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Neffinger sworn in as town’s second mayor

Date: 1/11/2012

Jan. 11, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

Assistant Editor

WEST SPRINGFIELD — An overflow crowd of more than 200 city officials and well wishers filled the chairs, lined the walls and spilled out into the hallway adjoining the second floor auditorium of West Springfield’s Municipal Complex on the evening of Jan. 3 to witness the official inauguration of the town’s second mayor, Greg Neffinger.

With music provided by members of the West Springfield High School Band and the Pledge of Allegiance led by students from the West Springfield Middle School, Neffinger’s brother, Frank, officiated a 45-minute ceremony that included remarks by the Rev. Derek Harmon, minister of Grace Lutheran Church, the Rev. Michael Tuohig, former pastor of Immaculate Conception Church, Rabbi Yakov Wolff, a teacher at Lubavitcher Yeshiva Academy in Longmeadow and Iman Wessam Abdul Baki from the Islamic Center of Western Massachusetts.

Tuohig, who said he first met Neffinger as an architect when the church’s former school was undergoing renovations to accommodate new tenants, remarked on how calm and focused the new mayor was in the face of what seemed to him insurmountable obstacles to the project’s completion.

“The essence of citizenship is how people work together ... power comes not from what we take, power comes from our gifts,” Tuohig said. “I know Greg will honor this community because he takes seriously this sacred trust.”

Town Clerk Otto Frizzell invoked the message of commitment to the common good expressed in the original Mayflower Charter as he administered the oath of office to Neffinger, who accepted his new responsibilities with his wife, Yael and daughters Elisheva and Galya by his side and his father, Nobert, looking on.

Neffinger opened his brief acceptance speech by noting he “wasn’t elected to speak, I was elected to do,” explaining how college trips to China and other parts of the world opened his eyes to the differences in governments and how people lived around the world.

“There is no other people like [those in] the United States,” he said. “When I came back to the U.S. I decided I was gong to look for opportunities to serve [in communities].”

He recounted how he had “walked hundreds of streets and knocked on thousands of doors to hear what people thought of our town” during the campaign, noting that taxes were a big concern among those he spoke to. He acknowledged that taxes affect the level of services, such as police and fire, that people expect, but promised to look into the issue.

“I want to look at the town in new ways,” Neffinger said, adding that the premise behind the democratic form of government is to provide a mechanism for the introduction of fresh ideas and new ways of thinking “Sometimes we don’t see the things that need to be done or the broken things [that need to be fixed].

“I hope to bring a new era to the town of West Springfield and I thank you for giving me this opportunity,” he said in closing.



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