Umass is obviously the largest employer in Western Massachusetts (a good thing) and the second largest landowner in Amherst--almost all of it tax exempt (not such a good thing).The School of Education deals in, obviously, education. So I'm trying to figure out why Amherst would give UMass $96,000 (half of it going to a lone Professor) to help the academics do what is, essentially, their job?
And no, the fact that most of it is American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money is not a good enough answer.
The main reason Umass gave the town free use of Mark's Meadow school for so many years is because they viewed it as a "living laboratory" for their graduate students, and it allowed professors to design real world curriculum for the School of Education. So why are we now paying a grad students $34,000 for essentially that same thing?
Good local schools are a top priority for a potential professor or grad student with a family deciding whether to come to Umass. Speaking of which, Amherst taxpayers already subsidize the annual full cost of public education (over $16,000 per head) for the 50 or 60 school age children who live under a Umass tax-exempt roof.
A "collaboration" should be a two-way street, not a gilded yellow brick road.
Copy of the $96,000 contract
The Amherst Bulletin reports (better late than never)
My original report.
Amherst Schools positive spin
"And no, the fact that it is American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money is not a good enough answer."
ReplyDeleteLarry, in their eyes, there's no difference between fed dollars and local dollars. Once they have it, it's their dollars.
Enough is enough is enough...
(Great work BTW).
I'm a pretty simple guy. My theory is a dollar is a dollar is a dollar.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't matter if it is a (1) Federal, (2) State, (3) Town, or your own household dollar: they all should be spent in the same way--carefully.
And that simply NEVER seems to happen with the first two on the list, and seldom with number three.
Off topic kind of:
ReplyDelete"AMHERST - Town Manager Larry Shaffer, who came to Amherst in 2006, will step down at the end of September.
Shaffer announced at Monday's Select Board meeting that he anticipated leaving his post before his contract expires at the end of June 2013. As soon as he made the announcement, the board voted unanimously to enter an executive session to speak with him and discuss the status of his contract. After 85 minutes in executive session, board decided to accept Shaffer's retirement effective Sept. 30 and agreed he would receive the equivalent of four months pay on that date, according to Chairwoman Stephanie O'Keeffe.
Shaffer said he has worked for 34 years straight.
"I really appreciate being given the opportunity to serve the people, the citizens of this community," Shaffer said.
Shaffer came to Amherst after serving as town administrator in Vernon, Conn., for seven years. He replaced longtime town manager Barry Del Castilho in Amherst. Shaffer previously worked in municipal government in Oneonta, N.Y., Keene, N.H., and Durham, N.H.
He said his younger brother, a fire chief in upstate New York, came to him three years ago and told him he was thinking about retiring. Shaffer's advice to his sibling then was that once one starts thinking about retirement, one should retire.
"In a week's time I'll be 62 years old and indeed I have been thinking of retirement," Shaffer said."
I can't get over the fact that they paid him 43,000 of our tax dollars...
Poof!
Gone.
And now he's all over the country looking for work because, after a couple of weeks in retirement he says he's bored?!!?
Why the show??? It seems highly likely that they all knew it was coming... that he wasn't retiring...
This from the Birmingham, MI Patch hyper local newssite:
ReplyDeleteIn Amherst, Shaffer began dating a woman who later was offered a position as associate professor at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant. Traveling between New England and the Midwest every few weeks wouldn't work, so he immediately began searching for jobs in Michigan.
instead shafter delivers this press comment...."he won't receive one dime"...as if to say... "fuck bach, he didn't deserve it because he trusted people on the committee who constantly assured him he would get paid"
ReplyDeletebach should hae learned some of shafter's scumbag negotiation and wife cheatin techniques
So Shaffer lied about retiring and the select-board not only knew, but actively gifted him $43,000 of our tax dollars so he could join his partner of an adulterous CHEATING affair out in Michigan?!!?
ReplyDeleteARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???!!!???
WAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
and Prozac sucking Amherst gets raped again and again and again by parasitic insiders...
PRICELESS!
No wonder M.G. was so snooty when C.S. brought the money up at the meeting...
ReplyDeleteNo god damned wonder.
Not only did Scaffer get paid for nothing he was must likely filling out job applications while on his job here. Is there a way to find out when his applications were sent out? Then we would know if his talk of retirement was BS or a way to milk the town out of more money.
ReplyDeleteNo, Public Document Law is not nearly that good.
ReplyDeleteLarry did not retire. Read a little more carefully, he resigned. He does not qualify for a retirement from Amherst so he could not retire.
ReplyDeletehttp://birmingham.patch.com/articles/choosing-the-next-city-manager-a-new-england-administrator-comes-to-michigan
ReplyDelete"Then we would know if his talk of retirement was BS or a way to milk the town out of more money."
ReplyDeleteKeep working at it, you'll catch up...
""The EPA has been wonderful to the town of Vernon ," said Shaffer, who estimated the EPA's investment in the project at about $800K. He said the town is not being held responsible for any of the costs of the effort. Rather, they awarded the town a grant which is designed to study the effectiveness of the technique. This study includes not only the testing after the injection rounds, but also the initial testing which determined the location, concentration, and fix of the contaminated sites. "
ReplyDeleteSo, the inhabitants of this defunct mill project are nothing more than lab rats .... I wonder how many of them will develop cancers and unexplained/diagnosed illnesses due to this experiment thanks to Shaffer and the EPA's generosity????
Sounds just like a "Julia Roberts" movie I saw once.....
And the town gave his admin assistant 25k to go away quietly....
ReplyDelete