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Playing Politics with Public Safety

By
Opinion

In the wake of the tragic nightclub fire in Rhode Island last winter, most cities and towns in the Commonwealth have become more serious about code enforcement and the broad issue of public safety. Here in Springfield, however, we are apparently going in the opposite direction.

The city’s Building Department is currently rudderless and woefully understaffed. There is no building commissioner per se — the the man who owns that title, Peter Garvey of East Longmeadow, is officially on unpaid leave, but working a full-time job with Barr and Barr Inc., a regional commercial builder, and reportedly trying to figure out what to do with his life. At the same time, an official from the Personnel Department is signing the checks and keeping track of payroll, while the people left in the department can’t begin to keep up with the workload.

Meanwhile, the city’s senior building inspector, Steven Desilets, has been promoted to acting assistant building commissioner, passed over for the top post due to politics, not credentials. What that does is give the city someone who is properly credentialed in a position of quasi-authority — someone who can sign permits and legally conduct inspections. What it doesn’t do is resolve the larger issue confronting the city — a situation where an office critical to public safety and economic development is being run into the ground in the name of cost-cutting and politics.

To be succinct, Springfield needs a full-time building commissioner — not four months from now when the Albano administration thankfully comes to a close, or whenever Garvey decides to end his leave in the private sector — but now. And we urge city officials to take the steps necessary to resolve this matter and give this department leadership.

What’s happening in the Building Department — or not happening, as the case may be — is very important to the business community and to the public at large, for a number of reasons.

For starters, the department is, in effect, City Hall’s liaison to the business community. Anyone who wants to construct a building, put on an addition, add a pool, or install a new bathroom needs permits from the building office to proceed.

Many business owners have seen their projects delayed over the past year because inspections are backlogged and paperwork is getting lost in the shuffle due to a lack of personnel. And when businesses can’t move forward with their projects, they move on to other cities and towns without Springfield’s problems. The city also loses vital revenue when inspections — for which businesses and individuals are charged a fee — are not conducted.

But the larger issue is public safety. The Rhode Island nightclub fire showed just how critical it is to have each and every nightclub, bar, and restaurant inspected regularly for code violations. Springfield has a large stock of older buildings that could become instant death traps. It appears the mayor doesn’t feel it’s an important issue. But this city can’t keep the public safe if it doesn’t have enough people to conduct needed inspections.

Yet, staffing is only one reason why the Building Department is in such disarray. The larger issue is leadership, or a lack thereof.

The department didn’t have much leadership when Garvey was on the job. Nor did he set a good example by misleading city officials and the press about his residence, according to sources (department heads are required to live in the city; he did not). But it’s had no leadership since he took the private-sector job.

It appears the mayor sanctioned Garvey’s leave as a cost-cutting move; one can’t fill a position if it is technically still occupied, and with Garvey on leave, the city can save his salary or use it to keep other people employed. While that might help Springfield with its current budget crunch, it is putting the city in a very dangerous position — one where it is playing with fire, figuratively if not literally.

The Building Department is certainly not the only city department facing difficulties. There have been layoffs across the board, including devastating cuts in the schools and police and fire departments.

But the building office is one of the three pillars of the city’s public safety infrastructure, and it needs a solid foundation — it needs leadership. A police department or fire department can function without a chief, but it shouldn’t. And neither should a department that plays such a critical role in business and economic development.

The city should move immediately to put a qualified, full-time commissioner in the Building Department, and then give that individual the tools needed to get the job done. In short, Albano should stop playing politics with public safety.

Albano’s Legacy At Stake

By
Opinion
These certainly haven’t been the best of times for the capital of Western Mass.

Indeed, just reading the newspaper these days can be a depressing exercise. Between reading about budget cuts, who’s been arraigned, and who’s not running for mayor, one might get the opinion that this city is paralyzed and devoid of hope.

It isn’t.

OK, maybe it is temporarily paralyzed while people in City Hall, the Mass. Career Development Institute, the Springfield Housing Authority, and just about every other agency in the city wait to see who gets indicted next. Meanwhile, the budget news isn’t good, and the general feeling that things will get worse before they get better is keeping many people out of the mayoral race.

But there’s no reason to give up hope.

As we’ve said many times, there are some good things happening in the Pioneer Valley, and especially Springfield. But right now, they’re being overshadowed by a war in Iraq, uproar over Gov. Romney’s various efforts to close the state’s budget gap, and a seemingly endless run of embarrassing stories about officials abusing their authority and wasting the taxpayers’ money. The latest allegations concerning Gerald Phillips and his management of the Mass. Career Development Institute are particularly disturbing.

And if it seems that many in City Hall and various economic development agencies are letting the events of the day — not to mention the question of who will be the next mayor — get in the way of progress Ö well, they probably are.

That’s why this is a time when the city desperately needs some leadership — and we’re not talking about the next mayor. We’re talking about this one.

Mike Albano has done too much for the city over the past seven years to spend his last 11 months in office trying to keep anything else bad from happening — which seems to be his MO right now. He has to pump some resolve into City Hall departments, especially those charged with economic development.

We know there’s a war and a recession on — and neither of those are good for business — but right now, it seems like economic development in this city is confined to waiting and hoping for someone to come along and develop the York Street Jail, the Gemini building, or the Technical High School property. That’s not economic development — that’s crossing your fingers.

Now is the time when the city should be putting the next phase of riverfront development on the drawing board and looking ahead to the time when the war and the recession are over. Meanwhile, as we’ve said

before, some work needs to be done to make this city more business-friendly, and the planning department would be a good place to start. More often than not, roadblocks are put in the way of developers and would-be entrepreneurs, not ’welcome-to-Springfield’ signs.

While addressing economic development initiatives, Albano should also take the lead in efforts to restore confidence in the city. This is not a job that can wait for the next person to take over the corner office.

At the moment, Albano seems content to let the FBI do the digging and for his city solicitor to do the talking for his administration. Neither strategy inspires much confidence.

When Albano announced in early February that he would not be seeking a fifth term, we became worried — not for him, but for the city.

Despite the mayor’s assertions to the contrary, lame ducks are not good for any community. And we’re not talking about any crusade against Romney’s budget plan and what it might do to cities and towns — we’re talking about the day-to-day operation of Springfield.

Eleven months is too long a period to wait for the next leader of a city, too long a time to put things off until the next administration takes over, and much too long a stretch during which to operate in neutral and leave the hard decisions for the next person. Albano needs to act now to instill some enthusiasm in a city hall that is clearly in a funk. He also needs to know that his legacy is on the line and what he does before he departs could make all the difference.

Come next January — or before that, if an employment opportunity should arise as many are predicting — Albano will depart City Hall and try to convince people that he left the city better than he found it. For him to say that, he still has some work to do.