Something old, something new.

Old Glory over a new light fixture with St. Brigid's steeple in the background.

Thanks to all the veterans who have served and sacrificed to keep our nation free.

$omething old, $omething new...

So Amherst Town Meeting coughed up $278,000 to bribe the state to release APR property so Mr. Cherewatti could build his new home on 1.7 acres of land just to the rear of the historic brick Kimball house. He originally wanted to tear down the structure and build on its footprint, but Amherst do-gooders liked the view and wished to preserve it (a digital photo would have been a lot cheaper).

Mr. Cherewatti contributed $25,000 cash and $8,000 in APR property to the deal. He still owns the Kimball House, although he can't demolish it (and has done some recent renovations). The Cherewatti’s also sponsor family fund that donates money up to $500 in Challenge Grants to local youths and families in the area.

Their brand new LARGE abode will probably be in the top-ten assessed homes in Amherst, thus paying significant property taxes. And, with no school aged children, will have minimal to no impact on town services.

Expensive Feed for the Great White Elephant

One of the advantages of a Daily paper cranking out four or five editorials per week it they occasionally sink a hole in one. Today’s Gazette for instance.

Yeah, it’s bad enough the free spending state encouraged South Hadley and Amherst into the golf business in the first place with $500,000 Open Space Grant’s--but now to further embolden South Hadley with a $237,000 grant for a Clubhouse throws good money after bad. But hey, it’s state money so who cares?

Perhaps the small business owners (believe it or not golf courses are considered small businesses) who have to unfairly compete with South Hadley’s Great White Elephant.

Private business creates tax dollars while public entities consume them. And when that public business goes into competition with private, tax-paying entities they have an unfair advantage.

The Leisure Services Empire in Amherst (fancy term for Recreation Department) has been salivating for over a decade to construct a mega-million Recreation Building. And Umass is about to break ground (is spite of a historic barn on the site) on a $50 million Recreation Center that will instantly kill two health clubs—one in Amherst and one in Hadley-- who target Umass students (not to mention another one in Hadley about to open).

Amherst College did a $7 million renovation of their Fitness Center a few years back and the Amherst Athletic Club went from signing up an average of twenty Amherst College students per semester down to one or two, or a 90% hit. Ouch!

Of course Amherst College has every right to do whatever it wants to serve its students. Just as Umass—a state agency—has every right to take care of students’ health fitness needs. I do draw the (battle) line with Umass however if they open up subsidized memberships to employees or their spouses.

As an Amherst Finance Committee member mentioned at a recent meeting almost everybody in Town Meeting and the town itself has some connection to Umass. If that Recreation Center were a private enterprise it would pay the town $750,000 in taxes and membership rates to consumers would have to reflect that overhead.

Crime Does Not Pay

OverRiders--some anyway--will be grumpy to hear the State actually coerced the teen-aged culprit to reimburse (Amherst) Taxpayers for Responsible Change for the 75-100 stolen angry bumblebee “No More Overrides” signs snatched from lawns all over the town of Amherst during the dead of night April 22’nd--only a week before the ill-fated $2.5 million May Day Override tanked--where they were ceremoniously displayed like trophies in front of the Amherst Regional High and then callously tossed into the school's dumpster.
http://onlyintherepublicofamherst.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

From One Command To Another

A news junkie’s disadvantage is that reading a headline in the morning newspaper seldom elicits surprise.

Not today. I was amazed Sarno beat Mayor Ryan in Springfield. And apparently the venerable Springfield Republican was too as the headline used the appropriate term “stunning upset.”

But the other one was a pleasant surprise: Michael Boulanger becoming Mayor of Westfield.

I first met the Colonel at a Memorial Day ceremony in Southwick, Donna’s hometown, when he was still commander of Barnes Air National Guard 104’th Fighter Wing. We have one of those husband/wife deals where we spend July 4’th in Amherst and Memorial Day in Southwick.

It was one of those numerous picture perfect days of 2001; and I remember thinking, “who is this guy”? Probably a pencil-pushing military bureaucrat who will give the stock, monotone speech that I endure all too often on the floor of Amherst Town Meeting (except never having to do with patriotism of course).

The person who introduced him at the microphone briefly ran down his accomplishments--not just as base commander--but as a fighter pilot and all the conflicts (some recent) he had served in; not too mention being one of the first to test night vision goggles, and survive.

He gave a heartfelt speech. I’m not sure if I was more impressed with his resume or that speech. Three and half months later, on another picture perfect day, the world changed.

The Amherst Veterans Agent planned a Veteran’s Day ceremony (2001) on the town common for the first time in memory, so I contacted the Colonel and requested a fly-over. He said he would love to, as his son was attending Umass at the time and he often buzzed Amherst.

Naturally, this being the People’s Republic of Amherst, peace protestors (the US had just begun the bombing of Afghanistan after they refused to give up Bin Laden) crashed the solemn event and the arguments got so heated that I thought for the first time ever I would have to physically intervene between two opposing participants.

Just then a pair of those gorgeously ugly A-10’s came SCREAMING up South Pleasant Street directly overhead, flying wicked low and wicked fast with their wingtips almost touching. The entire dumbfounded crowd went silent. War averted by fighter jets.

The Colonel retired just before the A-10s were retired and Barnes now has F-15’s out of Otis Air Force Base, probably including the very same two who scrambled that awful morning and chased the wayward commercial jets all the way to New York.

If Colonel Boulanger runs Westfield half as well as he ran his command (and I’m sure he will) those folks are in very good hands. I only wish he had became Amherst’s Mayor.

The Way We Were

Who needs first run airings of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” or Stephen (I could have been a contenda) Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”, Amherst Town Meeting is back. Ah…the humor, the irony, the ZZZZZZZZZZZ.

And we're off to a typical start. Town Meeting (supposedly) begins at 7:30 pm; the required quorum didn’t happen until 7:45 and we didn’t start discussing article #1 until 8:00 pm.

If you want the blow (hard) by blow (hard) description then go to Stephanie’s Town Meeting Experience (whenever she awakens and posts).

Last night’s most interesting presentation goes to feisty Nancy Gordon who dared to speak against spending a quarter million to add modular classrooms by suggesting we close down Marks Meadow the smallest of our four elementary schools.

Marks Meadow overhead consumes over $1.5 million and the structure has aged into obsolescence. Umass owns it and they refuse to give Amherst any more space nearby or renovate or expand the building.

The Town Manager admits he spent most of his time on Marks Meadow while negotiating the “strategic agreement” with Umass; resulting in the same status quo going back a generation--except an acknowledgement from Umass that these kids do exist and do cost Amherst taxpayers significant tax dollars (estimated $600,000 annually)

1. “If, in the future, the Town builds a new elementary school and vacates the Mark’s Meadow facility, the Town, AES, ARPS and the University will negotiate a new agreement in which the University may reimburse the Town for a portion of the net costs of educating students living in University tax-exempt housing.

Don’t you just love that waffle term “may reimburse.”

Heck, for the $600,000 Umass annually costs our education budget they should donate us the darn building.

And pay for their effluent, and the local hotel/motel tax, and the property tax on recently demolished Frat Row property, and Amherst Police World Series overtime ...

History, unfortunately, repeats itself.

A “a fed up taxpayer” anonymously mailed me the three-year agreement between Amherst and Umass circa 1995 with the observation that it was a better pact for the town than the one Town Manager Shaffer is currently crowing about.

My anonymous friend multiplies the $6 for each student by 20,000 rather than the 11,000 it actually covered (“student resident of University owned housing") and also multiplied $50,000 in “economic development and planning services” by three when in fact that amount was the total maximum for all three years combined.

So they came up with $510,000 when in fact the total was about half that. And what really brought Umass to the bargaining table in the first place was the fear of a lawsuit over $203,000 in misrouted moving violations money the Northampton Court Clerk had accidentally sent to Umass rather than Amherst over a ten year period.

Umass said they had already spent the money on student scholarships. I said it doesn’t matter if you used it to save the whales or cure cancer; it was not your money and please give it back (with interest).

So I filed a warrant article with Town Meeting calling for them to immediately suit the University to recover the money. And, amazingly, it passed. Umass came calling the very next day.

But Selectman Hill Boss and Town Manager Barry Del Castilho got taken to the cleaners by Umass negotiators (in a series of meetings at Hill Boss’s private home that the DA declared “violated the spirit of the Open Meeting Law)”, flushing away the $200,000 lawsuit that a judge already said was the town’s money for $50,000 in trade (something we probably could have gotten out of a Grad Student for free anyway).

But the $66,000 in ambulance money was new, although we postponed pursuing the Hotel/Motel tax on the Campus Center Hotel (estimated value $50,000 to $75,000) and to “confine differential in water rates to 20 cents per 100 cubic feet.”

In a later agreement the differential went away completely; but if our Water Commissioners simply reinstituted that 20 cent difference at tonight’s Select board meeting it would cost Umass about $75,000.

And of course there was much talk about Umass helping to advocate for an “equitable” PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes). All talk and no action.

Today’s PILOT formulae is the same as it was ten years ago, repaying towns with state property simply by the square mile with no difference between the Wendell State Forest and a densely populated areas like Umass.

This one-page pact certainly demonstrates how easily Umass, in the current “strategic agreement”, built on its previous outmaneuvering of Amherst Town officials.