Transparency--what a concept

From: amherstac@aol.com
To: westmorelandD@arps.org; mazurk@arps.org; gawles@verizon.net; nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com
Sent: Tue, Mar 9, 2010 10:50 am
Subject: Public Documents/Open Meeting Law Reqest

Hi Debbie,

Could I please get a copy of the discussion minutes and any votes taken during the Executive Session of the Regional School Committee last night.

Thanks,

Larry Kelley

From: Debbie Westmoreland
To: amherstac@aol.com; Kathy Mazur ; nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com; gawles@verizon.net
Cc: Tracy Farnham ; Farshid Hajir
Sent: Tue, Mar 9, 2010 1:37 pm
Subject: Re: Public Documents/Open Meeting Law Reqest

Hi Mr. Kelley:

The School Committee has not yet voted to release the minutes from last night's Executive Session; therefore, they are still considered confidential. I am not sure when the School Committee will officially release the minutes, but I will be happy to forward them to you once they do.

Best Regards,

Deb

From: amherstac@aol.com
To: WestmorelandD@ARPS.ORG; MazurK@ARPS.ORG; nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com; gawles@verizon.net
Cc: FarnhamT@ARPS.ORG; HajirF@ARPS.ORG
Sent: Tue, Mar 9, 2010 1:51 pm
Subject: Re: Public Documents/Open Meeting Law Request

Thanks Deb!

Just make sure I'm in line ahead of the Crusty Gazette (a few seconds here and a few seconds there...)

Larry

$igns, $igns everywhere $igns...

So in addition to those nickel-and-dime political lawn signs springing up around town like mushrooms after a summer rain, this Big-Boy went up yesterday on Rt. 116. Thankfully the State pays the $2,700 tab for the sign, and Palmer Paving--who won the bid--installed it.

The $2.3 million road resurfacing starts next month and will extend from Snell Street down to Hampshire College but skip the center of South Amherst, where my business is located.

The town "took over" (at tens of thousands in annual upkeep) this section of the state highway four or five years ago in order to redo the South Amherst center in the image and likeness of a quaint little French Village. That was years ago; thus far we did get a used traffic control signal--but no crosswalk.

And no little french bakery.

UPDATE: 1:00 PM

So back from my bike ride fertilizing the ground underneath all those green Vote Yes pro Override signs (Locked and loaded with a super-soaker squirter gun so I could fire from a public road.) I could not help but notice a second $2,7000 State sign on the other side of the 3-mile project.

And furthermore could not help but notice that they are only ONE-SIDED SIGNS. Hmm...even our overly-amateurish, do-gooder local politicos wanna be's with their loose change lawn signs figured out the value of two sided.

But not our illustrious state.

Better dead than red

You can tell Mr. Hood is a "webmaster", as he picked a lively color scheme for his lawn signs (which, unlike the green pro-Override signs, will still stand out when the grass comes in.)

I guess he learned from his boo-boo three years ago that lawn signs are an essential evil in a political campaign. Although it is a tad odd that he--of all people--a true blue, blue-state kind of guy, would use red.
Yeah as one of my Anons pointed out, he borrowed from the wholesome milk company.

The Color of Money

So Overriders picked the perfect color scheme for their lawn signs. Hey, at least this time around they were clever enough to order them. Three years ago they did not bother--one of the many huge mistakes they made under the leadership of Rick Hood, now a candidate for School Committee.

A-Rod strikes out!

Catherine Sanderson reports on the Gazette report

The Springfield Republican follows up (actually using the Gazette as a source)

UPDATE Monday Morning (quarterbacking): The crusty Gazette finally caught up with this story. Must be a tad embarrassed as they threw up a brief last night on Gazettenet, but back dated it to Saturday. And intrepid forever reporter Nick Grabbe had to resort to using persons "with direct knowledge of the situation," as sources but of course unnamed.

The Regional School Committee meets tonight in Executive Session to try to put together Dr. Rodriguez's going away present. For sure he will demand the rest of this year's salary (about $40,000) but he may ask for all of next year's as well ($158,000.) Probably will not have the gall to also ask for the $15,000 in housing/transportation. If so, let's hope the School Committee pays him off in pennies so he gets a hernia dragging them back to sunny Miami, Florida.
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UPDATE: Saturday around noon:

So sorry for not responding to all the Comments that occurred after I, finally, hit the "publish" button close to midnight last night as I then retired.

And sorry for deleting the post "We interrupt this regularly scheduled program..." which had garnered a few comments because I was sitting on this "A-Rod Strikes Out" story in draft for sooooo many hours that when I finally got the corroboration I needed for some reason it published below the placeholder, throw-away post signaling something BIG was in the offing.

So I just deleted that entire post (only the 2nd time in three years I have done such a thing.)

When someone taunted me by email about being out of touch on this story with the bricks and mortar media possibly beating me to it (and at that point it was written, the photo uploaded and my right hand was hovering over the publish button) I instantly flashed back to that great scene in "Tora, Tora, Tora" where the lowly staff Sergeant had tried to get his commanding officer to do something after the rookie commander of the USS Ward reporting attacking an enemy submarine at the mouth of Pearl Harbor, early on the morning of December 7.

The Commander, not happy about working on a gorgeous Sunday. barked "Corroboration, I need corroboration!" A few hours later he bursts into the same office with his eyes wide open and jaw hitting the floor and the lowly Sargent (busily answering the phone and stamping forms at a frantic pace) looks up, points his hand at the huge picture window overlooking the Harbor now filled with burning, dying ships and shouts, "There's your corroboration!"

ORIGINAL POST: late last night

After less than a year as the highest paid Amherst "public servant", School Superintendent Alberto Rodriguez will go the way of the previous (less than) Super, Alton Sprague who took his co-Superintendent wife, two months of taxpayer funded salary, and flew the coop.

In this case, Rodriguez will be winging back to Miami, Florida where "we play hard, hard, hardball" he bragged to the Amherst Bulletin last year, declaring he would have no trouble surviving in the People's Republic of Amherst.

Once again Maria Geryk steps up to cover as she did previously after the aged co-supers disappeared with two months left on their one-year contract, and most recently for the numerous days A-Rod took as vacation/sick time.
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SUPERINTENDENT ‑ CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT

4. TERMINATION: This Agreement may be terminated or modified by mutual written agreement of the parties. In the event that the Superintendent desires to terminate this Agreement before the term of the Agreement and his employment expires, he may do so by giving at least one-hundred twenty (120) days’ notice of his intention to the Committees. This Agreement may be terminated by the Committees prior to its expiration, for good cause, but not without prior written notice to the Superintendent of the proposed reasons for termination.

There they go again!

So ten or twelve years ago the spineless Amherst Town Manager Barry Del Castilho actually showed some backbone when Umass banned a rapist from living on-campus but did not expel him from classes, so naturally he relocated to the People's Republic of Amherst.

Barry did what many highly-paid professional bureaucrats do: he filed a memo/letter of protest, that went nowhere.

Now Umass is once again embroiled in a deja vu controversy mishandling yet again an admitted rapist, allowing him to stay on as a student. But apparently they kicked him off campus.

Amherst currently hosts 3 or 4 "Level Three" sex offenders --meaning the state in their infinite wisdom considers them "likely to reoffend" but they are still free to live and roam where ever they damn well please.

Since this Umass perp was never convicted of the rape allegation that he admitted to, he does not have to register with the local police department as a "Sex Offender."

Thus, local citizens and police have no idea of his current whereabouts.

Amazing that Umass uses the Catholic Church of twenty years ago (also a story broken by the Boston Globe) as a guide for dealing with sex offenders: just quietly ship them off to another unsuspecting community.

The venerable Daily Collegian reports

The old blame the blogosphere routine

So the Emperor hates it when anyone questions his flashy new clothes--especially as to why they do not resemble a hospital johnny.

But rather than deal with the issue of going AWOL for an entire week before filling out the mandated paperwork (Family Medical Leave Act), something that would get a teacher, janitor or bus driver fired the hot-under-the-collar Superintendent unloads on the evil Internet.

But he trains his fire not on the legitimate folks who used the interconnected instantaneous Web to expose and question (rather subtly at first) his extended absence, but focuses on those damn snarky Anons. Although strangely, he says he doesn't read blogs--but he attacks Anon comments made on blogs. Hmm...

Well Dr. Rodriguez, if you don't read the blogs then how do you know what the Cowardly Anon Nitwits are saying?

And next time you pretend not to look at those time-wasting, evil blogs maybe you should read a tad more closely. The issue was not the legitimacy of taking "sick" time in advance for a medical procedure, it was scheduling a fair amount of "sick" time in advance with no explanation whatsoever.

And even the memo/spreadsheet tossed to the Regional School Committee on 2/9 did not have all of last week on it. Not much "transparency" there, eh?

At the 3/1 School Committee discussion Regional Chair Farshid Hajir told the Super to submit an "updated/revised" memo to reflect the unannounced disappearance over the past week and an explanation for the sick leave absences scheduled in April as outlined in the sparse 2/9 memo.

I have been blogging for three years now with over 175,000 unique visitors and only one of them came from Miami, Florida--just last week as a matter of fact, coincidentally when the Super was AWOL in sunny Miami, Florida about a half-hour after an Anon posted comments questioning his whereabouts.

And isn't this the same cocky guy who bragged to the crusty Amherst Bulletin one year ago, "I'm going to be tested, and you guys will see that it's not about that," he said. "I have the mettle to take that fire."

Looks like his mettle came up short.

The Bully reports one year ago

The Bully reports today

Thank God Amherst School Committee member Irv Rhodes is black, otherwise Kathleen Anderson (sitting on his left) would have been all over his case for daring to defend the rights of the taxpaying public (admittedly overwhelmingly none minority in the People's Republic) to question the habits of the highest paid "public service" employee in town, who just happens to be Cuban American.