Category Archives: Elections

This is our last column before the March 23 election, and we are happy to join last week’s columnist Jim Oldham in urging you to vote yes on the override on March 23.

We also urge you to vote for Rick Hood in the contested School Committee race on the same day.

In considering the override vote, think for a minute why you live in Amherst, and not Belchertown, Hadley, Greenfield or Northampton.

Why is Amherst such a great place to live?

Well, it didn’t happen by accident.

Amherst is what it is because previous generations of residents have invested in schools, libraries, public safety, recreation, open space, elder services – the public infrastructure that makes up the fabric of our community, supporting our diversity, our vibrancy and our strong property values.

Now the national economic crisis is threatening the Amherst we’ve built. The state has cut our funding by $3.1 million over the last two years, and another $1.1 million in state aid cuts are expected next year. We can’t control the federal and state fiscal climate.

But we can step up locally to protect our community from the worst of the damage from this short-term, external crisis.

Some will argue that Amherst has been living beyond our means for years, and that we need to “tighten our belt first.”

Well, the good news for you is that Amherst has already tightened its belt.

While Northampton was passing their override last year, Amherst was cutting 51 staff from the schools and 13.5 from town departments (including three police officers).

Our town officials took seriously the message from the failure of the 2007 override.

They asked a citizens’ Facilitation of Community Choices Committee to examine the budget and identify strategies for closing Amherst’s structural deficit.

Here are the areas the FCCC identified in 2008, and what has happened since:

1. Increase fees for services. Done. LSSE is now practically all fee-based; other fees increased.

2. Increase revenue from ambulance service. Done. Rates have been increased.

3. Reduce costs through efficiencies, consolidation and regionalization.We’ve closed a school, closed a pool, consolidated departments in Town Hall, restructured health plans, pursued regional emergency dispatch and cut more than 60 staff.

4. Increase economic development. Master plan is done; business zoning is revamped; revenue-generating projects include the Lord Jeff, Boltwood Place, New England Environmental. Patterson property development and UMass taxable student housing discussions are ongoing.

5. Implement local option meals/lodging tax. Done. New, annual revenues now coming in.

6. Secure a Proposition 2½ override. Yes, the citizens’ fiscal committee said we would need one.

Our public officials have done the hard work needed to balance our budget over the long term.

Even with the override, we will have made $7 million in cuts this year and next.

What we face now is the short-term problem of the recession.

We can’t just keep cutting our way out – not if we want to emerge with the things we value about our community intact.

Enough is enough.

We need this override to save our schools, libraries and town operations from making an additional $1.68 million of the worst cuts.

Based on prioritized lists of the most critical, staff-identified needs, potential cuts will be rolled back as follows: $400,000 in the elementary schools, $739,195 in the middle and high schools, $88,994 in the libraries, and $452,252 in town operations. (For more information, visit voteyesforamherst.org.)

Here’s what it will cost you: for the average house ($334,600 assessed value) – $22 per month. And since property taxes are deductible, it actually comes to less than $16/month for the average taxpayer. That’s only about $3.50 a week!

Amherst has only had two overrides to support the operating budget in 30 years – we don’t do this very often.

But it’s time now to come together as a community and once again protect our investment in a quality of life that has been built over generations.

A final word on candidate Rick Hood: He will be an excellent School Committee member.

A Web designer and local business owner, he understands budgets and cares deeply about improving communication between the schools and the public. (For more information, visit rickhoodforamherst.org.)

A former president of the high school Parent Center, he brings knowledge of the high school to a committee that dearly needs it. And his thoughtful, low-key manner will help smooth the sometimes stormy waters of committee meetings.

Three thumbs up!

Amherst Center is a monthly column which appears in The Amherst Bulletin that seeks to portray local issues from a centrist perspective. It is written by Town Meeting members Baer Tierkel and Clare Bertrand and School Committee member Andy Churchill. Amherst Center appears in The Amherst Bulletin on the last Friday of each month.

We’re ready to cry uncle! We’re closing a school. We’re closing two pools. We’ve practically stopped fixing potholes. We’ve eliminated all town funding of human service agencies, slashed recreation support, cut senior center staff. We are cutting 50 school positions, dozens of town positions, a boatload of child and elderly programs. Uncle!

For the past eight years, our town has been facing costs that have outpaced revenues. Each year the town has cut a bit here, a bit there, streamlined processes, reorganized, outsourced, applied for more grants, raised fees to the limits ($210 for kids on the basketball team, anyone?).

But here we are. Hitting the proverbial wall as the cratered economy meets skyrocketing health care and energy costs, plummeting state aid, and a 2.5 percent limit on tax increases to create the perfect storm for our little Amherst. We would need an extra $6.9 million to maintain the schools and town services in 2010 as they were in 2009.

Your intrepid columnists have spent the most painful nights at Town Meeting this month, watching many of the things we love about our town being dismantled. It’s been soul-killing to vote to close schools, closing pools, laying off teachers and town workers and offloading services for our poorest and hungriest to the vagaries of the grants process. But we just don’t have the dough.

We must vote a balanced budget, where costs = revenue. We’ve been attacking the cost side (see the pain above). But we won’t survive this crisis with our town intact without working both sides of the equation.

It’s time to attack the revenue side.

The folks in Northampton are doing it. The folks in Sunderland are looking at theirs. No, it’s not some new viral YouTube video, it’s a Proposition 21/2 override! Folks all over the state are doing it – recognizing that cities and towns can’t just keep cutting forever, and that the 2.5 percent limit is an arbitrary number, they’re passing overrides this year at a record pace.

This year in Amherst, for the first time in our memory, Town Meeting members offered budget amendments to restore programs contingent on the passage of an override. But unfortunately it’s too late for this year. The soonest an override could be scheduled is September, at which point the fiscal year will already be three months old.

We’re ready to cry uncle. We’re ready for an override. But we voted these recent override-contingent amendments down. Amherst has only passed two overrides to support the ongoing budget in the last 25 years. So when we decide to do it, we need to do it right.

We know from past experience that it takes time, planning, coordination and solid communication to pass a tax increase. We need to develop a multi-year budget plan. We need to demonstrate administrative efficiencies. We need to coordinate school and town departments and prioritize the services we need to save. We need to build a coalition of town citizens who will work to save our town. All of this takes time.

Northampton passed a large override with resounding support. Meanwhile, Amherst has been doing the hard work of cutting our annual operations to a leaner core. It’s been painful, but it should put us in a better place for a fiscally sustainable budget going forward. Any revenue increases will last longer and go farther because we’ve made some hard choices these past few years.

But enough is enough. We can’t keep going like this. Uncle, already!

We believe that we should begin working this summer to pass a Proposition 21/2 override at the annual Town Election in March 2010.

If you are interested in joining a Vote YES! coalition for an override in Amherst, please contact us at yes@sustainableamherst.org.

We look forward to working with others of all political stripes on this effort in the next year. We can do this. Let’s get started.

Amherst Center is a monthly column which appears in The Amherst Bulletin that seeks to portray local issues from a centrist perspective. It is written by Town Meeting members Baer Tierkel and Clare Bertrand and School Committee member Andy Churchill. Amherst Center appears on the last Friday of each month.