Roundabout in front of Atkins Country MarketThe second attempt to change the zoning in South Amherst to a form based code that would allow denser development once again managed to garner a majority of Amherst Town Meeting support, but article #24 fell short of the two-thirds vote required for passage, 130-78.
This solid setback all but guarantees a follow up failure for bringing form based zoning to North Amherst under article #25.
15 comments:
It's time to see Town Meeting for what it is: a static thing. The world changes; Town Meeting doesn't.
This is not the form of government that can lead this community in an intelligent way through this century. We have a ruling minority that calls the shots here. If you look at that ruling minority, it's the same people year after year.
A year later, I'd rather roll a very large boulder partway up a hill and have it roll right over and down to the bottom and start over from now 'til eternity, than sit in there and watch zoning articles go down to defeat over and over and over.
Lord Jeffrey Sisyphus
I can't wait until Amherst beings funding 5-year plans reminiscent of the Soviet Union.
You got it wrong, Stalin's Ghost.
There are no "5-year plans". There are no plans of any kind. It's a mindless maintenance of the existing status quo for ever and ever and ever that's the problem.
Forget what you've heard about "people's republics"; this is reactionary government. It's cloaked in progressive language, but it's the most conservative mind-set against any kind of change of any kind you'll ever find.
I don't understand why people who have their position voted down need to consider the "winners" backward and unintelligent. And, of course, it's the same people year after year -- they have lived here for years and will continue to live here until they die. Duh.
"Progress" in this instance represents a denser concentration of housing, people, and cars. Many residents are opposed to that.
Couldn't progress be represented by a profitable virtual community housed in one building? This is to say that people who work with web based industries, not a pretend community.
So you would rather have a mayor and a city council? That would be a mayor who is elected -- just like some in the past who became worse than inquisition persecutors because their torture left no visible marks. The city council, also elected and not necessarily going to vote your way.
Town meeting is like a cup of tea and a muffin.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And, in the People's Republic of Amherst, oftentimes the "winners" are "backward and unintelligent".
Or at the very least, selfish.
There's no demand for this from the residents of the area. S. Amherst already as a town center, which has a gas station, multiple restaurants, a dry cleaners, salon, barber shop, laundramat, consignment store, package store and more. Going ahead with this zoning change would have been done solely to benefit Hampshire College, which wants to develop their land for commercial possibilities. It's not for the needs of S. Amherst residents. We've already got a small town center.
In accordance with one of the latest posts by Larry with regards to taxation of the three universities, I too question this rezoning.
The reason I pointed out the need for taxation of private universities (and not UMass) is due to the ownership of commercial property by these private schools. They want to utilize their property for commercial purposes to bring in money, using their tax-exempt status for non-transparent purposes.
They argue that this is to control costs, but private institutions are bankrupting students with consistent tuition hikes. Amherst, Hampshire and the like conduct no large scale research, so why is it so expensive? So the school administrators line their pockets, and owning and renting surrounding property to local business is a great start. Local businesses rely on a consistent shopping base even more than large business, what better than students relegated to a campus?
Tax institutions who own private property (even the Mullins Center at UMass) and use it to subsidize public goods.
Add back the former Town Meeting members who got involved through their interest in the ACE agenda, and the zoning articles, this year and last, pass. This is the cost of getting involved in disrespectful exchanges within coalitions of people otherwise dedicated to the same thing, in this case, intelligent, appropriate economic development to grow the tax base.
When you have a good thing going politically, don't blow it up!
My guess is hiring Maria Geryk is what blew up the coalition. All of a sudden the "sustainable" people didn't believe "sustainable," technocratic, good government. They didn't even question any of the budgets. We did lose a lot of involved parents in Town Meeting as a result of that hire.
Switch nine seats to pro-school, pro-development TM members and the thing passes.
Those parent former members showed up during their terms with good attendance records. They actually had their own kids in the schools and weren't sending them elsewhere to private schools or PVPA.
This is what the group hissy-fit, with all the faux outrage about politeness and civility, led by Mr. Tierkel against Catherine and Steve costs us.
The anger was always about only one thing: putting closing an elementary school on the budgetary table. The ruling minority coalition of regressives in Town Meeting, who want to roll Amherst back to circa 1950, is now the enduring political beneficiary.
This expensive, exhausting exercise in futility, this nightly wasting of the personal time of 200+ public-spirited residents, this sad, meaningless rearranging of the deck chairs in town was NOT to celebrate the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic.
Yes, they both involve human error, but any other resemblance between the two is purely coincidental. If you thought you heard "Nearer My God to Thee" coming from the Middle School Auditorium, the problem was strictly with your television.
Carol Gray was clearly entertained by what was happening, and this is really all that matters.
Forget what you've heard about "people's republics"; this is reactionary government. It's cloaked in progressive language, but it's the most conservative mind-set against any kind of change of any kind you'll ever find.
All "people's republics" are reactionary and terrified of change. They liked things best back in 1969 and really wish this still WAS 1969....
Wow.
Ed has said something I agree with.
Here's the problem with being stuck in 1969 for me: I would have to wait 35 more years for a Red Sox world championship. I don't want to do that again.
Here's the problem with Town Meeting now: you have to do the politics right. You can't take it for granted that it's going to turn out alright if you view the Town Meeting ballot as if you were placing $2 bets off of a racing card at the track, haphazardly picking your friends or nonincumbents or names or addresses that sound good. As a voter, I resent being in that situation. Others seem to agree, which is why the turnout is annually so incredibly low.
At the same time, we think that there's something dirty or unseemly about voter education, i.e. learning just what the values and voting records of the Town Meeting candidates on the ballot are. Yes, we should be able to do what we do at every other level of the democratic process: vote AGAINST those individuals who continually vote against our interests and dreams for this town.
The "ruling minority", as another poster put it, may be living their dream now. I look at the schools, at the police, at no firestation on the drawing board for southern Amherst, and say we're not there yet.
Rich Morse
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