Monday, November 10, 2014

Smooth Sailing

Pine Street, North Amherst (town owned construction staging area on right)


That loud celebratory roar you heard last week reverberating from North Amherst was not another Blarney Blowout. Just neighbors collectively breathing a sigh of relief that Pine Street has, finally, been paved.

Well, initial coat anyway. Final coat and sidewalks are scheduled (after some minor tweaking this week) to be completed next year.

9 comments:

  1. Is this drone yours? We've seen it now in a couple videos. Also, aren't they illegal in Amherst?

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  2. Do you have a FAA permit for it?

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  3. Thanks, Larry. A minor coup for an otherwise neglected area of town.

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  4. If Town Meeting had approved "Form Based Zoning" a few years back we probably would have gotten state money ($4 million) to do the entire project.

    And I think it would have been completed a lot faster as well.

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  5. And if the charter had passed a few years back, a LOT of things would have been completed faster....

    Who will lead the charge to throw the bums out of town meeting? We need an organized group to defeat the NIMBYS. Preferably folks who have the cojones to withstand being pelted by a few vegan tomatoes, and politically-correct name calling.

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  6. Anon 1:51 pm is right on the substance, say what you will about the crack about "vegan tomatoes".

    The reality is that we are one or two elections away from the ideologues having a consistent two-thirds majority needed to run Town Meeting, to follow through on their complete contempt for the recommendations of the deliberative boards in town, and to call the shots on every detail. They already have a solid one-thirds plus one minority to obstruct all zoning proposals, and quibble everything to death.

    People without a NIMBY/angry abutter/"The Planning Board is a tool of developers" agenda will have to step forward to run, or the current trend line will run unabated. The strong majority vote in there Wednesday night for a very reckless zoning proposal should be a shot across the bow.

    This is real, not some prophecy of doom from the usual trolls on this blog. WE have elected these folks and then checked out on what's going on, without even a minimal level of citizen vigilance.

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  7. " Dr. Ed said...

    Do you have a FAA permit for it?"

    If he flies it under 400 feet in general or outside 5 miles of an airport he does not need one. As long as there is no "reasonable" expectation of privacy nor an invasion of privacy claim, and as long as he is in a public place he is fine. But if he shoots exterior spaces on private property, like a backyard not normally visible from the street or the interior of a home, he is violating the law. Basically anywhere a space is considered a space where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy under the law. So if he is flying over someone's backyard and recording video or photos, he stands a good chance of qualifying as an invasion of privacy. This is true even where there is no direct over-flight; in other words, where there is no question of trespassing, but the camera is still able to capture images from parts of the property where reasonable expectation of privacy holds. The only issue Larry breaks is the commercial issue as he collects fees from advertizing for his site so he could be charged with illegally flying his quad copter for commercial purposes if he pissed the right people off. A new law goes into effect in 2015 but it is not completely written so until then we'll have to wait.

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  8. Me? Piss the right people off? Say it's isn't so.

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