The Great Lawn Sign Caper concludes

In a show cause hearing in Hadley District Court yesterday morning 18-year-old Ryon Bourdon was, essentially, put on probation for six months for the crime of larceny: stealing and destroying about 75 bright yellow political lawn signs costing over $200.

While certainly not up there with armed robbery, assault or arson this particular act shouldn’t be ignored or cordoned simply as “boys being boys.”

Democracy dies without Free Speech and snatching lawn signs under cover of darkness tramples on the First Amendment rights of all those homeowners.

I only wish the court had put pressure on Mr. Bourdon to give up his accomplices, as I’m virtually certain one kid could not have harvested ALL those signs, from ALL over Amherst overnight.

And you have to wonder why they ALL ended up in the dumpster at Amherst Regional High School.

DA to Amherst: Keep it legal!

District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel spanked the Amherst Select Board for yet another Open Meeting Law violation warning “For the future, Select Board members should ensure that a quorum of its members do not attend and speak at a meeting on subjects about which they may be ultimately called to take a position unless such meeting is posted as a Select Board meeting and the other requirements of the Open Meeting Law are met.”

On August 1, 2007 three Select Board members (of five) crashed a joint meeting of the Planning Board and Town Commercial Relations Committee unannounced. While only two loquacious members—Rob Kusner and Anne Awad—participated, the common sense DA concluded, “Deliberation occurs even if one of the three members has chosen to remain silent. The issue is whether the public should have been apprised that the Select Board would be discussing a matter over which they have jurisdiction.”

She continues: “As a practical matter, enforcement of the Open Meeting Law can not hinge on a retrospective review of the number of members of a Board who actually spoke at the meeting.” Duh!

In my complaint I also mentioned Rob Kusner’s OTHER excuse: that all three Select Board members were attending/acting as “committee liaisons” rather than as individual Select Board members. The DA probably thought that absurdity unworthy of comment.

Since the Charter Revolution succumbed, the sanctimonious Select Board has relentlessly purged any vestiges of that (common sense) reform movement.

Committee members—especially those on the more influential boards—and even town employees (or whatever the town attorney is considered) have been targeted for termination.

The Amherst Select Board’s scheme is to sabotage pro-development zoning articles scheduled for Fall Town Meeting, and they will go to great lengths to achieve that dubious distinction.

The next joint meeting of the Planning Board Zoning Sub-Committee and Town Commercial Relations Committee is scheduled for this Wednesday. Unfortunately, Open Meeting Law violations are not currently punishable by fines, but it’s a safe bet the Select Board will legally post their intentions.

The best laid plans..

Slumped low in the tribars, a position that reduces wind resistance at the expense of control and reduces visibility to about five yards directly in front, I glanced up for a moment to do a long distance scan and when I returned to my tuck noticed the black pavement below replaced by green grass.

Looking back up confirmed I had drifted to my right off the road onto a narrow swatch of grass leading to a solid wall of tall weeds that instantly parted for me and my flying machine.

Luckily the farmer had overturned the field the previous day so I landed in relatively soft black earth. Not so lucky, however, was the location of the field: a good six or eight foot vertical drop from the road above.

As I took flight my body turned horizontally and disconnected from my bike and I landed fully on my right shoulder, tumbling two or three times and ending up flat on my back, hyperventilating.

For most of my bike accidents I have someone else to blame--the homeowner who careened out of his driveway, the woman 5 miles up Mt. Washington who traversed directly in my path, or Mother Nature for providing a swath of black ice on Bay Road late one March.

But on Sunday, at the Greenfield Triathlon, under a picture perfect blue sky at perhaps the easiest part of the course a moments inattention brought disastrous results.

Last year my team came in first and I covered the 30 mile bike route at an average of 19 mph. This year I had a slightly stronger swimmer and runner so I didn't feel pressured but wanted to at least match last years performance.

The course is 7.5 miles and you do it four times. I planned to take the first lap slightly easy at 18 mph and then ratchet up to 19 mph for the next two. And the last one with adrenaline flowing you simply hammer.

With less than a half mile to go in lap one I switched my computer from distance to average speed and was pleasantly surprised to read 20.4 mph. So I decided to shoot for 21, since the remainder of the course was one third-level and two-thirds downhill.

The last thing I saw on my computer, as the road turned to grass, was a current speed of 25 mph. About the only thing more battered than my upper body at the moment is my ego.

History will little note...

http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/ead/ms524.htm.

Satchel Page said it best: “Don’t look back something may be gaining on you.”

So when Tonia Sutherland contacted me last year saying “The Department of Special Collections at Umass Amherst is involved in a long-term project to document the efforts by individuals and groups to effect positive changes in their society, whether politically, economically, spiritually, or socially,” I was deeply honored—but a tad weirded out.

Although she was quick to add: “we understand you are still active in your career.” Hell yeah!

We met for coffee at the Lone Wolf in town center and talked non-stop (not due to caffeine) for over an hour.

I turned over files I considering “inactive”; events that had played out and unlike Halley’s Comet would never return…or so I thought. Six month ago I could have used my ‘Vagina Monologues’ file after an incident in New York where three young women got their 15 minutes of fame over the issue and naturally a washed up Eve Ensler jumped into the limelight for the first time in a while.

I have not yet turned over—and it will be the hardest to part with—my Flag Flap file as that awful anniversary fast approaches (and Amherst shamefully embarrassed itself once again in mid-May). And, of course, the Cherry Hill Golf Course—at twenty years and counting—my oldest, most active and largest file.

And what I love about Blogger is I assume at some point I can easily back up on a hard drive everything I have posted since St. Patty’s Day.

But will having the Special Collections folks peeking over my shoulder create a Hawthorne effect, causing me to act differently? Nahhhhhh…as Popeye would say “I yam what I yam.”

In a message dated 7/20/07 1:05:16 PM, dkovacs@library.umass.edu writes:

Larry-

Thanks so much for reviewing this for us so quickly, and for finding the errors you listed below. I'm attaching the file again and I hope you won't mind re-reading those two paragraphs to see if the corrections are accurate.

-Danielle

From: AmherstAC@aol.com [mailto:AmherstAC@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 10:26 AM
To: dkovacs@library.umass.edu
Subject: Re: Finding Aid (brief corrections)

Hey Danielle,
2’nd Paragraph and final paragraph flag issue:

Included in the Kelley papers are over 100 newspaper clippings, either his editorials, letters to the editor, or guest columns, about issues ranging from the use of town safety services by Amherst College, his objection to the Civil Rights Review Commission's right to subpoena, his fight to fly the American flag on Amherst Town Hall both on the Anniversary of September 11th and on the day Osama bin Laden is captured, to his objection over the Amherst-Pelham Regional High School's production of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.

Finally, Kelley's papers include material on the Amherst board's decision to limit the number of days the town would fly the American flag. The decision was made on September 10th, 2001 to fly the American flag only on designated holidays, which Kelley felt was insufficient. After the terrorist attack of September 11th, the board agreed unanimously that the flag should be raised, and it flew until November 26th. Kelley took the same flag to Ground Zero a week later, on December 1st, and was able to get a photograph of himself and a police officer flying the flag over a pile of rubble. The flag was then sent to Washington, where it was flown over the Capitol building. The photograph is now autographed by Ted Kennedy, John W. Oliver, Jane Garvey, Jane Swift, and George W. Bush. The flag itself is now in the hands of the Amherst Historical Society.
########################################################################

The issue concerned (and still concerns) the flying of 29 small commemorative flags in the downtown from lightpoles, not the main flag in town center, which does fly 24/7 365 days a week (and I was instrumental in getting the town to illuminate it for night flying about two years ago). The one I took to Ground Zero was one of the original 29, because I felt that outdoor flags only last a few years and then must be destroyed. And I wanted to preserve this one for posterity sake (especially since it was flying THAT day.)

Also: my God given name is Lawrence but I never use it. Everybody on the planet knows me as Larry. Although my Mother tried endlessly to get me to use Lawrence. But since you are a formal institution maybe you wish to agree with my mother (she will be smiling in Heaven for sure.)

Larry

In a message dated 7/20/07 3:08:19 PM, dkovacs@library.umass.edu writes:

Excellent! We'll make these changes and I'll upload on Monday and send you the URL then. We're not that formal, so I'm going to side with you and change the collection title to the Larry Kelley Papers!

Thanks again, and happy weekend,
D

More Select Board Skullduggery

Elizabeth Scheibel, District Attorney
One Court Square
Northampton, Ma. 01060
8/3/2007

Dear Ms. Scheibel:

According to the Open Meeting Law: “When quorums of two or more bodies meet jointly, it is a meeting of each of the governmental bodies, and therefore both bodies must give notice of the meeting.”

On August 1, 2007 I briefly attended an Amherst Planning Board and Town Commercial Relations Committee joint meeting (duly posted by each board with the Town Clerk) and observed a quorum of the 5-member Amherst Select Board present: Rob Kusner, Anne Awad and Hwei-Ling Greeney.

The town clerk confirmed that the Amherst Select Board did not provide notice of such a joint meeting.

When I mentioned this to Mr. Kusner (who deliberated at length at that joint meeting, as did Ms. Awad) he replied that Ms. Greeney unexpectedly attended BUT, did not speak.

If the Amherst Select Board is operating under that assumption then perhaps a refresher on the Open Meeting Law is warranted.


Larry Kelley
Amherst Town Meeting Precinct 5
Amherst Redevelopment Authority
Onlyintherepublicofamherst.blogspot.com
#####################################################################################
UPDATE (9:45 AM)The dog at it, the check is in the mail, The sun got in my eyes.
So the excuse the Select Board will use is that they were attending that 8/1 joint Planning Board/Town Commercial Relations Committee meeting not as “Selectmen” but as Select Board “liaisons” to those committees, Greeney to TCRC and Kusner and Awad to Zoning Subcommittee.

Hmmm, let’s see. That means all five can show up to a Joint Meeting without posting it, giving them the element of surprise. On 7/23 Ms Awad became the second “liaison” to the Zoning Sub Committee. The Budget Coordinating Group also has two Select board liaisons.

Gee, I can’t wait to see whom they will assign to be our ARA liaison. Or Perhaps two.

Obviously what THEY are doing is trying to nip in the bud any and all of the Town Manager’s zoning initiatives to stimulate economic development.

And when elements of the Select Board combine this early in the process with the NIMBY’s like Mary Streeter and Fred Moseley, it’s a very bad sign.

A (sad) tale of two Larry's

Okay so I guess there was a third option to yesterday’s puff piece in the Springfield Republican on the cheery Cherry Hill golf report where the Town Manager crowed: “the course didn’t have to draw on tax support to help off set costs”.

Because $24,000 in tax money was most definitely required (just ask the Finance Committee) this angry Irish blogger, wrote yesterday the Town Manager either lied or the reporter was incompetent and misquoted him (highly unlikely since she has been covering Amherst for seven years--but doesn’t use a tape recorder, so it would be easy to claim misquotation)

Well, after last night’s Select board meeting I have a third option: Town Manager Larry Shaffer is incompetent.

So I bent the rules and during the 6:30 Question-The-Illustrious-SelectBoard Agenda item I instead questioned the Town Manger: “Did you really tell a reporter yesterday that no tax money was involved in Cherry Hill for FY07?” And I, of course, stated it with a voice dripping in incredulity.

Not only did he confirm it, but also he went on to repeat it. Yikes!

And when I pointed out that FY07’s $219,440 was comparatively poor citing FY02 (when a dollar was worth 15% more due to inflation) revenue total: $245,000. Shaffer then erroneously stuttered that $50,000 or $60,000 of that was taxpayer’s subsidy so this past year business was better. Hmmm…

Well yes, in FY02 Cherry Hill did require $82,650 in tax support (sandwiched between $136,417 required the year before and $127,210 the following year) but the $245,932 in total revenues still far outpaced FY07’s $219,440. In FY02 Cherry Hill, as an Enterprise Fund, showed ALL expenditures and that year they spent $328,582, thus requiring the $82,550 in subsidy. But they still took in $245,932 in golf related revenue.

Interestingly in FY02 Cherry Hill generated $8,767 in “food sales” and $23,707 in “beverage sales” (Mmmm, beer) for a grand total of $32,474 compared to last years’ pathetic total of $5,336. In fact, that difference alone would have neutralized the $24,000 subsidy approved by the Finance Committee on July 11.

Considering this “new and improved management” the Town Manager is trumpeting consists of one Leisure Services and Supplemental Education (fancy term for Recreation Department) employee working TEN hours per week (the other thirty spent running the Leisure Services empire) perhaps she should be bumped up to, oh say, 20 hours per week at the terminally ill golf business.

Or far better yet, take the Niblik private management deal for a guaranteed $30,000 return.

Amherst Town officials scam Spfld Republican

So either the Town Manager lied or the reporter is incompetent. Because if Shaffer actually stated that Cherry Hill “did not have to draw on tax money to help offset cost” it’s completely incorrect; and if he didn’t say it, they why would the reporter use it--especially so high up in the article?
#####################################################################################
By DIANE LEDERMAN
dlederman@repub.com

AMHERST - With improved playing conditions and additional programs to attract a new group of players, the Cherry Hill Golf Course ended fiscal year 2007 nearly $7,200 in the black.

This was the first time in years the course did not have to draw on tax money to help offset costs, Town Manager Laurence R. Shaffer said today.
#####################################################################################

And in my interview with her yesterday I NEVER said the course “budget was in the black”. I continuously stressed that it was $24,000 in the RED. Period. And taxpayers don’t care if bureaucrats classify tax dollars as “direct or indirect costs” or ‘sewer fund dollars’ or ‘community preservation fund dollars.’ A tax dollar is a tax dollar.

Most homeowners consider insurance a routine operation cost. The Cherry Hill clubhouse insurance (one of those hidden “indirect costs”) was $5,712. And any business owner considers “employee benefits” a regular cost of doing business. Last year (another one of those hidden “indirect costs”) Cherry Hill consumed $21,858.

IF Cherry Hill WERE in the black then how about repaying the Finance Committee Reserve Fund $23,000 required to close out the fiscal year? On May 31 the Town Manager told the Select Board Amherst couldn’t afford to fill the potholes until July because there was no money left in that “emergency” Finance Committee controlled fund.

Since Ms. Bilz has a marketing background I expect her to tortuously push the envelope for positive spin. But the town manager is a different story. And if he lied about this (a golf course for God’s sake!) then what else is he covering up in our $60 million budget?