Play Ball!

Potwine Lane Fields Saturday:  No soccer for you!

Saturday was a local sports lovers delight as UMass and Amherst College played home football games and amazingly UMass won while Amherst College lost (probably due to bad karma from "taking a knee" during the national anthem a while back),

Amherst College lost

The premier town soccer fields at Potwine Lane in South Amherst however, were all dressed up with nowhere to go as the Saturday games were rescheduled to other fields because neighbors continue to have problems with traffic on game day.

UMass won (must have been the flag)

Considering the town spent $500,000 in Community Preservation Funds to develop the "soccer fields" ten years ago you have to wonder if the CPA committee might ask for our tax money back if the utilization is cut back to keep the NIMBYs happy.

Scary Saturday

Townehouse Apartments East Quad 4:30 PM Saturday

Townehouse Quad Sunday morning

In addition to dealing with the usual large exuberant crowd gathered at Townhouse Apartments quad area, drunk drivers, noise complaints and fist fights Amherst police and Massachusetts State Police also investigated a hatchet assault on South East Street that required AFD transport to Baystate critical care unit in Springfield.

 Very large police presence on S. East Street since 1:00 AM

Chief Livingstone confirms an arrest was made (Patrick Bemben) and that eerily similar to the shooting death two weeks ago at Southpoint Apartments this was not a random act of violence, so the neighborhood need net be concerned about their security.

DA statement (Click to enlarge/read)

The rented house seemed to be specifically targeted by the four perps who were dressed in all black, used walkie talkies to communicate with one another and were armed with a hatchet and knife.  

Police spent hours looking for the other attackers using the MSP Air Wing and a K9 unit.  AFD also  used one of their thermal imaging cameras to search the wooded area.

MSP Air 1

Sayonara CAC

Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Select Board member Andy Steinberg attended final CAC meeting this Friday morning

After 36 public meetings, 7 private negotiation sessions, 2 public forums and countless hours reading draft after draft of a complicated contract the Cable Advisory Committee voted unanimously this morning to dissolve.

But like a phoenix (or zombie) they will revive in about eight years when the ten year contract with Comcast is a couple years shy of expiring.

Chair Dee Shabazz thanked her fellow committee members saying she could not have lasted this long as Chair without them, especially in light of the "negativity" of Comcast.

Town Manager Paul Bockelman followed up saying, "You were a stabilizing force over the course of four Town Managers."

Steinberg thanked them on behalf of the entire Select Board saying he now, "Really regrets we didn’t get more involved earlier.  But we were busy hiring a new Town Manager.  Amherst did however get extraordinary amount of capital ($1.125 million), more so than any other municipality in the state."

Negotiations are done with Comcast but now the town will negotiate a new ten year contract with Amherst Media who normally gets the entire 5% cut of revenues annually (about $300,000) as well as the one time capital amount ($1.125 million).

The stickler this time around will be the iNet, which the town relies on for all its data, phones, Internet and therefor is a benefit to every taxpayer in town rather than just the cable subscribers who benefit by it for their cable TV.

Select Board Chair Alisa Brewer made it clear the town would be keeping some of that $1.125 million in order to build a new iNet, which Comcast says we have to do within three years.  Early projections for that cost are in the $200,000 range.  

Ten Year High

The Special Town Meeting starting November 14 has 23 articles on the warrant -- the most in ten years -- including controversial zoning articles and of course the $66,339,000 debt exclusion for the new Mega School.  Zoning and Debt Exclusion require a challenging two-thirds vote to pass.

Thus it's a pretty safe bet the number of cold dark nights 150 or so Town Meeting members will have to trudge to the Middle School Auditorium will be in the neighborhood of 5 (as it was in 2007 with a 20 article warrant).

Jerry Guidera's three zoning articles to make it reasonably easier to do commercial development on the immediate outskirts of the downtown will bring out the NIMBY crowds in full force.

And the Planning Board's attempt yet again at "Inclusionary Zoning" -- requiring larger housing developments to have 10% of the units affordable -- will also be controversial as some view it as anti business and others think it's not anti business enough.

The Fire Station $75,000 for phase 1 feasibility and site selection should fly through as the average age of Town Meeting is ancient and therefor they understand how vital AFD is for Emergency Medical Services (as well as fires of course).

But the $350,000 for phase 2 of the new DPW building schematic design and construction cost estimate will certainly not get the same smooth sailing, especially if the Mega School mega million debt exclusion passes earlier in Town Meeting.

With the Charter Commission starting to align Town Meeting in the crosshairs for possible extinction at least members will be on their best behavior (which is not saying much.)

   11/14/16 Amherst Special Town Meeting Warrant by Larry Kelley on Scribd

Party House of the Weekend

35 Tamarack Drive

Fortunately it has been a while since we had one of these.

The new "Off Campus Party Registration" joint program between UMass and APD has been very successful, but obviously it's the party hardy nitwits who don't bother to register their events and don't respond to police when they come knocking on the front door who need an attitude adjustment.

 Leonard Schwartz, age 24, arraigned before Judge Estes

Click to enlarge/read

In Eastern Hampshire District Court on Monday Mr. Schwartz showed a little more cooperation with the DA's office than he did with APD and took a plea deal where he will pay the town's $300 nuisance ordinance and promised to be a good boy over the next four months.

Early Success (Voting That Is)

Congressman John Olver is a tad tall for the early voting booths

As of 11:35 AM today 986 Amherst registered voters out of 22,257, have taken advantage of the state's brand spanking new "early voting." 

On Monday night Town Manager Paul Bockelman told the Select Board 300 voters did their civic duty on Monday, the first day of the program.  But the challenge would be Tuesday as both Town Hall and UMass Campus Center would host early voting.

Well the results are in and Tuesday went smoothly with a little less than 300 voting in Town Hall and 280 UMass students voting in the Campus Center (although with fewer hours of operation).

Town Clerk Sandra Burgess speculates that if things continue to go at this rate between 15 and 20% of Amherst voters could cast their ballots prior to November 8th. 

Treading Water

Town Manager Paul Bockelman

Town Manager Paul Bockelman gave the Select Board a drought update on Monday and the report was pretty much nothing new.

Our wells, which draw from groundwater, are doing their job.

The state is requesting all water bans stay in effect at least through the end of October.

Atkins Reservoir still only 37.5% of capacity

Quabbin Reservoir October 25,  82.5% of capacity

Atkins Reservoir, shut down since 9/21, is being "slow to respond" with water levels still down nine feet and 75 million gallons remaining out of 200 million when full.

Demand is still below average at just under 3 million gallons per day.

The water crisis has focused attention on water usage and the town is considering ways to give economic incentives for those who may conserve a tad more than their neighbor.  Currently everyone pays the same rate no matter how great or small the usage.

At one time the town did have a rate differential where higher volume users were charged a little more.  Interestingly the cut off for usage to fall into that catagory was so high it only impacted UMass/AMHERST.

1996 three year Strategic Agreement (Click to enlarge/read)

And they were unhappy about that so in the three year 1996 Strategic Agreement inserted a guarantee to keep it to 20 cents (the town was considering raising the differential) and then somewhere between the 1999 renewal and 2007 bump to a 5 year Strategic Agreement the differential was nixed altogether.

Just one of the many ways UMass steamrolled the town in those "Strategic Agreements".