Town Meeting Snoozer

Amherst Town Hall looked busy at least from the outside last night

If last night's turnout for the League of Women Voters/Town Meeting Coordinating Committee Warrant Review is any indication, the annual Special Town Meeting starting November 2 will be lucky to acquire a quorum of its 254 members.

Perhaps because there are no hot button issues on the warrant, although I was surprised the three articles relating to solar development in town did not bring out the NIMBYs, with their solar powered torches and pitchforks.

Maybe two of the dozen who showed up were unaffiliated with the articles at hand

Article #4 (the 1st three are housekeeping articles) would create a Capital Stabilization Fund to squirrel away money to cover BIG ticket capital items coming up:  Wildwood School renovation, new Fire Station, Jones Library expansion, and new DPW facility.

The money comes from $650K already in Free Cash and even with that withdrawal the amount remaining would still be 5% of our total annual budget.

Currently Amherst reserves are 13.8% of budget and the Department of Revenue suggests anywhere from 10% to 15% as a comfortable target goal.

The $26K request for electronic voting devices for Town Meeting could run into trouble due to Town Meeting's geriatric median age.

Or proponents of the new Charter movement to kill off Town Meeting could also see it as a victory for their cause should this item fail.

Town Meeting will also be asked to allow repurposing $150K from previous spending to fix up East Street School so the LSSE recreation department can relocate there.  But bids came back too high so now the town with mothball that idea.

The money would outfit 4,000 square feet of the Amherst Regional Middle School as office space and interim Town Manager Dave Ziomek confirmed it does not require the recently talked about relocation of 7th and 8th grade students into the High School.

 Peggy Roberts TMCC Chair.  Interim Town Manager Dave Ziomek addressed the "crowd"

Since the Middle School is a total of 197,000 square feet and student enrollment has declined since it first built, the 2% of total taken up by LSSE will not even be noticed.

The two Community Preservation Act financed projects -- North Common and Crocker Farm pre school playground rehabs will pass handily.  Even with all that spending ($430K) the CPA fund balance will still have over three quarters of a million left over.

Since it appears nothing overly controversial appears on the warrant -- but with Town Meeting you never know -- November 2nd alone probably will not be enough time.  But certainly only two nights will be required to complete all 15 articles.

A refreshing break from our annual spring Town Meeting, which drones on and on and on ...

We're #1

 Amherst's new them song:  "Where have all the hippies gone?"

So this is certainly not the kind of Internet poll result you will see our Chamber of Commerce, Business Improvement District or UMass Office of News & Media Relations proudly hype in a press release.

But, considering the source, maybe they should.

Internet troll and anonymous provocateur Turtle Boy Sports named us #1 on the list of his (obviously he's a he)  "Top Ten Hippie Towns in Massachusetts Where Turtle Boy Would Lose His Mind"

Not that he has much of a mind to begin with.  But hey, at least he can count to ten.

First of all Amherst has the lowest median age in the state, with 58% of our population comprised of "college aged youth."  The "hippie" demographic died off a while ago.

These days we have more homeless hanging out in town center than we do hippies.

In other words the Vietnam war is l-o-n-g over.  And Turtle Boy should know that since he -- like Barstool Sports -- revels in bad boy, party hardy, rowdy student behavior.

If immaturity was a good thing, Turtle Boy would be a saint. 

But that's kind of the modus operandi for Turtle Boy:  Cite a cliche or two, add a pinch of snark and a few lousy photos and voilà, you have a listicle "story."  Now bring on the hits. 

Funny thing is in his "takedown" of little old me last spring he clearly says, "Downtown Amherst has tons of cool shops, restaurants, and bars, none of which would exist were it not for the fact that 20,000 carpetbaggers live there in three out of the four seasons."

And he even closed with, "it’s actually got a nice downtown area with tons of nice looking things."

But that's Turtle Boy: spew so much verbiage that you soon forget what you have said in the past.  And he's too lazy to bother with a simple Google search -- even of his own website.

And w-a-y too cowardly to stand by his opinions under his own name.

Amherst: Colorful College Town

Hampshire College, South Amherst: student population 1,400

Who needs psychedelic drugs when you have this outside your dorm?

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UMass Amherst, our state flagship: student population 28,635

UMass Southwest area houses 5,500 mostly freshmen, err, 1st year students

$10 million Paradis Steam Boiler Plant  that never worked

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Amherst College: largest property owner in town.  1,785 students 

Now you know why we call this College Street (or RT 9)

Fabulous Fall Sunday

Puffer's Pond dam

The weather could not be much more perfect on this gorgeous Sunday in one of the best college towns in America. Get out and enjoy it!

 Amherst College overlook off South Pleasant Street

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!
 

Treetop bouquet 

Check out the Mill District, the hip new North Amherst magnet

Hike around Puffer's Pond to work up an appetite

South Amherst is also looking pretty

With the long holiday weekend many of our college aged youth have returned to their hometowns

Take a balloon ride

Attention To Detail

Chestnut Court on the northern outskirts of Amherst town center

Residents of Chestnut Court brought their complaints to a Board of Commissioners meeting last week (10/5/15) about outside renovations done during the summer that left a lot to be desired with some of the final details, like landscaping.

 Rocks in a large bald patch of lawn 10/6/15

Interestingly the Department of Housing & Community Development had given Precise Paving a "Notice To Proceed" on May 7, 2015 for the project, which had a 90 day completion date built in. 

The contractor did not actually start until July 13, 2015 but was still under contract to complete the project by August 5, 2015.

The loam used appeared substandard with too many rocks and pebbles and the grass seed was planted in a haphazard hit-or-miss manner.

 Bigger rocks and globs of seed 10/6/15

AHA Director Denise LeDuc had complained to the contractor a few days before the residents appeared at the meeting.   She was pretty much told to go pound sand.

But after sending photographs of the lousy workmanship to the architect and telling them she would be withholding payment on the $300,000 contract, a worker showed up the very next day to rerake the lawn areas to remove the abundance of rocks and then he hydroseeded the entire area.

 Although they could have been a little more precise with the application 10/9/15

Oldest rule in the book:  If you wish to get someone's attention, threaten their pocketbook.

 AHA Commissioner Peter Jessop and Director Denise LeDuc at sight visit Friday 10/9/15

A Clear & Present Danger?

 UMass Southwest Towers.  JQA in the middle

Last week 22-year-old Zachary Simeone from Dalton Massachusetts threatened to come to UMass, assault/murder his former girlfriend, crash his truck into John Quincy Adams Tower and shoot up the campus.

 Zach Simeone and his truck

All at a time when gun violence on college campuses is paramount in people's minds.

 Click to enlarge/read

He was arrested by Dalton PD after being alerted by UMPD and originally found by Judge Patricia Poehler too dangerous for release, either on his own personal recognizance or via bail.

   Judge Poehler Dangerous decree

Simeone admitted he was dangerous

This morning a new deal -- "Joint Proposal RE Conditions Of Release" -- was struck at Hampshire Superior Court allowing his release under many, many conditions.

Let's hope it works.

   Zach Simeone Conditons for Release by Larry Kelley

Most of the retweets came from UMass students

Digital Time

APD on scene Fort River School 11:45 ish

I was on my way to Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown to pick up documents relating to a very scary story from last weekend when I first heard the call and knew simply because Dispatch was addressing it to multiple patrol units and the shift supervisor (X1) that it was not going to be a routine event.

Fort River Elementary School went into "shelter in place" mode due to reports of an intruder.  Although the original call did mention a possible weapon involved I chose not to report that.  And I used the slightly less scary term "lockdown" in my original Tweet/Facebook post.

When I arrived on the scene about 5 minutes later three APD cruisers were scattered about the area but two school employees were out front doing routine lawn maintenance.  So far so good.

Since the school was locked down officers were having trouble getting in, as apparently a key fob was not working properly.  At one point an officer told Dispatch that if school officials did not come to open the door they would have to "breach it."  That too I chose not to report.

Fortunately a moment later someone opened the door for them.

Within minutes APD had answered my original Tweet saying no intruder found.

@amherstac no intruder at this time found at fort river school

— AmherstMApolice (@AmherstMApolice) October 9, 2015

Follow @AmherstMApolice on Twitter to stay informed

I had gone from Twitter over to Facebook to file a quick report and then got distracted by questions and comments, so I did not see the original APD response tweet to me for a few minutes.

But by then I had already figured out things were under control and stated that fairly quickly in a follow up post.

As I was leaving the scene I saw Chief Livingstone coming out the main entry and he confirmed "Everything is fine."  And that was one statement I was happy to post on Facebook and Twitter.

By that time some of the responding units had already left Fort River School and headed to all the other schools in town just to be extra safe.

School Superintendent Maria Geryk, within 45 minutes of the original start of the incident, issued a robocall reassuring parents there was "no threat to the school."

Amherst officials are getting better at combining transparency with modern means of communication.

click to enlarge/read