A-Rod leads the charge

So our newest highest paid government employee must think he's a superstar baseball player or something as he is already championing a Proposition 2.5 Override.

The Gazette forgot to mention in addition to his $158,000 salary (a tad above former Golden Boy Jere Hochman's $135,000) rookie school superintendent Alberto Rodriguez also gets $15,000 in housing/transportation for two years. And he left his family behind in Miami to simply rent rather than buy a home here which of course is more directly subject to the vagaries of property taxes.

Plus he's a rookie to not only Amherst in particular--but to Superintendency (if that is a word) in general.

The 3.5% negotiated teachers union raises this year alone are costing taxpayers over a $1 million and the Teachers Union already told the Town Manager to go to hell on forgoing them. Can't really say I blame them, since the new guy came in to replace the old white guy at a 15%+ increase.

School Superintendent Rodriguez admires President Reagan as an influential role model because of his insistence on smaller more efficient government. But Super A-Rod now heads that part of local government that consumes the vast majority of tax dollars and he's already advocating an expansion of that expenditure.

Ch. 3 TV reports

The Bully reports (better late than never)

Sign, sign everywhere a sign

UPDATE: Friday High-Noon.
So my other friends at Hampshire Life--the Friday weekly magazine published by the Gazette also addressed this Rt. 91 sign issue (and since they are a weekly with a bricks-and-mortar deadline, I'm fairly sure their story was in the pipeline before my upload on Tuesday). Although I find it even more alarming that these signs will appear over ALL of the 776 miles of state roadways at a cost of $1,720,000):


So while my friends at the Springfield Republican are ridiculing the $timulus $igns that cost $2,700 each (as of course they should) informing folks their tax dollars are at work, I'm kind of wondering about all the new signs along Rt 91 that designate every .2 of a mile and at every mile a larger one with the Rt 91 logo.

Hmmm, so five signs per mile times the 55 miles between the Connecticut and Vermont border is how much? And if your clunker breaks down do you really, really need to know within .2 of a mile exactly where you are?

The emergency call boxes, spaced about every mile, are equally useless. Massachusetts is the only state to use them on Rt. 91 and I bet they never get used because the three in a row I tried did not work. The technology looks like something from the 1970's and does not even allow voice communication.

And in this day and age where everyone has a cell phone why not spend the money on making sure there's cell reception along the entire route and replace the call boxes with cell phone stations?




Yes, I hit the top button not one of the emergency ones. Nothing happened (no beep, no light.) Waited two minutes. Then tried the next one down the road; same thing. Then the third one, where I sat for 25 minutes just in case a wrecker showed up. It did not.

Who's bluffing whom?

So tonight in two hours Amherst Town Meeting disposed of seven articles,raising taxes on local restaurants and hotel/motels, while giving Atkins Farm Stand (a thriving business) a tax break to expand, purchased two solar panels that are advertised to generate $2 of electricity for every dollar of investment; but denied by a vote of 96 to 78 the Jones Library an additional $34,704 to bring their budget up to minimum state standards--and risking the $70,000 to $80,000 of funding that comes with it.

Apparently less than 10% of Massachusetts' cities and towns have been granted a waiver of the state minimum threshold for funding by town tax dollars. Select Board Chair Princess Stephanie in prepared remarks (not prepared enough apparently as she went over the time limit by 22 seconds) boasted if the state rejected the certification waiver request. the Select Board would quickly call a Special Town Meeting in the fall and suggested town money would then be forthcoming.

Let's hope the state official who decides waivers doesn't read that remark and call her on it.

I voted in favor of the higher number...mainly out of pride. Amherst. where education is the number one industry, with a town seal denoting a book and plough, begging the state to drop minimum library standards.

Seasonal Amherst?

Click to read

Yeah, back twenty years ago the town pretty much rolled up the streets in the sumertime (and the living was not easy.) But these days Amherst is a lot busier with all the summer camps and conventions at our tax exempt institutions (Judie's was busy last night for instance.)

So I find it a little odd that Papa Gino's, who only opened this past March closed for the summer (reminds me of those "gone fishin" signs). It does demonstrate that employees are the number one overhead--but rent in that location can't be far behind.

This from the March 2 Daily Hampshire Gazette:

Company representatives who came before the Select Board, including manager Joseph Kimmel, said they are confident that, even though the popular pizza-by-the-slice Antonio's restaurant is located directly across the street, many college students are already familiar with its products from living in the Boston area.

And another one gone, and another one gone...

So you would think a national franchise selling ice cream could at the very least survive the Summer in the People's Republic of Amherst into the Fall; and by then the students (swallows) return to Amherst (Capistrano).

But that location-- and its congenital twin (the vacant store next door)--is probably the most expensive rent in Amherst, if measured by $ per square foot. And normally I would say that labor is the #1 cost of doing business with rent #2.

But with Ben & Jerry's the actual rent was probably number one overall. And a decade ago, even McDonald's could not survive in that location (killed by Antonio's Pizza back when still owned by Bruno Matarazzo)

An innocent victim

So Bank of America better hope the Conservation Department does not take note of the dead tree in their overhead walkway. The bank--in the very heart of downtown Amherst--has been closed for a while now due to renovations (and obviously somebody forgot to water the tree.)

Bank of America or KFC?

What informed readers want.

So first of all, Amherst has according to our toothless watchdog the Finance Committee (report of January, 2007) approved 10 of 18 Overrides over the past 25 years. Yes, some of them were menu Override where on the same day/ballot a few items appeared, but still The People’s Republic of Amherst has on numerous occasions approved tax Overrides. Thus saying “only 2” is not even close, even by hand grenade measuring.

And of course the other hilarious hypocrisy is the Gazette touts “transparency” as a reason why Northampton just passed a $2 million Override; but the Gazette has also recently taken them to the woodshed (which indeed they should) for not keeping good Public Records notes during executive sessions --especially since those sessions seemed to be related to a $1.2 million buyout of homes near the landfill.