SB:Jim Wald, Diana Stein, Alisa Brewer, Aaron Hayden, Stephanie O'Keeffe Town Meeting commences on November 7, and will not conclude until all 18 articles are acted upon.
For sure article #17, bringing Form Based Zoning to North and South Amherst village centers, will be the most controversial item, resulting in a l-o-n-g debate; as will article #5: $40,000 for a town wide "market study" of the exceedingly tight Amherst housing market, something that will be attacked as a taxpayer subsidy benefiting real estate agents and developers.
Both articles will primarily come under fire for fear they will be instrumental in producing more "student housing," the bogeyman of Amherst. The Gateway Corridor Project, a joint effort between UMass, the town and the Amherst Redevelopment Authority was the most recent project to suffer from this paranoia.
The final article (#18), an advisory to the Select Board to revive the Committee on Homelessness--terminated only last month--could also generate plenty of discussion, but since it is the last article on the warrant, perhaps members will be burned out and less likely to talk until the cows come home.
Fall Amherst Town Meeting Warrant
I wouldn't call it paranoia about student housing. There's this cool blog -- I can't recall the name right now -- which has a weekly roundup of arrests at "party houses" in Amherst. You should read it to get a sense of why residents don't want students living nearby.
ReplyDeleteAnd the reason I have done that over the past year is to draw attention to those who are the exception rather than the rule.
ReplyDeleteUMass is not ZooMass.
The town--or ARA--needs to clean up the off campus slums and replace them with new housing that folks would be proud to live in.
And yeah, UMass could build some more on campus housing as well.
Do you really think that "new housing that folks would be proud to live in" would stay that way once students begin living in it? Is this really all dependent on "the quality of their environment"?
ReplyDeleteYour own coverage of student behavior over recent months has made me cynical on this point.
UMass undoubtedly has many, many fine people attending there, people we never hear about. But there is a significant number who seem determined to keep the public face of UMass ZooMass.
The culture won't change until someone gets killed, the death (or deaths) can be linked to this pattern of student violence and drunkenness, and UMass administrators out of sheer embarrassment shut it down.
Yes, that is what I'm trying to avoid.
ReplyDeleteThey need to crack down now. Expelling a few high profile troublemakers would be a good start.