In a first, voters in a couple of Springfield, Massachusetts neighborhoods will be going to the polls this summer to elect a new City Councilor.
Tentative dates of August 16th for the preliminary election and September 13th for the final election have been announced to fill the vacant Ward 5 seat on the Springfield City Council.
It will be the first time a special election is held for City Council in Springfield. Previously when a vacancy occurred with no runner-up from a prior general election ready to step in, Councilors appointed someone to finish the unexpired term. That is a responsibility they are gladly giving up said City Council President Jesse Lederman.
“We introduced this special act last year because we did not want to be in the position of picking peoples’ representatives for them,” Lederman said.
The scheduling of a special election for the Ward 5 Council seat is the result of the surprise resignation of Marcus Williams. He quit the Council on June 1st with 18 months left in his term to focus on his work in the philanthropic sector. Williams was also Council president. Lederman, an at-large Councilor who was vice president, automatically became president under the Council’s rules.
Immediately following Williams’ resignation, Lederman announced the Council would follow the same process as last year when the Ward 1 Council seat was vacated by State Senator Adam Gomez midway through his two-year term. There was an open application process, candidates were interviewed publicly, and the Council voted to appoint Gumersindo Gomez to fill the rest of his son’s term.
But a few days after Williams resigned, City Clerk Gladys Oyola-Lopez said she was notified that a home rule bill authorizing the city to conduct a special election to fill Council vacancies had been approved on Beacon Hill.
It was a relief for Councilors who found it upsetting that voters could not pick their Ward representative. Ward 8 City Councilor Zaida Govan called the appointment process undemocratic.
“Because democracy is people electing people and this is not what that is,” Govan said.
As the Council was meeting last year to fill the Ward 1 vacancy, Councilors Victor Davila and Mike Fenton said they would craft the necessary legislation for the home rule bill to allow special elections.
“I do believe that going forward we should take steps to ensure that the Council isn’t playing this very uncomfortable role of filling the vacancy,” Fenton said shortly before the Council voted on March 8, 2021 to appoint Gumersindo Gomez as the new Ward 1 City Councilor.
The Council’s only role now in filling the Ward 5 vacancy is to formally approve the dates recommended by the Board of Elections. If that occurs as expected at a special meeting Wednesday, nomination papers will be available June 10th at the election office in City Hall. Candidates will have until June 28th to turn in the papers with a minimum of 100 signatures to secure a spot on the preliminary election ballot.
The preliminary will be held only if there are three, or more, candidates who qualify for the ballot.
Ward 5 encompasses the Sixteen Acres and Pine Point neighborhoods.
