DUI Dishonor Roll

 

Drunk drivers caused 9,878 deaths in 2011.  NO FOOLIN!

I doubt they were celebrating the resurrection of our lord Jesus Christ, but these two almost simultaneous DUI arrests could easily have been burial vault material if not taken off the road by APD very early Good Friday morning.  

Even worse, they could have taken innocent folks with them. Especially since Heidy Canalizo was arrested in the heart of downtown Amherst, near the CVS at 12:47 AM.

Click to enlarge/read

 
And Alex Labib, arrested on Fearing Street (within spitting distance of UMass), at 12:50 AM, was a duel threat: both DUI and possession of narcotic drugs.  Not very becoming for a former UMass Student Government Association Senator.

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Early Thursday morning on Belchertown Road, one of the main roads leading to town center, APD arrested Randy Santiago for DUI and operating to endanger (which is almost redundant).

By Any Other Name

After a brief emergency meeting this morning at an undisclosed location the Amherst Select Board and Town Manager invoked Executive Order #19, a rarely used provision of the Amherst Town Government Act that allows the Executive Branch to do pretty much anything it wants.

One of less controversial decrees hatched at the secret meeting will change the name of the town from Amherst, where even the h is silent, to Salk -- where every letter is pronounced.

After 254 years of snarky remarks about the town being named after Lord Jeffery Amherst, the (bastard) father of biological warfare, and in a ritualistic bow to karma, the town will now be renamed after Dr. Jonas Salk, the researcher who came up with a polio vaccine. 

"Since education is our #1 industry, it's only fitting we rename our little college town after one of the greatest researchers in the history of science," said Select Board Chair Stefan O'Keefe. 

In keeping with the altruistic principles of Salk, who responded to a gotcha media question about patent ownership with ""There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?", the town will lease the Cherry Hill Golf Course to BlueWave Capital for a 5 megawatt solar energy farm.

Former golf course now guaranteed to generate profits

All proceeds will go towards funding research to find an HIV vaccine, the last project Dr. Salk was working on.

A Secret Documents Request also reveals via meeting minutes that the Select Board sold Amherst Town Hall to local developer Roberts Barry and the Business Improvement District for $10 million.

Amherst Town Hall to become "Townhouse On The Green"

Plans are to renovate the former seat of government to a mixed-use development with retail on the bottom floor and student housing above.

 "Since the Blarney Blowout downtown was such a success last month, this will help make next years' event even BIGGER" said Douche' Drinker, manager of McMurphy's Uptown Tavern.

News About Nothing (Seinfeld)

While not up there with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the lack of an $ Override question on the April 9 town election ballot is only a borderline miracle, especially in light of the recent outcry over school budget cuts.

Town officials are 1-2 over the past six years with one $1.68 Override passing in 2010; but a larger more hard fought $2.5 million Override campaign failing in 2007 (mainly because of campaign director, Rick Hood).

Any marketing guru will confirm trying to get people to voluntarily raise their own taxes -- especially in a trying economy -- is a tough sell.  Even more so, the prospect of trying to raise money to buy media to sell consumers on the idea of paying more for something most people take for granted:  public services. 

Especially when the town has $6 million stashed away in reserves and the Regional Schools another  $1 million.  The old "why should I take money out of my savings account so that you can keep money stashed in yours" routine.

Of course the major downside now is the April 9 local election, with no town-wide contests and half the town meeting precincts with not enough candidates to fill the open seats, will get an abysmal turnout ... under 10%.

And no, 14 UMass students running for Amherst Town Meeting will not stimulate the vote in the least (other than the 14 who come out to vote for themselves -- if indeed they bother to vote that day).

Last November, however,  the Amherst turnout for a non competitive (in this state anyway) Presidential election was 69%.

But for matters that more directly impact them -- The People -- it's the local election that really counts. And yet there, we always come up lacking.

Amherst:  where even the H is silent. 

Presidential E-X-P-A-N-S-I-O-N

Presidential Apartments, one of the first big complexes to arise fifty years ago in a mutual symbiotic relationship with UMass, our largest employer, has been granted a special permit by the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals to expand significantly (54 units) from the current 85 units to 139, or an increase of 96 tenants.

The 54 new units will spread out over nine new buildings and consist of a dozen one bedroom units and 42 two bedroom units.  Six of these units will be "affordable" and will count towards Amherst's Subsidized Housing Inventory.

The town is currently at 10.8% and if it falls below 10% a developer can use a state CH40B wild card to build a rental housing mega-complex.

According to the Amherst Housing Production Plan between 1980 and 2010 housing production decreased by 12.8% in a town where 59.4% of the population are college students.

Presidential Apartments is also one of the complexes that is professionally managed by Kamins Real Estate and seldom shows up in Amherst police logs.

Closing The Barn Door

 290 Lincoln Avenue

After a marathon 3.5 hour meeting last night the Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals decided the bulldozing of a barn in the backyard of 290 Lincoln Avenue was not "arbitrary or capricious," and was indeed within the scope of the Zoning Bylaw.

On September 4 The Amherst Historical Commission declined to issue a one-year demolition delay for the barn because commissioners did not deem it historically significant, even though it was rumored by a real estate agent to have once been used as a writer's loft by Robert Frost, Amherst's second most famous poet.

Building Commissioner Rob Morra issued a demolition permit and the owner quickly carried out the deed.  Neighbors then filed an appeal with the Town Clerk and the ZBA heard the appeal over two meetings.  Even though the barn was history.

Frisky Friday

 

500 Sunderland Road, Amherst (just barely)

Late Friday night around 11:45 PM,  Police were called to 500 Sunderland Road, almost at the Sunderland border, to break up a huge party, sending a stream of kids -- like a zombie herd -- staggering back to UMass via busy Rt 116.

One college aged youth was arrested for "failure to disperse" and a $300 "Nuisance House" ticket issued to the responsible tenant. Obviously neither of these kids read the memo from UMass Nanny -- I mean Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs -- Jean Kim.

 

45 Phillips Street 5:00 PM

And it's still early yet!

800 North Pleasant Street (Minutes before APD stopped to chat)

Strangling Supply

 Rock Farm, South East Street Amherst (note 50 gallon drum with liquid)

The number one reason for the high cost of housing and even higher cost of property taxes in Amherst, with a resulting crop of slum houses that spring up in response, is a bad byproduct of the simplest equation in the sacred book of capitalism: supply and demand.

Amherst is now more than half owned by tax exempt institutions that contribute far less than their fair share of Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, thus homeowners (since Amherst has an out of whack 90% residential and only 10% commercial tax base) have to contribute almost twice as much.

Witness Hadley's tax rate of $10.22/$1,000 vs Amherst's $20.39/$1,000.

Yet anytime anyone tries to build housing in town to stimulate supply, the NIMBYs go on the attack ... trying to get the town to buy the property to maintain their scenic views.

The most expensive taking in town history -- the Cherry Hill Golf Course in 1987 -- is an expensive case in point ($2.2 million). A plot hatched by North Amherst neighbors opposed to a Planned Unit Residential Development that would have added 134 high end housing units to the town.

 Rock Farm (A) South East Street, Amherst

Now after NIMBYs drove developer Scott Nielson into bankruptcy after he tried to build 23 high end condos and one single family house as a PURD, they want the town to buy this 7.4 acre open space off South East Street for $500,000 using $125,000 in Community Preservation Act money.

And it's the typical formula of using a variety of funding sources (much of it public money), including selling off two building lots for a ton of money. So rather than getting 24 units of desperately needed housing the town only gets two. And rather than generating $200,000 in annual property taxes it will only generate one tenth that. A lose/lose scenario, unless of course you live in the neighborhood.

Safe bet Amherst Town Meeting will approve the $125,000 in CPAC spending. The only place you will find more open space in Amherst is between their collective ears.