Bright Nights In Downtown Amherst

Amherst Community Fair (shot from town center looking south)

For all too brief a time Amherst downtown came alive with the sights, sounds and smells of family fun that dates back, well, forever.  Especially after dark, when the rotating colored lights produced something magical. 

 Amherst Community Fair shot from Amherst College looking north

The Amherst Community Fair beat the odds this time around by not bringing on the monsoons.  A standard joke around town is if you need it to rain (which we certainly do) then bring on the Community Fair.

 Like psychedelic flowers

Although Wednesday opening day did see a fair amount of rain and Thursday a brief encounter with a menacing giant black cloud that issued a bolt or two of lightening.

 Late Thursday afternoon:  ominous cloud came calling

But Friday and Saturday were picture perfect and drew better crowds.

Friday at sundown

 Friendly carny worker helps Jada after ride finishes

My fondest -- by far most vivid -- memory of the Community Fair dates back over 50 years to 1964, when I was the same age as my daughter Jada is now.

My mother suddenly on a Saturday night packed us all in a beat up station wagon and drove the mile up Main Street not telling us where we were going until we came within view of the those magical lights brightening the downtown.

Perhaps made even brighter due to a dark pall that had descended on our town & nation only 6 months earlier when the stunning report instantly echoed from sea to shining sea:   "Shots fired on the Presidential motorcade."

And for my Irish Catholic mother a double shock because she had just two months earlier lost the only other man she ever loved, my father.

As she handed each of her four children a (very) limited amount a ride tickets, in the light cast from the Ferris wheel, I could see on her face something I had not seen in eight months:  a smile.

Overbearing Bear

For the second day in a row Environmental Police were called to Amherst to deal with a large wild animal roaming about our town -- this time a 300-400 pound female bear.

17-year-old girl scratched by small bear in South Amherst.  APD enroute to scene.  Mother taking her daughter to hospital.

— Larry Kelley (@amherstac) May 31, 2015

A little after 9:30 last night Dispatch received a call from a Belchertown mother saying she was transporting her 17-year-old daughter to the hospital after she had been scratched by a small bear as she was house sitting and walking a dog on Tracy Circle in South Amherst. 

The young woman climbed aboard a parked car to escape the critter.

When Amherst police arrived shorty after, the bear could be seen in a backyard.  And there was nothing "small" about it.

The officer reported it was not a juvenile, weighing in at between 300-400 pounds and was wearing an electronic tracking collar so it was known to Environmental Police.

About 30 minutes later, just after an Amherst Police officer told Dispatch the bear was getting "restless", Environmental Police arrived and safely dealt with it.

"The bear will live to climb another tree", said the Amherst police officer.

Posted June 1st

Pay The Piper

UMass Mullins Center straddles Amherst & Hadley

So what are we, chopped liver?

Hadley just recently renewed a deal with UMass to cover municipal police costs associated with the Mullins Center, which is only partially on Hadley property and the other part in Amherst.

Hadley gets a 10% raise, from $50,000 to $55,000 annually.

But the annoying this is whether the Mullins Center is in Hadley or Amherst, either way, any medical call is handled by Amherst Fire Department, because Hadley does not have an ambulance service.

And on nights the Mullins Center hosts Electronic Dance Music events AFD is often stretched to the breaking point.

The town signed a "Five Year Strategic Partnership" with UMass to cover AFD ambulance runs to campus (but not the more expensive fire related runs) back in 2007.  It expired June 30, 2012 -- almost three years ago!

Sure the pact was continued on an interim basis the past three years and resulted in the regular $370,000 in ambulance reimbursements plus the extra $80,000 UMass kicked in a few years back to cover extra high ambulance demand on weekends when schools are in session.

So even a lousy 10% increase in that formal signed multi-year agreement would generate an extra $45,000 annually, or enough to pay a little over half the salary of the new Economic Development Director.

But after School Superintendent Maria Geryk told the Amherst Finance Committee and Town Meeting that children living in tax exempt UMass housing  cost the Amherst Public Schools well over $1 million annually, the town may be looking for a better offer than a paltry 10% increase.

Representative Stephen Kulik recently filed a bill (with Mass Municipal Association support) that would allow cities and towns to collect from tax exempt entities 25% of what they should be paying if they were assessed like everybody else.

Unfortunately, since UMass is "government" owed, they may still be exempt should the bill miraculously become law.

But at least Amherst could then extract money from Hampshire College the #3 landowner in town who pays nothing for Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, unlike Amherst College who pays $90,000 annually for AFD services.  

Ah, the burdens that come with being a "college town."

Moose (No Longer) On The Loose

Here's lookin' at you kid

A young female moose that had a penchant for the Amherst Public Schools was safely knocked out via tranquillizer dart late this morning along the access road that runs between the Amherst Regional High School and Middle School.

 I'm so pretty, I'm so pretty ...

The Environmental Police used a single well place shot from a tranquilizer gun to knock her out peacefully.  As in, she was not killed. 

Amherst Welfare officer Carol Hepburn was on the scene the entire time, and while she has a tranquilizer gun she is only authorized to use it on domestic pets (mostly dogs) rather than wild critters such as a moose.

 Wildlife District Manager loading up

Bus blockade

School officials immediately closed off the access road using a bus on the Middle School side and wooden barricades on the High School side.

Don't fence me in!

Fortunately the moose was in a fenced in wooded area most of the time.  She was first spotted yesterday in the vicinity of Wildwood Elementary School.

School leaders on scene: Mark Jackson, Marisa Mendonsa, Mike Malone, Maria Geryk

Moose takes the fall 

Bagged and tagged

The (High) Cost Of Preservation

Cost to repair old barn at 35 Tyler Place:  $48,614

Earlier this month the Amherst Historical Commission hit Amherst College with a one-year demolition delay -- the maximum extent of their powers -- to (temporarily) protect the Little Red Schoolhouse.

On June 15 Amherst College will go before the Dickinson Local Historic District Commission to request demolishing an ancient, dilapidated barn at 35 Tyler Place, tucked away in a location invisible to the general public.

The Historical Commission, at their May 19th meeting, voted not to even bother holding a hearing on the matter.  In other words, tear down this barn!  (with apologies to President Reagan).

   Old Amherst College Barn

Interestingly the Dickinson Local Historic Commission is required to hold a hearing and if they vote not to allow the demolition, then that is the end of the story.  Do not tear down this barn! 

In other words they have unlimited power when it comes to preserving a building within the Dickinson Historic District. 

No wonder NIMBYs are chomping at the bit to form Local Historic Districts. 

Community Gardens Go Wanting

Mill Lane Community Gardens

It would appear -- at least from 400 feet up -- that the Amherst Community Garden program is having a bad year for participation.

Which I find surprising since the town is proud to have a book and plow for a town seal.

 Amherst Town seal

Although maybe someday my suggestion will take hold:  changing it to a BANANA.

Certainly it isn't the cost of participation at between only $15 and $35 per year per plot.  And the space at Mill Lane (owned by Amherst College) is not even restricted to Amherst residents only.

 Amethyst Brook Community Gardens

Maybe someday when pot is legalized ...

Elisa Campbell's lupines at Mill Lane Gardens

Solar Sabotage?

i

Solar array on E. Hadley Road, Hadley (just over Amherst border)

Perhaps emboldened by their Amherst NIMBY counterparts who successfully torpedoed a 4-Megawatt solar project at the most perfection location on God's green earth -- an old landfill -- Shutesbury residents are now taking up pitchforks and torches over a proposed 6-Megawatt installation out in the middle of nowhere.

 30 acres out of a total of 830

While the 30 acres the array will require may sound like a lot, it is located on a 830 acre site known as the "Wheelock lot" owned by the state's largest private landowner W.D. Cowls Inc.  The property will be leased for 20 years by a big time Chicago firm, Lake Street Development Partners LLC. 

Since Shutesbury, like Amherst, is a "green community" the permitting of a commercial solar array shows the quaint hilltown can walk the walk rather than just lip-servicing sustainable energy.

In addition the economic benefits from a facility that requires no town services is alone more than enough reason to support the project.

The current offer on the table for Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) is $8,000 per megawatt or $48,000 total, which over the 20 year lease comes to pretty much $1 million dollars.

The entire parcel is currently in the forest conservation program (Ch 61) so total payments to the town in 2015 come to only $891.

   Shutesbury Solar Opposition

The opposition seems to be led by Michael DeChiara which comes as no surprise.  He orchestrated the ill fated M.N. Spear Library expansion Override yes campaign that bitterly divided the town.  And lost. 

And Mr. DeChiara has spent the past three years as the Shutesbury representative to the 4-town Regional Agreement Working Group, which overwhelmingly voted to support the expansion of the current 7-12 Regional School District all the way down to Kindergarten & grades 1 thru 6.  DeChiara voted No. 

The obligatory new website dedicated to opposing the solar project Alliance for Appropriate Development, seems to be drawing plenty of time and attention from Mr. DeChiara:

 Click to enlarge/read

(UPDATE: Friday morning: Since this was first published the website removed the Recent site activity" button at the bottom of the page.  Hmm ...)

Which is fine I suppose.  After all Mr. DeChiara does live there.  But he's also a recently elected member of the Shutesbury Select Board, so you have to wonder when Conflict of Interest law applies.

   Shutesbury Cowls Solar Project