Ghost of Christmas future 2

Back 15 years ago Phillip Sweeney asked Amherst Town Meeting to zone this property Village Square to allow commercial development. They overwhelmingly turned him down. I of course voted in favor. One town official even told Town Meeting that someday this entire corridor (ultra-busy Rt. 9) would be zoned commercial but Mr. Sweeney is a tad ahead of the curve (naturally the NIMBY neighbors spoke against the rezoning.)

His speech was one of the most disjointed I have ever heard in Town Meeting and he looked, with his frizzy hair, a bit like a male version of recent sensation Susan Boyle (but without the speaking/singing talent)

When the lopsided vote was announced (and it required a two-thirds majority to pass) a long-time Town Meeting member sitting behind me said to the member next to him "That's because we don't like him." Hmmm....

He did manage to open the Maplewood Restaurant under a "farm stand" exemption (what is more natural than fresh brewed beer?) but with all the rules and regulations restraining his commercial activity the restaurant only lasted a few years.

And now it just sits there, abandoned. The first commercial enterprise you see when approaching Amherst from the east. A reminder of the motto: bury your business in Amherst.

Ghost of Christmas Future?

Last year Town Meeting turned down (117-63) Ken Bergstrom’s request to rezone his property out on the Sunderland line off Rt. 116, a major highway. He wanted to put in a mix of condo’s and retail under Village Square Zoning.

The property was formerly used by Environmental PC Poster Child Bioshelters, to grow fish and basil (they employed mentally retarded workers, used solar heating and recycled 99.7% of all its water and wastes). And they went belly up.

Now it sits like a set for a post apocalyptic movie (Note to Mel Gibson: If you ever do another Mad Max…). Fine greeting for all those entering Amherst from the north.

The 40,000 square foot pad underneath the rotting shelter is concrete so it’s not like you can farm it. But the Conservation Commission and Agricultural Commission wanted it to stay a fishfarm (although they were not going to invest the millions to get it back up and gurgling)

And our Old Majority Select board, with has-been Gerry Weiss in his brief but glorious reign as Chair voted 3-2 against the rezoning (newbie’s Stephanie and Alisa voted in favor.) Ann Awad told Town Meeting "This is an intense development project on a fragile piece of land that is very wet”

And she of course was the only Select Board member a few years earlier to vote in favor of the hostile rezoning of Meadow Street land (not to far down the road) to ‘Flood Prone Conservancy” that set off a marathon legal battle costing the town $150-K and the landowners over $500-K.

Former Bioshelters CEO John Reid told Town Meeting he was raising funds (estimated at $6 to $10 MILLION) to restart the business. So far, one year later, nothing. Had the zoning change gone thru the development would have been worth millions on the tax rolls, rather than the paltry $200,000 in current valuation.

Town Meeting 5/19/08.
Let's hope Mr Reid takes off his cap when meeting with Venture Capitalists.

Running out of Resources

The first and only time I attempted a “Move to Reconsider” on the floor of Town Meeting—where you ask the esteemed body to reconsider a previously decided article because of “new information”—occurred back in 1998.

Town Meeting had passed the Social Service charitable donation budget of around $100,000 with little discussion. The year before I had tried to cut a piece of it for “The Amherst Youth Center” that was getting the lions share ($19,000) and only had one or two kids participating, so the $39,000 salaried Director had it pretty cozy. Naturally I was practically booed from the podium.

But the Youth Center closed down in the following year (the town finally figured it out and pulled the money) so I simply abstained on the vote this time around, meaning I was in a position to attempt a reconsideration (you have to have voted in the majority or abstained on the original article.)

The Men’s Resource Center was getting a hefty amount ($10,000) and the day after Town Meeting approval, I learned they had a month earlier purchased a downtown building for a handsome six-figure sum and as a non-profit would be removing it (or most of it since I think they did rent a portion) from the tax rolls.

My pitch to Town Meeting was that we should deduct from the $10,000 donation the amount that would no longer be coming into the town treasury because of their tax-exempt status. Again I was met with blank clueless stares.

Now with the economic meltdown the town is, finally, talking about cutting the charitable contributions it makes annually to social service agencies. Amherst is of course the only community in the state that makes such contributions with tax dollars, and when you are a community with over 50% of the land owned by tax-exempts, that is not a sustainable combination.

Besides charitable giving should be an individual thing.

Taking the hint, the Men’s Resource Center announced their executive director would be joining the millions of Americans getting laid off and they will be selling that downtown building. Let’s hope to a private enterprise that will renovate it, employ folks and pay property taxes.