The City Council met briefly this morning to urge Tom Menino and Firefighters Local 718 to get a room and hammer out a contract that's fair to both firefighters and taxpayers.

David Bernstein attempts to look into the municipal vaults; gets glimmers of millions just sitting there.

And about time, right? A Boston newspaper reports Marie. St. Fleur is leaving the legislature early (she'd already announced she wouldn't be running again) to take that job for Tom Menino.

The Dorchester Reporter prepares users of these centers for the news tomorrow, when Mayor Tom Menino proposes a budget that assumes non-profit groups will want to continue running the eight community centers he wants to excise from city responsibilitiy.

First, a confession: I haven't read an Adrian Walker column in months. Somebody tell me if I've missed anything. But Mike Durant posts today that Walker talked to Menino, who admitted that this whole branch closing thing isn't really about money after all, so I wanted to take a look.

And I promptly remembered why I stopped reading Walker - Why waste my time on a bloviator who writes stuff like the following?

Five months after the Secretary of State's office concluded Menino aide Michael Kineavy "inappropriately" deleted e-mail, the state Attorney General's office continues to consider what to do about the matter.

"The investigation into the Kineavy email matter is ongoing at this time," spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa said today.

Interesting: Even as the city looks to give one developer a $16-million tax break, it rejects a $50 million offer from another. Of course, one is longtime local stalwart Liberty Mutual, which wants to build its new headquarters in the Back Bay, while the other is Menino foe Don Chiofaro, who wants to put a 59-story tower (and a tinier 40-story one) right on the waterfront.

The Globe reports. No specific locations mentioned. The BPL board of trustees will meet next Tuesday (3 p.m., Rabb Hall at the main branch in Copley Square) to begin discussing how to decide which of 8 to 10 branch libraries to close.

John Keith pulls up the records from the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance on Liberty Mutual-related donations to Tom Menino between July 1 and Sept. 1, 2009.

It was during this period that the company was busy buying up two Back Bay parcels on which it said yesterday it will build a 25-30 story office building, for which the city will kick in $16 million in tax abatements over the next 20 years.