$158-K plus $15-K housing/transportation. Yikes!

Date: April 15, 2009 9:18:06 PM EDT
To: hussinm@arps.org, churchilla@arps.org, mazurk@arps.org
Re: Public Documents/Open Meeting Law request

Now that the need for secrecy is over and the negotiated salary of incoming Superintendent Rodriguez has been publicly announced, could I please get under Public Document Law the minutes of the Executive Session of the Regional School Committee and the actual vote of the individual committee members when this package was approved?

Thank You,

Larry Kelley

TM Committee to Town Mangler: Butt out!

So the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee (elected by Town Meeting) told Town Manager Larry Shaffer to take a hike when he offered to speak as a panelist for their "educational forum"on how to fund Human Services at ACTV last night.

Obviously these even more left-of-center (hard to believe it's possible) Committee members dislike the Town Manager's stand on the Human Services Budget (remove it from tax support) so rather than debate or question his stance eyeball to eyeball, they take the easy way out and ban him. Only in Amherst.

Town Mangler to bosses: Butt out!

So Princess Stephanie arranges for a fresh faced Umass student government rep to appear at the Select Board meeting and complain during Public Comment period about the sudden crackdown on unrelated housemates greater than four in any Amherst abode.


The Republican Reports

Running out of Resources

The first and only time I attempted a “Move to Reconsider” on the floor of Town Meeting—where you ask the esteemed body to reconsider a previously decided article because of “new information”—occurred back in 1998.

Town Meeting had passed the Social Service charitable donation budget of around $100,000 with little discussion. The year before I had tried to cut a piece of it for “The Amherst Youth Center” that was getting the lions share ($19,000) and only had one or two kids participating, so the $39,000 salaried Director had it pretty cozy. Naturally I was practically booed from the podium.

But the Youth Center closed down in the following year (the town finally figured it out and pulled the money) so I simply abstained on the vote this time around, meaning I was in a position to attempt a reconsideration (you have to have voted in the majority or abstained on the original article.)

The Men’s Resource Center was getting a hefty amount ($10,000) and the day after Town Meeting approval, I learned they had a month earlier purchased a downtown building for a handsome six-figure sum and as a non-profit would be removing it (or most of it since I think they did rent a portion) from the tax rolls.

My pitch to Town Meeting was that we should deduct from the $10,000 donation the amount that would no longer be coming into the town treasury because of their tax-exempt status. Again I was met with blank clueless stares.

Now with the economic meltdown the town is, finally, talking about cutting the charitable contributions it makes annually to social service agencies. Amherst is of course the only community in the state that makes such contributions with tax dollars, and when you are a community with over 50% of the land owned by tax-exempts, that is not a sustainable combination.

Besides charitable giving should be an individual thing.

Taking the hint, the Men’s Resource Center announced their executive director would be joining the millions of Americans getting laid off and they will be selling that downtown building. Let’s hope to a private enterprise that will renovate it, employ folks and pay property taxes.

Only in Lawrence

So I was just doing research on using a key card system to reduce overhead at the health club, while expanding hours of operation, and I landed on the Eagle Tribune carrying an AP story “24-hour fitness clubs popular, but controversial.”

I couldn’t help but notice another local article about the Lawrence School Superintendent being overturned by the School Committee for his ban on the kids performance of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ later this month.

Amherst of course opted out this year. Too busy I suppose, or those damn budget cuts, or the kid that lead the charge graduated (and like canceling ‘West Side Story’ there’s always one kid who leads the charge) and nobody else picked up the ball.

Or maybe because a few months ago the elderly, married Co-Superintendents were a tad old fashioned (after 40 years in the business) and probably would not have allowed it.

Superintendent Laboy should have cancelled the performance not for the word Vagina but for that other word used so repeatedly (rhythms with bunt); or the little vignette that glorifies sex between an adult and underage 16-year-old child (13-years-old in the original publication of the Play but Ensler because of controversy upgraded her to 16 in later editions) after the child is given vodka.

Makes me wonder if four school committee members who rallied to the play’s defense have actually even read it. And if the KKK wanted to rally in Lawrence on school property and were going to donate $10,000 to a local battered women’s shelter, would the School Committee allow that?

Back in 2004 when Amherst was the only high school in the nation to allow the play the diffident Regional School Committee was asked repeatedly to overrule golden boy Jere Hochman’s decision to allow it: they did nothing, claiming it was not their job to micro-manage the schools.

The Eagle-Tribune reports

The "art" of education

On Apr 9, 2009, at 10:23:18 AM, amherstac wrote:
Memo To: Amherst School Committee
Re: Vacate Trespass Order
4/9/09

Town Meeting starts next month and as a Town Meeting member since 1991 with a 99.5% attendance record and another year left on my elected three-year-term by the voters of Precinct 5, I will NOT allow an ill-advised, hastily enacted ‘Trespass Order’ from an employee no longer with the Schools (but still getting paid thru June 1’st) to keep me from my duly elected duties.

I have been advised that if you do not lift the legally enforceable 1/9/09 order hand delivered by a Sheriff (an East Longmeadow man was recently arrested for violating a “Trespass Order” while watching his child play sports on school grounds on a Sunday) I should seek an injunction against the town of Amherst for holding Town Meeting at the Amherst Regional Middle School, thus denying me my right to attend as an elected official.

Larry Kelley
Amherst Town Meeting Precinct 5
Amherst Redevelopment Authority
Fifth Generation resident
Cc: Amherst School Committee, Maria Geryk Interim Superintendent of Schools,Stan Gawle Amherst Citizens for Responsible Change, Attorney Mike Serduck, Attorney Bill Newman, Mary Carey Daily Hampshire Gazette, Diane Lederman Springfield Republican
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One of the many good things about a Charter School is that they are immune from oversight of the local volunteer School Committee (almost always elected with a tiny voter turnout) and highly paid Superindendent (just wait to details of the new guy are revealed).

The Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School started in Amherst and moved to Hadley after one year. And of course if Amherst had their way it would never have gotten a Charter in the first place (Golden boy Jere Hochman got his butt kicked on that one).

Fortunately the Amherst School System’s “Trespass Notice” does not bind me at PVCIC, so I can roam the building and take pictures till the cows come home (with Principal Kathy Wang’s permission of course as long as there are no children in the shots and even then it’s fine with parents permission and since my daughter attends…and yes, they have freakin hot water in the lavatories)

Another difference is the respect for all things Americans (this from a CHINESE charter school)


A tragic comedy in two parts:

Part one

Part two

The Springfield Republican recently reported

Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let...

UPDATE: Thursday, 7:45 AM
So apparently Mary Carey got her hands dirty and went to the Town Clerks office and perused the ancient books of all things political and discovered the unconstitutional Bylaw banning more than four unrelated house buddies was passed W-A-Y back in 1966. (I'm so glad the Bully uses updated stories on occasion) Now I just wish they would go cyber sooner.
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UPDATE: Wednesday, 5:00 PM

So I’m looking at my Sitemeter and I’m W-A-Y behind last week’s April Fool’s upload (all three of them). Hmmm…

Okay, if it’s satire you want (although God knows how often my little karate student Max Karson got into trouble for trying to use it) here goes:

Amherst Occupancy Bylaw controls those damn Republicans:

The People’s Republic of Amherst initiated a crackdown using an ignored, ancient, exceedingly unconstitutional Town Meeting ordinance and-- like the flying of the UN flag in front of Town Hall— (so old that even Vince O’Connor can’t remember when it was passed), limiting Republicans per household to just 1 in 15, since that is percentage of Republican registered voter s in town.

And if you allow more than that in a household with Liberal Democrats the police will be called called upon too often to referee fights.

Thus the 7% of registered Amherst Republicans will have to form their own shantytown “reservation” or face eviction from house and home. Indeed Dorothy, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home:”

Unless you (try to) live in the People’s Republic of Amherst.
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UPDATE: Wednesday, April 8 10:00 AM

So I couldn't help but notice the Collegian front page story yesterday following up on the Gazette front page article. In the active Comments section one of the young ladies responds to a curmudgeon from Boston who thinks all students are spoiled brats (OUCH!):

Charlotte, I'm truly sorry that your personal experience with college students has been so terrible. However, as one of the girls that live in 265 East Pleasant, I take extreme offense to being referred to as an "ill-bred brat." I understand that you want to vent your feelings about the college kids in your area, but it really has nothing to do with our situation in Amherst. We have had absolutely no noise complaints from either the neighbors or police force. The issue is not about our being spoiled or inconsiderate, it is about the number of cars in our driveway and the fact that we had one more person in our home than is permissible by the town of Amherst. And just because you asked, yes I am the type of student who "eagerly signs up" for charity events-- last year I spent time building a Habitat for Humanity house in a South African township and in past years I have worked with Relay for Life, an especially important cause for me as my younger brother is currently battling cancer. So as much as I appreciate the interest, please take your negative comments elsewhere.

Collegian Article
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ORIGINAL POST: Tuesday morning

So once again academic, overly enlightened Amherst hits the AP wire with a negative story.

You would think if the town (that makes a fool of itself nationally all too often) wanted to suddenly crack down on those evil students using the unconstitutional four unrelated persons bylaw which has been on the books forever and like Rent Control was only briefly enforced, they would have chosen better subjects to make an example of.

Like five macho dudes living in a ramshackle hut with empty beer cans littering the lawn and numerous noise complaints (another bylaw that is enforced almost every weekend) documented in the police records.

But NOOOOOOOO, they have to pick a group of industrious, responsible--women four of them graduating seniors and one a grad student--renting a large house from a Umass professor on sabbatical and throw one out a month before the semester ends.

Amherst has too many young people for too few housing units and now the town is going to further reduce supply (by limiting the number per house) while the demand will stay high.

Sounds like landlords can now increase rents even further.

A few months ago the Select Board voiced their concern to the Town Manager about high legal bills (averaging $160,000 for the past few years) yet now we're enforcing this bylaw in a heavy handed manner when our previous town attorney suggested it would not stand up to a legal challenge. Umass students can get free use of an attorney through Legal Services.

The town needs to hire a PR/marketing expert (Umass has five or six in their Spin Room) to give advice to department heads or the political leadership to head off these bonehead ideas. Until then here's this free advice:

All you need do is ask yourself, as PT Barnum almost always did, “how is this going to play in the heartland”? And right now the People’s Republic of Amherst, once again, looks redder than the People’s Republic of China.