Riders on the storm...

9:45 AM

So it's nice to see Ricky Boy Hood outnumbered in town center by 2-1. And notice Rob Spence for School Committee supporters are not, unlike Jonathan O'Keeffe, also holding a pro-override sign. Irony is if Spence gets elected the School Committee--for the first time in a generation--would have a majority of sensible center types and might actually wrestle that Sacred Cow under control thus obviating the need for Overrides.

All roads lead to...

The Ballot Box

7:15 AM So we're off. And already the Overriders have me confused. No large display ad in this morning's bricks-and-mortar Gazette. So where the heck did they spend the remaining $3,000 in campaign contributions? (60% of total raised!)

Maybe they figured out this was going down and they are saving it for round two, after Town Meeting comes back with yet another tweaked version of this Override. You know, Custer thought it was a good idea to divide up his cavalry...

Overriders current campaign disclosure

Prime location promo

Wow, the town must really be taking this election seriously as the red reminder to "VOTE tomorrow" displaced the cute Cherry Hill Golf Course logo on the town's main web page.

Left out in the cold

The Republican reports

The town spins it

Say it isn't so

So this Amherst Bully web article falls into the "You gotta be kidding me category!" 105 faculty and staff of Amherst Regional High School sign a petition supporting their boss Mark Jackson, after he made an ass of himself bullying School Committee member Catherine Sanderson at the 3/9 SC meeting.

Goes to show what lousy institutional memory they have. After all, 8 years ago that many staff signed a petition penned by ARHS journalism teacher Bruce Penniman supporting pedophile principal Steven Myers, who almost days later disappeared in the middle of the night.

And in 1999 a 17-year-old Puerto Rican girl garnered 158 signatures in one day at the High School decrying the production of 'West Side Story' as the Senior class play; she managed to convince the spineless School Committee to cancel the production--the first time in history any entity has ever banned 'West Side Story.'



ARHS The Graphic 1/25/02 Click to enlarge/read

Override is not the answer! (neither is WAR)

Springfield Sunday Republican reports

So yeah, this concerns me a tad: the highest read edition of the 3rd largest newspaper in Massachusetts publishes this routine overview article. Concerns me only because the uninformed voter may read it and think--because of outgoing Amherst School Committee Chair Andy Churchill comments--that the override is now down to $1.12 million, which of course it is not.

What town officials claim is that if unexpected tooth fairy revenues come in--as they always do--they will do as they did in the 2004 Override scenario and not tax to the full extent of the levy in the first year.. However after that one year they will tax to the full extent of the $1.68 MILLION Override amount PLUS THE 2.5% ALLOWED BY LAW.
##########################################
Original Post 1:00 PM

So I rolled through town center at around 12:30 PM and the anti-war folks, who have been on that corner every Sunday for 30+ years, outnumbered the "Vote Yes" people--mainly Ricky Boy Hood family and tenderfoot Field Marshal Clare Bertrand--three to one.

You know the drill: click photo to enlarge. The exceedingly small contingent of "Vote Yes" drones are, fittingly, on the extreme left.

A question of priorities in the People's Republic

Click to enlarge/read

Couldn't help but notice on the 2nd tier "gray area"--meaning possible restoration with an Override and unexpected state aid--sits the $61,092 LSSE "Customer Assistant Registrar."

Gotta wonder how that makes the average cop or firefighter feel when they make less than that--not to mention classroom teachers or DPW laborers.

And notice all the Cherry Hill Golf Course was willing to give up is $7,600 in Maintenance/Equipment/Supplies (must be those savings garnered from using convict labor.) But even then their Operation budget is up 2.6% next year while the Police budget is up less than 1%.

And while town officials keep trumpeting how the LSSE Recreation Empire is almost break even, like the Golf Course, they do not tell you that those figures ignore the employee benefits and health insurance costs. ($200,000 next year.)

And of course Capital items are also not included (and LSSE has a quite a fleet of trucks and vans.)