More $ down the drain

Amherst Cherry Hill Golf Course (metaphorically speaking)

Just so all of us "customers" have time to adapt, Amherst announced six months in advance a 3% price hike in water and sewer rates. Yeah, that $24 annual increase takes a long time to soften the shock. Thanks.

Or I suppose households could cut back--a bath here and a toilet flush there. But try telling that to my two kids.

Now too bad the town could not correspondingly swing a magic golf club and guarantee an increase in the bottom line at our floundering golf business. Interestingly, the town has incrementally increased rates almost every year for the past decade or so but it still loses money hand over fist because of sinking interest in the expensive game of golf.

And with H-U-G-E capital infrastructure expenditures coming up soon, those already too large losses will only grow exponentially.

Government seems to do just fine in the marketplace when it has a monopoly on a vital service like running water or education, but tanks in a competitive arena where good quality at a fair price matters.

Unfortunately the taxpayers are all too easily tapped to cover the difference.

I'm here from the government...

How many teachers, cops or firefighters could $5 million fund here in historic Taxachusetts? Or...just give thousands of state workers a couple days off and be required to pay overtime to those deemed "essential."

I'm a patriotic guy, and if state workers in Suffolk County all attended day-long educational teach-ins and a ceremony celebrating Bunker Hill Day (historically speaking they may want to teach that the battle mostly occurred on Breeds Hill and that technically the Brits won) or Evacuation Day (which sounds like a medical term for bowel movement) then maybe I could live with the $5 million tab...maybe.

But like Columbus Day, the "holidays" have lost any meaning. Even the most meaningful of holidays--Memorial Day--is lost on some clueless folks.

Unsurprisingly, Amherst's state government dynamic duo--Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Ellen Story voted to keep the hack holidays alive. After all, Amherst only has a pathetic 9.9% commercial tax base--thus taxpayer/voters gainfully employed by the private sector are in a distinct minority.

September 17 is Constitution Day. Since state and federal workers do not get it as a paid holiday, nobody seems to care. But the Feds, mainly due to Sen. Robert Byrd, decided six years ago that any publicly funded educational institution must have an teach in that day focusing on the most important document in our history.

Since the Feds decided not to come up with any extra money for this auspicious occasion, thereby making it an "unfunded mandate," you have to wonder what the adherence rate is here in our most historic of states?

Do any of the Five Colleges or the venerable Amherst Public School system hold a teach-in that day? We already know the Amherst schools ignore the requirement for reciting the "Pledge of Allegiance," so it's a pretty safe bet 'Constitution Day' falls into the same void.

But our state can continue to squander $5 million to "remember" two encounters that helped lead to the adoption of the Constitution, while not taking a little time remembering what the Constitution is all about. Only in Massachusetts!

The Republican Reports

Amherst Town Hall Thursday morning

10:30 AM

Hey, at least the building was wide open (although abandoned) . So I got to walk around with my RPG looking for a soft target (nothing sprung into my crosshairs).