THE REMINDER:
City Loses Lawsuit Over Alarm Ordinance
You’d think the city would check with the state before blundering forward with such things…

Sarno Meets with State Officials About City’s Budget
Unfortunately, the overall message I’m getting from the Sarno Administration is that he’s looking for new ways to “create revenue” (ie: raise fees, increase taxes, etc.) as opposed to looking for ways to lower spending.

Oh, and by the way: Lowering spending does not mean we have to layoff fire and police personnel. (Have you ever seen how many ordinance inspectors we have on the payroll??) There are a ton of wasteful practices going on in the city.

THE REPUBLICAN:
Jury foreman stole soft drinks belonging to aide of Congressman Richard Neal
I love how this guys says he thought someone had just left the cases of drinks there, so he felt perfectly free to take them away.

Lawsuit Alleges Massachusetts Officials Failed to Help Welfare Recipients Register to Vote
This is actually an AP story that appeared on Masslive, but it made me roll my eyes. As one commenter so truthfully said it: Does the state need to help these people wipe their asses, too? The laziness of some people is truly amazing.

How about this, folks: GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES, GO TO CITY HALL, AND REGISTER. For crying out loud, you can practically register on your cellphone these days. What’s next? Having the state register FOR YOU so you don’t have to get off the couch?

THE VALLEY ADVOCATE:
Standing Against ‘Stand Your Ground’
This is a good story by Maureen Turner. The only thing I would have to say about this subject is that there is no credible evidence that “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) would make our streets less safe. “Stand Your Ground” does not necessarily mean “Carry a Gun,” as many people suppose. (No pre-existing gun laws would be affected.) It simply means you have a right to defend yourself if assaulted in public. I can’t believe people actually have an issue with that.

And in the exceptional case of Zimmerman-Martin, Zimmerman would have shot Martin regardless of the SYG law in place in Florida. He didn’t shoot Martin because of SYG, he was released from custody because of it. Likewise, Zimmerman wasn’t carrying a gun because of SYG, he was carrying one because it is legal to do so in Florida.

MISCELLANEOUS:
The Dread Report is dead. What started out with such fanfare (it’s creator, Brian Santaniello, once boasted on its homepage that it was “the best blog in the Valley – perhaps in all of New England!” or some other such nonsense back in 2008) ended with an apparently unceremonious non-renewal of the site’s domain name. Poof.

Whenever I pass by this Chinese restaurant on Main Street in the South End of Springfield, I always pronounce it's name in my head as, 'Homee,' which I quickly follow with the long-form of the slang word, 'Home Boy'

This is the first of a recurring series of posts entitled “Random Thoughts.” These posts will essentially be random comments on anything and everything, whether the topic be about something in Springfield or on the other side of the Milky Way. This initial post is published as a “Feature” post, being shown as the top story on the Intruder. Future posts, however, can be found in the “Random Thoughts” column on the lower-right of the SI homepage, which will replace the “Opinion” column currently located there.

## I have an uncomfortable feeling the search committee for Springfield’s new Superintendent of Schools is probably going to end up selecting someone who most agrees with the local Establishment’s social philosophy of labor rights and zero professional accountability, etc., as opposed to picking the best possible candidate for the job of improving our school system. Having two preachers, a school mom, and a high school student on the committee is touching, perhaps, but hardly appropriate. A highly regarded – and highly effective – candidate in the likeness of a Michelle Rhee will be out of the question. (Rhee’s tenure as chancellor of schools in Washington D.C. came to an end after her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, was defeated in 2010. This after they both infuriated the Establishment there by daring to hold people accountable for their performance.) Instead, Springfield residents and parents should expect to see another ineffective Burke-Ingram clone.

## Starbucks has always struck me as having this strange duality about it: On the one hand, for years it’s been a beloved haven for young, yuppie coffee drinkers. At the same time, though, it’s also been reviled by the far-Left as being the epitome of corporate meanness. My opinion on them? They’re overpriced. And I like Dunkin’ Donuts coffee better anyway.

## I do not like the security guard uniforms at the Holyoke Mall. I think they want the guards to look like park rangers or some kind of state trooper, but instead they come off looking goofy. I’d rather see them in dark blue golf shirts, dark pants, and black sneakers, with a white baseball cap adorned with a “Holyoke Mall Security” logo of some kind. (This could also be on their shirt, front & back.) This way they would still stand out in a crowd while at the same time being comfortable as they perform their rounds.

## Meanwhile, in Springfield, I’m thinking the Eastfield Mall on Boston Road is doomed. The signs are all there: vacant storefronts, sparse patrons, limited vendors, vast areas of the mall’s expansive parking lot wasting away and overgrowing from non-use. On a recent visit there, I strolled to the end of the mall where the J.C. Penny Outlet used to be. The lights were all dimmed and, as I walked along, a sense of eeriness overcame me. It actually reminded me of that episode from the old “Night Stalker” series where Kolchak is in this vast underground data storage facility, and as he wanders beyond Section M, he encounters a big man-eating lizard. I felt sorry for the two or three shop owners still located there. I hope the lizard creature leaves them alone.

## I was walking along downtown Springfield’s South End, where reconstruction from last June’s tornado is ongoing, when I came by the building where the sports bar Murphy’s Law used to be located. (And, apparently, where anything that could go wrong did go wrong.) This is the same little building that was once home to Samuel’s Sports Bar before it moved over to the Basketball Hall of Fame…

Main Street, Springfield.

Looking at the boarded-up walkway, you can see that everyone advertising there pays a fee to benefit the South End Community Center. But I noticed the big “Mayor Sarno” sign isn’t technically on that rent-a-space paneling, as the sign is being displayed on the under-construction building itself. So I wondered if this was their way of avoiding the advertising fee that all the others had to pay. (Which would be ironic, of course, since Sarno used to head up the Community Center prior to becoming Springfield’s mayor.)

The former Visitors Information Center, Hall of Fame Ave., Springfield.

A couple weeks back Peter Pappas made the news when he asked the Springfield Redevelopment Authority (SRA) to reconsider the bid of a preferred developer for the former William C. Sullivan Visitor Center, located on Hall of Fame Avenue (West Columbus Ave) in downtown Springfield.

Pappas had bid on the property himself last year, but eventually lost out to attorney-turned-developer Raipher Pellegrino and his Rhode Island partners, who had made their bid under the business name Lustra LLC.

The partners will be opening a Springfield version of the Rhode Island-based Luxe Burger Bar.

Pappas said in his plea that the Pellegrino team was taking too long to begin redevelopment of the site. Pellegrino, meanwhile, defended his company’s progress, saying in a Republican story that there hasn’t been any delay.

“We have been working cooperatively with the city in a joint enterprise to bring a quality restaurant to the city of Springfield, to restore a building vacant for a number of years,” said Pellegrino in the Republican article.

(The story on the Visitors Center itself, by the way, isn’t exactly a charmer: The building was only built a few years back – and a highway exit was later constructed off of I-91 to better access it and the Basketball Hall of Fame. But apparently nobody went there, so the city moved the center to a space inside the Basketball Hall of Fame instead, leaving the specifically-built visitors center building vacant.)

The Pellegrino team’s bid on the former Visitors Information Center of $450,001 was over twice that of Pappas’s bid of $223,024, which might lead some to question the wisdom of the financing in light of the fact that doing business on the riverfront can be a dicey undertaking, at best. (Just ask the former Onyx and Pazzo’s restaurants, as well as the former McDonald’s before them.)

But questionable investments are nothing new for Pellegrino.

In fact, when last we heard from the Attorney Raipher Pellegrino (as opposed to his new persona as a developer), he was defending scam artist Michael Armitage from charges of fraud and tax evasion. That case made headlines across the country, and it was also revealed that Pellegrino himself was an investor in one of Armitage’s companies, EV Worldwide. (Armitage was also reportedly an investor in downtown Springfield properties owned by Victor Bruno, son of murdered mob boss Al Bruno, who also recently made headlines by blaming the FBI for not “adequately” notifying his mob boss dad that his life was in danger.)

Armitage was hauled off to jail late last year to serve a five-plus year term.

Before the Armitage case, Pellegrino – a former Springfield City Councilor during the height of the Albano years who’s long been known for defending some pretty shady characters in his time – also came to the defense of convicted swindler William Foster back in 2006.

In that case, Foster, of Easthampton, and two other men – Mark Shapiro of Glastonbury and Irving Stitsky of Bayside, NY – were charged with taking $16 million from real estate investors. The three men allegedly set up a phony firm called Cobalt Capital that was supposedly headquartered out of Springfield, MA. According to an AP story reporting on the arrests of the men, Pellegrino stated at the time that Cobalt was soliciting legitimate investments from investors and that many of them were in fact making money.

Shapiro had previously been convicted of bank fraud in 1998 and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Stitsky also had a previous record, having pleaded guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud and bribery back in 2001, according to the same AP story.

This time around, all three men were later found guilty in federal court.

These days, though, Pellegrino has gone from representing property developers to being one himself.

Pellegrino and his two business partners, John Elkhay and Richard Bready, both of Rhode Island, will be opening up their Luxe Burger Bar in the vacant Springfield Visitors Center building located next to the LA Fitness and Mama Iguana’s complex. The listed Resident Agent for the business is Jennifer Stefanik, and the enterprise appears to be running out of the same address as Pellegrino’s Springfield law office, on 265 State Street.

Lustra LLC partner John Elkhay is an experienced and, if his biography is accurate, highly regarded chef at the Rhode Island Luxe Burger Bar.

Richard Bready is a retired former President & CEO of Nortek, Inc. He is also the President of CRB Holdings, out of Rhode Island. (Raipher Pellegrino is listed as the Registered Agent of that company.)

If the name Richard Bready sounds familiar to some of you, that’s because Bready’s name also came up during the investigation of Michael Armitage. Bready reportedly loaned Armitage $390,000 to cover a mortgage expense, and then later assigned his note to BankNorth, according to a Republican story on the exchange. Armitage was eventually able to get a $400,000 loan from United Bank, which he subsequently used to pay off Bready. According to the same Republican article, Pellegrino acted as the bank’s settlement agent. (Armitage was charged by authorities with fraud in part because of his having hidden debt in order to obtain loans from United Bank, including the $400,000 loan.)

The Luxe Burger Bar serves burgers, wings, soups and salads, and other snack-type foods. According to its online menu, it also serves wine and beer, so Lustra LLC will also be acquiring a liquor license.

Which is good news for the nightclub that will probably end up being there in a couple years.

None of that can be done very effectively, though, without the monetary contributions made by the loyal followers of any given candidate. Such contributions are seen as signs of trust, respect, and – though they dare not admit it – a token reward for future considerations.

Springfield’s local political scene offers a close-up view of what routinely goes on in American politics in general, and it’s an eye-opener to see what goes on in the world political campaign financing.

Let’s take a look at some of the more significant players in Springfield.

MASSMUTUAL
Everyone knows that MassMutual wields considerable influence in the city of Springfield. They’ve helped finance a large number of programs and redevelopment initiatives in the city through the years, and because of that commitment it’s perhaps understandable they would have certain expectations when it comes to the decision-making process at City Hall.

In fact, the city’s most talked-about redevelopment organization, Develop Springfield, is actually headed up by MassMutual executives Nicholas Fyntrilakis and newly-appointed interim Executive Director Kevin Sweeney.

Collectively speaking, MassMutual employees – including Fyntrilakis (who served on Sarno’s 2007 transition team) and Sweeney – are also significant campaign contributors to Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, having dished out hundreds of dollars individually to the Mayor in 2011 alone.

THE CALLAHAN CLAN
The folks at MassMutual aren’t doing anything unusual, by any means. Many companies that do business in Springfield also make it their business to contribute to the people at City Hall, whether it be the mayor or any number of city councilors. That’s politics.

What makes the contributions dubious, however, is when our elected officials and their benefactors insist that such generous giving is in no way intended to influence the elected officials’ decisions or voting habits – and we’re expected to actually believe that.

Palmer Paving’s Callahan family, for example, has been dumping thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Mayor Sarno, various city councilors, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, among others, since at least 2009, at about the time that family first began their drive to develop a biomass plant in East Springfield under the business name Palmer Renewable Energy. (Palmer Paving was also the company selected to redevelop the State Street Corridor back in 2008.) In an article that appeared in the Republican back in February 2011, however, the Callahans insisted their contributions had nothing whatsoever to do with their business plans in Springfield, and Mayor Sarno himself swore that such contributions would never sway his decision-making. From the Republican article:

- Any suggestion that the most recent contributions are related in any way to the biomass plant “is a reckless mischaracterization of our history of giving to this community,” Callahan said. -

But according to that same article, writer Peter Goonan reported that the Callahan family as a whole had heaped close to $30,000 in contributions to various elected officials in 2009 and 2010, whereas in the three years prior to that their combined contributions never exceeded $5,700 per year.

Callahan family contributions to the Sarno Campaign, November 2011.

It’s also true that, contrary to any true spirit of community giving the Callahans may claim to be practicing, they only contribute to those candidates who they feel will best help their business interests (as is, by the way, their right).

To date, the Callahans have given generously to Springfield City Councilors Kateri Walsh, Bud L. Williams and Jimmy Ferrera, all of whom have either voted in favor of the biomass plant in Springfield or conveniently made themselves absent in any such voting. (Williams lost his seat on the Council in 2009 after his failed campaign run for Mayor, but the Callahans wasted no time in restoring their contributions to him with his re-election in 2011.) Former City Councilor Jose Tosado also received hundreds of dollars in campaign donations from the Callahans, but the tap on that source was shut off after he switched his position on the biomass plant issue and joined the opposition in 2010-2011.

Since state officials have delayed approval of the plant on the state level, Mayor Sarno has thus far not had to stick his neck out too much on the biomass plant issue. But should the state give its final sign-off on the plant’s construction, Springfield residents might soon thereafter hear the Mayor pronounce his intention to fight “tooth and nail” to get it up and running, using jobs and tax revenue as his reasons for support.

BULKLEY, RICHARDSON & GELINAS
Attorneys at the law firm of Bulkley, Richardson & Gelinas contributed hundreds of dollars to the Sarno Campaign in 2011. BR & G is the law firm contracted by the Springfield School Committee to perform legal advisory work for both the Committee and the Springfield School Department. (BR & G lawyer Melinda Phelps is the attorney assigned to work with the two government bodies. A prominent figure in political circles in her own right – she was once considered a viable candidate for mayor – Phelps has done past work for the City of Springfield, is a regular Sarno campaign contributor who is said to have also worked on his 2007 campaign for mayor, and is currently on the Board of Directors for Develop Springfield.)

Last November 8, 2011, BR & G received a reimbursement of $730 from the Sarno campaign for purchases the law firm made for a Sarno campaign fundraiser.

This past March 15, the Springfield School Committee voted to renew its contract with Bulkley, Richardson & Gelinas. Excluding the absence of Committee Member Barbara Gresham, the vote on the renewal was unanimous, which included the vote by the School Committee’s Chairman, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno.

KELLEY & RYAN ASSOCIATES
Kelley & Ryan Associates, Inc., is a municipal data and administration services firm that has been contracted as the City of Springfield’s deputy collector since 1998. (These are the folks you pay if you pay your city tax bills and fees online.) Senior staff at Kelley and Ryan are regular contributors to Mayor Sarno, handing over $1,000 to his campaign in November of 2011 alone.

The folks at Beeline Trucking also gave generously to the Sarno Campaign.

UNIFIRST CORPORATION
Unifirst Corporation is a uniform and work clothes provider based out of Indian Orchard. The company recently decided they needed more parking space at their facility, but they didn’t have much land to work with – and Springfield’s Hubbard Park was in their way.

So off’a lobbying they’a went.

UniFirst first went to Springfield City Hall to request a parcel of land be carved out of the park. Perhaps to help grease the wheels of progress in the matter, though, UniFirst’s project manager, Michael Fuller, slipped some funding into the campaign coffers of both the Mayor ($500 in December 2011) and a number of City Councilors ($100 each in September and October, 2011).

The Council approved the request via a 13-0 vote by mid-December of 2011, with the provision that the company also help pay for improvements to land at another park, Solutia Park, in order to replace the land lost in Hubbard Park. The city’s agreement with UniFirst then went on to Massachusetts State Representative Thomas Petrolati, who sponsored a home rule petition for the final approval needed for the city to sell the parcel of land to Unifirst. (The bill is currently pending.)

The Epiphany Building

In apparent gratitude for their business opportunity, the Patel clan, which operates Jamsan, contributed $250 each to Mayor Sarno’s campaign in November of 2011 (totaling $1,000).

Other notable, regular contributors to local officials include: Peter Picknelly Jr., Peter Pan Bus Lines; Maureen and Richard Hayes, Hayes Development; Robert Bolduc, Pride Stations; Frank Fritzgerald, attorney and legal counsel to Palmer Renewable Energy (who appears to have become especially active since his client’s biomass plant endeavor kicked off); and various officials at Baystate Health and Health New England.

John Salema, owner of several Dunkin Donuts franchises in Western Massachusetts, also spots several Springfield City Councilors a hundred bucks every year as part of his civic duty to the community.

Now, none of the above contributions are in any way illegal under current state and federal campaign finance laws. But this does not mean that taxpayers shouldn’t be aware of the considerable influence that businesses and lobbyists wield in our local government. Nor should we be dismissive of the cozy relationships many of our elected officials have established with people who have long positioned themselves to be at the forefront of the political decision-making process.

In the long run, it is with these relationships that our elected officials’ loyalties truly lie, not with the mostly un-named and largely non-voting masses they profess to represent.

Lizzy Warren - Cherokee Woman

The news places Warren in the Left’s much-prized Protected Minority Status (PMS).

Supporters from across the country are no doubt exultant at the news. Where before they merely had some snooty white chick running against incumbent Scott Brown (of the much-reviled Republican Party), they now have a Native American woman – albeit only 1/32nd of one. But that’s good enough. Good enough for Harvard to classify her as a Native American back in the 1990s, and good enough for Moonbats from across the land to raise up their hands and sing “Kumbaya”….

Lizzy Warren, Cherokee Woman, has entered into the fray!

CITY HEALTH INSURANCE DEBATED
Last week The Reminder had a good story on the push by Springfield City Councilor Tim Rooke and School Committee Member (and Vice Chair) Christopher Collins to have officials put the City’s health insurance out for bid.

The City of Springfield has used the state’s General Insurance Commission (GIC) as its health insurance provider since the days of the Finance Control Board. Rooke and Collins want to find out of the city could save money by putting the city’s coverage out to bid. Their efforts have met with resistance from Mayor Domenic Sarno and other city officials, some of whom have said placing an RFP would be expensive and, for the time being, unnecessary. Sarno has said he is pleased with the cost of the GIC-provided coverage and said any action to place the coverage out to bid would only strain the city’s budgetary resources.

“Based upon these facts,” the Reminder quoted Sarno as stating, “it makes no sense to go out to bid at this point in time because it would put more strain on the city’s general budget creating additional costs to the tax payers.”

Both Rooke and Collins disputed that assertion, as well as the financial numbers used to come to that conclusion. Check out the whole story here.

IS THE SEARCH COMMITTEE FOR A QUALIFIED NEW SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT QUALIFIED THEMSELVES?
Last month we all heard news about a Search Committee that was established to help weed-out undesirables for the position of Springfield Schools Superintendent, a position that will become available once the current hack occupying that post, Alan Ingram, vacates it at the end of his contract year this June 30th.

What I found noticeable about the members of the committee was the decided lack of expertise evident in their numbers.

Heriberto Flores, while a smart businessman, is hardly known for his academic acumen. B. John Dill is into real estate – I don’t see how that qualifies him. And then there are two local religious figures – the Reverends Talbert Swan II and Mark E. Flowers, neither of whom, to my knowledge, have any business interfering in the government’s business. What ever happened to the Left’s much-balleyhooed cries of separation of church and state?

Others include a local parent (how sensitive) and, since all good liberals believe kids are adults, too, a student from Central High School. One wonders if the state’s penal system undertook such methodology in gathering their search committee members for wardens, would they include a relative of an inmate and an inmate him or herself on that committee?

Well, we are in the Happy Valley, after all, so perhaps that would indeed be the case.

As an a-side, there have also been rumored grumblings over how the process of selecting members of the superintendent Search Committee went along. My spies say that a secret ballot selection process was marred by confusion over which names received the proper number of votes over other candidates. This would have possibly opened the door to preferred names getting included in the final selections while other, perhaps more qualified names, were tossed away.

Typical politics in the city.