The city of Springfield, Massachusetts is making plans to re-pave about nine miles of streets this construction season.
The City Council voted to authorize spending $3.6 million on the street work.
The money is from the state’s Chapter 90 program for local street and bridge projects. Springfield DPW Director Chris Cignoli said it has been level-funded for more than a decade.
“Right now, this is buying us probably 50 percent of what it did 11-12 years ago,” Cignoli said. “Rather than doing 25 or so streets we are able to do 12-13 with the city money and money we are getting from the state.”
Despite lobbying by the Massachusetts Municipal Association and several mayors, the legislature refused to increase the status quo $200 million annual authorization for Chapter 90. The Joint Transportation Committee did include $150 million in grants for projects including small bridge repairs and to help municipalities and regional transit authorities buy electric vehicles and build the necessary charging infrastructure.
“I put together some information for the mayor so we could submit it,” Cignoli said. “Everybody was really hoping for (an increase) and that is what we provided to the governor’s office and the MMA.”
Cignoli said the DPW will supplement its Chapter 90 funds with $7 million in city money that comes from a $30 million bond authorization the Council approved last year.
Still, nine miles of repaired streets is a tiny-tiny fraction of the roughly 600 total miles of streets in Springfield, noted Cignoli.
“It represents a percent-and-a-half of what we need to do in the city,” Cignoli said.
Councilor Tracye Whitfield, a member of the Finance Committee, called for Councilors to lobby the local legislative delegation to increase the Chapter 90 funding.
“I encourage our colleagues to sit with our state delegation and find out what is going on and how we can advocate better for these funds to come into the city because that is their job,” Whitfield said.
City Councilors voted happily to accept $110,000 from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health to pay to continue a program where clinicians respond to 911 calls involving people who are having a mental health crisis.
The clinicians from Behavioral Health Network are given police radios to monitor emergency calls and are based at the police department’s Metro Division Substation.
Springfield Police Lt. Ronald Sheehan said the program is successfully keeping people with mental health issues out of jail and out of crowded hospital emergency rooms.
“The crisis in society today is overwhelming both the criminal justice system and the heath system with a lot of psych crisis calls,” Sheehan said.
He said the police department has applied for $350,000 from the state to continue the program for the entire next fiscal year that begins July 1st.
