A BRIDGE FOR SALE?

If you really believe that Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno is planning to lower your taxes next year by putting your $45 million that he loosely labeled a “surplus” into a treasury account as reported in a January 13, 2023 article in The Republican, then I know of a bridge in Brooklyn that I would be willing to sell you.
Mayor Sarno has raised taxes every year since he has been in office. Whether or not he had a legitimate reason for doing so is irrelevant because he has in essence lied about it every year rather than telling property taxpayers the truth. In his recent effort to dupe readers and to dim the outcry from the current year’s major tax increases, Mayor Sarno has presented us with a plan in which he promises to lower taxes next year by a bit more than $2 million in interest that he claims will be earned on the $45 million treasury account. Well, if his next year’s property tax reduction is the same as this year’s so-called reduction then taxpayers are in big trouble.
As I’m sure you recall, his $3 million plan to lower taxes this year resulted in the largest increase since he was elected. Why should anyone believe the $2 million plan will lower taxes next year and why should anyone believe Sarno will even try to fulfill his promise (remember the trash fee claims that first got him elected)? And, remember, Sarno still gets to keep the $45 million to do with as he pleases whenever he chooses. That’s the real news! And it’s the same old story.
The bigger story that has not yet been written, though, is that the $45 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of money that have fallen into Sarno’s hands from the tornado, Covid and state and federal government efforts to stimulate the economy, much of which has been distributed in such a haphazard and opaque manner that taxpayers will never know if they received their fair share, which, on its face, seems unlikely. What Springfield residents really need is an independent audit of the city’s books during the full time of Sarno’s term in office. No doubt, the results would probably be very interesting.
With much false adulation, one city councilor who does the mayor’s every bidding, said in The Republican article reporting on the new program to reduce next year’s property taxes: “I suspect this announcement will attract attention from across Massachusetts, the region and the county….”
If so, it won’t likely be the kind of attention the mayor and his cronies want. But it will most certainly be revealing to Springfield’s residents, taxpayers and voters and some of the few lawmakers who have shown the courage to question the manner in which the city is spending the people’s money.

SPEAKING OF A BRIDGE FOR SALE…

The comedy of events surrounding Springfield’s police commission couldn’t have happened anywhere else in the same way. It’s what makes Springfield peculiar and the laughing stock of the state. It is almost embarrassing to write about. It’s another Brooklyn Bridge tale.
After all these years of fighting to get a legitimate police commission against formidable resistance from Mayor Sarno, who didn’t mind resisting it both legally and illegally, the commission has ended up weaker than it was before it became an official power through the relentless efforts of the Springfield City Council and a good outside lawyer who represented the councilors for free, and the courts and, of course, the persistence of the residents of Springfield.
I don’t even know where to start explaining the most recent demonstration of the sad condition of the new police commission in a manner that can be understood so, I’ll start with a recent headline in The Republican: “Board moves to void vote reinstating officers.” (January 18, 2023)
The two White officers referred to in The Republican were reinstated by a vote of the commission in November after having been convicted of misdemeanor charges of assault on four Black patrons of the Nathan Bill’s Bar and Restaurant on Island Pond Road. Most folks know what happened. The cops started a fight they shouldn’t have started over nonsense because they were drunk and arrogant. And this time they got caught, prosecuted and convicted and they should not have been reinstated in the first place. But they were both reinstated in November 2022 by the Springfield Police Commission by a vote of 2 to 1. Two White members present at the meeting voted to reinstate them and the lone Hispanic member in attendance voted not to.
Of course, there are five members on the commission. Two were absent – one Black, the other Hispanic. All five were appointed by Mayor Sarno with no input from anyone. They were appointed because they were expected to do the mayor’s bidding or to do nothing against his bidding which had been the case up to the time the Board reinstated the two White police officers. And Mayor Sarno would have us believe that he had no part in the reinstatement and was against it. (Anyone looking to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?)
Of course, we know Mayor Sarno and the police chief colluded to rehire the two errant cops while allowing the mayor to distance himself from the reinstatement. They always operate in sync. I won’t speculate on how deep the collusion goes, but the two White commissioners became the arbiters of the White officers’ fate and it didn’t look good for Mayor Sarno and it upset the two absent commissioners. To the commission’s credit, they agreed to vote to reverse the reinstatement of the two officers and won the vote by a 3 to 2 margin with the two White commissioners voting against the reversal.
And this is where things get tricky. The five-member vote was actually not a vote to reverse the reinstatement of the two police officers. It was only a vote on whether or not to hold a vote to reverse the reinstatement. In other words, the first vote of the five commissioners was not a vote to cancel the reinstatement but merely a vote to allow the commission to take a second vote on whether to reverse the reinstatement. The trickiest part came next.
The mayor’s attorney (who is not actually supposed to be the attorney for the mayor but for all of the city), former Judge John Payne, surprisingly declared that in his legal judgment, the original vote to reinstate should be reversed because the two votes to reinstate didn’t represent a majority of the five existing commissioners as the law requires. Sounds good, so far!
But Payne also declared that the only commissioners who could vote to reverse the reinstatement were the ones who were actually present at the November meeting – the original three! So, of course the vote to reverse the reinstatement was denied by a 2 to 1 margin and, of course, the two White guys voted not to reverse the vote to reinstate and the lone Hispanic commissioner voted to reverse. And the other “brave” commissioners meekly accepted the decision as though they were powerless to do otherwise.
Of course, there had to be a fall guy in this mess to keep everything clean and neat. And for the sake of Sarno’s image, it couldn’t have been a Black or Hispanic person so the only choice had to be a White commissioner. So, Mayor Sarno and his lawyer, Judge John Payne, somehow contrived (or they appeared to have contrived) to sacrifice White Police Commission Chairman Gary Berte. John Payne let the contrivance slip out when he made an apparently unintended public comment about an impending change in the chairmanship that none of the commissioners had discussed before at the meeting, including Chairman Berte who was visibly and vocally disturbed by his abrupt reduced status. So, when the contentious vote finally took place, Berte was voted out in favor of Norman Roldan, who is as close to the mayor as Chairman Berte and the other commissioners.
As a result of all of this foolishness, two convicted cops have been reinstated to the police force, fall guy Berte came out of it with a tap on the hand with his position as a commissioner intact; the two commissioners who were absent for the vital vote had their say to no apparent effect; Judge Payne’s reputation is further soiled; and Mayor Sarno doesn’t look quite as bad as he should look and most unfortunately, the police commission remains as weak as ever and, as usual, the everyday people of Springfield, who long for a strong, independent police commission, lose out. And that’s the real news.
Except for one more Republican headline worthy of mention: “DOJ lauds police, but not commissioners.” (January 19, 2023) It is disturbing that the DOJ had such praise for the progress of the Springfield Police Department and seemed to blame the Springfield Police Commission for its shortfalls as though the mayor and the police chief share none of the blame when we all know that they are the blame. The commission was never intended by Mayor Sarno and his chief of police to be anything other than what it is. Its members were chosen by Mayor Sarno to do exactly what they are doing…his bidding and nothing more. Sarno is the source of the problem and always has been and only when the DOJ calls him out on it and forces his hand will the public be satisfied that the DOJ is a real force for change at the Springfield Police Department. And that’s the real news. ■