Two steps forward, one slide back.

Alas, my annual membership fee to The People’s Republic of Amherst is up 33 cents this year—that is 33 cents per $1,000 of valuation. Thus I will pay the Politburo $3,800…and it doesn’t even include a personal masseuse.

If a tornado uprooted my humble abode and plopped it down in Hadley, the membership fee there would be about half that ($2,095).

Last night, rather late, Town Meeting took baby steps towards economic development. We extended the business district a smidgeon to include the Lord Jeff Inn and some other Amherst College owned properties in the immediately vicinity thus paving the way for the stately Inn to expand by at least 33%.

Currently valued at $2 million the Lord Jeff membership fee to Amherst this year is $32,000 and they also pay the 4% hotel/motel room tax something the tax-exempt Umass Campus Center Hotel (with room sales last year of $919,382) ignores.

Thus the Lord Jeff expansion is a double win for Amherst: a significant increase in property tax valuation and increased sales subject to the local room tax.

But we narrowly failed to muster the two-thirds required (100-53) for a slight loosening of restrictions to allow hotel/motels in the downtown business district. A great night for Amherst College, as now there is little likelihood of increased lodging competition.

As long as Amherst’s tax base remains 90% housing and 10% commercial, the annual membership fees will remain entirely too steep; and the only one that benefits is Hadley.

JUST THOUGHT OF IT NOW UPDATE: Interestingly, both the Town Moderator Harrison Gregg and Chair of the Planning Board Aaron Hayden stepped down during the discussion last night to avoid Conflict of Interest as they are both employed by Amherst College. Too bad our Select board members, who are employed by Umass (or immediate family), don’t have the same high threshold for integrity.

Turn About Fair Play

Since Mr. Kusner elicits laughs from so many people, I’m only too happy to hear that this blog amuses him. And I think it’s great he can use the bully pulpit provided by his honorable Select board position to address items found only here.

Stephanie O’Keeffe reports on Inamherst's Recap of the 11/15 Select Board meeting that Rob Kusner explained he recused himself from the liquor license change for Umass Faculty Club last week because he’s good friends with the manager and he and his department (Math would definitely drive me to drink) have accounts at the club. Furthermore, he’s descended from Vulcans, not Klingons as I suggested.

Yeah with all his brainy expositions over the years, I should have figured that. Hopefully he will give advance warning before that once every seven years "Pon Farr" blood fever thing.

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.