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Proposed Library Closing Draws Objections

The City Council in Springfield Massachusetts has scheduled a series of special meetings to wrap up budget deliberations before the new fiscal year starts July 1st

 

City Councilors have already objected to the closure of the Pine Point branch library.  But Library Director Molly Fogarty said closing two branch libraries is  part of a reorganization to ensure the long term viability of the city’s library system.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno described his proposed $571 million  budget as “austere” It calls for no layoffs and no cutbacks in basic city services such as trash collections, snow plowing and parks maintenance.  The city council , by law, can only cut proposed spending in the budget.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.