A Very Simple Request (Denied)

 

Amherst Select Board meeting 8/26/13

For the second time in less than a year the Amherst Select Board refused to allow the 29 commemorative American flags to fly in the downtown to remember the horror of 9/11, and commemorate the innocent lives taken that awful day.

Watchdog Wire takes up the fight

 

Pendragon is from Amherst.  Shocked, shocked I say

First Day Eve

 

School Superintendent Maria Geryk welcomes crowd, Marta Guevara waits to translate into Espanol

A good sized crowd turned out on the town common late this afternoon for the 4th annual "First Day" back to school party celebration, a pep rally for students, family and school staff.

Parents are certainly in the mood to celebrate.

 Crowd listens to the Middle School Choir

The event was rescheduled to an earlier start time in response to the EEE mosquito paranoia which proved fortuitous as angry skies started threatening almost as soon as the event started at 5:00 PM and opened up into a downpour around 6:00 PM cutting the event short by a half hour.

Certainly not a harbinger of stormy things to come.

Wildwood Principal Nick Yaffe is excited about tomorrow

 

Mark Jackson, Amherst Regional High School Principal

Sam The Minuteman works the crowd

A Grim Reminder

 Ghost Bike to commemorate the death of Livingston Pangburn

Over the next few days thousands of college students will stream past this memorial, erected soon after Amherst College graduation day last May 26th, when a tragedy occurred around 4:00 PM on a busy Sunday afternoon.

The cycle of being a college town means the two busiest weekends of the year are when our institutes of higher education go on hiatus for the summer via graduations,  and now when they reopen for the start of the fall semester.

Hampshire College will be shy one gifted student, Livingston Pangburn, age 22, most recently from nearby Granby. 

He was descending a somewhat steep hill heading east on College Street when a panel truck heading west took a left into the Amherst College east entrance.

 Amherst College East Entrance, College Street looking east

A fatal collision resulted.

According to a recent email response from Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Pepyne:  "The  investigation of this accident has not been completed.  The Mass. State Police Collision and Accident Reconstruction (CARS) team generally takes three to four months to complete an investigation."

I've noticed, however, with these tragic fatal accidents that the longer it takes the less likely charges will be brought against the driver.

Either way, it doesn't bring back Liv Pangburn.

Amherst's Twin Towers

Boltwood Place under construction August, 2011

Boltwood Place, Amherst's first downtown tall building in more than a generation, will soon have a sister clone rising into the not so rarefied air, only in this case not quite as close in proximity as those iconic Twin Towers knocked down on 9/11.

 

Kendrick Place lot (near Bertucci's)

Archipelago Investments LLC will go before the Planning Board on September 18 seeking approval for Kendrick Place -- a five story, mixed used building located at the very Gateway to UMass on the corner of Triangle Street and East Pleasant directly opposite Kendrick Park.

 Boltwood Place today

The views alone from the Penthouse suites will be worth the lease payments.

The new building will also be LEED certified, and co-developer David Williams is hoping for Platinum Certification one step up from Boltwood Place's Gold Certification.

 

Kyle Wilson standing, David Williams seated

Archipelago is currently before the Planning Board seeking a Special Permit for the construction of a 75 unit, 236 bed dormitory style development on Olympia Drive known as Olympia Place.  The private (therefor on the tax rolls) student housing project would replace a run down rowdy frat house.

These visionaries also instigated the joint project between UMass and the Amherst Redevelopment Authority for the ill fated Gateway Project, a mixed use plan that would have created badly needed student housing and high end commercial space in a prime location connecting UMass to Amherst downtown.

Archipelago Investments LLC is transforming the landscape of Amherst -- both figuratively and literally.  It's about time. 

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UPDATE

The Gazette caught up with this story about 8 hours later (on the web) and it appears in print today, Wednesday.  Odd headline.  Originally they used "Second Apartment Building Proposed For downtown Amherst" but then changed it before going to print.

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1:00 PM

Now they've changed the digital headline for a 3rd time (much better) and added this nifty stock photo.  But they can't exactly recall the 20,000 or so printed editions delivered this morning with the odd "ups ante" headline.  

DUI Dishonor Role

 

APD administers FST on Sunday 4:15 PM

Yesterday around 4:00 PM, among a swarm of returning college students, one young lady called 911 to report an "erratic driver" in a gray mini van coming towards town center from the north (Pine/Bridge streets).

The van took a left on East Pleasant Street and assumed a straight line course, although occasionally "all over the road," towards the heart of a bustling downtown Amherst.

Amherst police intercepted the vehicle at the very outskirts of town center and had her pull over in the parking lot of "The Pub," where they administered a "Field Sobriety Test".  She failed. 

Arrested for Driving Under the Influence, Operating to endanger and reckless driving:

Maria C. Domenici, 229 Leverett Rd, Shutesbury, MA, age 64

Flag Flap Deja Vu

Town flies flag daily (as does every municipality in Mass)

On August 27, almost exactly a year ago, the Amherst Select Board refused to allow the commemorative flags to fly in the downtown on 9/11.  Since the issue was officially on the agenda that night a simply majority vote could have made it happen.  

Two of the Select Board members (Jim Wald and Alisa Brewer) have previously voted in the affirmative and Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe as a Town Meeting member voted to support the annual flying of the  flags on 9/11.

Last year the SB did meet again on 9/10 (oddly enough they are not meeting on Monday September 9 this year) and I again appeared before them -- this time during 6:30 PM "Public Comment" -- to make a last desperate plea to fly the flags.  

But knowing they would not I also made a  request the board put this issue to rest once and for all.  

How?  

With a simply majority vote the Select Board can place an advisory question on the annual town election ballot.  I promised that night to abide by the direct decision of the voters.  I even returned to a Select Board meeting in March to remind them of the request.  They refused.  

So here we are ... again. 

Masslive/Springfield Republican reports

Larry Kelley plans to urge Amherst Select Board to reverse policy, display US flags on Sept. 11 http://t.co/TevMnZ02U8
— GazetteNET (@gazettenet) August 23, 2013

When BANANAs Attack

 

Vince O'Connor far left, David Williams front, Kyle Wilson center

If you ever wondered why almost nothing ever gets built in the bucolic college town of Amherst, just peruse these snippets from last Wednesday's 3.5 hour Planning Board meeting.

40 year activist, or should I say "community organizer," Vince O'Connor had a good point or two concerning parking -- or lack thereof -- at the newly proposed "Olympia Place," a 75 unit dormitory style (private) student housing development springing up where a rowdy defunct frat house currently stands.

But he kind of went overboard attacking the height of the building with his medieval serfs vs the castle metaphor.





Since moving to North Amherst only a few years ago Melissa Perot has become the Joan of Arc for slaying development.  But she can get on your nerves (and I'm pretty sure it's not the accent).

 

North Amherst resident Melissa Perot railing against development before Town Meeting

Town Meeting approved "mixed use development" zoning in village centers last session, and the Planning Board was discussing a minor technical tweak ... but that didn't stop Ms. Perot from launching into a do over of the battle she and fellow NIMBYs lost by a more than two-thirds vote.