Jones Library has a new trustee

Amherst College professor Austin Sarat won the vote 8-1 in a combined meeting of the Jones Library Trustees and Amherst Select Board and will serve out the remaining one year term left on Kathy Wang's seat, who resigned due to time constraints brought on from her day job--principal at the ever expanding Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter school in Hadley.

Party house of the weekend: Busted!

51 Pine Grove (stand alone condominium)

These bad boys are vying for "Party House of the Semester"! Four occupants, each arrested on charges of violating three bylaws: Unlawful noise, Nuisance House, Unlawful Possession of a Keg. Normally, had they simply been issued $300 tickets, a stinging $900 each ($3,600 total for the incident).

But, instead of the that lucrative option, the responding officers arrested all four charging each with 3 violations and one, Ted Bates Miller, with the additional charge of "resisting arrest". Which shows that the town crackdown on rowdy students is not about raising money--it is about changing their bad behavior.

According to Police narrative: "Ongoing problem with listed apartment, approximately 20-plus people cleared out, keg confiscated, four residents arrested."

Dashnilov Emeri Yoyo, age 22
Matthew Kubinski, age 21
Mark Chancy, age 27
Ted Bates Miller, age 21

About a month ago I almost gave them "party house of the weekend" award for the noise tickets issued, but they were trumped by a party house of five girls gone wild. This past weekend they tried a little harder; and will now pay the price.

Interestingly the condo at 51 Pine Grove is owned by Jonathan Goldin and according to the assessor it is "owner occupied." Apparently Mr. Goldin was not home the night of the party.

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.
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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
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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)

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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