Buddy can you spare a dime (or 500-K)?

After years of debate at committee meetings and multiple Town Meeting approvals and a Referendum vote at the ballot box upholding Town Meeting's approval, construction snafus, and even a Department of Environmental Protection citation, the Plum Brook soccer fields may not be out of the woods yet.

According to a November 15 memorandum to municipal clients from our new town law firm Kopelman and Paige, “…one trial court judge has found that the language of the CPA intentionally prohibits municipalities from using CPA funds to rehabilitate or restore land for recreational use that was not acquired or created with CPA funds.”

Amherst acquired Plum Brook back in 1974, twenty-five years before creation of the Community Preservation Act. Town officials decided to use CPA money for soccer field construction, borrowing $500,000 and paying it off on the installment plan using CPA funds with the first $40,000 payment commencing in FY04.

It’s not an ‘Only In Amherst’ thing, town officials everywhere spend CPA money as though it were a gift from God. Jealously guard your General Fund dollars but treat water/sewer fund money, Chapter 90 (state road money) or CPA funds as somehow less valuable and therefore subject to less scrutiny.

Exactly why the Town Manager gave away over $200,000 in effluent to Umass over the next five years. He figured the “Strategic Agreement” would bring in a few more dollars to the General Fund and who cares about the Sewer Fund, except of course for the thousands of taxpayers in town who also pay sewer fees.

Wednesday night Town Meeting overwhelmingly voted not to ask the Select board to rethink their Umass water giveaway; now after this recent court decision, Town Meeting may have to rethink the financing of the Plum Brook Soccer fields.

And no, we can’t use Sewer funds.

UPDATE (early afternoon Saturday):
In a message dated 12/1/07 10:01:36 AM, krystyobolyte writes (and attached the court case PDF):

This is the trial court level case. Caution - this is not binding precedent; only cases from the Appeals Court or SJC are binding on the trial courts. So, this is not yet established as the "law of the land." It does indicate that there is at least one judge out there who holds this opinion, and it wasn't appealed.


In a message dated 12/1/07 10:15:05 AM, Amherst AC writes:

Yeah, I read it prior to posting yesterday; as well as Kopelman and Paige's take on it. And I believe it is under Appeal, so when the esteemed Appeals Court gets around to it then, I believe, it will become the law of the land.

And even if it were not under appeal, Kopelman and Paige state: "While the Seideman case, which is now under appeal, is a Superior Court case and creates no precedent for other courts considering similar facts, it may be persuasive to other trial court judges." Seemed pretty persuasive to me.

Whenever I push the envelope, I always ask myself what would a jury think? And after reading the CPA regulations it is quite clear both Newton and Amherst (and God knows how many other communities over the past few years) screwed up.
LK

I owe my soul to...

So late last night Town Meeting, with almost no discussion, reaffirmed that Amherst is indeed a Company Town…with Umass minding the store.

Article #20, advising the Select board to reconsider its 3-2 vote gifting Umass $200,000 in water, was so overwhelming shouted down it would have been useless (although interesting) to call for a recorded Tally Vote.

Why am I surprised? As Finance Committee member Kay Moran observed when they--our supposed watchdogs--voted unanimously to oppose the article “Almost everybody in Town Meeting is connected to Umass” And unfortunately, Town Meeting members are exempt from 'Conflict of Interest' Law.

Mt. Holyoke College (and what have they contributed to South Hadley lately?) professor emeritus Diana Stein, corrected me on the figure I obtained from Answers.com for Umass’s current Endowment: $348,100,000. She told Town Meeting the Amherst flagship was only in the hundred thousand range; I think she meant to say million, but on the floor of town meeting almost nothing ever gets corrected.

Ms. Stein, who claims to be running for Select board but will not announce till January, also pointed out on the Town Meeting listserve earlier in the day that almost all the esteemed institutes of higher education that pay impact fees to their home community are private schools.

So what! Fire protection costs the same for rich or poor, private or public, Republican or Democrat. What matters is call volume--and that is dependent on overall size.

That is why the comparison (and even Ms. Stein deemed it “surprising” that UVM is state funded) with the University of Vermont is so stunning. They are 2.5 times smaller in both land area and student population, but will pay Burlington twice as much as Umass pays Amherst in 2010. For fire protection only, as UVM has it’s own ambulance service that covers the campus and actually provides service to the city.

Since I believe UVM is not overpaying for fire protection, could Larry Shaffer and Umass have underestimated the cost of fire/ambulance service to the campus? Considering the Town Manager is math challenged over the ailing golf course, I’m not surprised.

This year’s Fire/EMS budget is $3.5 million and the emergency dispatch center is another $500,000. I always hear Chief Hoyle use 25% for Umass’s drain on the department, thus making their fair share $1 million--a tad over the $425,000 claimed in the ‘Strategic Agreement’.

His Lordship Select man Weiss told Town Meeting Umass would jettison the overall agreement if they nixed the $38,000 effluent waiver. Wouldn’t you love to play poker with this naive ninny? I pointed out that this represents only 10% of this overly one-sided deal, so Umass would never walk away from it.

And if they did, good riddance. Next time they call 911 tell them the number has been disconnected for non-payment.
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In a message dated 11/28/07 6:55:34 AM, amherstac@yahoo.com writes to Town Meeting Yahoo listserve (110 members):

BOSTON is the KING of PILOT’S (Cambridge the Queen):
Berklee Colllege of Music: $191,304

Boston College: $261,397

Boston University: $4,406,158

Emmerson College: $27,029

New England School of Law: $13,125

Harvard: $1,810,639

Northeastern University: $141,132

Suffolk University: $141,132

Tufts University: $135,582

Wentworth Institute: $35,867

Cambridge:
Harvard: $2.4 million

MIT: $1.5 million

Watertown:
Harvard: $3.8 million

Providence, RI:
Brown University: $2 million

RI School of Design: $792,000

New Haven, Ct.
Yale: $2 million

Ithica, NY
Cornell: $1.1 million

Trip the light fantastic

Yeah, yesterday's BIG old house move was as--Alan Root points out in this morning's crusty Gazette--probably the most photographed event in town history (although he failed to mention it was also the fastest dissemination of event photos via three local blogs). But over the course of the next three weeks, this modern house on Whippletree Lane will garner its share of shutter bugs. Kira loves it. And they donate money to a great cause: Shriners Childrens Hospital.

Mission (mostly) Accomplished

So by noon it was done. The house and garage sat like beached whales on the slope of the hill to their new home. Tomorrow they will slog their way up the hill and the old house will be set on its new foundation.

Turning the corner in town center was the fun part. They sat there for a bit, probably for dramatic effect, then chugged down Main Street. The truck is military surplus having served in the 1'st Gulf War pulling tanks out of sand dunes. Fortunately nobody told Amherst Town Meeting that before the move.

The Dickinson Homestead was the only structure to lose power and telephones, sending it temporarily back in time to when Miss Emily whiled away the hours in her upstairs room.

Selectman Kusner risks life and limb to get the shot.

A combined effort of Police, DPW, power and phone companies came together to make it happen (Yes, the developer covered those costs)

Developer Barry Roberts is also a proud grandfather.

Gentlemen, start your engines

The garage is on the road and the house is starting to move.

Let's make a deal

When it comes to horse-trading those Vermonters surpass us country bumpkins. Take the new five-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes deal just signed between Burlington and the University of Vermont, as compared to our miserly “strategic agreement” with Umass, Amherst.

This year the University of Vermont will pay host city Burlington $456,000; next year $600,000 and $912,000 in 2010 simply for fire protection. The agreement also calls for a closer working relationship between the police forces of the city and University that may result in joint patrols of neighborhoods bordering the University.

The pact also generates additional payments of $180,000 for public works impacts.

Thus, in 2010 the University of Vermont (9,000 undergrads, 1,350 grad students) will pay Burlington (population 39,000 with one-third of all property tax exempt) $1,100,000 over TWICE what the University of Massachusetts (20,000 undergrads, 5,000 grad students) will pay Amherst (population 34,000, with one-half of all property tax exempt).

Of course Burlington, although not much bigger than the People’s Republic of Amherst, is a city with a more efficient Mayor/Council form of government. And when it comes to negotiations, a Mayor makes all the difference.

A Million Here, A Million There.

So I go away for a day and look what happens. The crusty Gazette, finally, publishes the expose about how much superfluous money the Regional school had in last year’s $26 budget: ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Yikes! Naturally they hurriedly went Christmas shopping and spent half of it on “unanticipated spending.”

The highly paid director of finance Robert Detweiler gets the “duh!” award for his preemptive spin explaining that it doesn’t mean the schools are in any better shape going into this year’s budget season. Yeah, I guess you would say that whey your mantra mimics a five-year-old’s “gimme, gimme, gimme.”

Last May 1’st voters turned down 53% to 47% a $2.5 million Override where the diffident Finance Committee had come up with ‘The Amherst Plan’ (as opposed to the ‘Peoples Republic of China Plan’) that called for only $1 million used this fiscal year and the extra spread out over the next two years.

Thus, last year when town officials wanted taxpayers to dip into their savings accounts to give them an extra $2.5 million, the town municipal budget had $4 million in reserves, the Regional High School had $1.5 million and the Regional budget approved was $1 million too much. Hmmm...

And yet this year the Middle School Pool was closed to town folks because the town Manager did not want to pay the schools $40,000 upkeep.

If the Regional school alone (and the Regional AND Elementary schools are about 60% of Amherst’s total budget) had ONE MILLION DOLLARS left over in FY07 what does that say about the supposed extra one million they said we needed for the entire municipal/schools budget this fiscal year?