Friday, May 6, 2016

A Generational Divide

Maria Capriola

After over two hours of tedious discussion, where our five member Select Board (called Selectmen in every other municipality in Massachusetts) tried to keep the analysis of the two candidates positive, they voted 3-2 in favor of the best fit for Amherst ... who just happens to be a woman.

Maria Capriola, at age 36, is neither a "millennial" (although  pretty close) and certainly not a "baby boomer" but she has the vital experience of living and legislating in a University Town where UConn casts a shadow as enormous as the one UMass does over Amherst.

 UMass Amherst is our #1 industry, err, employer

At the proposed salary of $155,000 she will be, like her predecessor John Musante,  the second highest paid employee behind School Superintendent Maria Geryk.

And will probably interact most often with the Select Board Chair, Alisa Brewer.  Maybe have lunch with the President of Amherst College, Biddy Martin; or Business Improvement District Director Sarah la Cour; or the Donald Trump of North Amherst developers, Cinda Jones.

Amherst has a strong team of upper management already in place and the Select Board made it clear from the get go the new Town Manager is not expected to "clean house."

We need someone with enough experience to carry out a vision with vigor.

And I think we found her.

17 comments:

  1. I like having Kelley buy-in.

    Rich Morse

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  2. As long as she's familiar with Aesop's "The Scorpion and the Frog" ...

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  3. Maybe not clean house, but, she needs to do some serious dusting.

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  5. I'd like to drop the Donald Trump association. I've conserved 3486 acres and plan to conserve 2000 more in 2017. I have developed less than 10 acres and hope to develop maybe 50 in my lifetime.

    Wikipedia: "Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal. He called it "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man." Pinchot coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources. Pinchot's main contribution was his leadership in promoting scientific forestry and emphasizing the controlled, profitable use of forests and other natural resources so they would be of maximum benefit to mankind. He was the first to demonstrate the practicality and profitability of managing forests for continuous cropping. His leadership put conservation of forests high on America's priority list.[3]"

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  6. No problem.

    I'm sure a year from now nobody will remember who Trump is.

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    1. Lol. That's a good one! TRUMP 2016!

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  7. Your wish is our command, we won't compare you to Trump anymore. See how simple it can be? We can just ask for how we want to be portrayed in the media. Let's all get along!

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  8. It was actually kind of an inside joke.

    At one of many, many public meeting she was at where her NIMBY neighbors were giving her a hard time, one of them used the comparison.

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  9. Typically people don't get online to counter and defend against "inside jokes" the way she did, I guess that's what confused me, it seemed like something that might have really bothered her. Sorry.

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  10. She's just very protective of her brand. (As we all should be).

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  11. Larry, it's called "Generation 'X'" -- a very small generation because our parents were the children born in the First Depression, of which there weren't many.

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  12. Okay thanks. I'm glad she has a generation of her own.

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  14. Best wishes to Ms. Capriola, She sounds f'ing awesome and I welcome her to the community and look forward to her work.

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  15. She is between Gen X (cool cat indifferent slackers)and a Millennial (overbranded self absorbed crybabies). You need to watch out for folks that came of age between cultural generations....like kids coming of age today....but not like the sellouts known as Boomers or the distracted "Greatest" Generation.

    Think about it 75 year olds.....55 year olds....35 year olds....15 year olds....all between cultural generations and often slightly off.



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  16. At least Cinda learns and grows into a better and better citizen with the passage of time….

    - YF

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