UPDATE: 6:05 PMSo I just called (from my business) a publicly published Amherst phone number 256-1042—just to see if Mr. Hubley or Ms. Awad were home.
Of course I get voice mail and hang up (actually I was hoping the message would say “this number has been changed to a South Hadley number”)
About 5 minutes later my business line rings and it’s Mr. Hubley asking if I just called his number. “Hey Robie! Yeah, I was just calling to see if you were actually living in Amherst”
All-in-all the resulting “conversation” lasted about 10 minutes. Mainly consisting of Mr. Hubley yelling in a shaky voice about “leaving me alone”, or “it’s a personal matter” and “I hope you go to confession because you are an evil person”.
He refused to explain why he would purchase a $310,000 home in South Hadley while supposedly still living in an Amherst condo half that size and half that price--one that is currently up for sale.
Or why he took out a Homestead declaration on the South Hadley home that identifies it as his and her “primary” residence. Or why they lied in the Amherst Bulletin Letter to Editor saying they had switched the Homestead back to the Amherst condo.
And he sounded real nervous about potential Federal bank fraud charges over the FDIC mortgage that requires them both to live in the South Hadley home by June 10.
And any time he used the phrase “it’s a personal matter,” I would respond with “then why is this all available on a official Massachusetts state database?
At that point he yelled something slightly unintelligible and slammed down the phone.
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6:55 PM: So Mr. Hubley just called me back at my personal home phone number (only available to Amherst Town Meeting members) and wanted to “apologize for losing his temper”.
Apology accepted. But when he insisted, “he was not hurting anyone” I tried to interject that he was shortchanging the voters in his precinct.
Once again he accused me of “tormenting” him and then hung up (although a tad less aggressively).
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6:45 AM (original post)
So now it’s the old “residency is in the eye of the resident,” or like ‘Ultimate Frisbee’ where the players act as referees, or Hampshire College where there are no grades.
Obviously the Amherst Town Manager has been hoodwinked: “If she declares her residence (to be here). I take that to be true.”
But Ms. Awad also declared:
“The homestead declaration, cited frequently by this newspaper (Amherst Bulletin) as proof that we are already living in South Hadley, was an error on our part. We were unaware that such protection can only apply to one’s primary residence. We removed the homestead declaration as soon as we realized the error. It now applies only to our Amherst home as it has for years."
Oh really? A check this morning at the Registry of Deeds shows she has not “removed the homestead declaration” on their spacious South Hadley abode or reapplied it to their (up for sale) diminutive Amherst condo.
So Mr. Shaffer, if she can't tell the truth about the Homestead declaration--how can we the voters take anything she says to be true?
And don’t you just love His Lordship Gerry Weiss’s defense of Robie Hubley: "He goes to every meeting"? So does Frank Well’s cat!
Bad news for Pinocchio
