Saturday, June 14, 2008

One bad apple (or two)

Click to enlarge/read

So now we have not one but two flagrant violations of Mass General Law Ch. 40 Section 14. We purchased land without a two-thirds vote of Town Meeting and we are paying—if the deal goes through—over 25% of appraised value.

Previous post

note April 10 publication date of previous post (day Hubley/Awad became South Hadley residents)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

They came up with the $200k price because of the lots sold on Red Gate 2 years ago, but the price of real estate has come down since then, and in my mind these are not comparable lots. The Red Gate lots have the Wildwood school hiking trails behind them, are larger sized, and the road has less traffic. I seriously doubt anyone would pay $200k for those lots. Doesn't Amherst already have a higher percentage of publicly owned land than any other town in the state? Do we really need another park for public works to maintain? How much did the town originally sell the Hills house for anyway?

O'Reilly said...

YES! Amherst needs another zero tax revenue park to maintain. Where else can we put Larry Shaffer's skating rink and pitch and put course for teenagers who can't drive to Cherry Hill?

Larry Kelley said...

Yeah, Amherst is more than half owned by non-profit, off-the-tax-roll entities.

So these guys would turn down the 270-K the town juryrigged last Wednesday because they want 360-K, or 90-K more.

Hmmm. So if a developer comes along and gives them that extra 90-K they end up with two homes built (as opposed to the town buying them for Open Space) cluttering the landscape and bringing down the value of the other homes they want to sell for Big Bucks.

Good point o'reilly. A few years back I heard the rumor the town wanted to take the entire parcel and build a $10 million recreation center.