Princess Stephanie recrowned

So if this looks a little awkward and orchestrated that's because it was. But hey, the Open Meeting Law allows for public officials to kibitz behind the scenes as long as it only involves "housekeeping."

For those of you new to the ongoing antics of the People's Republic, Stephanie O'Keeffe rose from complete obscurity to the venerable Amherst Select Board mainly via her groundbreaking blog "Stephanie's Town Meeting Experience".

Then after I took out former SB Czar Anne Awad, who was replaced in a mid-year election by Aaron Hayden, she orchestrated a coup d'état and cut off His Lordship Gerry Weiss's, errr...knees and ascended the throne.

Now she's been reelected. All hail the queen. Also worthy to note that we now have a sitting majority of Select Board members "elected" without having any competition in the election.


The good old days

White Elephants: the same all over the country

Another losing Amherst golf course (New York)

Funny how public recreation folks all think alike. Ten years ago the now defunct Cherry Hill Golf Advisory Committee wanted to a borrow millions to replace the condemned clubhouse with a Taj Mahal like structure including 5 star restaurant.

Fortunately that was downsized to a $286,000 loan for a Wal Mart quality Clubhouse that still managed to overrun its budget by 30% and a new irrigation system. The Finance Committee promised the improvements would lead to revenues falling from the heavens like manna; and of course Cherry Hill then went into its seven-year tailspin averaging over $100-K losses per year.

Now-a-days capital improvements (that are charged to a separate part of the town budget so it does not show up as an operation cost of the business) are limited to little things like the $15,000 two years ago for a security fence and above ground fuel storage tank.

Not sure if the security fence is to protect from terrorists detonating the storage tank, or just a visual screen so Hilda Greenbaum doesn't complain about the industrial view. But that open space looks big enough to drive a golf cart through...

Fire in the hole!

12:20 PM

And I thought Amherst elections were hot.

To Hell with the taxpayers

Click to read (and weep)

So at least the Budget Coordinating Group is recommending Amherst Town Meeting stick it to the voters "with extreme care and thoughtful deliberation."

Yeah, the old, just a spoonful of sugar help the cyanide go down routine.

The School Committee votes to spend money out of their cool $1 million in reserves after the Override rather than before, the Teachers Union votes a $350,000 contract giveback dependent on the Override passing and town officials promised that if more state aid came in--which it appears will happen--that they would not tax to the full extent of the levy.

Ahhhh, but nobody apparently can speak for Town Meeting. Next time folks, hold on to your wallets (or purses as the case may be.)

Gus Sayer: "Just go. I don't care how. Just go."

So in spite of being a private sector kind of guy, I know how CYA (Cover Your Ass) works.

I too, was guilty a few days ago when I first posted my reaction to the horrific South Hadley suicide by a young Irish immigrant girl, choosing to question why the DA came back so quickly with indictments against the brats involved with bullying teen-ager Phoebe Prince, but taking her sweet time with an incident in Amherst last year where a two-year-old died under the wheels of a school bus, eventually ruled an accident.

Thus demonstrating the Northwestern District Attorney is nothing if not conservative in the careful sense.

But if you are going to indict the pack of juvenile brats who drove young Phoebe Prince to suicide, then why not the paid professional adults who stood by and did nothing? And is sounds like, with Scheibel's use of the term "troubling" for their behavior, that she came pretty damn close.

My self-interested concern is that one persons bullying is another persons banter. And having been on the receiving end of Amherst Town officials trying to have me arrested for suggesting a town official should be removed from office because she no longer lived in town (eventually proven true), or another chief official railing against my "chilling effect" on his governmental board because of my respect for the Open Meeting Law, I'm just a tad sensitive to incidents sending us down that slippery slope to censorship.

Speaking of censorship, Gus Sayer when he was Amherst School Superintendent in 1999 first reacted to the tempest in a teapot about the Amherst Regional High School performing 'West Side Story' and being accused of racism responded unequivocally quick: "No group, neither in the majority nor in the minority, should have the ability to censor the decisions our community’s educators make about what to teach, what to read, or what to produce on the stage."
A few days later he collapsed like a cheaply constructed Chinese school building in an earthquake, allowing the even wimpier High School Principal Scott Goldman to cancel the play--the only time in history such sacrilege would occur.

Two years later Sayer hires Steven Myers as the new principal--at $85,000 annually--to lead the Amherst Regional High School, who at least by physical appearance is gay (Not, as Seinfeld would say, "That there's anything wrong with that."). In the People's Republic of Amherst certainly worth extra credit.

Soon thereafter a mother complained that Meyers propositioned her 15-year-old son, asked him to remove his shirt to expose his breasts, invited him out to a movie, and for a soak in his hot tub.

Superintendent Sayer took the charges seriously enough to hire a lawyer and undertake an investigation of his own, thus he was then duty bound to file a report with the Department of Social Services (G.L.c.119, 51A). He did not--at least not until the news broke and created a firestorm.

Sayer told Myers that if incident became public his Principal job would be “untenable."

This all occurred in January, 2002. Daily Hampshire Gazette digging and Amherst PD uncovered Myers had been under investigation in Colorado for pedophilia and Mass Department of Social Services stepped in and removed his recently adopted 8-year-old boy. Mr Meyers was never charged, disappeared, and has not been heard from since.

Mr Sayer soon "retired" after 14 years as Superintendent of the Amherst Regional High School, but quickly assumed the post at South Hadley High School following in the footsteps of Michael Smith whose brother Dan is still Principal. The 'Good Old Boys' network.

And they rest as they sadly say, "is history." A young girl who immigrated here from from Ireland, after continuous verbal battering, wraps a scarf given to her as a Christmas present by her sister only three weeks earlier around her neck to end the torment the only way she knows how. She was only 15.

At age 67, Gus Sayer is certainly traditional "old school" when it comes to running a publicly funded education empire. Time to head out to pasture. Actually, that time --too late for Phoebe Prince--was a long time ago.

Phoebe speaks

Slate Magazine strongly hints Gus should go

An Irish paper reports

Opportunity lost

Since Town Manager Larry Shaffer champions the relationship with our "good friends" at Umass, and since he crafted a fairly useless five-year strategic agreement with them a few years back, and since he is now talking about a $12 million new fire station in South Amherst with renovations to North Station (on land donated by Umass) and Umass is currently constructing a $12.5 million police station immediately next door why couldn't he have worked out a deal to merge the projects thus creating a joint Public Safety building?

What the Hell, nearby sits the monster $10 million heating plant that never threw a BTU of heat. So Tilson Farm has plenty of space available.

Umass news flacks report

Urban Renewal

The Amherst Redevelopment Authority will take historical Town Hall in downtown center by Eminent Domain and sell it to private local developer Barry Roberts.

One of the main goals of the ARA is to stimulate the economy and reduce blight. Since not much happens at Town Hall this action falls well within the ARA purview. Although the Amherst Select Board, who meet weekly in Town Hall, also possesses the power of Eminent Domain and is chaired by Stephanie O'Keeffe, daughter of ARA Chair John Coull.

Next Thanksgiving should be interesting in that household...