Back to that damn raise

From: Debbie Westmoreland
To: amherstac
Cc: Andy Churchill ; Michael Hussin ; Kathy Mazur
Sent: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 3:14 pm
Subject: Re: Public Documents Request

Dear Mr. Kelley:

Kathy Mazur forwarded your request to me because I am the keeper of public records for the three School Committee. As of now, the School Committee has not
voted to authorize release of the executive session minutes you are requesting
so they are still confidential and I am not authorized to release them as a
public record.

Sincerely,

Debbie

Date: April 16, 2009 4:52:49 PM EDT
To: WestmorelandD@ARPS.ORG

Hey Debbie,

Thanks! ( I should have known you were the 'go to' person on this).

I will formerly request the SC take it up at the very next meeting April 28'th; and if they do not vote to release the minutes I will unleash the wrath of God, Yahweh or Allah upon them.

Larry


On Apr 16, 2009, at 9:56:49 PM, "Michael Hussin" wrote:
Subject: re: minutes of executive session
To: amherstac@aol.com

Dear Mr. Kelley,
I received your letter and am just now getting a chance to respond. I am also aware that you have received an email from Debbie Westmoreland, the administrative assistant to the superintendent, with information regarding the release of executive session minutes. I wanted to elaborate further on the necessary procedures for making public the minutes of executive sessions.. Essentially the board must meet in executive session to review and vote to approve the minutes of any of those sessions. After that vote we can then vote to release to the public the minutes of any or all meetings that we have reviewed and approved. That can probably be done at the same meeting. Minutes of any executive session can be released, according to state law, when it is deemed by the board that no harm to the district or to personnel would come from the release of those minutes. As spring break is upon us, we will not be gathering any sooner then the next regional school committee meeting scheduled for April 28. If we need an executive session it is typically scheduled the same evening immediately following our regional meeting. I will be checking with the superintendent to see if that is the best time to schedule this session and if there are any other legal issues involved. At this point I do not foresee any problems with making the information you requested public, but again I will be checking to be sure we are following appropriate procedures.
Thank you,
Michael Hussin

From: amherstac
Subject: re: minutes of executive session
Date: April 16, 2009 10:12:09 PM EDT
To: "Michael Hussin"

Thanks. I look forward to the results of this request. Transparency is a good thing.

Larry

What goes around...

So Mr. Oldham, a Hampshire College professor (naturally) led the charge last year criticizing the School Committee for “outsourcing” food service to save ten$ of thousand$ and garnered all sorts of ink and bandwidth defending the “lunch ladies” who were getting outsourced.

Last night at the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee informational forum on Social Service Funding--the one Town Manager Larry Shaffer was banned from--he advocates, in a bumbling sort of way, for town tax money to continue funding these enterprises (making Amherst the only community in the state to do so).

At the May 30, 2006 Town Meeting where I had a multi-media presentation on DVD disc prepared (with background music no less) timed at just under 4 minutes (I had five since I was "amending the motion") to be projected on the large screen in front of Town Meeting, Mr. Oldham did a “point of order” as I was walking to the podium and demanded the Moderator (not exactly a BIG fan of mine) censor/ ban the presentation because I use clips of town officials (speaking at public meetings) without their permission.

Violating my First Amendment rights all in order to protect the taxpayer subsidized game of golf. Hmmm…

The moderator dismissed him, but about one minute into the presentation, when Czar Awad complained about my choice of The Eagles “Lying eyes” as background for her previous Town Meeting misstatement (lie), he shut down the presentation.

Interestingly, Ms. Awad went on to publish a letter in the Amherst Bulletin two years later categorically declaring that she had changed her “homestead declaration” back from an expensive South Hadley home to an Amherst Condo when in fact had not. She is currently living in South Hadley and unlike the bar Cheers, nobody seems to remember her name.

Today Mr. Oldham has a column (unpaid of course—and sometimes indeed you get what you pay for) in the Bully where at least he does state the new School Superintendent should not get more than the previous Super, but he concludes with a bleeding heart reference to the lunch ladies: “whatever the state of the budget, the treatment and conditions of the workers remains our concerns.”

Well gee there Professor, what about the thousands of small businesses (you know, the ones who pay taxes to fund all your favorite social programs) that perished over the past year, or the millions of workers laid off?

This is an economic 9/11—a new normal. Get used to it! (And yes folks, he voted two years ago not to allow the commemorative flags to fly on 9/11 as did most members of the TMCC).

$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