Tuesday, March 24, 2015

257 & Counting

Town Manager & Select Board get to sit at the head table

The Select Board signed the warrant last night and Amherst police posted copies this morning at all the precincts in town so there's no turning back now.  The 257th annual Amherst Town Meeting starts April 27 and runs for as long as it takes (usually two meetings per week) to get through all 30 articles.

A significant reduction from the 42 articles appearing on the warrant last year, which prompted a much talked about editorial in the Springfield Sunday Republican criticizing the molasses like pace of Amherst Town Meeting.

Click to enlarge/read
That year we finished up on June 2nd. 2013 was even worse with 45 articles on the warrant and a dissolving date of June 10th.

30 is not a new record for least amount but it shares that distinction with 2012 and 2009.  At the opposite end of the spectrum 2008 was the largest over the past ten years with 47 articles.

Our $70 million budget is balanced so not much controversy to be generated there.   Additionally, last night the Finance Director told the Select Board that enough savings had been found in health insurance and long term debt payments to cover the cost of the Town Manager's pet project:  A new Economic Development Director.

Police will see a paltry increase of one position but the beleagured Fire Department got burned with no additional staffing.

8 of the 30 articles are via "citizen petition" (it only takes 10 signatures to get on the warrant) and three of the eight are zoning related so they will require a two-thirds vote of Town Meeting to pass.

 Tedious standing vote

One thing that takes up tremendous time every meeting is the procedural process.  Standing votes and tally votes can require 10 or 15 minutes each, and some nights we can have nearly a half-dozen.

Although not in the budget for this year's annual meeting, Finance Director Sandy Pooler did set aside $25,000 for the Fall Town Meeting to buy electronic voting devices for the entire 240 member body.

Which should help speed things up.

Of course the best solution is to reduce the size of the legislative body by 75% and hope some of the more loquacious members do not survive a competitive election. 

 

DUI Dishonor Roll


 Drinking six beers and piloting a pickup truck don't mix

In what will probably be the last somewhat quiet weekend (brought on by Spring Break) until UMass graduation in May, Amherst police still managed to arrest two impaired drivers, Brett Fellows, age 42, and Christopher Chilson, age 25.

 Christopher Chilson stands before Judge John Payne

Amherst police had been called to a house on West Street in South Amherst for reports of a breaking & entering in progress.  The reporting party said she and her boyfriend had barricaded themselves in the basement after hearing glass breaking and then footsteps.

Police surrounded the house but found nothing.

Until Mr. Chilson came roaring along in his F350 pickup truck.

Click to enlarge/read

Amherst Police also arrested Brett Fellows, in spite of his refusal to take the Field Sobriety Test.  He also refused the chemical breath test back at police headquarters, which will make it somewhat harder to prosecute the case.

Both individuals had a plea of "not guilty" entered in their behalf and their cases were continued until next month after they each told the Judge they would be hiring a private attorney.

 Brett Fellows arraigned before Judge Payne

Housing Authority Votes Budget

Amherst Housing Authority

The Amherst Housing Authority voted unanimously yesterday to approve a $1,662,631 budget for the upcoming 2016 Fiscal Year which includes a 2% increase in employee pay, although Executive Director Denise LeDuc, whose contract was extended two years, garnered a 1.5% increase to around $88,000 annually.

 Commission member Laura Quinn

During the routine approval of minutes Commission member Laura Quinn criticized the record keeping from the March 2nd meeting as "cryptic". 

When asked to explain by outgoing Chair Paul Bobrowski she pointed out that her suggestion the Executive Director performance review be tied to her contract extension did not make it into the minutes.

The minutes were then amended to reflect her concerns, although not before audience member Alan Root complained they had been "sanitized."

 Alan Root leaning in

The Amherst Housing Authority owns 191 units of housing in Amherst and manages another 36 units.  But their main influence with providing affordable housing comes via a "voucher" program.  The AHA oversees a federally funded Section 8 Rental program where they are authorized to issue up to 413 vouchers, which assists renters based on their income.

Housing Urban Development funding for that voucher program has returned from pre sequestation levels.  In the upcoming fiscal year the AHA will receive $3,077,917 or enough to fund 390 vouchers, 23 less than their maximum.

Currently over 600 people/families are on the waiting list to receive a voucher.

Since the vouchers are based on a recipients income things can change from month to month. If the person loses their job then the amount of the voucher goes up thus making it hard to project overall costs.

Annual HUD funding is based on previous year's spending so if you have too much money left over your funding next year could go down, but if your average voucher goes up too much and the budget is overrun, they have to dip into reserves.  

  

Sunday, March 22, 2015

If You Can't Stand The Heat




Anytime you pack a room with town officials, board and committee members -- appointed or elected -- you're bound to have a few grumps.

So I didn't really mind so much the venom spewed towards the media by Shelburne Board of Selectmen Chair John Payne -- it was more the ovation he received from the rest of the crowd.

Although I did notice Stan Rosenberg, who organized the Hampshire & Franklin Municipal Conference, calling his speech finale, "fighting words."

What the Attorney General needs to do is put more teeth into the Open Meeting Law.  Make an example of offenders who knowingly violate the law, not by fining the committee or board $1,000 so the taxpayers get stuck paying it.

Fine every individual member of the board $1,000 that must be paid out of their own pocket.  Then you will see a dramatic improvement in compliance.  If that doesn't do it, then try a jail sentence.

Making the job of the media a little easier via a strong Open Meeting Law only brings better enlightenment to the multitudes of citizens who rely on the media for vital information about their local government.  

If you can't deal with transparency then don't volunteer or run for public office.

Where There's Smoke



Extravaganja 2013 attracted typical crowd of 6,000 fans to the Amherst Town Common

Now I know it's Spring!  The preliminary paperwork for the town common pot rally is in the pipeline.  Or maybe I should say bong line. 

The Amherst Select Board will discuss parking approvals Monday night for the 24th annual Extravaganja festival coming this April 18th to a bucolic town green near you.

The event is promoted by the UMass Amherst Cannabis Reform Coalition and every year manages to attract many thousands of aficionados to Amherst town center for an afternoon of live music, food, and camaraderie all punctuated by the pungent fragrance of pot.

Some of the original adherents from two decades ago have probably gone on to high profile positions in the state legislature, paving the way to legalization in the next year or two.

Considering the awful toll legally ubiquitous alcohol wreaks on our little "college town", perhaps not such a bad thing.

The pot rally coexists with the Amherst Farmers Market

Saturday, March 21, 2015

North Amherst: Can't Stop Progress

 The sun also rises over entrepreneurial rebuilding

The renovation of a former cow barn for Atkins North is moving along at flank speed and may actually see satisfied customers before the end of August, in time for when the swallows, err, students return to Capistrano, err, Amherst.

Not that a chic operation like Atkins needs to rely on students.

 Helpful that Cowls President Cinda Jones husband can operate an excavator

Large windows are framed in the south wall

South east corner needed the most work

Adjacent abandoned barn is almost contigious

The immediate neighboring barn, however, may not be as fortunate as the cow barn.  Last July 22nd the Amherst Historical Commission placed a one year demo delay on the ancient structure, but no plans have been forthcoming for its revitalization.

W.D. Cowls President Cinda Jones would like to save the barn and is willing to lease it for $1/year for 20 years to anyone who can renovate it with a business plan that's complimentary to the The Mill District.  

 Roof is starting to collapse
And has plenty of holes

Otherwise, in the interest of public safety -- especially Atkins North customers -- the building will come down.  The clock is ticking.

Currently the barn screens the Mill District from neighbors along Montague Road

Affordable Housing Incentives

Boltwood Place (12 units) valued at $1.7 million could have saved $34,000 tax bill 1st year

Town officials are busy crafting a Special Act Home Rule Petition article that must pass Amherst Town Meeting before it goes to the state legislature for their approval to allow the Select Board to give property tax breaks to developers -- especially in areas where such development is cost prohibitive.

The tax incentive -- which could hypothetically zero out property tax for the first year or two and then phase in over the next eight years -- is seen as complimentary tool to work alongside the Planning Board's new Inclusionary Zoning article, which also requires Town Meeting approval ... two-thirds no less.

Because of irregular lot sizes and high cost of land the downtown and other village centers are especially problematic for developers to create far less profitable affordable units in their projects. 

According to Planning Board Chair David Webber:

In exchange for the 10% requirement and to make the resulting developments more economically viable the Inclusionary Zoning article gives certain “cost offsets.” These include increased height, floors, and lot coverage among other things.  

The Planning Board supports this article even without tax incentives because we believe it will be a substantial improvement over the current bylaw which has not resulted in any constructed affordable housing units. 

It is the downtown (BG) and adjoining areas that are already built out to the lot lines where the proposed non-zoning article will likely be needed.  That consists of a home-rule petition to allow discretionary tax incentives for affordable units (i.e. not tax them for up to 10 years) where the IZ incentives are not enough.  

Together these provisions should result in new, deeded affordable units without stifling new residential development.
The Planning Board has been diligently planning their Inclusionary Zoning article for the past year, and town officials have used tax incentives in the past with Atkins Farms Country Market in South Amherst and the Cushman Village Store in North Amherst to stimulate development.

Amherst has one of the highest housing costs in Western Massachusetts because of the presence of UMass Amherst, which also causes our "college town" to have the lowest medium age in the state.

The average working middle class family is priced out of the market because they can't compete with the per bed rental model absentee landlords rely on to market property to "college age youth." 

And NIMBYs are nothing if not organized -- fighting housing developments an all fronts like Muhammad Ali in his prime.

The simple formula is as old as capitalism itself:  supply must at least come close to satisfying demand.