Who would curse Indian Summer gracing us on weekends over the rest of the month? Public safety professionals for one. (And perhaps grumpy Internet trolls who live in their parents basement and never go outside anyway.) At this morning's police briefing Detective Dave Foster attributed the somewhat quiet--as in less riotous--weekend a result of the wet weather, dubbing it a "friend."
Amherst Fire Department Chief Tim Nelson concurred saying this past weekend's, 9/30, lower number of ambulance (35) firetruck runs (13) compared to last weekend's, 9/23, ambulance (67) firetruck runs (12) was "directly attributed to weather."
Last year when Amherst Police Department Captain Jennifer Gundersen visited a journalism class at UMass she said,“Weather dictates the activity. In the spring we hope for rain every weekend. We also hope for the Red Sox to lose. Just one weekend can drain our budget as overtime has to be paid for some officers.”
Perhaps the town should think about adding a new position to the budget: rain dancer.
How bout the town consider a few more cops... It's getting too dangerous.. and just the other day I saw a few Umass police cars-lights and sirens going south on 116- I asked around.. and they were backing up Amherst PD at a fight because they didnt have enough officers.. On a side note.. as I don't understand this political side of things.. why is Amherst a Town.. and not a City??
ReplyDeleteYeah, UMass has a lot more cops than we do. But NO fire department.
ReplyDeleteOne of the arguments against the switch to Mayor/Council was that we would have to change our designation from "town" to "city."
Turns out that is not case. But the Charter change vote still lost, narrowly.
So we remain one of the larger communities on the planet with an antiquated town meeting form of government.
"How bout the town consider a few more cops"????
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh, heh......ask that of Town Meeting and see what kind of reaction you get.
Perhaps you've heard of it? Amherst Town Meeting?
Know who serves in Town Meeting? You don't??? Well, you elect its members. 24 members per precinct; 10precincts in the Town. The members presume to represent you, but nobody really worries about that much. You say that you can't remember any of their names???
Welcome to democracy Amherst-style. It's a shame. But we love it.
It sounds like UMass could use an ambulance or two. They have students who are EMTs and could probably handle much of the drunken shenanigans.
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