A Gateway, Guaranteed

UMass director of planning Dennis Swinford paid a courtesy call to the Amherst Planning Board on February 1st to talk about their "Master Plan" looking forward to the next fifty years, and at the end of the presentation he was queried about the Gateway Project.

You can tell by his reaction he was a tad unprepared for the question, perhaps why he blurted out the unvarnished truth.

 Dennis Swinford, UMass planning

Originally the Gateway Corridor Project was a joint development project between UMass, the town and the Amherst Redevelopment Authority. Umass would donate the 2 acre former Frat Row and the ARA would commission a private top shelf developer to build a grand mixed use project providing badly needed housing, parking and commercial business space--all of it on the tax rolls.

Neighbors, fearing a revival of the Animal House Frat Row days, lobbied long and hard, meeting after meeting to abort any part of the plan concerning housing. They brow beat town officials into altering the grand vision to an unrecognizable shell of its former self. UMass withdrew the offer of Frat Row.

On the night Deputy Chancellor Todd Diacon broke the bad news to the ARA he stated reassuringly, UMass had no plans to build on the property "for the next five years."

Chancellor Holub and Town Manager Larry Shaffer signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" at the 9/1/10 community breakfast (in front of 400 witnesses) jump starting the grand Gateway Corridor plan. Shaffer would later run off from his wife and the town to Michigan, Chancellor Holub was run off by the by the rough and tumble Boston pols, and Deputy Chancellor Todd Diacon just found another job with Kent State University.

And Gateway will become townhouse apartments (like North Village Apartments) and a signature building at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, North Pleasant Street, and Butterfield Terrace.

Now neighbors will get the devil they don't know.

Mullins Center Hogs AFD ambulances

This folks is unacceptable, completely unacceptable: All five AFD ambulances and ten of 11 firefighters--including all the extras brought in--were occupied carting drunks and druggies from the Mullins Center Rusko concert to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton on Friday night, meaning the entire town and our hilltown neighbors had EMT protection from another, more distant, department and Amherst had one crew of student volunteers for fire protection.

Besides the eight incapacitated folks transported to CDH, our EMTs also observed and then released another five patients (all alcohol related).

What more can I say? UNACCEPTABLE!

AFD weekend runs
Note almost all ETOH (alcohol) cases occur during time period University Health Services used to be open but is now closed.


Full Week Emergency Dispatch report (note times student force covered and mutual aid)

Springfield Republican covers UMass Health Services cutback Note spokesperson final quote about increasing demand on AFD ambulances, "It's too soon to tell." Not anymore Mr. Blaguszewski!

Party Apartment of the Weekend

 Crestview Apartments, North Amherst

Amherst Police were called to #35 Crestview Apartments very early Saturday morning (2:10 AM) for "loud music and voices coming from listed location."

According to APD narrative: "Upon knocking on the door observed a bong in plain view. There was also a marijuana grinder and marijuana joint in plain view on the table. Perp slammed the door and ran inside to hide the contraband. Door was finally answered. Items listed were seized and perp was issued citation for noise and marijuana less than an ounce."

Given citations for noise ($300) and marijuana ($100) violations: Jared Johnson, age 21

Auf Wiedersehen and Do svidaniya

 Superintendent Maria Geryk

In order to trim their budget and stay within Finance Committee guide lines of no more than a 2.8% budget increase, the Regional Schools will nix Russian this coming year and German the following year.

According to Superintendent Maria Geryk:  "The decision to cut German and Russian at the Region was made about 3 years ago. Since that time, no new students have been added to the classes. We maintained enough FTE to support the students who were already taking classes in these languages. This year is the last group currently in Russian, and we have one more group left in German. For FY13, there will be a .4 reduction in these areas. Therefore, Russian is cut in FY13 totally and German will be cut in FY14."

At least they're still offering Chinese.

Party Concert

UMPD evidence confiscated early in the evening from one vehicle

UPDATE 6:20 PM:  Saturday night is not starting out so hot.  Another dumpster fire at Hobart Lane.  And the fireworks at North Amherst Winterfest stimulates a bevy of calls to 911

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Like the melody of a song that gets stuck in your head, "200 Commonwealth Ave", the Mullins Center address, will stay with me for a while as that became a loop run for Amherst Fire Department ambulances starting even before the Rusko concert (drunken young woman fell and broke her arm).

UMass Police did their best to be proactive: patrolling expansive parking lots with an armored car and unmarked patrol cars--swooping in when alcohol was visibly in possession by minors--but on nights like this, you may as well bail out the ocean with a plastic red cup.

Riot buster on patrol outside Mullins Center

The concert started at 7:30 PM, but over an hour later coatless young men in short sleeve shirts and young women dressed in even shorter black skirts with midriffs exposed, streamed down Commonwealth Avenue from the Southwest area heading toward the Mullins Center, while many of the vehicles converging on the scene had out-of-state license plates.

The good thing of course is the concert kept thousands of students on campus, the bad thing, however, is our Fire Department became like a Domino's Pizza delivery service--carrying cargo from the Mullins Center to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

And the saddest thing? It's become routine.

AFD ambulance at the Mullins Center. Load 'em up

Loaded For Bear

Backpack Journo tools

Since a high ranking Amherst public official--obviously not a sports fan--once tried to have me arrested for using the expression "locked and loaded", I thought it safer to explain my use of the term "loaded for bear" on Facebook regarding tonight's ride along with UMass Police Department.

My weapons--I mean tools--include a Kodak z981 with 26x wide angle optical zoom and high ISO for low light conditions, flip camera for simply to use video (but better quality than a cell phone), portable tripod so the flip can become an instant dash cam, portable scanner with Amherst and Hadley first responder frequencies, digital audio recorder, and of course when all else fails, small notebook and pencil.

And no, I'm not hoping for a riot--or what photo journalists refer to as "bang bang". Any Friday night with APD or UMPD is a newsworthy evening. Although... it is unseasonably warm and there is a big concert at the Mullins Center tonight.

Amherst Fire Department will have extra staff with nine on duty professionals (7 is normal) split between Central and North Station as well as another special detail of two stationed at the Mullins Center covering the concert.

Counterattack!

Cutting Bully Columns

UPDATE 5:05 PM Friday:
See Comment at 5:02 PM today from Bart Hollander, Catherine Sanderson's husband.

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Catherine Sanderson, as usual, hit a nerve with last week's column in the venerable Amherst Bulletin questioning the glowing evaluation the Regional School Committee bestowed upon Amherst School Superintendent Maria Geryk by highlighting those inconvenient truths about the high cost of education in Amherst with mediocre MCAS results, currently the most failing in over a half-dozen years.

This week's Amherst Bulletin has not one but two columns ganging up on Dr. Sanderson, written by three-out-of-four remaining Amherst School Committee members. Interestingly not a peep from any of the four hilltown committee members who presumably were as offended as the Amherst members. Or maybe Amherst has thin skinned public officials--especially now that Catherine Sanderson and Steve Rivkin are gone.

How dare she point out the rosy report was penned by a Pelham School Committee member with a spouse working under the Superintendent!

Massachusetts public officials--both paid and volunteer--are held to a higher standard. It's not called "conflict of interest", it is called the "appearance of a conflict of interest". Kind of like in criminal cases the evidence must prove "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" vs. civil cases were it is a "preponderance of the evidence."

And having your volunteer spouse critique your highly paid boss clearly has the appearance of a conflict. The state, however, offers a simple solution: disclosure. You know, that thing called transparency--which we see very little of in Amherst.

Some might even argue appointing a high school student to the school committee smacks of an appearance of a conflict. Although we're told by reporter Nick Grabbe that the teacher was joking, newly appointed school committee member Solomon Goldstein-Rose was greeted with "I'm teaching my boss now" by a teacher at the High School on Tuesday.

Yeah, and you damn well better not give him too much homework!

Both columns use the same lame excuse town officials have relied on for 25 years protecting the Cherry Hill Golf Course: Wait until next year. Katherine Appy even manages to throw in liberals favorite boogeyman to blame, President Bush.

Yes, it takes time to turn around a big ship in a sea of molasses. But other nearby towns navigate in the same sea and seem to do as good a job in a far more cost efficient manner. As President Kennedy once said, "A rising tide lifts all boats." And Amherst has a rising tide of red ink.

Neither counter column answers that nagging question of why our cost per student is by far the highest in the area at $16,413 per student while state average is $13,055. Is it too much to ask why we don't get average adequate yearly progress when we pay 20% above average for our system?

Indeed, nobody likes a critic--especially when they're right!