31 Spring Street, Amherst
Two weeks ago the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals approved the conversion of 31 Spring Street to a two family abode, thereby doubling its legal occupancy. The house, contiguous with the newly renovated Lord Jeff Inn, is owned by Amherst College, the largest landowner in town.
The President's House, home to Biddy Martin, is tax exempt
Last year Amherst College, a tax-exempt education institution, paid the town $491,364 for the small part of their vast empire that is on the tax rolls: 31 single family, 5 two-family and 3 three-family houses, the profitable (unlike the town's own Cherry Hill) Amherst Golf Course on South Pleasant Street, the Dakin Property (purchased for $4.3 million in 2005) contiguous with the golf course and the scenic overlook at 69 South Pleasant Street.
In addition last year the college donated $90,000 in unrestricted funds to the town General Fund mainly for emergency services protection provided by Amherst Fire Department. Although a couple years earlier, before the endowment took a major hit, Amherst College had donated $120,000 to the town they are named after.
Those donations have traditionally (if you call three or four years a tradition) taken place at the start of the New Year. This past January/February, however, no announcements were forthcoming. Odd, since their endowment is now comfortably at a historic all time high, $1.64 BILLION.
Meanwhile the "5 year strategic agreement" with UMass/Amherst expires next month. That Payment In Lieu Of Taxes generated $325,000 per year (plus the regular $100,000 the state always gives Amherst for all state owned land in the town). Umass is the second largest landowner in Amherst--all of it tax exempt except for the Campus Center Hotel that, grudgingly, pays the local option hotel/motel meals tax.
Of course the closing and return of Mark's Meadow Elementary School to the University is a major change.
Former Mark's Meadow Elementary School
According to the expiring 5-year Town/Gown "strategic agreement":
“If, in the future, the Town builds a new elementary school and vacates the Mark’s Meadow facility, the Town, AES, ARPS and the University will negotiate a new agreement in which the University may reimburse the Town for a portion of the net costs of educating students living in University tax-exempt housing. "
Estimates of the number of children attending Amherst Public Schools from our tax exempt flagship University are somewhere between 50 and 60 (two of them Chancellor Holub's children), with our current average cost to educate at $16,413 per student, significantly over the $13,055 state average.
In other words, the $1 million it costs us to educate children coming from UMass tax exempt housing is more than double the amount they currently pay the town.
Last week Amherst Town Meeting approved an Elementary School Budget $218,000 in the red, which had to be made up by tapping reserves, currently around $6 million, but less than 10% of general fund operating revenues.
The Fire Department also spends about 25% of its time dealing with University related emergencies; and with the AFD budget at $4 million, that too comes to a cool $1 million annually. Recently the firefighers union called upon the town and Umass to consider as part of the negotiations enough (extra) money to fund the addition of two new additional firefighter positions.
Considering the stress placed on AFD just from recent Mullins Center concerts (run by a for profit company cloaked under a tax exempt entity) a reasonable request.
Last night Amherst Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved the town operating budget (police/fire/DPW etc) without a single mention of negotiations with UMass, a guaranteed six digit amount for the FY13 budget. And no questions concerning the supposedly imminent deal with Blue Wave Capital for placing a $10 million solar farm on the old landfill, thus generating six-digit savings in electric costs on top of $200,000 in annual property taxes.
And then we have the runt of the litter, Hampshire College, who pays the town zero in Payment in Lieu of Taxes and a grand total of $61,613 in property taxes for a few houses and the Bay Road Tennis Club. Yet expensive trips to Hampshire College are as routine as rain for the Amherst Fire Department.
Black Walnuts near Hampshire College main entrance. College gave the state a bike lane easement to save trees, but charged the town $200,000 in paving for an easement for Atkins Corner ProjectBut town officials still act like beggars, pleading with our tax exempt institutes of higher education to "spare a dime." It's time to get serious...and ask (nicely) for real money.
"Economic impact: In fiscal 2010, the impact of UMass Amherst on economic activity in Massachusetts was approximately $1.43 billion. The spending of the UMass Amherst campus, its employees and students helped to support an additional 5,174 jobs in the Commonwealth."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/newsreleases/articles/19158.php
Cost of 200 (quadruple of what you cite) UMass student children attending Amherst public schools:
$3,226,800.
Doubling Amherst fire departments staff, as cited by you, 1 million. Let's say 5 million to make it more fair.
That means Amherst would like 8 million of our 1.34 billion we contributed to the economy, seems like a small chunk of change and I agree... to an extent.
UMass already has student fire volunteers, and groups such as Student Bridges and our graduate students in the teaching program already reach out back into the community through service. My fraternity was the only civic institution from any of the three schools to volunteer following the Halloween storm. (Strange, it never made it on here despite great thanks from the town...) Our Greek organizations donate more time to the local communities than all other students at the other schools combined.
Either way, go ask the private schools. With tuitions reflecting Harvard (sorry Hampshire, you're nowhere near there) and one with an endowment in the billions maybe they should consider stepping up to the plate. UMass has research to conduct and children to educate rather than rob.
I tend to think of UMass as the US of the local world, to put the school/town relations in a international politics comparison. We are the biggest, loudest, and always try to do the right thing yet somehow all the good is ignored.
Yeah, that reminds me I forgot to include my "editor's disclaimer" hyping all the great things about UMass/Amherst.
ReplyDeleteBut since this post is also about Amherst College and Hampshire College, I suppose I'll have to come up with one for them as well.
The trouble with comparing the University's economic impact to the costs of providing services to UMass is that the positive impacts are regional, whereas most of the direct costs are to the town. It's Amherst schools and ambulances, not Hadley's or anyone else's. In my opinion, I think a way should be found (at least) to pay for the schooling of the children in tax-free apartments and for the excessive ambulance service. Mullins should be required to provide and pay for adequate emergency services for those big concerts - clearly 1 ambulance is not enough.
ReplyDeleteDamn.....if Elisa Campbell is reading this blog, I've got to start paying attention.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, she's right.
And what am I, a stopped clock?
ReplyDeleteLet's face it, the disclaimer isn't saying anything other than it's a small minority. You Larry, are a wise man (yet this seems to be a small minority in this town...), however I am sure you are just as embarrassed by the actions of the few.
ReplyDeleteYes, the regional impact is not for only the town of Amherst, but even if that was split among 150 towns (and it isn't) the university through its existence alone grants over 9 million dollars each. Amherst actually benefits far better than other towns, you get the brunt of the bad but also the much larger good.
Not to mention UMass should disallow the use of Amherst on the sporting fields, bar them from public lecture. Forget the library system, or the buses.
Strange, 20 seconds of thought and I already can see the benefits of having 30,000 individuals pumping money into the economy.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteAFD charges for the ambulances. If they are not breaking even on this, it seems to me that the solution is simple -- either privatize it to an outside vendor or charge more.
As for the issue of educating the children residing in Family Housing, I think the university has solved that -- there won't be any from Lincoln next year, and before long, you won't see any from North Village either.
Be careful what you ask for though -- 200 undergrad cars in Lincoln where there are only 80 parking spaces is going to create something that the town is going to have a nightmare dealing with.
Of course, I have my own personal solution - we just simply ask Amherst to name a figure -- whatever Amherst wants in a handout -- and deduct it from the union pay raises under the "subject to legislative allocation" clause of the labor laws. That would put an end to all of this real fast.
Asking the UM students to keep paying more flies in the face of any of this "social justice" mantra, or does the Town of Amherst only intend to "talk the talk" on that?
Since the union pay raises are a lot less than the professionals' pay raises, why not deduct anything from them? Oh, wait,do you consider yourself a professional?
ReplyDeleteLarry,
ReplyDeleteYou're right more often than a stopped clock.
“If, in the future, the Town builds a new elementary school
ReplyDeleteThis is the most important clause in the sentence -- if Amherst was to build a new elementary school *AND* Mark's Meadow stopped being used, THEN the clause applies.
Not the closing of Mark's Meadow but ALSO the town having the expense of a NEW elementary school to replace it -- which I really hope that the town isn't stupid enough to be planning to build.
No one anticipated the number of children in town shrinking so dramatically that four elementary schools were no longer feasible. Actually, *I* did, but no one listened -- and but for subsidized and Section 8 housing, you would be having trouble justifying two elementary schools.
Young families simply can't afford to live in Amherst -- and if you make an issue of the children of the UM students in what will now be just North Village then you won't have them in your schools either and Amherst will increasingly be a town without children.
Or worse, where ALL of your children are those of single mothers on welfare, with all the socieo/economic problems that such ghettoization causes and if you speak privately with older and more senior police officers, they will tell you that while the UM students are obnoxious and problematic, those aren't the neighborhoods where cops are afraid to go alone.
This could well get a whole lot worse....
Since the union pay raises are a lot less than the professionals' pay raises, why not deduct anything from them?
ReplyDeleteMy bad -- attention everyone: Ed made a mistake here. And I will admit it.
I meant to include the non-unit professionals in the category of "union" employees because, in theory, they are supposed to be getting raises similar to and under conditions similar to those of the unit folks. And I would also include GEO in this too.
And were I in a UM bargaining unit, I would be making a fuss about the disparity between the GEO salaries and everyone else's -- remember that GEO is 20 hours for 28 weeks -- not the standard 37.5 for 50 weeks -- and if you pro-rate that on the latter basis, almost all of the classified and many of the lower level professionals are being paid far less than first year graduate students!
Seriously, we are now down to a 13 week spring semester (the fall one has been that short for some time now) and that is a total of 26 weeks, with two more for finals coming to a grand total of 28 weeks which is less than even 9 months!
Now compare that to the standard "unit" employee who starts with 2 weeks of vacation which means 50 weeks -- and GEO gets the same number of holidays and sick days.
You folks are being screwed. Do the math! And don't do it on 5-10-15 years of seniority but on 0-1-2 years and see what the GEO rates come to if you adjust for the 20 hours for 28 weeks factor.
The last time I calculated it, a decade ago, a first-year Grade 13 person works twice as many hours for the same money as a first-year GEO person. But do the math yourself -- get the current GEO wages and your own scale from your own contract and do the math.
One more thing here -- and there are exceptions in both cases -- but who works harder and does more for the university -- a Clerk III/IV or a foreign graduate student who can't even speak understandable English?
ReplyDeleteWe are not talking race or national origin here -- we are talking about the ability to be comprehensible in the American dialect of spoken English. And when we have adjunct faculty with earned doctorates teaching for LESS than first year graduate students who only have a BA/BS, there are some serious questions to be asked.
And when we have UNDERGRADS doing a better job in some of the academic support roles than graduate students paid 10 times more when you include the full tuition/fee waivers for out-of-state students, and I am quietly thinking of a specific example here -- we have some serious questions to ask.
In a bit more than a decade, GEO salaries increased by more than 400%! Yes, Holub's initial compensation package was a half million dollars per year -- $500K and Ed is in a position to know that -- yes that is obscene, but so too is what we are now paying graduate students....
Five hours and no response to Ed.....let's keep it going.
ReplyDeleteFive hours and no response to Ed.....let's keep it going.
ReplyDeleteI take that as a response.
I said that you folk were far to fascist not to respond in some manner....
Fascist or inbred?
ReplyDelete"He (Alberto Rodriguez) accuses the town of having "a pervasive sense of complacency fueled by a culture of nepotism and cronyism."
http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/06/09/ex-schools-chief-fires-on-amherst
"Ms. Geryk stated that she will be happy to relay Ms. Sanderson’s concern to see if UMass will supply additional resources; however, she noted that they are providing a number of in-kind services including grant writing, course attendance by district staff, co-teaching opportunities for staff members, and work between district personnel and university personnel cohort groups. She noted that this partnership is providing a level of focused district professional development that the district simply could never have without ARRA funds. Ms. Geryk said she also believes it is inaccurate to say that the district should no longer use consultants because we are grossly understaffed even with Ms. Graham on board. She said it is imperative to focus resources on curriculum and instruction in order to make the level of change we desire for our district. Mr. Rhodes asked that Ms. Geryk supply a copy of the contract with UMass to the school committee members. Mr. Rivkin noted that he is skeptical of the partnership work because it seems to be too internal.
Steve also talked about the fact that where he works, staff just go out and talk to other professors about what they’re doing. He expressed concern about the $96,000 being spent on the UMass contract when it could have been spent more effectively on things that would have helped students more. He also expressed reservation about the use of funds for professional development which he believes has been shown to have limited effectiveness."
Love the graffiti on the wall in the Mark's Meadow picture.
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't directed at Amherst insiders, it should've been.
Well ponziville's bloated roaches,
ReplyDeleteGuess we know who put the graffiti on the wall. Just couldn't help but point to your handiwork, eh.
-Second Hand Smoke
If we would've done something like that, we would've put it at the south end of the middle school.
ReplyDeleteKnow what I mean?