Another one bites the dust

So I and 146 other movers and shakers just received a depressing email. Curt Shumway, my former Amherst Redevelopment Authority compatriot and current Hotel/Motel Czar in the Happy Valley, is migrating from Amherst to South Hadley.

Yeah they can have Anne Awad, Barry Del Castilho (is he still acting Town Manager?) and School Superintendent Gus Sayer; but one of Amherst’s venerable founding families? Say it isn’t so!

And of course, that is a major problem with our fair town: Even multi-generational townies like Curt Shumway get fed up and move away.

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Revitalizing the crop?

After the last Christmas tree is sold, the Amherst Pelham Boy Scouts always clean up after themselves at Kendrick Park. The same cannot be said for the out-of-town wheat growers. Well, at least we didn’t finance them with CPA funds.

Looked better back in June

CPA snafu

So the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has decided: the precedent setting case is now the law of the land (Massachusetts land that is): A community cannot use CPA funds to improve or rehabilitate land that was purchased prior to the creation of the CPA.

Like our Plum Brook Weeds, errrrrr, I mean Soccer fields--land purchased in 1974 for conservation/recreation and thirty years later expensively fine tuned into a more specific recreational pursuit, although still not ready for Prime Time.

While the court did not decide whether to grandfather projects already illegally completed (such as Plum Brook) they did clearly say: “We also have been urged to specify that our interpretation will be applied prospectively such that our ruling will have no effect on CPA appropriations already expended by municipalities throughout the Commonwealth. This issue has not been raised by the parties, and we reserve opinion on the matter until it is properly presented.”

Either way, The People’s Republic of Amherst was greedy enough to leverage CPA funds by taking out a large loan repaid over ten years.

So now you have to wonder: where is Amherst going to find the $40,000 annual loan payment over the next five or six years to retire the original $500,000 loan?

If Amherst cannot expend legally and properly the money it gets with the 1.5% CPA tax, how can we trust them with doubling that tax burden to 3%?

My original "I told you so"

The Boston Globe Reports (yeah, the Crusty Gazette will get around to it)

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Of course the funny thing is Mr. Obama will have no problem whatsoever winning the People’s Republic of Amherst, or Taxachusetts for that matter.

Even more hilarious, if you polled the entire DPW department--you know the men and women who do the actual day to day work--McCain would probably hold a slight edge (although the majority of them would not be Amherst registered voters because they cannot afford to live in the town they work for).

Eating for a good cause

10:30 AM
So I couldn't find any bake sales to benefit the next nuclear aircraft carrier but I did find the next best thing: A pancake benefit put on by the always-working Amherst Fire Department. All proceeds benefit SAFE (Student Awareness of Fire Education) an education program that teaches kids about a most formidable foe, fire.

The men behind the curtain

Grrrrrrrr

No it is not Anne Awad doing gardening in her "love nest" in South Hadley. It's a full grown black bear rumbling around the Bike Path in South Amherst (Mill Lane) around 3:00 PM. My wife called from her bike saying to get down her quick with a camera.

But when I went into the woods to get a decent shot she kept yelling to get the Hell back into the car and shoot from there.

The bear just wandered off into the brush. I would guess he was about 400 pounds or so--a lot bigger than me. Back in the day, I had a sidekick that stopped Andre Tippett dead in his tracks (when he was a Pro Bowl linebacker for the New England Patriots), but he probably only weighed in around 275. And that was 20 or so years ago.

So yeah, maybe Donna had a point...

All politics is local

Yeah, that’s our antiquated almost-extinct Amherst Town Meeting, with over half the members already having one foot in the grave. The illustrious Select Board moved back the start date from November 5 to November 10 because they figured everybody would be soooooo tired from campaigning on November 4 and watching the election results that they would need a reprieve.

Of course if McCain wins, about half of Town Meeting will succumb to heart attacks thus making it hard to get a quorum.