Depends on how you define value

UPDATE: 1:15 PM

This from today’s Gazette concerning the $5,000 CPA request for an appraisal:

But Ziomek said his department can use existing CPA money to complete the $2,500 to $3,000 appraisal, and doesn't believe there is a need to add to the fiscal year 2010 requests.

Hmmm…if the appraisal total is only $2,500 to $3,000 (forgetting for the moment they already have the funds stashed away to cover that) why request $5,000? Ah yes, government work.
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The CPA Committee controls a large pot of money the town spends like a pickpocket using a stolen credit card. And they just received $600,000 in gimme, gimme requests. One of the smallest was for $5,000 to complete the appraisal for 20 acres of property on Meadow Street owned by Leigh Andrews and Don Laverdiere.

You gotta of course wonder if the "appraisal" will include the $500,000 the landowners spent in legal fees and the $150,000 the town spent fighting over that piece of property.

Town Meeting spot rezoned the property Flood Prone Conservancy to prevent development and keep it as open space (would not want to scare any cows.) After a protracted battle in Land Court the judge sided with the property owners and overturned Town Meeting. The town appealed and, against the odds, won. But a costly battle it all was.

Normally I’m not in favor of using tax money to buy property to prevent development thus reducing the tax base (yes, the Cherry Hill Golf Course springs to mind); and with Amherst more than half owned by tax-exempts about the last thing we need to do is take more property off the tax rolls.

But in this particular case, after Town Meeting mugged the landowners they deserve to be treated fairly for once. And with Czar Awad long gone, Vince O’Connor and Rob Kusner (Amherst’s Axis of Evil) now marginalized, regrettable incidents like this should become a thing of the past.

But then, this is the People's Republic...

If you live in Amherst

Bruce Scofield's My Space page

What you looking at

Control or chaos?

Rent Control, Amherst’s failed experiment in socialism finally pays off--but not for the tenants it was designed to help, now long gone.

A judge decided the $100,000 held in escrow since 1998 by fired (oops, I mean former) town attorney Alan Seewald should go to the town rather than the state.

The 1987 Rent Control fiasco represents the high water mark for liberalism gone amok. Not only did Town Meeting create a ‘Housing Review Board’ to dictate the rent a landlord could charge, but they gave these untrained amateurs the power of subpoena to bully and threaten landlords into compliance.

Within two years Amherst’s Rent Control went the way off the Dodo Bird; and oh yeah, the Berlin Wall also came down.

It's the little things...

With Umass Amherst churning out faculty pink slips like a gay pride print shop and deferring building maintenance while escalating student fees $1,500, today’s Springfield Republican carried a Legal Notice RFP for sandblasting McGuirk Stadium, estimated at $35,000.

So hmmm… they are going to hold off on routine maintenance for buildings used year-round, but gussy up a football stadium used only a few months per year for a very expensive athletic program? Yeah I know, it is also used for Commencement another one time annually.

Maybe the 91 professors who received lay-off notices should form a Workers’ Collective to place a bid. According to bid specification they have to get paid at least prevailing wage.

Yes we can!

Click to enlarge

With all this talk about parking in downtown Amherst—specifically the lack of it—and with me actually agreeing for the first time in quite a while with today’s Gazette editorial suggesting the town NOT give away parking for free to stimulate business, you would think town officials would remember that the once controversial Parking Garage (costing about $40,000 per addition space gained) was specifically designed to e-x-p-a-n-d.

In fact, the Amherst Redevelopment Authority donated the prime location (valued at $350,000) under only one condition: that the garage be built strong enough to support a second (much cheaper to construct) deck.

Well at least one former town official remembered, as he snail-mailed me the actually blueprint from 1998. And at the time the cost was $1.3 million for 55 new spaces gained—or a Hell of a lot cheaper than the original cost per space for our quaint little garage.

Amherst Sundown

5:05 PM (looking west)