Four Star Town Manager

Town Manager John Musante, SB Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe

Tonight the Amherst Select Board gave a sneak peak at the Town Manager's rookie year evaluation and it could not have been much better, garnering "outstanding" check marks for budget related items, high marks for media relations and mostly "commendable"--but no less than "satisfactory"--in his dealing with staff and personnel relations. Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe in her introductory remarks called his overall performance, "stellar."

A far cry from his predecessor Larry Shaffer, who suddenly retired last year under the cover of an Executive Session on the very night his evaluations were to go public. Those evaluation forms, since they were never presented in a public meeting and had to do with job performance, then became immune to a pubic documents request.

Perhaps the only discordant note would have come from Committee on Homelessness Chair Hwei-Ling Greeney, the only spectator in the audience, who came to the meeting wondering if the evaluation her committee submitted would become public. It did not.

The Committee on Homelessness is in a pitched battle for survival with the Select Board/Town Manager as town officials wish to terminate the committee over its zealous advocacy for the homeless.

Safe bet their evaluation of the Town Manager sang a starkly different song.

ABC MIA from Town Center?

Once again the Zoning Board of Appeals seems poised to cast another, gasp, pro-business decision; this time in favor of the Amherst Brewing Company, an established bar/restaurant, to relocate its successful operation a mile from town center into a larger commercial space located on a busy direct route to Umass, the Golden Goose of stable employment for all of Western Massachusetts.Formerly The Leading Edge, aka Gold's Gym

Thus it appears the NIMBYs power to snuff development in Amherst is, finally, beginning to wane--on a couple of major fronts. The ZBA, after a protracted hearing process, allowed the variance required for Dr. Kate Atkinson to practice family medicine in a Professional Research Park, thus she will construct a $2.5 million dollar LEED certified 16,000 square foot building, enhancing the taxbase not to mention providing quality medical care to her thousands of patients.

And last week the public hearing to allow ABC to move into the former Leading Edge Gym location in a larger commercial building a mile down the road seemed to garner major public support--including Stephanie O'Keeffe, the Chair of the Amherst Select Board, and Tony Maroulis , the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce and a plethora of patrons far removed from the college aged stereotypes neighbors seem to fear the most.

Those speaking in favor of the variance pointed out the previous tenant, a Health Club operation open 100 hours per week, was far noisier than the brew pub and the Jones Library currently adjacent to ABC has never had complaints about either the noise (and a library would notice) or any odor complaints due to the brewing process or routine cooking.

Meanwhile the Amherst Redevelopment Authority is steaming forward with the Gateway Corridor Project, an urban renewal joint effort between Umass, Amherst and a private tax paying developer to significantly beautify the main corridor connecting the campus to the downtown. We have whittled down the original field of four consultants for the "visioning process" to only two and both will come in to pitch their expertise in person at the next two meetings (in Executive Session.)

The ARA will award the consultant contract by March 1st. The ZBA meets again March 10 to present their decision concerning the ABC. I'll drink to that.

The infamous Anon letter mailed to the neighborhood a few days before the 2/10 ZBA meeting.

Former Amherst Bulletin Columnist Baer Tierkel countered in an email to the Planning Department saying "I received an anonymous letter asking me to write against this move, so be aware that there is a campaign against this move being hatched-anonymously My guess is it is from people who want their Gym (Leading Edge) back , of which I was a member, but do not have a viable plan to make that happen. So they are sabotaging another local business with their anonymous campaign."


They also plan for outdoor dining during the wonderful weather season

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in

Former Town Manager Larry Shaffer, standing center (way back in his angelic days)

From: White, Donald (SEC)
To: amherstac@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 10:30 am
Subject: Public Records Appeal - SPR11/009

Mr. Kelley,

I wanted to provide you with a brief update on the status of the public records appeal that you submitted to this office. I have been in communication with the counsel for the Town of Amherst to discuss the information redacted from the 8/30/10 Amherst Select Board Executive Session Meeting Minutes. At this time, town counsel has withheld that information and asserted Exemption (c) – The Privacy Exemption. Although the town has asserted this exemption, I am awaiting further information that will support the use of this exemption. I expect to speak further with town counsel next week, as they are out of the office this week.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions, but I at least wanted to provide you with the information that I had on the appeal to date. Thank you.


Donald White
Staff Attorney


Dear Mr White,

Thank you for the brief update. Nice when a government agency in charge of Open Meetings can be so open themselves. I hope when you make your final decision I can also receive the results via electronic mail.

As I'm sure you know, 'Exemption C The Privacy Exemption' is the #1 reason cited by municipal officials for turning down Public Documents requests. But public officials have a lesser expectation of privacy than the taxpayers who fund their salaries.

And the state allows the exception to be trumped when "there is a paramount public interest in disclosure." Indeed I strongly believe the sudden departure of Town Manager Larry Shaffer, taking with him four months of salary, rises to level of "paramount public interest"; and since he very soon thereafter reentered the job market in Michigan, I'm sure it was not a medical condition that fueled his hasty flight.

The redacted lone sentence I seek represents one half of the 120 minute Executive Session, as Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe covered the entire meeting with only two sentences. That too is questionable record keeping.

Maintaining public trust should be your paramount concern. When elected local officials hatch backroom deals in a private manner financed with public taxpayer money, it diminishes that sacred trust.

Again, thank you for considering this important matter.
Larry Kelley

Correction: The Executive Session was one hour-and-twenty-minutes (80 minutes) not two hours (120 minutes). Still, pretty hard to capture in only two sentences

And justice for all

Sending the Amherst Select Board to a "social justice training session" is like requiring a professional All-Star baseball team to attend a Little League summer training camp. Talk about preaching to the converted. Yikes!



And some of you may remember Dr. Barbara Love, UMass School of Education, who in 2002, as Chair of the Amherst Regional School Committee, played the race card to defend the pedophile principal Steven Myers as incendiary news broke about his pernicious interaction with a 15-year-old Amherst student: "As a black woman, I am leery of jumping to conclusions and condemning and convicting an individual on the basis of circumstantial evidence."

That same year, when school officials were discussing whether to disregard the state mandate that will require students to pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test to receive a diploma, the Daily Hampshire Gazette noted that " ... Chairwoman Barbara Love countered that it is equally important to teach students to defy laws they find unconscionable."

Yes, by all means, sit down in the middle of the road to protest the MCAS. God forbid we test students to see whether their expensive education instills learning or not.

The private Kellogg Foundation (those purveyors of the "breakfast of champions") provided the $300,000 "social justice" grant to Amherst over three years to fund this auspicious project, so no taxpayer money was involved. Unlike the $96,000 Amherst schools recently donated to the Umass School of Education for tips on how to teach.

The Denver Westword News reported: