I hear a train a comin'

Station Road South Amherst crossing 1:30 PM

Okay folks, hold your breath. The tracks are about to open for business as usual.

Fate of the Gateway

Nothing really new came out of last night's joint meeting between the Amherst Redevelopment Authority and the Amherst Planning Board: A vision of what the Gateway Corridor could be was presented, residents raised concerns and committee members took it all in.

Tonight at 5:00 PM, in the first back-to-back meeting in over twenty years, the ARA meets again to decide the critical issue of where to go from here. Do we bow out gracefully now that a "vision" has been articulated and let the town figure out how to proceed? Who will take up the negotiations with UMass for the former Frat Row--a signature piece of property that our consultant called a "catalyst" for positive change?

Tomorrow is July 1st--start of the new fiscal year. At this exceedingly late juncture we don't even know who will be running UMass/Amherst in the near future.

The retirement of Building Commissioner Bonnie Weeks will also delay the hiring of a new building code enforcement officer, so slum lords get a reprieve while owner occupied houses in residential neighborhoods will once again have to endure party houses when UMass students return, and the cycle resumes yet again.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."

The price of deferred maintenance

Rotted railroad ties don't provide much structural support

As a long time health club owner I know how easy it is to put off routine machine maintenance to save money--especially when revenues are in steep decline. A treadmill belt start to slip occasionally and a new belt costs $300 so you try to let it go just a little longer. The liability exposure is enormous should someone get injured.

And a runaway train can do a world of hurt.

A spike works its way to freedom

This one succeeded

The question is why is this clamp not doing its job?

Somehow I just can't imagine taking a couple hundred yard amble down a runway at Barnes or Westover Air Force base and spotting loose nuts and bolts littering the airstrip.

Looks like some ties were replaced...a l-o-n-g time ago

Strike two!

UPDATE: 8:40 PM Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe, obviously concerned, asked the Town Manager tonight if Amherst had the authority to prevent the trains coming through town if they don't get their upkeep act together. Unfortunately the answer was "no".
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Thank goodness the maintenance program for C-5A aircraft that routinely lumber over Amherst is so top shelf because if one of those babies ever falls from the sky...And if it happened a month ago, like the first train wreck in Amherst, the entire fleet would be grounded until they figured out what caused the mishap and then corrected it.

Two trains derailing within a stones throw of each other in less than a month's time is unacceptable--especially when both occurred within a half mile of Lawrence Swamp where wells are located that supply half the town's drinking water and an overpass where automobiles and bicycles routinely travel directly underneath.

Moving on up

My friends at the venerable Amherst Bulletin--affectionately referred to by insiders as "the Bully" (although probably less so now that the term's negative aspect is in vogue)--have a new home closer to town center, so as my British friends would say: "bully for them."

Old location. University Drive

Not so sure it is going to increase interaction with the general public, as these days folks do not like to walk up a flight of stairs to get anywhere, but the rent is probably a tad cheaper than their previous location on University Drive and reduced overhead adds to the bottom line--especially helpful when advertising revenues tank due to increased competition via the Internet.

New location. East Pleasant St. 2nd floor

I do like the fresh new look of the website, which mirrors the Daily Hampshire Gazette--so much so that I actually thought it was the Gazette. And it would be nice if the Gazette or Bulletin resurrected the online forum for reader interaction that ten years ago was far more active than Masslive's moribund Amherst Forum.

Twenty years ago upper management kept the Gazette and Bulletin completely separate, so that reporters for one paper considered those working at the sister publication competition and would work hard to scoop one another even though they all worked for the same owner. Nothing like a little competition to fire up motivation.

The actual competition, 100+ year old weekly Amherst Record, ceased publication in 1984 leaving the Amherst Bulletin as the sole paper devoted to Amherst.

The Bully and Gazette pretty much merged into one seamless entity, where the Gazette would break a story in the beginning of the week and the weekly Bulletin would flesh out all the fine details by distribution on Friday.

Of course the problem now for the newspaper industry as a whole is that readers want their news almost before it happens, rather than waiting until the end of the week. And even daily publications have trouble printing a story before readers have already heard about it on Facebook, Twitter, or those pesky blogs.

In a one mortician town, who buries the undertaker? Let's hope the Bulletin never has to cover its own funeral.

Guppies unite

Groff Park wading pool opened this weekend, just in time to keep the little ones off the streets. Kudos to the DPW.

Where were they then?

Today's Daily Hampshire Gazette has an above-the-fold, long-form "investigative" story about the residency of our elected register of deeds Marianne Donohue, who lives a fair amount of time away from her current husband in Florida with her ex-husband in a house located on Bridge Road in Northampton to qualify as a "resident" of the district she has served for 22 years, with a current salary of $90,000.

But where was the Gazette three years ago when Amherst Select Board member Anne Awad and her town meeting member husband Robie Hubley purchased an expensive home in South Hadley, left their condo on North East Street abandoned and up for sale and had even declared that South Hadley home as a primary residence in a legal homestead declaration filed at the registry of deeds, but still wanted to maintain their elected town positions in Amherst?

In fact the Amherst Bulletin even printed a Letter to the Editor from the wayward couple claiming they had not realized a homestead declaration was equivalent to admission of "principal residence" so they had refiled a new homestead declaration back on the Amherst condo.

A simple check of the exceedingly accurate land records website proved that statement a lie.

When I took a photo of Ms. Awad from a public road tending to her garden in that South Hadley home I was accused of stalking and the Amherst Select Board even considered passing a public motion sternly reprimanding me.

Strangely enough the only support I received besides the Masslive article came from the left of center Valley Advocate who awarded me a "halo" that year for my investigative reports.

Today's front page Gazette article also includes a photo of the house Ms Donohue occupies while living in the district. Although she did not react quite the same way as Ms. Awad, she did note that "who needs a reporter calling me and asking where I live?"

And the answer is: the people who pay your salary have a right to know.