Amherst Town Meeting voted to pull the rug out from underneath our military in the field last night by supporting a "Bring the war dollars home" resolution, and since they also torpedoed the zoning change allowing for common sense development, the town is going to need to get money from somewhere besides overburdened property owners, who just last year approved a Proposition 2.5 Override.
The zoning defeat was simply a preemptive attack on The Gateway Project--a coalition between Umass, the Amherst Redevelopment Authority and the town that did not of course hinge on the zoning vote last night, but certainly was painted that way by NIMBY Town Meeting members.
Kind of like marching a herd of sheep through an enemy mine field to discover where the dangerous items are hidden. Unfortunately, by the time the Gateway Project goes before Town Meeting for a zoning vote, all the mines will be replanted--and then some.
Since the two-thirds required super majority only failed by a few votes (96-62) it would be interesting to calculate what a difference it could have made if the Conflict of Interest law applied to Town Meeting.
Pissing off a Umass Collegian columnist
Veterans Day: Umass remembers, and the Springfield Republican reports
So they did get to that last item. They must have finished the meeting in that case.
ReplyDeleteI left early. So did most other people. I was sorely tempted to stay, and call for a quorum count, as a tactical maneuver.
Miss having you there in person.
Terry Franklin
Gateway property is owned by the state. State overrides town authority, state can tell Amherst to go to h*ll with impunity and build any thing it damn well pleases there.
ReplyDeleteState contracts the private developer to build what the private developer wants to build there, and then gives the lease instead of payment.
Amherst holds another sputter and spitfest but has lost. Checkmate.
Better yet, it becomes a 40B project, low income housing for UM Students and instead of input, the town is stuck with a second Southwest, towers & all (geologically, Southwest ought to have been built *there* and not where it was, in the swampland..)
Amherst Town Meeting voted to pull the rug out from underneath our military in the field last night by supporting a "Bring the war dollars home" resolution,
ReplyDeleteHey, if I thought it would bring the troops home from Larry's war, I'd be all for it if I lived in the Peoples' Republic.
The rug was pulled when they were sent there.
Sure does pay (thousands) to be in with the Amherst shadow government, eh?
ReplyDelete"AMHERST - Only a month into his retirement, former Town Manager Larry Shaffer is seeking new employment - in the state of Michigan.
Shaffer is listed as one of five finalists for the position of city manager in Essexville, Mich., a community of less than 4,000 residents that calls itself "The Gateway to the Saginaw Bay."
Shaffer departed Amherst Oct. 1 after announcing in August that he would leave his post prior to the expiration of his contract at the end of June 2013. The Select Board agreed to accept his retirement, met in executive session with him and voted that he would receive the equivalent of four months pay on his final date of employment.
At the time, Shaffer said he was retiring because he had worked 34 years straight and believed that once one begins thinking of retiring, one should actually retire.
"In a week's time I'll be 62 years old and indeed I have been thinking of retirement," Shaffer said..."
I mean lookit George Reed, the schools' so called "mechanic" the town paid $15,000 to "retire" after he was outed on this blog... for not having a single hour of formal training whatsoever, save fixing hot water heaters and lawn mowers in his garage.
Amazingly, Ron Bohonowicz just quietly hired him back from his "retirement"!
Hmm, wonder why he did that?
Is anyone asking WTF is going on in this town?
Anyone???
> leave his post prior to the
ReplyDelete> expiration of his contract
> The Select Board... met in
> executive session
> voted that he would receive
> the equivalent of four months
> pay
Odd that they would hold a secret meeting, and then pay him extra...
I thought if you break a contract, *you* had to pay.
Terry Franklin
Well what the Hell, it worked for Alberto Rodriguez and he was making a L-O-T more than Mr. Shaffer.
ReplyDeleteAmherst Massachusetts and its' compatriots re-acting to the events of 9/11/01:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vOJCQr1Now
Now town meeting radicals are stabbing at the heart of the town that gave birth to them!
Priceless.
Ed, when Alberto Rodriguez described Amherst's school system in these terms:
ReplyDelete"A pervasive sense of complacency fueled by a culture of nepotism and cronyism."
http://media.gazettenet.com/pdf/rodriguez_letter.pdf
What do you think he was talking about?
Most importantly, why are people afraid to talk about the problem openly?
Because they get fired.
ReplyDeleteAny questions?
fck amherst and harry shafter
ReplyDeletethey should have paid me, not given him 4 months severance. that is bs, plain and simple
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=156763367699112&set=a.156762554365860.28405.156650237710425
Amherst, MA= 80% UMass Amherst + 10% Amherst College + 10% other. The bad things brought by UM is far less then the good, yet people seem to want to bite the hand that feeds them...
ReplyDeleteIf Shaffer is job hunting now, then it wasn't his idea to leave.
ReplyDeleteWe got Kabuke theater. The town got a new manager and Shaffer got 4 months pay and his reputation (not having to explain why he was fired.)
What obvious to anyone who can read is that a "Bring the war dollars home" resolution is an explicit judgment on the rationale of waging this(these) wars and clear message that the petitioners want to use war funding resources for domestic priorities rather than waging war with them.
ReplyDeleteIt really has absolutely nothing to do one way or the other about whether the people who support the petition support our soldiers.
In fact, the petition is exactly the type of expression our soldiers fight for.
Next time create a straw man with a cute puppy. The petition means war opponents hate cute puppies.
In Amherst, all we have to fear is...........zoning.
ReplyDeleteNovember 11, 2010 3:39 PM
ReplyDeleteDisgruntled ex-employee with a thorn in his foot?
"November 11, 2010 3:39 PM
ReplyDeleteDisgruntled ex-employee with a thorn in his foot?"
When Ron Bohonowicz keeps Karl Richardson on (after repeated, forceful complaints from a maint. department head), a person who for years got paid a tax payer funded salary to do illegal plumbing work for the town (i.e. unlicensed), over whom the state sent agents (based on another schools' now ex-employee's complaint) and opened an investigation and established an ongoing case against Bohonowicz (including threatening him with legal action), one has to ask WHY.
Even more disturbing is Bohonowicz's keeping Richardson on until January 2011, Richardson's first year of retirement benefits eligibility... when he should've been fired on the spot 9 months ago!
Now ask yourselves, what the hell is going on here?
Or do we need to spell it out letter by letter?
How long are we going to allow criminals in our system to use our money to help their "friends"?
How long?
"Ed...Most importantly, why are people afraid to talk about the problem openly?"
ReplyDeleteWell, in my case I might have to explain to the US Department of Education why UMass won't even admit that it knows me (wait, I am writing that letter this weekend...)
There are a lot of things 'breaking to bottom' right now and wonder how much longer it will be before everything in Amherst falls apart.
Am I the only one wondering what will happen with the first snowstorm -- if the undergrads are openly wandering around with booze the way they have been all fall, what happens when the cops can't even scare them anymore?
The very social order is breaking down.... When I say "please be quiet, my neighbors have small children who are asleep -- it works well but the larger concept of how it is "unladylike" to urinate on a fire hydrant is missing...