Not Mike Dukakis’s snowblower

So if your spouse or teen-ager drove the family van to a Vermont ski resort from the People’s Republic of Amherst and forgot to check the oil and somehow missed the illuminated idiot light warning of imminent disaster, would you simply cough up $19,000 for a brand new van to replace the one with a seized motor?

Probably not. But Amherst taxpayers did that for the LSSE recreation empire in FY08. A Ford Windstar Van with only 54,000 miles sits forlornly in the DPW parking lot (actually moved onto the grass to make room) waiting to be sold “as is”--meaning it will bring in little to nothing.

Comparative healthy vans with that low mileage resell for anywhere between $4,000- $6,000.

One of the (many) quirks of municipal budgeting is that capital items are treated separately from the operation budget (as is insurance and employee benefits). When I buy a treadmill for my Health Club it's financed out of my everyday revenues, and if the revenues are not there then I don’t buy the item. And when I do buy an expensive item like that I take good care of it.

But municipal bureaucrats get to purchases capital items ($22,000 lawn mower for the Cherry Hill Golf Course for instance) outside their everyday operation budget. And as a result, that money is not always well spent.

And, as you can see, items purchased don't always get the best of care.

There he goes again...

In America’s national pastime you’re only allowed three strikes and in today’s crusty Gazette the Town Mangler strikes out, lying for the third time about the finances of the Cherry Hill Golf Course by insisting the Money Pit is actually making money.

At the close of FY07 LSSE marketing flacks issued a press release claiming $7,200 in profit (by ignoring $31,000 in hidden costs paid from other parts of the overall budget). Shaffer crossed a line when he told the Select Board Cherry Hill required “no tax support". Even Finance Committee chair Alice Carlozzi disagreed with that assessment.

And this spreadsheet from Comptroller Sonia Aldrich created four months ago proves it. Note very bottom line, where FY07 shows up as a $10,708 loss instead of $7,200 profit):

If Cherry Hill really can carry its own bloated weight, including Big-Ticket capital items (this years $22,000 lawn mower) why did Assistant Town Mangler John Musante say back in April when asked when Cherry Hill would be "fully self-sufficient and pay its own capital too?"

Musante responded sheepishly, "We haven't given that serious consideration because the revenue has not been there."


Amherst Bully (for them) article

And it's not there now either. Revenues for the first half of the current Fiscal Year (July 1-Nov 1) are a pretty paltry $110,000, including concessions. Dan Engstrom the twenty-year manager who was fired 3/17/07 told the Select board the easy way to project total annual intake is to simply double the amount at Fall closing.

Thus under Engstrom’s formulae Cherry Hill will generate $220,000 total. Yes, the operation budget is only $208,000 but that does not include hidden costs of employee benefits, clubhouse insurance and liability insurance (the Finance Committee in FY07 pegged that total at $31,612). Or the $22,000 capital item, a lawn mower.

Even more important, factor in the $30,000 guaranteed annual payment from Niblick Management to privately manage the 9-hole-course. South Hadley pays a management company $515,000 to run their 18 hole White Elephant.

With all costs considered Cherry Hill's break even point is $290,000; and with the year half over it's safe to assume they will will once again miss the green.

Amherst Remembers

10:45 AM Amherst Town Center
Brief speeches, poems, a lone bagpiper and the town flag at half-staff, all under mournful grey skies. The veteran, and their friends and family, never forget. And neither should we.

4:45 PM

Belchertown Remembers as well

Scenes from Amherst Town Meeting

7:35 PM

His Lordship Gerry Weiss walks past the big screen receiver where the Select Board meeting he chaired had been projected into the auditorium from the back room where they huddle immediately prior to the start of Town Meeting (No, unfortunately we can't start without them)

Yeah, I’m the taxman

Click to read

After Board and Committees reports to Town Meeting tonight : the Finance Committee’s routine gloom and doom and the five minute follow up of even more gloom and doom from Facilitation of Community Choices Committee, the first issue Town Meeting votes on is to raise the collection fee notice from $5 to $10 for all the tax scofflaws in town.

A couple years ago the town hired some hustlers from the Boston area to search and assess small businesses in town adding a little over 200 to the 600 that were already on the town radar.

Of course the company fudged some of the assessments (because they were in a hurry and worked for commissions) and I’m pretty sure we no longer use them.

So the Amherst Athletic Club gets brought on the tax rolls for “personal property”--which is kind of a misnomer since they mean “business property”--for the first time in 25 years.

Town Meeting had told the assessor about ten years ago not to bother with smaller amounts since he stated that 90% of the total amount collected came from only five large companies and the other seven hundred and fifty were what you might call diminishing returns.

The town got greedy a couple years ago and targeted all the little fish, but last year went back to the high exemption meaning I—and almost everyone else-- no longer has to pay it…well, except for last year’s bill.

When you get behind on water/sewer the town simply tacks on a 12% interest charge and lets it go for years. But with this personal property tax they sick the sheriff on you.

Just another one of those anti-business vibes the town is famous for.

Please come to Boltwood...

And you don't even have to be the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.

11:30 AM

So tonight marks the final moments of operation for a downtown legend, linchpin, anchor, or…just plain old icon. The Lord Jeff Inn and Boltwood Tavern expire tonight after a couple generations of serving the general public from that ornate, prime, mid-town center location.

While I’m not a big fan of business run by non-profits or government, the venerable Lord Jeff--owned by tax-exempt Amherst College but always kept on the tax rolls—earned my respect.

Unlike the Campus Center Hotel, owned by Umass (or I should say us taxpayers) The Jeff at least, always tried to survive under private sector conditions.

And now, due to forces above their control… Not a good thing. Bad for Amherst taxpayers who have to pick up the property tax slack and certainly horrible for the image of owner Amherst College, arguably the number one ranked Liberal Arts College in America.

According to an April 13,2007 Amherst Bulletin article (yeah, appropriately enough, a Friday): Tony Marx, the president of Amherst College, called the inn "a beachhead in the center of town" and admitted it is "not the magnet it could be."

Yeah Tony--and we know the historic importance of a ‘beachhead’. What if Canadian and US forces surrendered those prime beachheads on D-day because the cost was so significant? Kira would be studying German or French today, rather than Chinese.

Let’s hope Tony appears tonight for the Irish wake and buys a round (or two).

More Post Mortem

Ok fine, I'll say it! So when all is said and done—and thank God it is—the final results failed to live up to the advanced hype. I had predicted an 85% turnout and the Amherst Town Clerk was a tad more optimistic prognosticating a historic 90% turnout.

We ended up with a not too shabby 67.89%--but still a far cry from either of our predictions (although slightly ahead of the national turnout of 64%). Especially considering in the popular vote John McCain only lost by 3%, 51% to 48% (Note: figures corrected in 'Comments') so if only 1.5% of folks had changed their minds in the privacy of the voting booth it would have been dead even. Yet most media outlets describe his loss as a “landslide”.

In 1992 Amherst had a historic high of 89% turnout when Bill Clinton first became President, and even four years later against a lame, aging Republican Bob Dole (who later retired to do Viagra commercials) our turnout was 67%. In that watershed year 2000 when President Bush (the 2’nd) first came to power we only turned out 59% and then four years later when Darth Vader ran for reelection we mustered 65%.

So 68% is good--but hardly historic. Of course 25 years from now you will have thousands of extra folks claim they actually voted in the bucolic town of Amherst for their first time in this historic—not to be confused with histrionic—election.

Like when Jimmy Carter had us boycott the 1980 Olympics and suddenly Walter Middy athletes everywhere could tell members of the opposite sex (or same sex for that matter) at the local bar that they had “made the Olympic team, but that damn President Carter…”

Interestingly on a National level the 64% turnout was indeed historic, but not much better than the previous high of 63% in 1960 when a youthful Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican Tricky Dick Nixon.

A thousand or so days later, on an otherwise routine Friday afternoon in late November a succinct news bulletin stunned America: “Three Shots fired--Presidential motorcade!”

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On a local level—the first time ever a Select Board seat is contested on a Presidential election—the turnout (meaning those who bothered to take the second ballot containing only the local Amherst Select Board race) was dramatically less at 44%, meaning over one-third of the overall voters couldn’t be bothered--probably a good thing.

Not to take away from Aaron Hayden’s Select Board victory with 4,152 votes to long distance runner up Vladimir Morals with 2,491. Hayden trounced Morales in nine out of ten precincts, only losing Precinct 6 by a scant nine votes 576 to 567

Of course the irony is that this Select Board election was called to replace Anne Awad (who moved to South Hadley in April but only grudgingly announced her resignation in late June) who first vaulted to power in 2000, defeating incumbent Hill Boss with the considerable help of many first-time student voters coming out to support the local decriminalize pot resolution on the ballot that year (that passed 1,659 to 981).

In 2000 Amherst turned out 20.4% almost double the 1999 amount when only 11% of local voters bothered to trudge to the polls. Of course the highest local turnout occurred on May 1, 2007 when 31.46% turned out for the $2.5 million Override that lost 2,650 to 2,383. Presidents and pocket books seem to attract the attention of the average Amherst voter.

For instance over 10,000 voters (over 2,000 more than who voted in the Select Board contest) voted on the CPA tax increase from 1.5% to 3% and the Question only lost by a scant 2% (now if this were national Presidential race we could use the word “landslide”).

But obviously you had an awful lot of first-time student voters who didn’t have to worry about that $50 -$60 annual tax increase on their homes if the feel-good measure passed. So I think if the CPA tax increase had been on the normal Spring ballot it would have lost by at least 60% to 40%, or a genuine “landslide.”

And for our Select Board contest all we need do is divide by 2.5 to adjust for the Presidential bloat: In other words Hayden’s 4,152 becomes 1,660 and Morales runner up 2,491 becomes 996, Keenan's 812 was really just his hard core following of 325 (but enough to tip the balance in a future Override vote) and last place Mr. Brower falls off the radar.

Interestingly Morales on his blog complained: “As the Select Board campaign draws toward a close on November 4th, the Gazette/Bulletin's endorsed candidate's campaign manager and supporters have descended to mudslinging tactics similar to those they used to drive Anne Awad from office.”

Hmmm…