Joe McMenamin for Ward 7Retired 12 year alderman on Springfield City Council 2011-2023
Tim Landis
The State Journal-Register
A member of the family that founded the Family Video Inc. nationwide chain of video stores is the new owner of the former Esquire Theatre in Springfield. The immediate plan, said a representative for Eric Hoogland, is to demolish the property at MacArthur Boulevard and South Grand Avenue. The building has been vacant since the theater closed in 2003.
The next Springfield City Council will have a drastically different look, with voters choosing six newcomers to join four incumbents. Among the sitting council members, Sam Cahnman in Ward 5 lost to Andrew Proctor, ending Cahnman’s eight years as an alderman.
The newcomers are Chuck Redpath (who previously served as an alderman from 1987 to 2007) in Ward 1, Herman Senor in Ward 2, John Fulgenzi in Ward 4, James Donelan in Ward 9 and Ralph Hanauer in Ward 10.
Re-elected incumbents were Joe McMenamin in Ward 7
Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
Continuing to foster development and infrastructure needs are the issues dominating discussion in a heated three-way race for Springfield Ward 7 alderman. Attorney Sarah Delano Pavlik, a Capital Township trustee, and Maldaner’s Restaurant owner Michael Higgins are trying to unseat incumbent Ald. Joe McMenamin in the April 7 election.
Bruce Rushton
The Illinois Times
Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin can be forgiven if he feels like a walking bullseye.
After one term in office, McMenamin has held firm to certain principles, chief among them an insistence that the city take painful steps to deal with burgeoning deficits in pension funds. The stance has put him on the lonely end of 9-1 votes against collective bargaining agreements, which he says worsen the pension problem by including raises that the city can’t afford, and annual budgets that he says kick fiscal cans down the road
Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
City Water, Light and Power is one step closer to avoiding a technical default.
The city-owned utility emerged from the summer needing to make up an $8 million deficit to avoid its second technical default in four years, which city officials said would have created some significant obstacles moving forward.
Bruce Rushton
The Illinois Times
The reenactment of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral on the 150th anniversary of that event is not coming together in the usual way for an occasion that organizers promise will be once in a lifetime.
No government agency is in charge. The headquarters for the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Coalition is a mail drop on Wabash Avenue in Jerome. Organizers have told the Internal Revenue Service that they don’t expect to have more than $50,000 in annual revenue and therefore aren’t required to file
Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
The Springfield City Council on Tuesday passed a budget for the next fiscal year that includes a modest increase over the current year, body cameras for police officers, more money for abandoned building demolitions and funding for the Lincoln Funeral Coalition.
Aldermen last week tacked on another $53,000 to what Mayor Mike Houston had proposed for fiscal 2016, which starts March 1, and then passed the spending plan in a 9-1 vote Tuesday night. Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin cast the only dissenting
Jamie Munks
The State Journal-Register
After a lengthy investigation into the shredding of Springfield Police Department internal affairs documents determined that no “provable crime” was committed, little is known about how special prosecutors reached that conclusion.
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 