Drought Dilemma

Amherst Regional High School late this afternoon

Water to drink, flush toilets and fight fires ... or water to keep athletic fields green and soft?

With the water crisis getting anything but better, and with the current concern being a closure of our #1 employer, UMass/AMHERST, do we really want to relax water protocols now in favor of athletics?

Click to enlarge/read

Cable Contract Conundrum

Amherst Select Board will accept or deny multi-million deal on September 26

The standoff between the town and Comcast for the right to provide 7,000 Amherst residents with more TV channels than they can possibly use escalated a notch on Monday night with new Town Manager Paul Bockelman reporting to the Select Board that Comcast's "final offer" for a ten year contract renewal had gotten a tad better.

The Cable Advisory Committee and Temporary Town Manager Peter Hochenbleikner had negotiated an offer from Comcast that increased the one time capital payment from $450,000 ten years ago to $950,000 now and an additional $10,000 per year in iNet maintenance in years 4 through ten ($70K) paid to the town.

Or a total offer of of just over one million with $950K available for Amherst Media.

The asking price from the CAC -- with much input from our local cable access provider Amherst Media -- was for a one time payment of $2.2 million.  Therein lies the battle.

But now the counter offer to avoid a denial of license renewal and expensive time consuming appeal hearing process has escalated to $1.125 million and $25,000 per year years 4 through ten on iNet maintenance.

Or a total offer of $950K for Amherst Media (because now the $175K in iNet maintenance is included in the $1.125 million)

Either way the one time capital payment comes out of the pockets of the 7,000 subscribers.

But the Select Board still fell short of accepting the deal and put off that final decision until their September 26th meeting, which is the final chance to approve/deny the renewal which expires October 15th.

In the meantime they asked the Cable Advisory Committee for their opinion on the counteroffer so that Town Manager Paul Bockelman can decide whether to return to the negotiation table or not.

 CAC and Amherst Media (and a Gazette reporter) this morning

This morning the Cable Advisory Committee voted unanimously to ask the Town Manager to seek $1.6625 million in one time capital -- although that includes the $175K paid over seven years for iNet maintenance -- an increase of $500,000 and the guarantee that three PEG channels (Amherst Media) be brought up to HD status.

At the very end of the three hour meeting (scheduled for only two) Amherst Media Director Jim Lescault distributed correspondence that indicated how arduous those closed door negotiation sessions were with charges of homophobia against the town hired attorney by Comcast's negotiator and his physical bullying of ACA Chair Dee Shabazz.

   Complaint To Comcast

Blockbuster Party

North Pleasant Street from Amity to Triangle Street became a no vehicle zone

 

One good thing about our lack of rainy weather is it makes for a perfect backdrop for outdoor activities -- especially on a large scale.  And in our little college town things don't get much larger than the annual Block Party.

DPW used fleet of large vehicles to close off streets

Thousands of residents converged on a safely closed off downtown to partake of our culture, cuisine and camaraderie.

AFD will miss having such a Central location (but that's about all they'll miss)

Great job by Business Improvement District and Chamber of Commerce as well as their partners AFD, APD and our DPW.

 St. Brigid's would love to see this crowd on Sunday

Birdie the 2nd had a blast.

 Caught in the act by Kevin Collins

Red Alert!

Today's bad news

Atkins Reservoir this morning now two-thirds depleted

Conservation is good, and we're doing a good job with it. BUT WE NEED RAIN.

Desperate times call for desperate measures: Friday is a full-moon with zero chance of rain. Let's have a giant rain dance on the Town Common. 

Maybe we can get the Native Americans who are fired up about the solar farm in Shutesbury to come perform.

And we can get the UMass cheerleading squad for extra motivation and the Power and Class of New England UMass Marching Band to play a few sad Irish songs to move Mother Nature to tears, along with a few kegs of beer for (de)hydration.

Game on!

Charter Pros

Lauren Goldberg and Bernie Lynch (center)

The nine member Amherst Charter Commission heard a presentation last night from the second consulting group wishing to take on the $20,000-$25,000 project of guiding them over the next twelve months towards creating a new and improved town government.

Laura Goldberg is an attorney who works for KP Associates, who provide legal counsel to about one-third of the communities in the state (including Amherst), and Bernie Lynch of Paradigm Associates who most recently acted as headhunter for our new Town Manager.

Thus both professionals have direct experience with Amherst.

The Commission had planned to hold off discussion of the two proposals until next week when they would make their choice, but member Julia Rueschemeyer suggested each member weight in with "one sentence" about their overall impressions.

Of course that turned into somewhat of a straw poll with four members expressing a strong preference for Ms. Goldberg/Mr. Lynch and another four members expressing just as strong a preference for the the Collins Center.

 And ironically enough only Ms. Rueschemeyer said she could go, "either way."

A $100 Million Here, A $100 Million There

The attendance peaked at 35

The town probably set a new record for number of meeting participants with a joint meeting of 5 boards/committees and town staff: Select Board, Finance Committee, School Committee, Jones Library Trustees, DPW/Fire Station Study Committee.

And before the digital dust settled the final tally for all four building projects presented came to $100 million in town money, or one tenth of a BILLION.

The purpose of the meeting was to briefly pitch their individual projects and then hear about how the town might finance all of them.

With total town savings in Free Cash and Stabilization at around $12 million only the Fire Station could be immediately paid for out of savings alone. But unfortunately the South Fire Station is scheduled to be the last of the four projects to break ground.

The $67 million Mega School is already scheduled to go first on the November 8 ballot with a debt exclusion that will cost town taxpayers about half that total amount.

And the other project funded via a $12 million debt exclusion with be the $32 million Jones Library expansion with the state paying $15 million and private donations covering $5 million.

The $50 million or so from those two debt exclusions, if passed, will cost the average single family homeowner $500 per year.  Amherst already is in the top ten in the state for high property tax rates.

The DPW/Fire Station Study Committee will come to Town Meeting in November with a request for $350,000 in "schematic design" for the DPW project and $75,000 for the "feasibility and site design" of the new Fire Station. 

We Have The Technology

UMass owns BIG tank (1.5 million gallons), the town owns little one (475K gallons)

The Amherst water supply system is a fine tuned operation that efficiently delivers vital water to homes, businesses and our institutes of higher education.  The problem occurs when there is not enough water being replenished via Mother Nature.

A sophisticated monitoring system feeds into a control station at the DPW to automatically adjust water tower levels and almost like a thermostat will signal industrial wells to kick in accordingly to keep up with demand.

 Holding Rudy in reserve

At the moment that demand is just under the 3.5 millions gallons per day the town set as a benchmark for dealing with the drought, although peak day hit 3.7 mgd on Wednesday, September 7th.

Last year peak day was September 6th with 4.2 millions gallons used, so we're still ahead of the game.

Click to enlarge/read

Atkins Reservoir is going off line on September 21st joining Hawley and Hills reservoirs which are also in hibernation, thus leaving the town relying solely on our wells.  It takes three or four days to properly shut down Atkins and another three or four to fire it back up.

Atkins and Centennial will be off line as of September 21

We did this once last winter for a month or so -- but not while UMass was in session -- and for a more extended period way back in the early 1980s.

Four of the five wells are tied into the DPW monitoring station for electronic control but (backup) Well 5 is not and has to be fired up and adjusted by hand.  And after 5-7 days it needs to be shut down for a while to rest.  But well 5 is the only one with a name: "Rudy".

Probably because after the brief hiatus he comes off the bench, kicks back on, and delivers the 500,000 gallons per day that could be a make or break difference in the very near future.  Go Rudy!

 Rudy:  The little well that could