(5/2/07) Here are some thoughts on local current events.
• Before the May 1st election, Amherst had a major financial problem and the prospect of a thoughtful, multi-faceted solution to last three or more years. After the election, Amherst just has the major financial problem. That's progress for you.
• Not everyone can afford to live in Amherst. A truer statement has never been written. It is so true that it is actually meaningless. No matter where you draw the line of affordability, someone will be below it. Opposing higher taxes on that basis is faulty logic but certainly yanks those heartstrings.
• Wait for the drama in Town Meeting when members seek to restore funds to the private human service agencies, after the voters have just rejected restoring funds to the most comprehensive, wide-reaching and effective human service program in town – the public schools. Donations can fill the budget gap at the private agencies, but school funding doesn't work that way.
• These Select Board meetings are getting out of hand. Clocking in at four to five hours ought to be a violation of the Open Meeting Law since it effectively prohibits people from watching the whole thing. Perhaps, with the added benefit of conserving electricity, the lights at Town Hall could be put on a timer and set to shut off at 9:00 p.m. Other options? Taking the chairs away so they have to stand the whole time. Sedating the loquacious Mr. Kusner. Using those little sand timers to limit speakers. Blasting a loud horn every time a member repeats a point he or she has already made at that meeting or at a recent meeting. Making them take turns writing detailed meeting recaps.
• This disturbing new trend of political lawn sign vandalism makes me wonder if the end is near for that promotional medium. Next year's elections might see Amherst skies abuzz with planes pulling banners like you see at the beach.
• Have you noticed the near-weekly entry in the Bulletin's Police Log about the police delivering mail to Select Board members? Isn't that kind of weird? Could that really be the best of all options?
• At the recent joint School Committee and Select Board meeting where several Select Board members chastised Elaine Brighty for trying to influence their votes by providing them with negative information about Chrystel Romero, Chrystel was ultimately elected to fill the School Committee vacancy. I don't know if what Elaine did was right or wrong, and it looks like the State Ethics Commission will decide that. However, either the information she provided was less significant than she had apparently felt it to be, or four Select Board members were irresponsible in voting for someone about whom they had this information. Wonder which it was, and if we'll ever know.
• Now that tally vote records have been searched, sorted, ranked, dissected and fretted about, I wonder what will happen at this Town Meeting. Will proceedings grind to a halt as every possible vote goes to a tally? Will members abstain from tally voting to keep their votes out of the fray? Will more people start blogs to provide explanation and context for their votes? Time will tell.
• Many tune out Larry Kelley's golf course rants as so much “here we go again,” but finance officials and the Town Manager better not be counting on that sentiment to defeat his Special Town Meeting warrant article. A lot of people who wouldn't want to close the course, and don't even necessarily believe it has to make a profit, still want to know what the downside would be to offering a three-year contract to an outside management company. The Niblick bid looked pretty reasonable to many, so if it wasn't, we want to know why. Leasing the Town's equipment just doesn't seem like a deal-breaker.
• All this talk about partnering with UMass and the colleges brings to mind a perennial thought: why doesn't the Town celebrate graduation weekend? Huge crowds of family members descend on Amherst for that event, and we make no community or municipal effort to welcome them. (Individual businesses do, I'm sure.) Why not aim to spiff things up and make our best impression? Repaint the downtown crosswalks. Put out some flowers in planters. Hang a “Congratulations Graduates” banner across South Pleasant Street. Encourage the schools to work together on some kind of joint public display. There are so many possibilities. The number of graduates our little town ushers into the world each year is amazing, and there's nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain from offering them a proper send-off.
-- Stephanie O'Keeffe
Comments
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...nk!
Posted by: Anonymous | May 3, 2007 09:11 AM
Funny you should mention plane banners. Cherry Hill had a Grand Reopening to celebrate the new Clubhouse and irrigation system scheduled on a weekend when the weather had been beyond perfect for weeks on end and was projected to continue for many more weeks.
Figuring they would get a pretty turnout I hired the guy from Northampton Airport to buzz (I was going to pay him extra to fly low) the course pulling a sign in red letters (hoping for a few white clouds and a bright blue sky) shouting: “Stop Subsidizing Golf!”
Of course that weekend was mid-September 2001, only days before the world changed. They got an okay turnout (I biked by); but all aircraft were grounded.
Yeah, the Town Manger is going to have some explaining to do to Town Meeting about turning down the deal of the century at Cherry Hill.
While numbers can be deceiving (especially when bureaucrats want to keep them that way) the simple math that any fool can do in their head is: The last three completed years of town operation at Cherry Hill cost taxpayers $280,000; if Niblick had been in effect those three years it would have been a plus $90,000 (or possibly $105,000 since he said he expected to pay between $25,000 and $30,000 In Lieu of Taxes on top of the $5,000 bid).
A PLUS $90,000 to $105,000 in place of a MINUS $280,000 adds up to a significant amount of tax revenue and since Cherry Hill is no longer an Enterprise Fund, the money can be spent on anything like teachers, police and Fire.
I actually got all 200 signatures required for a Special Town Meeting (plus a few spares) by last Sunday, the 20’th Anniversary of the taking. But I will wait until this Monday to hand them in so the story doesn’t get lost in the Override fallout.
Posted by: Larry Kelley | May 3, 2007 09:46 AM
Stephanie -
As usual, I enjoy your musings, and I agree with nearly all of them (I think that Larry S will probably clarify his Cherry Hill reasoning to our satisfaction at TM). I also really enjoy your judicious use of your blog, and I appreciate that you don't reply to everybody that writes in disagreeing with you by calling them names, as is the case with another Valley blog. You are so kind.
Did you ever wonder why the same Valley blogger who complains about people who disagree with him "wasting his bandwidth" (whatever that means) chimes in on every blog in the Valley (including this one) with all of the same rants? How I wish we all had the time... (just kidding)
One more thing... It will be a tough year and a tougher TM, but eventually they will understand the damage to be done to our town by keeping revenues (i.e., taxes) artificially low.
Posted by: Jeff | May 3, 2007 04:42 PM
Yeah, Jeff and I'm sure you as a state employee don't have too much time on your hands (especially on Bunker Hill Day). Or your wife, another Umass employee, who just happens to sit on the Amherst Finance Committee who orchestrated this epic disaster otherwise known as the Override that wasn’t.
And if she had been doing her FinCom job Cherry Hill would have closed 4 or 5 years ago thus saving taxpayers almost a half-million in hard earned tax dollars.
How many votes do you think Mr. Shaffer's idiotic rejection of the Cherry Hill RFP cost the Overriders (my guess is enough to have tipped the balance.)
And I do not think Stephanie considers Inamherst.com a Blog.
Posted by: Larry Kelley | May 3, 2007 09:16 PM
Main Entry: blog
Pronunciation: 'blog, 'bläg
Function: noun
Etymology: short for Weblog
: a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer
Posted by: Eli | May 4, 2007 06:58 AM
Gee thanks Eli, while you’re at it why don’t you explain “bandwidth” to Jeff, although I find it hard to believe a long-time Umass Prof doesn’t understand the term.
Stephanie started with a Blog on Blogger.com and I assume will start reposting to that site next week. But I think she considers this effort a little differently (calling herself “editor and publisher” for instance). And the bottom right part of her Main Page about which we are not chatting is clearly labeled “opinion”, like a newspaper does with its “editorials”.
Her painstaking transcriptions of Select board meetings, for another instance, contain no comment or opinion. And since your dad, his Lordship, has taken over reigns of the Select Board things certainly have not moved any more briskly.
In fact, when she had not updated for a while (Election Central, for instance, was confusing because it had info on an election from a month ago and some folks probably thought it was about the Override you supported on Tuesday), I thought maybe she came down with carpal tunnel syndrome.
But I’m glad to see she’s BAAAACK. Blog, or Alternative News Internet Information Source (ANIIS) or whatever you want to call it. And I couldn’t help but notice your stepbrother has not updated his Blog since the March 28 election.
Posted by: Larry Kelley | May 4, 2007 11:31 AM
Hey Stephanie,
I love the idea about graduation weekend. We should celebrate the hard work of the people who keep our town vibrant.
I'd work on this with you!
Posted by: Carol S. | May 7, 2007 07:05 PM
Saturday, May 26th was the UMass graduation. One would expect the downtown would be buzzing after it was over. I was there and it was very quiet...dead. No traffic and the restaurants were empty . Apparently, UMass police diverted traffic away from town towards Hadley where I was told there were traffic jams. Why do businesses pay dues to the Amherst Chamber of Commerce when it does pretty much nothing to promote Amherst. Years ago the town wanted to build a bypass so people going to UMass would never have to drive through town. Brilliant. Thanks to Dick Minear we were saved from that huge mistake.
Posted by: Jan | May 26, 2007 10:22 PM
Well, we did get the flowers downtown before graduation. "Why not aim to spiff things up and make our best impression? Repaint the downtown crosswalks. Put out some flowers in planters."
Posted by: Gerry | June 2, 2007 08:59 AM
Love the cute sheep photo!!!!
Posted by: Anonymous | June 2, 2007 02:22 PM
Tommorrow, June 7th, is the so-called Art Walk. I guess it will be like any other Thursday night in Amherst. A couple stores stay open until 8 pm.(Zanna's) The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College is closed for renovations. The Fiber Arts Center will be open. Boltwood Tavern has $12.99 early bird specials from 4-6 pm. The weather should be beautiful, so we'll be galavanting around town.
Posted by: Jan | June 6, 2007 06:27 PM
The Art Walk was really nice. Too bad the promotion of this event was nil. The Fiber Arts Center, the Chamber, Gallery A3, and the library had wine and cheese. The weather was beautiful, and there were many affordable items at the Fiber Arts Center. I bought them all! I'll definitely attend next month. Next time I'll browse and wine taste first, and eat dinner later. We ate at Pasta E Basta which was very good. Amherst Coffee had a jazz trio at 8 pm. All and all, a great Amherst night!
Posted by: Jan | June 7, 2007 10:02 PM
Another beautiful afternoon in Amherst. Walking around Amherst College was a pure delight. The new construction projects are magnificent. The Museum of Naturel History was open. You can taked the fossils. It's the minerals I love. They glow.
Posted by: Jan | June 10, 2007 05:26 PM