Well, sort of. The print edition of the Amherst Bulletin hit the ground this morning and like the good old days where you read the breaking news in the major dailies and then waited till the end of the week for Time and Newsweek to provide more in depth coverage, the editorial/commentary section this week is chock full of analysis of the raging controversies in town.
Mainly the Jones Library running battle between the Evaluation Subcommittee and the more normal members of the full board of Trustees.
Interestingly columnist Jim Oldham, an anti-devevelopment compatriot of cutthroat Carol Gray, takes Trustee Chris Hoffmann to task for daring to blow the whistle on Ms Gray's covert war against longtime Library Director Bonnie Isman.
Charging that he "chose attacks in the press and on blogs over debates in the boardroom as the way to express his position." Hmm...of course Mr. Oldham's attack on Chris Hoffmann occurs in his monthly Bulletin column otherwise known as "the press."
And Mr. Oldham is a co-founder of the new regional school discussion blog--an infomercial for the Regional High School--along with Shutesbury School Committee Chair Michael DeChiara, who wanted the DA to shut down public officials who blog namely Catherine Sanderson.
The above the fold front page lead story concerns cutthroat Carol as well--as she is now, mercifully, safely ensconced in Egypt (well...safe for Amherst but maybe not Egypt) and wants to tenaciously hold on to her Jones Library Trustee position for the next year using video conferencing on the web via skype to attend meetings.
Which is fine of course for tuning in to keep in touch, but not so good for the back-and-forth required of public meetings.
The Bulletin must have felt a tad guilty for holding the presses last week so the Evaluation Subcommittee could pen their poor excuse for recent bad behavior, as the editorial basically says enough! They cite that the Eval committee has met an astounding 50 times over 115 hours since January.
Can't disagree with their conclusion: "It's time to bring the director's review process to a close." But now that Ms. Gray is gone, things will simmer down dramatically anyway--especially if somebody can hit the mute button when she visits via skype.
