Alisa for Amherst Blogspot

More H1N1 Immunization Clinics: Now for ages 6 mos to 65 years, Wed Dec 2 @UMass Campus Ctr Audit, Sat Dec 12 @Bangs

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:41:00 +0000

More H1N1 Immunization Clinics: Now for ages 6 mos to 65 years, Wed Dec 2 @UMass Campus Ctr Audit and Sat Dec 12 @Bangs

Please note: Clinics are open to ages 6 months – 65, while supplies last.

More info:

http://www.umass.edu/uhs/services/publichealth/

http://www.amherstma.gov/
http://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=2874

H1N1 Immunization Clinic for Amherst kids Wednesday 11-11-09 @ARMS 9 am - 1 pm

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:43:00 +0000

If your pediatrician/obstetrician still doesn't have H1N1 immunizations available (like Amherst Pediatrics doesn't for all their patients yet:-( check out the H1N1 Immunization Clinic for Amherst kids Wednesday 11-11-09 @ARMS 9 am - 1 pm.

Q: Who can get the H1N1 immunization at this clinic tomorrow, Wednesday 11-11-09?
A: Only people who fall into one of these three categories:
1. Amherst residents who are pregnant
2. Amherst residents living with an infant younger than 6 months
3. Amherst & Amherst-Pelham schools students from Amherst, Pelham, Leverett, or Shutesbury who are age 17 and under (must be accompanied to the clinic by their parent or guardian)

Q: What should I do if I need a ride to the H1N1 clinic at the Middle School?
A: Call the hotline, 413-259-3075

Q: How much does it cost?
A: Free! No payment will be accepted at the clinic, however, please bring your insurance information so that the Town can recover some costs of providing this clinic

Q: What paperwork should I bring other than my insurance card information?
A: Download this form from the Town website or the schools website or pick it up from any Amherst public school, Town Hall, or the Bangs Center. Complete as much of the form as you can before you get in line at the clinic so that things move more quickly.

Q: Will my child get the nasal spray or the shot?
A: Most will get the nasal spray. See the information sheets for the nasal spray (live virus) and the shot (inactivated)

Q: My child was already sick with what everyone says was probably H1N1 -- should my child still get the H1N1 vaccine?
A: If your child was diagnosed with H1N1 based on an H1N1 test, then your child does not need the vaccine. If your child was assumed to have H1N1, but no test was taken, then your child should still get the vaccine. This is also applies to pregnant women and adults living with infants younger than 6 months.

Q: Will this immunization clinic provide H1N1 and seasonal flu immunizations?
A: No. This clinic is for H1N1 immunizations only.

Q: I'd rather drop my child off with the paperwork -- is this OK?
A: No. All children must be accompanied by their parent or guardian.

Q: How long will it take to get through the line?
A: We've never done this before! Recent seasonal flu clinics held by a private company at various CVS locations had a two hour wait. Please bring the things you usually provide for your children when they have a long wait -- books, coloring/small crafts, handheld games or music players with headphones, snacks, water, etc.

Q: I have more questions. Who should I call?
A: Call the hotline, 413-259-3075

RSVP for the private Amherst July 4, 2009 Parade

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:49:00 +0000

Regionalization Materials File Drawer

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:26:00 +0000

K-6 Regionalization Study Committee

Saturday, March 7, 2009
9:30-11:30 a.m.
Professional Development Center
Amherst Regional Middle School

AGENDA

1.Charge to the Committee

2.Welcome and Introduction
Maria Geryk, Interim Superintendent
Rob Detweiler, Director of Finance and Operations/Meeting Facilitator

3.Historical Perspective on Regionalization

4.Framing the Current Issue

5.Select K-6 Regionalization Study Committee Chair

6.Identify Factors to Consider

7.Perspectives from Each Town

8.Discuss the Process for Investigating the Factors to Consider

9.Committee Planning—Set Future Meeting Dates

possible next steps
1.Invite Christine Lynch from DESE to meet w/the committee
a.Suggestions for other communities to visit
2.Identify data needed to complete research/investigation
a.Share data from each town
b.Organize the factors for consideration
3.Identify resources needed to complete research/investigation
a.Facilities
b.Staff support
c.Budget

Leverett Elementary School Google Group related to Franklin County Public Education Study Committee

Together we won't
The governor plans to improve education by merging school districts. But other states have tried it - and it doesn't work.

By Elaine McArdle | March 8, 2009 Boston Globe

IN THE ONGOING effort to fix America's ailing schools, one of the most popular ideas is to shrink the number of school districts.

The country once had more than 130,000 independent districts managed by local communities. Merging them into larger units, advocates said, would lead to a more efficient system, reducing costs while offering students more opportunities and producing better academic results. This approach, part of a larger movement to standardize schools, reduced the number of districts by 90 percent between 1930 and 1970.

With budgets under fire, consolidation is again gaining traction as a way to save money. Today, more than a dozen states - including Maine and Vermont - have seriously considered or already implemented plans for fewer, larger districts. And last June, when Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts announced his comprehensive education reform agenda, he made consolidation a top priority. Reducing the number of districts will improve the quality of education, he has said. Virtually every district in the state is a candidate for consolidation if it's determined that merging with another district would benefit its academic performance, according to J.D. LaRock, chief policy adviser for the state education office.

But a wave of research from around the country shows that consolidation does not improve schools or lead to better academic results. Spending on education does not go down; indeed, budgets often balloon with increased transportation costs and more administrators to run enlarged districts. Consolidation leads to schools closing and to bigger schools, with less parental involvement and community participation. And, in many parts of the United States, it has led to children on unconscionable bus rides lasting several hours a day.

"There is either no advantage or actually a disadvantage to making these enormous uber-districts," says Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., who has conducted two major studies on consolidation. "They just don't help kids."

As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University several years ago, Christopher R. Berry became intrigued with the idea that district consolidation was, in his words, "arguably the most profound reform movement in 20th-century education." Yet almost no one had studied its effects on students.

Now an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, Berry set out to fill that vacuum. Focusing on 1930 to 1970, the most intense period of consolidation in the United States, he found that consolidation of districts inevitably resulted in the consolidation of schools - closing schools and moving to bigger schools. With regard to student achievement, consolidation was "generally negative," he says, because dropout rates and wages earned by graduates got worse following mergers. (There was no standardized testing of student performance at the time.) His study, "Growing Pains: The School Consolidation Movement and Student Outcomes," co-authored with Martin R. West and published in 2008 in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, also concluded that spending on education did not decrease following consolidation.

These findings challenged the entire consolidation movement, which was spearheaded with almost no critical inquiry by state officials and educational administrators, says Berry. "They seem to be convinced, almost as a matter of professional ideology, that bigger must be better," he says.

Several years ago, when Michigan began promoting consolidation, the Cato Institute's Coulson undertook a study there and in three other states and reached the same conclusion as Berry. If the goal is to improve academics, there is "no advantage whatsoever to either breaking up districts or consolidating districts," says Coulson. A 2007 study by Indiana University researchers found student achievement is not improved by consolidation; a 2008 study in Iowa found dropout rates did not decline after district mergers.

Proponents insist that larger districts are cheaper. In theory, big districts can achieve efficiencies of scale with lower per-pupil costs because fixed expenses are spread among a larger student body, and bigger districts have the power to negotiate better prices for supplies and utilities. But studies show the anticipated savings usually don't materialize. Like Berry's research, the Iowa study, by Brian Knight at Brown University and Nora Gordon at the University of California, San Diego, found per-pupil spending did not decrease after consolidation. It is true that very small districts - with fewer than 500 students, say - are the most expensive on a per-pupil basis, and merging them has the potential to significantly reduce per-pupil costs. But these districts represent a tiny fraction of any state's educational budget, so combining them has minimal effect on total costs, says John Yinger of Syracuse University, who in 2001 published with William Duncombe a study of district consolidation in New York State.

Moreover, there's no guarantee that consolidating even tiny districts will save money, Yinger emphasizes: The very process of consolidation is expensive, including new buildings and the often-substantial financial incentives states give to local communities to encourage mergers. Transportation costs can skyrocket with hauling kids to schools farther away. If there are cost savings, they often don't show up for a decade or more, according to Yinger, whose study was published as a working paper for the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse. Moreover, there was no indication that any money saved was funneled back into schools to improve academics, he says.

Meanwhile, Coulson has data that should give consolidation proponents real pause. If states are truly serious about cost savings, they should be focusing on breaking up big districts rather than combining smaller ones, he says. In Michigan, breaking up districts larger than 3,000 students would save the state 12 times as much as merging small ones: $363 million a year versus $31 million a year, he found. Yet there's rarely any discussion of this option, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.

Governor Patrick is on an ambitious schedule. He wants a substantial reduction in the Commonwealth's 329 districts, although he hasn't settled on the ideal number and district size, and legislation to that end will be introduced in the next year to 18 months, according to Secretary of Education Paul Reville. The governor and his administration are convinced that fewer districts will translate into better academics: each district will be larger, and larger districts perform better, they say.

In December, the governor's office released a study that found that larger districts in Massachusetts were academically outpacing smaller ones. Specifically, it found that on a continuum, districts closer to 5,000 pupils were more likely to have eighth-graders who perform better on the MCAS than smaller districts, as well as lower rates of student absenteeism.

"It's not all on one side, but there are some key indicators on which it does appear large districts have an advantage," says LaRock, primary author of the report. (The national studies on consolidation and research from other states are not particularly relevant, he argues, saying each state has a different educational structure.)

But a competing report in Massachusetts has found that small districts achieve better academic results. Last September, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents' Small and Rural School District Task Force completed a yearlong study that examined student performance in the Commonwealth. It found that the graduation rates in small districts were 6.5 percent higher than the state average, and small districts had a lower dropout rate and better attendance rates. Only 6 percent of small districts were considered "underperforming," compared with 20 percent statewide, according to standards set by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The 10th-grade MCAS is a more important indicator than the eighth-grade scores, the task force believes, and here smaller districts have an advantage. "On the 10th-grade MCAS, the small districts outperformed the midsized and large," says Nicholas Young, superintendent in Hadley and a vocal opponent of forced consolidation. "Some of the highest-performing districts are at or under 1,000 students."

If saving money is the goal, says Young, there are many studies that support effective but less-drastic approaches that keep schools in local hands, such as purchasing collaboratives, in which independent districts join together to buy supplies or utilities, or share certain teachers or administrators. In Maine, consolidation opponents are pushing this option. Reville says he is open to this approach but says it doesn't substitute for consolidation because fewer districts will lead to better schools through streamlined administration and centralized control over education.

"When we talk about thinking and acting like a school system instead of system of schools, I think of places like Maryland, where [the state superintendent of schools] can get 24 superintendents around a table a couple of times a month if she needs to talk about educational policy . . . to get everyone on the same page, to connect it with a system of higher education," Reville says. "There are operational advantages."

For more than 80 years, well-intentioned people have been trying to make schools better this way. And it seems logical.

It just doesn't work.

Elaine McArdle is a writer in Cambridge.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

local news updates
updated
Friday, 1:34 PM
From the Metro staff at The Boston Globe
School districts to study regionalization
February 27, 2009 11:00 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By James Vaznis, Globe Staff

Financially strapped communities from Cape Cod to the Berkshires will receive state grants to study the possibility of regionalizing their school districts, which state education leaders say could lead to greater cost efficiencies.

At a press conference this morning at the public high school in Greenfield, state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester announced that Greenfield's schools, along with other districts across the state, would receive the first batch of grants from a new state program that is urging regionalization. Each grant ranges between $15,000 and $25,000.

"This funding is meant to jumpstart a movement across the state to find ways for our smaller communities to work together, learn from one another and share expenses in a manner that makes sense fiscally and educationally," Chester said in a statement. "I am pleased that in a year when money is so tight we have [been] able to maintain this effort as a priority."

Greenfield, located in the western part of the state, is looking to merge its 1,500 students and eight schools with the neighboring Gill-Montague Regional School District, which has 1,000 students and five schools. Both districts have fallen upon tough financial times.

Merging the state's smallest school districts into larger entities is one of the many initiatives Governor Deval Patrick laid out in his sweeping state education overhaul effort known as the Readiness Project. The proposal calls for "dramatically reducing the number of school districts in the state" so less money is spent on administrative services and more can be spent in classrooms. All but 41 of the state's nearly 400 school districts serve fewer than 5,000 students.

Districts do not need to fully consolidate with a neighbor to yield savings. Districts could maintain independence while forming partnerships to run school buses, lunch programs, or special education services. The districts could even share superintendents and other central administrators, while keeping their districts as separate entities.

"In light of the current fiscal climate, this type of a collaborative effort is a key step towards finding a more manageable way of funding our public education system, and achieving the goal of providing all students quality education in the classroom," said state Senator Benjamin Downing.

In addition to Greenfield, districts receiving grants include: Ayer, Berkshire Hills Regional, Frontier Regional, Hadley, Harwich, Holland, Mahar Regional, Mohawk Regional, Nauset Regional, Westfield, and Boxford.

The Commonwealth Review podcast: Bob Pura talks School Regionalization

Remember to Vote TWO Ballots in Amherst tomorrow:-)

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:40:00 +0000

Remember that in Amherst, you need *two* ballots tomorrow, don't forget in all the excitement! Sample Amherst ballots

How Alisa is voting on Tuesday November 4, 2008:

Aaron Hayden for Amherst Select Board

(and yes, Obama/Biden & all the incumbents)

Questions:

1. NO A No vote would make no change in state income tax laws

2. YES A Yes vote would replace the criminal penalties for possession of one ounce or less of marijuana with a new system of civil penalties

3. NO A No vote would make no change in the laws governing dog racing

4. NO so that the CPA tax is retained at 1.5%, not increased to 3%

5. YES for single payer health insurance and for not penalizing people for not buying crappy overpriced insurance (editorializing mine:-) (non-binding)

6. YES for pressuring us to do better with the greening of America, although I also understand this reason to vote No (non-binding)

BCG FY09+ Budget Forum on Monday February 11th starting at 7 pm in the Middle School Auditorium

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:39:00 +0000

[copy of email sent to 433 Amherst community members]

OK, folks, attached.pdf hot of the press from the schools (coming home in backpacks on Thursday, I think).

You can also provide a link to the Town website front page, middle:
http://www.amherstma.gov/

Get it out there, please. We need lots of people *throughout Amherst* to understand what's going on if we're going to do anything other than rearrange deck chairs while we decimate the elementary schools in FY09, and we need a *plan* that gets us on track to survive (and thrive!) without some magical infusion of funds from the state and federal governments, because they are *not* coming to save us, no matter how hard we lobby them! (although yes, you still have to do the lobbying:-)

Talk to a BCG member if you have any questions; this is their show:
http://www.amherstma.gov/departments/Budget_Coordinating_Group/default.asp?id=77&mypage=77&myName=Budget+Coordinating+Group

Thanks so much for helping make our community what we all want it to be!

Take care,
Alisa

February 5, 2008 Primary Amherst Precinct Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:28:00 +0000

Clinton-Obama-Other Dems

Precinct 1: 136-291-12
Precinct 2: 242-477-09
Precinct 3: 104-213-05
Precinct 4: 104-213-03 (not a typo!)
Precinct 5: 167-351-14
Precinct 6: 305-611-25
Precinct 7: 236-527-24
Precinct 8: 364-749-14
Precinct 9: 194-465-05
Precinct 10:102-242-07
Total someone:-) provided: 1954-4139-128

Random wonderings about how Town Meeting is going to go this Fall 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:23:00 +0000

Interesting excerpt from the David Brooks New York Times "Happiness Gap" column published in The Republican (Springfield, MA) pg A16 Thursday November 1, 2007:

"In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt could launch the New Deal because voters wanted to change the country and their own lives. But today, people want the government to change so their own lives can stay the same. Voters don't want to be transformed; they want to be defended."

The basic upshot of Brooks' take on some Pew Research Center survey results is that as individuals, American voters are happy with their lives and also expect their lives to get better, although at the same time they believe their country and their government is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

I'm trying to figure out why this resonates with me for local politics as well as for the Presidential election that Brooks is focusing on.

Amherst has some number of folks who want the Town to stay the same as it was the day they arrived -- and given the transient (oops - mobile) nature of our population due especially to the five colleges, that arrival day may be last week, or ten years ago, or thirty years ago, or four generations ago -- and those folks don't seem to want to acknowledge that things in Amherst have changed and will change, like it or not, even since just ten years ago (disclosure: I've been here almost that long).

I'm trying to figure out why the clearly unhappy people, who fight so many of the changes we are challenged to consider as a community, are able to organize their unhappiness so effectively, while many of those who are strongly supportive of some change are too busy to sit through meetings and proclamations based on consensus. Sure, a lot of it in Amherst is the "aristocracy of time," as my friend Rich M refers to it. The people who can "afford" to spend time in all kinds of meetings -- plus the uber-meeting, Town Meeting -- are definitely people of some varied viewpoints, but all together they are admittedly unlikely to be representative of the entire breadth and depth of Amherst-resident views. So much of life is based on who shows up, so...

When it comes to community bylaws, zoning, and budgets, do retired white academics view the issues the same way as a single mother of color who has lived in poverty for two generations or more? Do we need to find ways to have all of us hear from the single mother on an ongoing basis, or is the retired white academic "channeling" his/her hopes for the "downtrodden" enough? What about retired academics of color -- should we worry that they're not serving in our numerous volunteer government positions in representative-of-our-population numbers? What about the number of visibly mentally ill people -- where do their views get meaningfully considered during any part of this process? And what about the college students? Do they get any say?

Do the folks we're not hearing from at meetings, in the newspapers, and/or on the listservs want Amherst to remain the same?

Do they notice the effect of state Proposition 2 1/2 on our town services? Have they suffered any ill effects due to the failure of our 2007 override vote?

Do they want to see some denser development in some areas of town, or do they think it's better to have more areas with a single large house on a two acre lot? Does "denser development" mean small, close together, single family houses? Accessory apartments in already built-out neighborhoods? Mixed-use buildings with retail on the ground floor, offices above that, and condos above that? Where?

Do they depend on the PVTA bus to get to work, school, food shopping, and/or medical appointments? Do they agree that significant local tax dollars should be spent on serving 5-15 riders at any given time, or are the routes paid for mainly by UMass (e.g., the Old Belchertown Rd bus that goes to Valley Medical) adequate for their needs?

That's just skimming the surface, of course.

Questions like these have indeed been considered in the Comprehensive Planning Committee's Planning Amherst Together process, including a survey, multiple questionnaires, small meetings, large meetings, etc.. Some progress in reaching those not often heard from has been made due to huge amounts of thought and effort on the CPCs part, but we all know that there is simply no way for the results of all those efforts to seem as though they've perfectly captured every single nuance of the issues. I'm something of a perfectionist by nature, but I know the efforts and results of the CPC work enable me to say "the perfect is the enemy of the good." The draft Master Plan is still being worked on, and should get to the Planning Board for their statutory approval a few months before Annual (Spring) Town Meeting. This will give everyone time to consider the many ideas in the Master Plan as they develop their Town Meeting warrant articles.

So why are we going forward with the zoning articles on the upcoming Special Town Meeting (the one we have every Fall, but it's always "special" if it's not the Spring Annual) beginning Monday Nov 5, 2007? Why not wait for the Planning Board to approve the Master Plan?

Because the results have already been made widely available through the town website and a variety of meetings, and ongoing meetings can always be attended by anyone. The zoning articles on this upcoming Special Town Meeting are significant and they can proceed now. For a great perspective, see this week's Amherst Bulletin piece by my friend Carol S.

Back to Brooks and how it applies locally: maybe the folks who are afraid are the ones who want the government to change to ensure their fear remains codified.

We don't need to be afraid of our decisions. We can decide to pass these zoning articles with the necessary 2/3 vote, and move on to making more decisions in the best interest of the viability of our community in both the short and long term. Arguing zoning pieces to death (or referring them, again) takes up time we need for figuring out how to deliver programs and services our residents need during these extremely difficult -- and likely to get far worse before they get better -- financial times. Keep moving forward!

Even as I try to shed some cynicism, Demotivators never let me down

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:40:00 +0000

...we need to get rid of cynicism in politics...

although then again, as quoted by Craig Sandler of the State House News Service at the MMA Massachusetts Selectmen's Association Fall Conference on Saturday October 13, 2007:

"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." - Lily Tomlin in "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"

Tradition @Despair, Inc.

Interpreting the Ethics Laws: No Action Taken by State Ethics Commission

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:50:00 +0000

Update on the Ethics complaints filed by Larry Kelley:

Daily Hampshire Gazette:
This just in to the Gazette Newsroom

State ethics complaint against Amherst Select Board members closed without any action taken
By SCOTT MERZBACH Staff Writer

AMHERST -- The state Ethics Commission complaint filed against two members of the Select Board has been closed without any action being taken.

Information obtained from board members Rob Kusner and Alisa Brewer Wednesday morning, who were the subjects of the complaint, as well as from complainant Larry Kelley of South Pleasant Street, reveals that the matter was closed because the appropriate disclosures had been filed by both board members with the town clerk.

Kelley said he was surprised and disappointed by the decision "I'm not overly pleased with it," Kelley said.

The original complaint was filed by Kelley because Kusner and Brewer, who both voted in favor of a waiver on effluent fees for the University of Massachusetts, have connections to the university. Kusner is a mathematics professor, while Brewer's husband is a UMass professor.

Kelley maintains that the Select Board should at least have to do over its vote because the formal disclosures were not filed with town clerk until a week after the vote.

See more about the decision in Thursday's print edition of the Gazette and on GazetteNET.

You are receiving this email because you have subscribed to this blog.
-------------

Alisa says: Verbal disclosure is sufficient. Verbal disclosure was made at the September 17th Select Board meeting. Case closed. If you're interested in actual ethics violations, check out these enforcement actions.

Ethics Commission

268A:23. Supplemental provisions; standards of conduct.

Section 23. (a) In addition to the other provisions of this chapter, and in supplement thereto, standards of conduct, as hereinafter set forth, are hereby established for all state, county and municipal employees.

(b) No current officer or employee of a state, county or municipal agency shall knowingly, or with reason to know:
...

(3) act in a manner which would cause a reasonable person, having knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to conclude that any person can improperly influence or unduly enjoy his favor in the performance of his official duties, or that he is likely to act or fail to act as a result of kinship, rank, position or undue influence of any party or person. It shall be unreasonable to so conclude if such officer or employee has disclosed in writing to his appointing authority or, if no appointing authority exists, discloses in a manner which is public in nature, the facts which would otherwise lead to such a conclusion.

Previous posting on this blog:

268A:19. Municipal employees, relatives or associates; financial interest in particular matter.
...

(b) It shall not be a violation of this section
...

(3) if the particular matter involves a determination of general policy and the interest of the municipal employee or members of his immediate family is shared with a substantial segment of the population of the municipality.

Annual Town Election Date Announced: Tuesday April 1, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:11:00 +0000

Last night the Select Board voted to hold the next Annual Town Election on a date separate from the Presidential Primary of Tuesday March 4, 2008, due to the many pieces of information provided by the Town Clerk and others about the level of complication vs the benefits of holding the elections at the same time. The cost savings at most might have been $3,600.00, and compared to the confusion of four Primary ballots plus a local ballot...it just wasn't going to work out.

Please, mark your calendars: Annual Town Election Tuesday April 1, 2008, polls open 7:00 am - 8:00 pm

Town Meeting Vacancies: Four Seats Open

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:01:00 +0000

IN THE NEWS
Posted 9/28/2007

Town of Amherst Representative Town Meeting Vacancies

The following Town Meeting vacancies exist:

Precinct 3: 1 vacancy

Precinct 7: 1 vacancy

Precinct 10: 2 vacancies

In accordance with Section 1.5422 of the Amherst Town Government Act, the above vacancies may be filled by filing a petition with the Town Clerk to request a special meeting. The petition shall be signed by no fewer than 10 elected town meeting members from said precinct.

For more information contact the Town Clerk’s Office by email or phone 413-259-3035.

Updated September 28, 2007.
======
Current Town Meeting members

Interpreting the Ethics Laws

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:33:00 +0000

Ethics Commission

The vote Mr Kelley didn't like will not be overturned because the Ethics Commission will find that UMass faculty (or faculty wife, in my case) does not have a financial interest in the outcome of the vote, and (b)(3) applies.

I noted the following on Stephanie's blog: Stephanie, if you'd rather we take any continuance of this thread to Larry's blog or mine, rather than continue here, please let us know:-)

268A:19. Municipal employees, relatives or associates; financial interest in particular matter.

Section 19. (a) Except as permitted by paragraph (b), a municipal employee who participates as such an employee in a particular matter in which to his knowledge he, his immediate family or partner, a business organization in which he is serving as officer, director, trustee, partner or employee, or any person or organization with whom he is negotiating or has any arrangement concerning prospective employment, has a financial interest, shall be punished by a fine of not more than three thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than two years, or both.

(b) It shall not be a violation of this section

(l) if the municipal employee first advises the official responsible for appointment to his position of the nature and circumstances of the particular matter and makes full disclosure of such financial interest, and receives in advance a written determination made by that official that the interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services which the municipality may expect from the employee, or

(2) if, in the case of an elected municipal official making demand bank deposits of municipal funds, said official first files with the clerk of the city or town, a statement making full disclosure of such financial interest, or

(3) if the particular matter involves a determination of general policy and the interest of the municipal employee or members of his immediate family is shared with a substantial segment of the population of the municipality.

Choices for Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 7 pm abound!

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:21:00 +0000

If you aren't going to the ARMS Open House at 7 pm Thursday September 27, please, please attend the Planning Amherst Together "Premiere" aka "Citizens Review" (yes, I know why people like to use "citizen" in this context, but I much prefer "residents" or "townspeople," myself:-)

FY09 Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:08:00 +0000

Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 12:08:45 PM
To: Select Board
Subject: comments for priorities discussion

Hi all,

I thought I would send along a summary of my comments from last Thursday night's priorities discussion:

1. We need to stop looking at % of revenue from residences and businesses and look instead at the bottom line - dollars. If we have a $1.5M gap, how will we close it?

2. We have a couple of examples in town that can give us a glimpse of how we might generate more revenues. Veridian Village, the seniors-focused development going up at Hampshire College, is projected to bring in $700k in annual tax revenues. The JPI taxable student housing complex that was proposed for North Amherst was estimated to
bring in $500k in annual tax revenues. Maybe we could still do something like this, siting it in a different location if necessary. Anyway, that's $1.2M right there.

3. There was a column in the Gazette a couple of months ago [below] that noted that companies in Boston are having trouble getting workers because they can't afford to buy housing there. Our housing costs aren't great, but they're more affordable than Boston. We could recruit a company or two from the Boston area to set up a research-based shop here, consistent with our values and the higher ed strengths we have here - say alternative energy or software development.

The point is, there are real projects that can generate real dollars. I don't know all the details on this, and I would say most of us don't. But we have people on staff in our town who could do the research, crunch the numbers, and give us some options. Maybe we should ask them to do that.

Andy C

[Originally published in Daily Hampshire Gazette on: Friday, June 15, 2007]

The knowledge economy: How our region can help end the state's brain drain
BY WILLIAM POHL

'Attracting and retaining recent college graduates in an effort to create a knowledge-based economy is one of the hottest trends in economic development today," says Rob DeRocker, executive vice president of Development Counsellors International, a New York firm that helps companies relocate.

In the same June 11 article in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Stopping the Brain Drain," Lauren Tara LaCapra notes that "a large pool of well-educated young people can be just as important to creating a vibrant economy as big employers and real-estate development. But for that to happen, competitive jobs must be available, as well as vibrant nightlife and other forms of entertainment."

Reading this, I couldn't help making comparisons to our Five College community. We have vibrant culture coupled with a high quality of life in a pleasant rural setting. We have easy access to Springfield, Providence, Hartford and Boston. We have decent transportation infrastructure including Route 91 and the Mass Pike, a freight railroad, and Westover and Bradley International Airports. And we have a supply of affordable housing with acreage and superb school systems available for a fraction of the cost of a free-standing home in Boston, which today costs from $650,000 to $2 million.

Given all these local amenities, why don't more graduates of our colleges remain in our region? The answer is simple. It's jobs. According to LaCapra, research indicates that most college graduates choose to remain in the towns where they graduate, assuming they can get decent jobs that take advantage of an increasingly expensive education. But when it comes to the creation of decent-paying knowledge-based jobs that tend to raise living standards for all area workers, our community is largely missing the boat.

Consider the numbers. UMass-Amherst boasts "a distinguished faculty that has achieved a reputation for excellence earning national and international recognition in fields ranging from computer science, business, nanotechnology, polymer science and engineering." It educates some 25,000 students a year, including an impressive number of MBAs from the Isenberg School of Management. Add to that 20,000 more students annually from Smith, Amherst, Hampshire and Mount Holyoke, plus kids from local community colleges and trade schools, and you have a powerful degree factory capable of churning out America's future innovators at an impressive rate.

So, again, one asks, where are the cutting-edge jobs for graduates of our own knowledge industry? The short answer is: not here! Despite our brain trust, most positions in the local classifieds advertise unskilled or old-economy jobs that average from $15,000 to $25,000 in annual wages. No way are you going to entice a UMass grad student with a Ph.D. in nanotechnology to stay on in the area if the best job available is to be a big box cashier or a forklift operator. That graduate leaves, and the monetary benefits of his higher education go with him to places like New York and Boston.

Now, in fairness, there are some bright spots in our area, including the Renewable Resource Energy Lab (RERL) at UMass, which focuses on creating wind energy, a handful of start-ups like Vegetable Energy Group LLC, and a growing health services sector anchored by excellent hospitals like Bay State Medical Center. We have chambers of commerce, a Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council and various research and industrial liaison offices at the university.

Still, it's the larger picture that is troubling. Given the huge scope of our academic community, knowledge-job creation here remains anemic and underwhelming relative to other parts of the country. We continue to be a net exporter of talent to intellectual centers like Route 128 and Cambridge with thriving biotech and high-tech knowledge jobs. Most of our local graduates are forced to take their diplomas and leave.

Given that our community's major industry - education - is tax-exempt, our selectmen and mayors and our college faculty and administrators should redouble their efforts to expand the tax base and remove an increasingly onerous tax burden on residential property owners. Amherst and Northampton in particular should think out of the box and become far more business-friendly. Understand that knowledge jobs at major tech companies bring in an average of $1.5 million of annual revenue per worker. (With a more diversified tax base, communities that host such companies are not voting on tax overrides to pay for basic services like police officers and teachers.) Furthermore, our towns should acknowledge that new economy growth need not be to the exclusion of existing small businesses: our farms, schools, museums, tourist industry or the arts and entertainment sector. Indeed, these very assets make our region a more attractive knowledge-economy candidate than many other college areas.

We can make excuses for the brain drain in the Five College region but while our area languishes, other academic communities are thriving. Over the past 20 years in New Jersey, Rutgers and Princeton have attracted companies from Merrill Lynch and Forrester Research to Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Tyco - concerns that employ thousands of local grads, which, in turn, generate millions of tax dollars that flow back to that community.

The same is true in the Raleigh-Durham collegiate area of North Carolina - an area comparable in size to the Pioneer Valley. Since the 1980s these pro-business towns have used tax incentives and other means to lure anchor companies like IBM to their academic communities. In a short time, they have created a virtuous cycle of knowledge businesses that has resulted in many high-paying jobs staffed by graduates and faculty of Duke and UNC, as well as people from our own area and the rest of the world.

Perhaps the most successful college town of all is Palo Alto in California. Just 50 years ago it resembled Amherst: a bucolic university town surrounded by fruit orchards and just a little closer to San Francisco as we are to Boston. Like UMass, its resident university, Stanford, found itself with vast tracts of land adjacent to its campus. It reserved this land for growing start-up companies that became the headquarters for world-class companies like Hewlett-Packard and Xerox Research PARC, and more recently Apple and Google down the road. The university fostered a vibrant entrepreneurial culture that attracted venture capitalists and the result today is Silicon Valley.

Contrast this with UMass. Business growth in the past decade adjacent to our university campus consists of a large horse farm, a new church, University Avenue sports bars, a few banks and professional offices, and a shopping center with some gas stations, a CVS and a Big Y. Is this the best use of real estate right next to a major research center? Why is there not a single solid knowledge-company in our area that could serve as a magnet to attract more business?

It's time for Western Massachusetts to stop playing second-fiddle to Boston or any other university community when we could be creating a more vibrant and healthier economy. Our towns, academic leaders, and the Isenberg school of business should emulate successful places like Palo Alto, and find more supportive and efficient ways to proactively identify promising entrepreneurs and emerging technologies, connect them with capital, and speed them to market.

We can be defensive or take offense at these suggestions and fall even further behind or we can take this as a rallying call to keep more of our considerable intellectual talent home where it belongs, to the benefit of our academic institutions, our students and ourselves. The choice is ours.

William Pohl was a speechwriter and communications adviser to the CEOs of IBM and other Fortune 50 companies.

Vote when to Vote! part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:39:00 +0000

More analysis on costs. Turns out it's not the case that we'd save a solid $12,000 that we normally think of as the cost of an election, as shown in the spreadsheet provided by our Town Clerk.

Here's our Town Clerk's cover email text:

From: Burgess, Sandra
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 11:32:38 AM
To: Shaffer, Larry
Cc: Select Board
Subject: PAYROLL ANALYSIS FOR COMBINING TWO ELECTIONS.xls

Good Morning Larry,

At the finish of our meeting last week I promised to work up a spreadsheet which would more accurately reflect the cost savings of running two elections on one day.

I have attached a spreadsheet and added comments. Extra staffing would be required at the polling places but other costs could be reduced by half.

All other costs, i.e. ballots, programming would remain the same, and as I mentioned before, if the two elections were to be combined, I would to have the opportunity to speak with you about hiring temporary help for 4 - 5 weeks prior to voting.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the spreadsheet.

Sandra
<>

Worth a read

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:20:00 +0000

GavinThink on the role of elected officials

What are we arguing about again?

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 23:56:00 +0000

One of the most difficult challenges I face in my role as a member of the Select Board is to not become impatient with conversations I feel are both repetitive and endless.

One of the most earnest conversations is the hand-wringing around "economic development isn't going to save us, look how much more growth we would need to get to x %"

Note that I said "hand-wringing," not "argument."

I read the local listservs and the local newspapers. I talk to you on the street, online, on the phone, in the shops, and listen at meetings. I know that many of you desperately want to come up with a set of numbers we can all agree are "the" numbers, yet the more we revisit this topic, the clearer it becomes that we may not in fact be that far apart on "the" numbers. Really, truly, I don't feel the need to become convinced that any particular set of numbers represents the one true reality of Amherst's possible economic development.

I know part of the problem is the original "80/20" designation that some people used as shorthand for strengthening and increasing the revenue the town receives from other-than-residential-property tax. I was part of those conversations, and I apologize if that figure seemed like a hard and fast demand. It wasn't.

I know part of the problem is people hearing something along the lines of "three projects the size of Veridian Village and/or that JPI student housing project located somewhere less offensive than they proposed, and we're all set." Please don't assume that anyone mentioning that scale of project imagines that just doing three projects like that will solve our structural deficit from now until eternity. Everyone I know who's mentioned that scale of project knows that while doing three or so of those would make a big dent in the problem in comparison to many more small projects; they do not imagine it will solve our structural deficit.

So please try to be patient with me if you see my hair stand on end when some variation on the following gets repeated:

"we need to stop thinking we can simply grow our way out of the Town's financial mess"

"nevertheless, the simplistic mantra for more development goes on"

I have not yet met a single soul -- from the wealthy developer to the business operator to the academic to the sixth generation farmer to the online entrepreneur who could live anywhere to the single parent family to the retiree on a fixed income to the two-income 7,000-square-foot-home family -- who says "more development" or "growth" is the answer to our structural deficit. Again, no one believes development is the answer.

Many people believe it must be part of the answer. Part of the answer. So we really, truly, can stop arguing about exactly how many dollars some theoretical level of growth will produce, OK?

Here's what we need to be arguing about (if arguing is indeed necessary in such a genteel academic small-town environment):

1. Since more people want to live in Amherst than currently live here, and more people want to work in Amherst than currently work here, what types of homes are we willing to let them live in, and what types of businesses are we willing to let them work in?

2. Since a lot of the people who already live here are a couple of paychecks, or an accident, or a medical problem away from not meeting their daily living expenses, they can't afford regular property tax overrides of the state 2 1/2 limit. So what do we do?

Sure, some communities don't seem to mind passing override after override, but Amherst isn't one of them, and I don't know anyone who wants it to be one of them.

No matter how hard each and every one of us works, the people of Amherst are not going to stop the war in Iraq, or create universal health care. The people of Amherst are going to contribute a lot to both of those things happening, and I hope you'll share my pride in that, but it isn't going to happen in time to eliminate our town structural deficit. Same situation on a smaller scale with increasing education aid, closing state corporate tax loopholes (or as one legislator said recently, your loophole is my incentive), and/or allowing a meals tax. That doesn't mean we stop working on any of those issues and invite Walmart to the Town Common and a gas station to your neighborhood. It means we keep plugging away on the issues we know are important, work with our legislators, our neighboring communities, and our lobbying groups, and in the meantime, we do what we can to maintain the kind of community we choose to live in.

The community we choose to live in is safe, with shared green spaces and good schools.

And if we change nothing in our FY09 budget from what we're doing for FY08, the "normal" property tax increase many of us struggle with each year will not cover increased energy costs plus health insurance benefits costs. It's really that straightforward. We can't cover our fixed costs increase with the revenue coming in. So what's going to give?

My definition of core services is possibly not your definition of core services. That's why the Select Board continues to seek your input on our community's priorities. We all -- all of us in this community, not just a few elected officials who imagine we know better than the rest of you -- have a good idea what the people of Amherst want, and the Planning Amherst Together process of developing our Master Plan will provide some strategies to help us get there.

So let's move past arguing about the development dollars, and talk about the specifics of what our community is willing to do to:

1. Control Spending
2. Seek New Revenues
3. Preserve Vital Services

Let's stop hanging back and being afraid of what might change. Too late, folks -- things have already changed! This isn't the same Town it was 15 years ago, 30 years ago, or 250 years ago. The same strategies are not going to allow us to retain the same core values.

So what are we willing to embrace?

FY09 Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:33:00 +0000

Select Board Meeting for Citizen Comment on FY09 Budget Priorities
September 20, 2007

Comments from Elaine B
Woodside Ave, Amherst. – 28 year resident

Inherent in this list of budget priorities is my belief that the town must strongly support increased economic development, must establish a multi-year fiscal plan including planned increases in revenue, and must make fiscally responsible choices which are based on identified priorities. Building and maintaining a strong Reserve Fund is a required responsibility of the town government in order to ensure the economic health and survival of Amherst.

No real set of priorities is going to be strictly linear, but a list is convenient way to order priorities for discussion. I hope that the Select Board will make FY09 budget decisions based on the following priority list:

1) A primary town government responsibility is to ensure the availability and safety of Water, the Sewer systems, and to protect against potential dangers to the town population’s health.

2) The second priority is providing the necessary safety for the town. The Fire Department and the Police have to have sufficient funding to serve the town well. The police budget particularly has been cut too far and must have a much higher priority than last year.

3) The third level of priority for me is the Education of the town’s children. Strong financial support of the Amherst Schools and Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools has to be one of the town’s very highest priorities not only because of its importance for the children and families in Amherst, but also for the economic health of the town.

Obviously, the Select Board does not make School budget decisions, but the Select Board needs to place education and the public schools at the top of their list of priorities because every financial choice that the Select Board makes can affect the schools and the school budgets both directly and indirectly. The Select Board’s decisions affect the town funds available for a school budget and affect the availability of other town services needed by the children and by the schools.

Every year for the past few years, all of the boards have agreed that real budget prioritizing must be done across all departments and across all budgets, not just within a single budget. Cutting every budget by the same amount each year doesn’t result necessarily in funding decisions based on the town’s actual priorities.

4) Fourth in my priority list is funding the Town services that assist the poor, the disabled, and the elderly who need assistance. This priority is different from the line item for Human Service Agency funding. This priority includes a wide range of items in a variety of budgets: some of the bus/van transportation, Bangs Center activities and services, sidewalk curb cuts and other ADA access changes, providing sufficient recreation opportunities for low socio-economic families, etc.
5)The jobs done by the Public Works Department are the set of basic services a town has to provide that individuals cannot do, or cannot do as effectively for the town. town government has the obligation of providing and maintaining roads, sidewalks, pipes, plowing, etc etc

6) Town buildings must be maintained, repaired, and renovated. Some buildings must be replaced as well for reasons of safety and efficiency.

7) Town employees must be sufficient in number to accomplish the needed work that is highest priority, and they must be paid well enough to retain valued employees. Any departments dealing with finances and town planning must have adequate staffing to do their jobs really well.

There are many more items and services to prioritize, of course, libraries, conservation dept, etc; however, the top priorities are the most critical to identify and fund, especially when money is so tight that many lower priorities will not be funded at all.

Thank you for your consideration of my list of priorities

Elaine B

Vote when to Vote!

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:32:00 +0000

Here's the reason I'm collecting purely anecdotal data from the new poll, above:

We normally hold the Annual Town Election (i.e., Moderator, Select Board, School Committee, Jones Library Trustee, Oliver Smith Will Elector, Redevelopment Authority (ARA), Housing Authority, Representative Town Meeting) the last Tuesday of March or first Tuesday of April. Since Easter is the second last weekend in March 2008, it appears Tuesday April 1st would be chosen for 2008 (the Annual Town Election fell on April 1st in 2003).

Here's the sticky part: the Presidential Primary in Massachusetts is Tuesday March 4, 2008. At first glance, it seems most sensible to hold both elections on that same date, rather than expecting people to show up at the polls twice within a month, and it would save roughly $12,000 in the General Fund to not have to hold separate elections. Holding separate elections only three to four weeks apart is challenging for the Town Clerk & Board of Registrars, as well. When Ms Awad brought up holding both elections on the same date at our September 10 Select Board meeting, I thought it was a terrific idea! As Mr Weiss pointed out, it would also be helpful to newly elected officials to formally participate in the budget process earlier in the budget/Town Meeting cycle (although I'll note here that there's some benefit to being able to say, I didn't vote on that budget:-). As it turns out -- of course -- it's all not as simple as we'd hoped.

A Presidential Primary already requires separate Democrat & Republican & Libertarian & Green-Rainbow ballots, and under state law we can't "add" our local questions to those ballots, so we'd need to have one separate ballot for our Annual Town Election. Each voter would cast two ballots -- if they were eligible to do so; apparently it's entirely possible someone would be entitled to a Presidential Primary ballot but not to an Annual Town Election ballot. Obviously this would all be a challenge for both the voter and the election workers!

Write-ins are likely on both the Annual Town Election ballot (especially for Representative Town Meeting) and the Presidential Primary ballot (for Hampshire & Franklin District State Committee Man and State Committee Woman, and Town Committee), and writing them on the wrong ballot would be very possible. Add in the processing of the various party absentee ballots and you'll see why this no longer seems like such a simple idea!

Most of the information I'm presenting here is from a sheet of "Talking Points for Election Timetable Analysis" that was provided in our September 24, 2007 Select Board Agenda packet (available from the Select Board office; sorry, no electronic copy at hand). It includes the fact that prior to 1996, turnout for Presidential Primaries was significantly higher than for the Annual Town Election. In 1996 the turnout was considerably higher for the Town Election than for the Presidential Primary (which was excruciatingly low). In 2000 the Presidential Primary turnout was 0.6% higher than the Annual Town Election; in 2004 the Annual Town Election turnout (28.30%) was 4.6% higher than the Presidential Primary turnout (23.70%). There is simply no guarantee that holding the Presidential Primary and the Annual Town Election at the same time will improve turnout...

...although I'm sure having an override on the 2004 Annual Town Election ballot had something to do with that year's turnout surpassing the Presidential Primary turnout.

As outlined in the "Talking Points," there are more details the Town Clerk and Board of Registrars will have to handle in terms of answering questions, publishing deadlines, how the machines will process the ballots, not tearing their hair out, etc., so feel free to refrain from sharing those details in any comments you make on this blog:-) Just make it simple: vote in the poll at the top of this blog before 6:00 pm Monday September 24. Thanks!

Note that these two images are each only the first page of the 2004 results:

Election dates in Presidential Primary years (from warrants and results:

2004: March 2, March 30 (override)
2000: March 7, March 28 (Boss/Awad race)

Last day to register to vote and/or change party enrollment for the March 4, 2008 Presidential Primary: Wednesday February 13, 2008
(likely) Last day to register to vote for a March 4, 2008 Annual Town Election: Wednesday February 13, 2008
(likely) Last day to register to vote for an April 1, 2008 Annual Town Election: Wednesday March 12, 2008

FY09 Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:30:00 +0000

AMHERST TAXPAYERS FOR RESPONSIBLE CHANGE

Amherst continues to face an ever increasing structural deficit. Last year, the voters said NO to additional taxation as the way to close the deficit.

In our campaign vs. the override, we put forth our funding priorities to the voters:

Support for teachers not administrators
Support for current police and fire staffing

We suggested that the monies to fund these priorities come from Leisure Services; Cherry Hill Golf Course and the nearly empty buses appropriations. We also identified 29 positions totaling over $2 million between the schools and the Town that should be combined in some manner.

Given the limited resources we have for next year, priority funding based on available new resources and funds gathered from zero budgeting for non-essential programs should first go to essential services: police; fire; libraries; school teachers and para-professionals that interact with children; Public Works and essential Town Hall personnel that are required by statute.

All other programs should be zero funded and placed on a menu override, requiring majority support from the taxpayers to continue.

Some will say that this approach is to drastic and divisive. One has to balance that opinion with the fact that many Amherst residents are being forced to leave because of the high tax burden. That is a drastic situation as well.

Over the past two years, I have observed a continuing inability of the elected officials to make budget priority decisions that protect essential services.
Maybe now is the right time to let the taxpayers do the priority setting.

Stanley G, Treasurer

Strategic Partnership Agreement with UMass 082307

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:22:00 +0000

Some attachments just aren't meant for Blogspot, so go on over to my old campaign website for the Strategic Partnership Agreement and the Mutual Aid Agreement .pdfs

I'll post the article from today's Gazette later.

I believe the Ethics Commission will not find any conflict of interest for Mr Kusner (UMass professor) or myself (husband is UMass lecturer). We both disclosed verbally, publicly at the Select Board meeting of September 17, 2007, which is sufficient under the law. While my written disclosure is not yet on file at the Town Clerk's office (and yes, of course I agree it would have been ideal to have it there already), it will be soon.

FY09 Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:17:00 +0000

Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 9:17:21 AM
To: Select Board
Subject: Input on Amherst Budget

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS MONEY-SAVING IDEA:

My husband’s company pays our $165/month premium for a family health insurance policy through my company.

This has been a great incentive for us to use my company’s plan instead of his, and it saves his company around $800 a month for our family alone.

If Amherst (town and schools) could offer to pay employees’ partners’ premiums—in part or in full—the town could save a lot of money. It’s really a win-win plan.

Thanks for asking for the community’s input.

Carolyn M

White Privilege

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:25:00 +0000

I participated in the Anti-Racism Basics for teachers required course at ARPS in January 2003. I grew up in a very white town in Central Pennsylvania, and though I'd thought I'd become the liberal my hometown warned me about, I learned a lot in the course co-facilitated by Kathleen Anderson and Susan Kennedy Marx. I've always hoped to see Tim Wise speak, but he always seems to be here when I have some other unavoidable commitment, in this case a Select Board meeting where we'll be working on the three of the Special Town Meeting Fall 2007 warrant articles.

Leading Critic of White Privilege to Speak at MHC

Tim Wise discusses The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial, and the Costs of Inequality October 1 at 7:30 pm in Chapin Auditorium.

FY09 Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Alisa V. Brewer) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:01:00 +0000

from Irwin S, handed out at Select Board Priorities Public Hearing Thursday September 20, 2007, and available at AmherstInformed.com