Half Way There

 Town Meeting (on a voice vote) approved $26K for hand held voting devices

Last night Town Meeting meeting dealt with almost half (7 of 15) the articles on the fall warrant and only screwed up one of them (maybe two if you're a Patriots fan); meanwhile Charter change enthusiasts who wish to terminate with extreme prejudice the esteemed institution report they are half-way to the goal of 3,215 voter signatures needed to put the change question on the ballot.

 Select Board unanimously recommended approval of Capital Stabilization Fund

Town Meeting failed to muster the two-thirds vote required to create a seperate "Capital Stabilization Fund" to squirrell away money for the four mega-building projects on the immediate horizon: new Fire Station and DPW buildings, expansion of the Jones Library and the new mega school the Amherst School Committee will support later this evening.

The original "placeholder" figure used by Finance Director Sandy Pooler was $57 million for all four, but only $7 million of that was for Wildwood School renovation.  And tonight the School Committee will vote to support a plan (new mega-school) estimated to cost $20 million.

 Town currently has $9.9 million in savings

Which gives you an idea of what all four of these projects will cost if they ever get done.  The new South Fire Station, for instance, has been in the hearts and minds of South Amherst residents  for over 50 years now.

 If you can't trust the Finance Committee who can you trust?

Both the Select Board and Finance Committee supported the idea unanimously.  But conspiracy theorists on the floor of Town Meeting thought it would tie future Town Meeting's into supporting the as yet not-in-the-pipeline building projects.

Some of those folks would much rather have the money available to feed unicorns.

 Test question

After a ten minute or so hands on demonstration that actually (mostly) worked, Town Meeting overwhelmingly supported  the bylaw change required to allow electronic voting and then quickly followed up with near unanimous support to spend the $26,000 necessary to purchase the devices. 

Fortunately the gizmos, which will see first official use this coming spring, can be repurposed once Town Meeting has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

And Town Meeting also overwhelmingly supported borrowing $200K to renovate the Amity Street parking lot dead in the center of town.  Good news for struggling small businesses located in the high rent district.

Amity Street lot. Jones Library top center

Scary Halloween For 1st Responders

3 Engines on scene Brown Dorm 12:42 AM for stuck elevator with passed out female aboard

The Halloween weekend was to nobodies surprise a chaotic one for First Responders.

 Standing room only in Eastern Hampshire District Court this morning

Amherst police had 28 arraignments this morning in Eastern Hampshire District Court for all the college aged youth they arrested -- almost all of them alcohol related.  And as you can see AFD  was stretched to the breaking point by alcohol related runs.

Like for instance at UMass, where two-thirds of the "emergency" runs were for ETOH (intoxicated) students.

   AFD Halloween runs

AFD also dealt with a single Motor Vehicle Collision out on North East street that required the jaws of life for extrication and two helicopters for transport to a trauma center.

I hate to think of what would have happened had that accident occurred closer to midnight -- when our emergency response system was at maximum stress -- than at 3:45 AM, when more responders were available.

What's In A Name?

The Emily Dickinson Homestead "I'm nobody! Who are you?"

Perhaps we can get Amherst College to increase its Payment In Lieu Of Taxes to the town of Amherst from the current $130,000 up to $1 million or so in exchange for changing our name.  How about Emilyville?

Appropriate enough of course since Miss Emily is more famous than Lord Jeffery Amherst -- and for a better reason.  And ever so conveniently her historic homestead, a mecca for tourists from around the world, is owned by Amherst, err, Emilyville College.

The undefeated Jeffs beat Wesleyan 27-18 at their October 24th home game

I'm not so sure rough and tumble college football players will be psyched about a nickname associated with a long dead reclusive female poet, although anything has got to be better than a flea infested moose. 

Lord Jeff of course never actually ordered the distribution of infected blankets to the hostile Indians, err, Native Americans laying seige to Fort Pitt.  And there's no conclusive scientific proof that the two blankets and handkerchief used in the sick attempt actually worked.

But there's no question Lord Jeff was not a big fan of what was then a sworn enemy threatening the men, woman and children of his command. 

15 Minutes Of Fame?

Luke V. Gatti (center) and father (right) appear before Judge John Payne last year

Just so some Cowardly Anon Nitwit can't say "Gee Larry you're numbers have dropped precipitously; you must be losing your touch":

In the routine course of covering rowdy student behavior -- mostly UMass -- I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting in a cyber sort of way, Luke Gatti, aka the "mac and cheese kid."

 Previous all time record was 134,000 for Blarney Blowout coverage March, 2014

I actually covered him three times over a very brief period last year and he even interacted with me in one of the posts -- although I assume his response was written by an expensive attorney.

So when he screwed up yet again at UConn in a viral sort of way (my definition of viral is minimum of 1 million hits) almost all the major digital media outlets linked to me -- most of them in two places.

This of course was meant to demonstrate Gatti was exhibiting a pattern of bad behavior -- not just a one off aberration that should be forgiven under the Christian guise of "Whoever is without sin cast the first stone."

Luke Gatti one state over

 When I went to bed the night of October 5th this blog was at the usual 75,000 hits for the month.  I usually get around 500 hits during the overnight so I was a little taken aback when I awakened the next morning to see my sitemeter fast approaching the 100,000 mark.

Over the next 24 hours I averaged around 10,000 hits per hour.  And the story had legs of which I've never seen because even a week later I was getting numerous referrals.  But that impact will start to disappear any day now as we approach the one month anniversary.

I get requests almost weekly from individuals I've covered asking for forgiveness in the form of name deletion.  My standard response is, "If you don't want your name to appear here then don't do the crime."

But I do sometimes think about maybe modifying the post once the District Court mandated terms have been met i.e. fines paid, "educational programs" taken and probation period completed without any further incidents.

Of course if I had used that leniency with Luke Gatti those three posts would have disappeared long before his mac and cheese incident.

His total punishment for both incidents on Phillips Street near UMass amounted to $250 in fines, one day alcohol education program and four months probation.

But now his mac and cheese antics as well as his UMass failures, will live on. Forever.

 Gazette even garnered much needed boost in circulation

Educational Point/Counterpoint

Amherst Public Schools are nothing if not colorful these days

With all that's going on with the Amherst Public School system -- new school, expanded regionalization, merging Middles School students into the High School, etc -- it's easy to forget teaching, that most basic function taking place in a classroom.

I found this exchange between a former ARMS teacher/parent and Principal Mendonsa interesting.

   Education Clash Of Ideas

Thirsty Thursday Party House

203 Northampton Road (Rt 9)  "Everybody into the pool"

This large out of control party disturbing the Rt. 9  neighborhood  (not already disturbed by the high traffic volumes) last night is probably not a good sign going into Halloween weekend.

This morning in Eastern Hampshire District Court all four "college aged youth" took a standard plea that  diverts from criminal to civil with payment of the $300 town noise bylaw fine.

 All four signed a waiver in order to represent themselves.  And they were out in time for a 11:15 AM class

The other "nuisance house" charge was dropped, although if the bad boys repeat this type of behavior before the end of the semester and end up before Judge Payne, that charge will quickly reappear.  And then some.  

Sunderland Barn Fire

Thick black smoke could be seen for miles

If anyone in Amherst looked out their windows this morning towards the northwest you couldn't help but notice the dense black plume of smoke billowing over the farm fields of Hadley and Sunderland.

A barn, mostly used for storage, had caught fire and despite the best efforts of many, many fire departments (including Amherst) the barn was a total loss.

Fortunately there were no injuries.

The morning after