This one's for you Spc. Jonathan M. Curtis

Sometime soon Amherst Town Meeting will discuss "Bring the war dollars home" resolution recently endorsed by our Sister People's Republic, Northampton.

The article, placed on the warrant by Ruth Hook who also created a bit of a buzz last year with the Welcoming Gitmo Detainees to Amherst resolution, failed this time to get the endorsement of the illustrious Select Board who voted 4-1 to "not take a position".

Best summed up by rookie member, and history professor during his day job, Jim Wald who said: "I think there are better things to do with our time." Indeed.

But, Town Meeting will pontificate for over an hour then pass it rather handily, thus demonstrating how out-of-touch somebody is in town government.

Scary thing is these people are also in charge of a $60 million budget.

There they grow again

93 Fearing Street. Lincoln Apartments (brick building behind fence) in back.

Umass is in the process of purchasing 93 Fearing Street, probably because of its prime location abutting Lincoln Apartments, recently renovated family housing (105 units) set aside for Graduate Students and faculty. The house,currently assessed at $403,000, has been owned and occupied by the same family for 50 years.

Obviously owner-occupied houses in that neighborhood are not the problem when it comes to rowdy student behavior.

Next door neighbor Gretchen Fox appeared before the Amherst Select Board on 10/25 to complain about the purchase and husband John Fox has also been routinely attending the ARA meetings over the past six months to question The Gateway Project.

Since this will take the three-family house and property (over one acre) off the tax rolls it will cost Amherst about $6,500 annually in lost revenue (plus 2.5%.) Umass is the #2 landowner in town behind Amherst College and overall tax exempts own half the property in town.

####################################
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Diacon
Cc: Nancy Buffone ; MusanteJ@amherstma.gov ; casanderson@amherst.edu ; nhoffenberg@gazettenet.com
Sent: Fri, Nov 5, 2010 3:36 pm
Subject: Re: Umass/town relations

Dear Larry: Thank you for your thoughts and query.

I have met with John Musante to discuss 93 Fearing Street, and soon will follow
up on the meeting with a memo explaining our plans for that property.

As to the other issue, we believe the Gateway Project will produce the win-win
situation of additional housing that individuals affiliated with the university
will find attractive (undergraduate students, graduate students, new faculty),
while contributing to the town's tax receipts.

Todd Diacon
Deputy Chancellor
University of Massachusetts Amherst
tdiacon@umass.edu

On Nov 5, 2010, at 1:13 PM,
Amherstac@aol wrote:

Not asking as an ARA member, just as a nosey blogger. The bricks-and-mortar
media sleep from around noon Friday until Monday 9:00 AM, but I do not.

What is up with 93 Fearing Street? I could not help but note the Fox household
has divided to fight a two-front war: John Fox continues to hammer The Gateway Project (and I would not take heart that he failed to show for last night's ARA meeting) on the Commentary pages of the venerable Daily Hampshire Gazette and Amherst Bulletin and wife Gretchen attacks Umass for purchasing 93 Fearing St via public comment at the SB meeting Oct 25.

Since the sizable property is contiguous with Lincoln Apartments, I'm assuming it will be used as housing of some sort? And IF melding seamlessly with Lincoln Apartments that would seem to indicate Grad students or faculty, thus making the neighbors happy?

Of course the upside for the neighborhood is a downside to the town as Grad
Students/Faculty have a far greater impact on our public schools. Last I looked
we had about 60 kids (@ $14,000 per) attending Amherst schools from tax-exempt housing located at Umass, including Chancellor Holub's two daughters.

And speaking of which, what is the status of the Amherst school department's
modular classrooms at Mark's Meadow?

The 5 year "Strategic Agreement" signed with Umass about 4 years ago did clearly state that if Mark's Meadow closed Umass would sort of, maybe, consider a Payment In Lieu of Taxes to cover the $750,000+ in education costs for children in the public system from Umass?

And if the purchase of 93 Fearing street goes through, that will cost the town
another $6,500 or so in property taxes per year. If I were your PR flack I
would be thinking about all of this (especially now).

Larry K

Tax-exempt house with a view

The good old days?

Back when I was growing up in the People's Republic of Amherst I used to love those stories--since my dad fought there--about Japanese soldiers finally coming out of their caves in far flung South Pacific islands where they hid for decades refusing to believe the Empire had lost.

My bricks-and-mortar friends at the Republican and Gazette report today about a "firestorm" on the Internet yesterday that I somehow managed to miss, involving Cooks Source magazine out of little old Sunderland stealing copy from a blogger without permission and then refusing to pay a token amount (as a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism) saying the writer should be thankful for publication.

Especially thankful, since the kindly old editor, with "30 years experience," had rewritten the piece and in fact should charge the writer. Yikes!

Such arrogance I have not seen, oh, since the rise of the Internet. Back in the day, only 15 or so years ago, the bricks and mortar media were indeed the gatekeepers who "bought ink by the barrel". And could treat writers with complete disdain (many did).

Those days are L-O-N-G gone. Thank God! (or the Internet.)

The LA Times reports

There grows the neighborhood

So after eight L-O-N-G years of bitter strife--including of course the courts, costing the developer over $100,000 the town $10,000 and the neighbors about the same in legal fees --the "low income" housing project in Orchard Valley South Amherst is going full steam ahead, even on a rainy day.

I put low income in quotations because the 24 units will work out to $350,000 per unit in simply construction costs. And since it is "low income housing", it will pay reduced local property taxes.

Amherst is currently around 50/50, where half of all property in town is owned by tax exempts--although our assessor is getting vigilant about finding innovate ways to tax them, even if at reduced rates.

HAP, inc is a private 501c3 nonprofit organization serving all of Hampden and Hampshire counties and is funded by Federal, State and Private donations--in other words Other People's Money.

The 24 unit development springing up on Longmeadow Drive was approved by our ZBA under the the state's Chapter 40B affordable housing law, even though Amherst is not below the 10% threshold. HAP argued that Amherst has a less than 1% vacancy rate and that there was a strong "regional need" for the housing.

Hence the ire of the neighbors. The project development manager called it "the most extensive opposition of all the 40 projects we've done in western Massachusetts."

Let's hope the neighbors on the other side of town do not break that record in trying to torpedo 'The Gateway Project'.
Much of South Amherst was once an apple orchard harvested for generations by competing farm empires Atkins and Wentworth who both used lead arsenate--the insecticide of choice from around 1892 through the 1970s.

Since it was routinely sprayed on orchards in high concentrations, some of it would drip and bond tightly with the the top 10 or 12 inches of soil then separate into lead and arsenic, either of which is hazardous--especially to young children.

When will they ever learn? (sequel)

So missiles in the form of beer cans launched from the snipers lair located on the 3rd floor balcony of this humble abode at 27/28/29 Phillips street resulted in three $300 "nuisance house" tickets to the responsible parties late Sunday night/early Monday morning.

Since they were "beer cans" it's safe to assume they were empty--even so, any metal object hurled from the 3rd floor of a building gets a fair amount of assist from gravity and can do damage if you happen to be on the receiving end.

The nitwits are lucky APD did not charge them with "assault with a dangerous weapon."

And yes, I'm sure I will hear about incidents like this Thursday night at the Amherst Redevelopment Authority meeting as we continue to move forward with The Gateway Project, where the former 'Frat Row' directly across Phillips Street is headed for a mixed-use private development partly to provide new higher end student housing, but mainly to connect the downtown with Umass and to increase our pathetic commercial tax base.

Naturally, neighbors think the Gateway Project will result in more rowdy student behavior rather than less. Kind of like your toddler wailing over their first flu shot, not realizing the overall benefits.
Phillips Street is less than a beer can throw away from the heart of the Gateway Project: Former Frat Row, owned by Umass but about to be donated to the ARA

When will they ever learn (Original)



Frat Row circa 2005

In the mainstream, mostly

UPDATE: Wednesday 10:00 AM

So I was almost perfect in my predictions yesterday. Amherst went W-A-Y overboard supporting all the Ds including the Governor, and voting "No" to all the binding ballot questions except for the non binding vote on taxing pot where we voted strongly in favor.

Turnout was 45%--a little more than half what we muster for a Presidential election and certainly twice what we normally muster for a local town election.

My only surprise on a state level was the repeal of the booze tax. Of course Amherst voted overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the tax. But considering what happened on a national level yesterday a lot of folks in Massachusetts will be crying in their chardonnay for the next two years, so I guess it makes sense they would want to repeal the tax on alcohol.
##########################################

Original Post: election day 10:00 AM

So it's not too hard to predict how the People's Republic of Amherst will vote today: All Ds all the way, as in the straight Democratic ticket will win by more than a landslide (somewhere in the vicinity of 80% of the vote.)

The binding Questions will be about the same: Nix sales tax on booze or reduce the overall sales tax to 3% will lose by the whopping margin, as will the Question to repeal 40-B the affordable housing state law. And of course the non-binding question to tax pot the same way we tax booze will pass handily.

Voter turnout will be half what we get for a Presidential election and more than twice the average turnout for an annual spring town election (where the candidates have far more influence on 'All Things Amherst'.)

No longer fearing the 1st

So today marks the very first 1st of the month in 28 years where I did not experience some degree of trepidation brought on by making the rent. Actually my longtime landlord, Dick Johnson, told me early on that payment was due on the 1st but as long as it arrived by the 10th that was considered "on time." Naturally I took to getting it there on the 9th or 10th.

But the 1st of the month always set off that reminder alarm that a sizable chunk of my total monthly overhead was now due, and the clock was ticking.

Yes the Amherst Athletic Club closed June 21 but my new landlords were kind enough to allow me three months at greatly reduced rent--that I pushed to four--so I could try to sell a hundred or so very large, heavy commercial exercise machines one piece at a time; that otherwise would have sold for a song at public auction in the middle of a very hot summer.

Yesterday was the final, final day although I ended up with four pieces remaining--three of which "sold" Sunday morning but the deals never went through.

Although I now have one more week (gratis) to sell them, not having to worry about paying November's rent made the finality hit home this morning--and the weight of treadmill lifted from my tired shoulders.

So again tomorrow I will awaken, minus trepidation, and get through an entire day, without trepidation, and go to bed, minus my old friend, trepidation. Feels weird... Empty.