Of course, of course

Spring Spectacular Horse Show 4/3/11

Amherst Robocop

Amherst Police Department scored yet another major grant , $18,945, for a cruiser mounted high-tech gizmo that automatically scans 1,000 license plates per hour flagging unregistered or stolen vehicles, AMBER alert targets in flight or cars registered to drivers with revoked licenses, a common penalty for drunk drivers.

The computerized camera/internet system, known as ALPR (Automated License Plate Recognition), combines the power of optical character recognition and face recognition common on digital cameras but geared toward high speed capture and analysis of license plates.

Thus an officer can automatically do real time plate processing, effortlessly, in high-volume with a highly accurate system that never discriminates against race, creed, color, gender or religion.

And unlike the current controversy in South Carolina, where a small town uses radar cameras to issue a plethora of expensive speeding tickets, the results produced by ALPR involve potentially more serious infractions.

APD was only the second police department to receive state accreditation 12 years ago and has been recertified every 3 years since. This achievement weighs in their favor when applying for government grants. Recently they have snagged an Underage Alcohol Grant, You Drink you Drive you Lose Grant, Car seat Grant, a very large Domestic Violence Grant ($175,000 shared with UMass PD), and now this ALPR grant.

Conspiracy theorists may whine about "Big Brother," but it will always be a flesh-and-blood, highly trained officer who interacts with drivers stopped because something was amiss, possibly preventing harm to innocent citizens--as well as the responding officers.

The system will be operational in July.

Long Beach PD demos the system

No foolin'

Town Hall in a storm 4/1/2011

As some of you may have noticed by now I have enabled "comment moderation" to better police reader comments. Since I have always considered this hyperlocal website a journalistic endeavor, I will now treat comments somewhat in same way a newspaper treats 'Letters To The Editor'--although far less formerly of course.

Yes I'm a passionate defender of the First Amendment, but if you actually read that precious declaration it only applies to government censorship--not private policing.

So what does that mean? Over four years I have published (or I should say readers have published) over 15,000 comments. In that time I have only deleted maybe a dozen and I'm tempted to fall back on the Supreme Court Justice who once said of porn, "I don't know how to describe it but I know it when I see it."

Occasionally along the way I would remind readers that I only delete spam, accidental double posting, libelous rants, and any use of the C-word or N-word. I open up comments (and that will continue) to anonymous postings because I honestly believe--especially now after watching the bullying Catherine Sanderson received over the past couple years--that there is an inherent risk in speaking truth to power; and many people, understandably, do now wish to lose their jobs, have their children shunned or risk the wrath of their neighbors.

Crude comments--foul language, personal attacks, lousy attempts at satire/sarcasm will, most likely, no longer be tolerated. If, however, you push the envelope with a comment and sign your name it will increase the odds for publication.

And no, just because I allow a comment to appear does not mean that I even remotely agree with it.

Yes, maybe that will decrease somewhat the interest in coming here--hopefully among trolls--but it's not like I'm getting paid by the hit. I watched very carefully (being the open transparent person she is, Ms. Sanderson has an "open" sitemeter) what happened on her School Committee blog last year when she enabled comment moderation:

A decrease of about 20% in overall traffic in the first month or two, but then it seemed to return to "normal".

My journalism ethics/law professor (and she is W-A-Y smarter and more experienced than I) believes that enabling comments actually makes me more vulnerable to litigation, not less; because if something legally actionable does get published, obviously I approved it to appear.

Bring 'em on!

Election Post Mortem

Friends, Anons, Bloggers, lend me your eyes; I come to praise Catherine Sanderson not to bury her.

The good that she has done, lives after her...Long live the queen.
############################################


Gotta love the Freudian slip just before the 4 minute mark where she starts to say "neglected representative" of the school committee. You got that right Ms. Theilman. Still, a classy move on your part--and a well deserved one at that.

Senator Scott Brown will probably lose a few votes in Amherst for his nice gesture, and it's not like he was going to get many in the first place.

And the winner is....

Harry Brooks Registrar of Voters, Sandra Burgess Town Clerk (center)

Catherine Sanderson gracefully bids adieu

UPDATED: Town Meeting Results:

9:35 AM Wednesday morning

If "Blank" was an actual candidate he/she would have come in first place in all 10 precincts by wide margin. In all, 7,172 individual votes were cast among all ten precincts in town meeting 3 year category and a total of 4,623 left blank.

Precinct 1 (8 total for 3 year terms):
Louis Greenbaum
Diane Westfall
Kenton Tharp
Vincent O'Connor
Eric Nazar
Patricia Holland (runner up prize for not making Library Trustee)
Melissa Perot
Hilda Greenbaum (only beat 9th place finisher by 4 votes)

Precinct 2
Barbara Levine
Andrienne Levine
John Coull (also Chair of ARA)
James Pistrang
Barbara Ford
Daniel Clapp
Issac BenEzra
Two Year term: 0
One Year term: Edward Mientka

Precinct 3
Peter Gray-Mullin
Nancy Gregg
Nancy Buffone
Karen Marie Harrington
Jacqueline Churchill
Patrick MacWilliams
Lawrence Orloff

Precinct 4
John Stuart Nelson
Kay Moran
Baer Tierkel
George Ryan
Alan Powell
Two Year Term
Doris Holden
One Year Term
Mark Parent
Naomi Ossar

Precinct 5
Barry Federman
Pat Church
Jane Price
Nancy Pagano
Kevin Eddings
Kevin Noonan
James Oldham
Andrew Bohne
Two Year Term
Mary Wentworth
One Year Term
Katharine McGovern
Robert Saul

Precinct 6
Maralyn Blaustein
Elizabeth Welsh
Diana Spurgin
Jeff Blaustein
Richard Spurgin
Harry Brooks
Gordon Freed
Faythe Turner
One Year Term
Paul DiBenedetto
Amy Brodigan

Precinct 7
Ernest Dalkas
David Keenan
James Brassord
Kenneth Hoffman
Alice Swift
Harvey Allen
Andrienne Terrizzi
Two Year Term
Marylou Theilman
George Jeffrey Bohne

Precinct 8
(Mother) Mary Streeter
Kathleen Traphagen
Jenifer McKenna
Lise Halpern
Ruth Hooke
John Kick
Glen Bertrand
Elaine Fronhofer
One Year Term
Barry Roberts

Precinct 9
Dade Singapuri
Felicity Callahan
Otto Stein
Denise Barberet
Jessica Wilkinson
Emily Lewis
Jonathan O'Keeffe
Pamela Rooney
One Year Term
Stephen Schreiber

Precinct 10
Lewis Mainzer
Stephen Braun
Brett Butler
Jan Eidelson
Richard Bentley
Elissa Rubinstein
Hwei-Ling Greeney
Nancy Gordon
##########################################

UNOFFICIAL TOTALS (for the contested races):
Amherst Redevelopment Authority: Winner Aaron Hayden 880 to Vince O'Connor 504

Jones Library: (Major upset!) First Place: Chris Hoffman 832, Second place: Michael Wolff 665, Odd person out: Current Board of Trustees President Pat Holland with 660 (kind of like that overthrow in Egypt thing).

Voter turnout: A pathetic 8.5% (Think globally, ignore locally)

##############################################
8:39 PM
So far in the "heated" race for ARA, incumbent Aaron Hayden, with numbers from three out of 10 precincts (7,8 and 9) is winning by a 2-1 margin. Turnout is barely breaking double digits.

9:05 PM
Hayden wins precincts 2, 3 and 4 and combined it's probably by 2-1 total. Vince actually wins Precinct 1 (his home precinct) 48-42.

I am now projecting Aaron Hayden the winner. Go Gateway!

9:17 PM
For Library it's looking like the odd person out is not going to be out by much. Close 3-way race for the two seats (with 7 or 10 precincts reporting.)

9:21 PM
Looks like Chris Hoffman is in for one of the Jones Library seats but number two is close. Vince actually won another precinct: 2

What if they gave an election and nobody came?

The best PR flack in the business--even the guy who came up with “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”--would have a hard time selling today's municipal election. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Almost exclusively due to a lack of competition. For the second election in a row, no contest for Select Board--the highest elected position in town government. And since the schools are the only thing that matters to a whopping percentage of the electorate, the lack of a contest for Catherine Sanderson's School Committee seat (at least hers until 8:00 PM this evening) dampened markedly any election buzz.

No lawn signs, post cards, radio ads, bumper stickers, nasty emails, Facebook pages or stand outs in town center. Nada.

Ironically Aaron Hayden is the candidate hurt the most--fortunately not fatally--as virtually all the 'Amherst Center' types who would have flocked to the polls to vote against Catherine Sanderson would have supported Mr. Hayden's reelection to the Amherst Redevelopment Authority for his sane, smart growth approach to enhancing our commercial tax base (thus creating more tax revenues for the schools); the exact opposite of Vince O'Connor's touchy-feely, no-growth-is good-growth attitude.

But I'm still going to write in Catherine Sanderson for School Committee anyway. She deserves the Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart for three long years of banging her perky head against a brick wall. Like the innocent kid who cried out the emperor has no clothes, only in this modern version a royal goon squad then beats the tar out of her.

Chris Hoffman also took some heat last summer for calling attention to the hatchet job underway at the Jones Library, where cutthroat-Carol Gray was setting up long time director Bonnie Isman for a death by a 1,000 cuts with an "evaluation" longer than 'War and Peace'.

Since three candidates are vying for two Library Trustee positions a voter can choose two candidates. I'm going to "bullet vote" for Hoffman, but if you feel it's your patriotic duty to use that other vote then cast it for ANYONE BUT Pat Holland (also part of the hit squad with cutthroat Carol.)

Traditionally Amherst voter turnout for municipal elections held in the Spring is usually an embarrassing 15 to 20% (30% for an Override or Charter change in government ballot question) but the Presidential elections every four years in November always brings out around 75%.

That's Amherst for you: always thinking nationally (or internationally). Today's turnout will be the most pathetic in years, possibly under 10%.

Catherine Sanderson: out of the hot seat

Party Street of the Weekend: Phillips St.

10:30 AM

Amherst Police Department's crack down on rowdy students behavior continued this past weekend with an escalation of tactics: rather than issue $300 tickets for alcohol violation perps were arrested, cuffed and thrown in jail.

And with a shift to "sector" saturation greater police presence (both APD and UMass police) occurred all around the Gateway corridor--especially Phillips Street, Nuting Avenue and North Pleasant Street as well as the usual suspects, Hobart Lane and Sunset/Lincoln Avenues.

In all Amherst Police arrested over 25 college-age students rather than issuing a $300 ticket--mostly for "open container" and "underage drinking" violations. One more arrested for Driving Under the Influence and only one $300 ticket issued for "open container" and two for "noise" violations.

With a $10,000 state grant providing for additional police overtime, expect greater police presence on weekends between now and graduation.

Bad boys bad boys, whatcha going to do
whatcha going to do when they come for you?