocate.com
