The road not taken.

A perfect metaphor for our current form of government...

You scratch my back...

At a time when the People’s Republic is facing a $1.9 million deficit in the upcoming year and town officials desperately wished for a $2.5 million tax Override to make it thru this year, the Town Manager gifted Finance Director and Town Manager wanna-be John Musante with a new job description, ‘Assistant Town Manager’--including a retroactive raise from $90,000 to $96,000 this year and to $102,000 next year.

So how many other municipal employees will get a 7% raise next year? And where would we come up with the many millions needed to cover that?

Musante’s predecessor Nancy Maglione always acted as town Manger when Barry Del Castilho was on his frequent vacations or I-don’t-feel-like-coming-to-work days; and that was simply a part of her job description as Finance Director.

Musante collected an extra $10,000 last year (and an additional month of vacation) for acting as Town Manager when Del Castilho bailed out, with full pay of course, three months early.

At the Select board meeting of May 30 rookie Town Manager Larry Shaffer reported the Finance Committee’s Reserve Fund (supposedly set aside for “unanticipated emergencies”) was bankrupt, so the potholes (requiring about $10,000) that made Amherst resemble a B-52 carpet-bomb test range would just have to wait until July.

Of course the Cherry Hill Golf course--that both Shaffer and Musante championed--was sucking up $16,000 of the FinCom’s $50,000 emergency fund; and the Town Manager’s car/cell phone allowance of $4,200 also encumbered that fund because Musante neglected to include it when he put together his (or rubber stamped Del Castilho’s) FY07 $220,000 Selectboard/Town Manager budget.

So if Musante has trouble with a spare-change $220,000 budget, what else will he miss in a mid-$60 Million budget?

Seasons in the sun

Cherry Hill Golf course, too late to benefit the bottom line, is on a PR role (with the crusty Gazette anyway): yesterday’s puff piece about Frisbee golf--a sparsely attended non-revenue event--and today’s “back in the black” advertisement, errrr, I mean article.

With all the figurative lying cheating and stealing, the best town officials can conjure up is $26,500 over last year's Fall closing? Let’s see, they ignore over $20,000 in hidden costs like employee benefits and insurance, $15,000 in capital expenditures for a new fence and underground gasoline storage tank, and try to suggest the course can be managed by only one-quarter of one person when two years ago it required two full-time people.

No wonder operations are down. In FY06 they had purchased $6,200 of fertilizer/insecticide in the first half of the year but this year delayed that purchase until the second half of the season (this coming Spring), probably to make the mid-season report look good.

And of course the most important calculation the crusty Gazette failed to acknowledge: had the Town Manager accepted Niblik’s privatization bid last year the town would be GUARANTEED $30,000 profit thus freeing up the Recreation honcho and Town Manager to attend to more important matters.

Umass Strike: Summer Soldiers

So I took a lunch hour break from my working day that started at 5:25 this morning to attend the high-noon Umass Strike Rally in the Student Union Ballroom. Yeah, that would be the very same premier facility on campus that students are protesting is not available to them. Hmmm.

And let me get this strait: They are protesting the high cost of education by boycotting classes over the next two days they have already paid (too much) for? Isn’t that kind of like Mobile Oil Company management saying they are gong on strike by locking out employees for two days but the workers will still get paid?

I guess if it were sunny they would have had the rally on the Campus Center steps (like in the good old days). But hey, it was raining.

Just one look

Obviously Selectman Kusner is disappointed and angry…with his Lordship Select Board Chair Gerry Weiss in particular. Notice that overly pregnant seven or eight second delay before Weiss half hearted says he “raised an objection” (the objection was just as wimpy).

And particularly notice at the very end Mr. Kusner’s little flip of his head and eyebrows diagonally up and to his left, like an evil Klingon.

Stephanie O’Keeffe transcribed on Inamherst.com “Recap of the 11/7 Select board meeting” the innocent and accurate observation “Mr. Kusner appeared displeased.”

So Kusner, first after pressuring O’Keeffe to delete the line, posts the entire NY Times Vs. Sullivan First Amendment case as a form of intimidation (go ahead Rob suit her--or me for that matter--and see how much press that would generate.)

Why he wanted Mr. Weiss to vote NO on this liquor license upgrade for the UMass Faculty Club is anybody’s guess. Probably as a reaction to the flack generated by their $200,000 giveaway of water to Umass at the 9/17 meeting, and not wanting to be seen as simply sycophant servants to the University.

What I found particularly fascinating about this entire brief episode is that Kusner and Brewer both recused themselves from the discussion (actually leaving the room) over their Umass affiliation.

So they can leave the room over a nickel-and-dime liquor license to Umass BUT when it comes to gifting the University $200,000 in free effluent water they lead the charge.

Oops...wrong button.

So we had another one of those amusing, always revealing cyberspace boo boos on a listserve where, longtime Amherst Town Meeting member Hilda Greenbaum, sent a chatty missive to fellow longtime Town Meeting member Mary Wentworth lamenting “nasty” Moderator Harrison Gregg and encouraging a continued fight over upcoming zoning articles; and it accidentally went to over one hundred Town Meeting members.

Although she did send another to the entire group three minutes later with the subject line all in caps: “PLEASE DELETE WITHOUT READING” my previous post. Of course that probably doubled the readership of her mistaken email.

The battle line is drawn around the Zoning Board of Appeals (which Hilda Greenbaum is an Associate Member) giving up some of its veto power to the Planning Board, thus making it a tad easier for development to occur in the People’s Republic.

Fist off, Hilda Greenbaum is a significant Amherst property owner--both commercial and residential. Why is she on a quasi-judicial permitting board where her one vote can kill a proposal to increase competition by adding either commercial or residential property to the tax base?

Her email reveals: “Barbara Ford, Carolyn and I have been working together to avoid the whole issue of posting public meetings for telephone calls, emails and lunches. Jane joined in after the public meeting but again we had to be careful about open meetings and passed all messages through Carolyn.”

Barbara Ford is the ZBA Chair, Carolyn Holstein is a town employee acting as staff liaison, Hilda Greenbaum is an Associate Member and I assume “Jane” who “joined in” AFTER the public meeting is ZBA Associate Member Jane Ashby, thus making three.

According to Rules and Regulations for the ZBA posted on the Town Web cite:
“Three members/associate members shall constitute the panel for all public hearings or meetings. Three members/associate members shall constitute a quorum.”

So in spite of trying to “be careful about open meetings” they obviously were not careful enough. I guess they learned it from the Select board, who appointed them all.

Only in Vermont

My daughter the treehugger. Yeah, a chip off the old block.