July 31, 2009

Energy, Passion, Commitment

Brian Morton’s 13 years of service on the Finance Committee were celebrated at a reception at Town Hall last week. His is a compelling story of volunteer service to the town, both on its own and as it represents the countless other Amherst residents who volunteer their time to help our town run.

A lifelong resident of Amherst, Brian ran a landscaping business in town and found he was becoming increasingly interested in the fiscal decision-making he saw in the Bulletin and on ACTV. Former Selectman Merle Howes encouraged him to get involved, and he applied for an open spot on the Finance Committee and was appointed by town Moderator Harrison Gregg in 1996. Thus began many years of service.

But while he worked to help the town, Brian found the experience helped him grow as well, in unexpected ways. As he became increasingly familiar with municipal finance, Brian began working toward a new career path.

First at community college and then UMass’ prestigious Commonwealth College, he joined college students in their teens and 20s in studying balance sheets and texting about group projects. He developed new data presentation skills, which he then used at Town Meeting to help members understand budget trends and challenges. When Alice Carlozzi stepped down, he became Finance Committee chairman. This spring, he received his bachelor’s degree in accounting, and he has since joined the staff of the Franklin Council of Governments, where he now professionally provides accounting services to four towns – a perfect combination of his new accounting degree and his years of municipal finance experience.

The bylaws of the town of Amherst require the Finance Committee “to investigate all proposals in the articles of the warrant for any Town Meeting that shall in any way affect the finances of the town and to recommend to the town … a course of action thereon, and in general to make recommendations to the town in regard to any financial business of the town.” The Finance Committee is the one body responsible for ensuring that good fiscal advice is given to our leaders on the Select Board, School Committee, library trustees and Town Meeting. They make sure that even in times of fiscal uncertainty and crisis, such as we are currently facing, that we have a steady financial strategy.

The Finance Committee is a volunteer job in our town government. These volunteers bring energy, passion and commitment to ensuring we have the financial ability to continue to improve our quality of life. Brian Morton’s 13 years of service, as well as the hundreds of hours of service each year of all the Finance Committee members, exemplifies the best in our community spirit. We now welcome veteran Finance Committee member Andy Steinberg as chairman, as well as new committee member Phil Jackson, both following in Mr. Morton’s footsteps in service to the community.

While we can’t promise that every volunteer role in town will lead to gainful employment, as it did for Brian Morton, we do believe that town service brings corresponding rewards to those who serve. Amherst offers plenty of ways of getting involved and making things work – we encourage you to seek out one that works for you. Take a look at the myriad opportunities to help on the town Web site (http://www.amherstma.gov/index.aspx?nid=82). Don’t wait, just do it!

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.


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Filed under Finances, Quality of Life, Town Administration, Town Meeting

June 26, 2009

The Overriding Issue

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.

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May 29, 2009

Back to the Future

If you have had a teenager or been one at any time since 1985, you probably know the movie, “Back to the Future,” in which a young Michael J. Fox travels back in time in a souped-up DeLorean sports car. While there, he makes a few changes to the past to make an unattractive present work out better.

Amherst’s present isn’t looking so good, either. State tax support is falling, and we have failed to make up the difference locally. Recent headlines about closing pools and schools are just the beginning, as Amherst increasingly struggles to make it on its own. If only we could go back in time – what would we do differently?

News item: a private builder, Edwards Communities Development Co., wants to acquire land near UMass to build 800 beds (about 225 units) of off-campus, taxable, student apartments. Neighbors are up in arms. Keep the students on campus, say some. Don’t build it here, say others. Now where have we heard this story before? Let’s hop in the DeLorean and find out.

Back in 2004, another builder, JPI Development, proposed buying the now-former Hope Church land north of campus to build a similar number of student apartments. JPI, like Edwards, had built many of these types of developments in other college towns across the country – high-quality apartments with modern amenities that are in demand from today’s college students. These taxable properties would have generated an estimated $400,000 in new tax revenues each year.

Rereading the news stories from that failed effort is a surreal experience. Individual Select Board members worked against the effort, commenting negatively on the project. Foes in Town Meeting hastily established a “Land Use Committee” to explore other uses for this privately owned property (they never identified any). Accusations of racism, hidden costs, and UMass takeover conspiracies were flying. After a cool reception from the full Select Board, JPI saw the writing on the wall and left town.

Back to the future: according to the town manager’s estimate, the new Edwards project would generate about $640,000 in new revenues each and every year going forward. For lack of a similar amount of money, the School Committee just voted to close one of our elementary schools. Do we really want to watch hundreds of thousands of new, annual dollars walk out of town again? Where will we cut next? Instead of simply saying, “No,” like we did last time, let’s look at how we can make the most of this second chance.

First, let’s recognize that building private, taxable student housing meets the mutual interests of UMass and the town. UMass has about 19,000 undergraduates and wants to grow by about 2,000 students over the next decade. But UMass is in the business of education, not housing. Well-built, private, apartment-style housing is part of the solution in countless other college towns – why not here? Amherst desperately needs the tax revenues, students need housing, and if it is built privately the town has some control over the development. No more skyscraper dorms – and surely we can do better than our current reality of dilapidated houses with couches in the front yard.

Second, let’s dispel some myths that helped torpedo the JPI project:

1) “UMass should keep the kids on campus.” They don’t stay on campus anyway, so let’s locate them in a way that maximizes economic benefits and minimizes negative impact on neighborhoods;

2) “Off-campus housing will cause more “party house’ problems.” Actually, high-quality apartments near campus could reduce student rental pressure on family neighborhoods and help actual families move back in;

3) “UMass will take over the apartments and turn them nontaxable.” UMass doesn’t want to be in the real estate business; the town should be able to dispel this concern through a legal contract.

4) “Hidden costs to the town will eat up the projected revenues.” Let’s substitute cost-benefit analysis for conjecture here.

Finally, let’s find a site that works. The land off of Sunset Avenue currently under consideration faces serious obstacles. Perhaps another spot on University Drive – still in close proximity to UMass but outside residential neighborhoods – would be better. Maybe UMass could even sell or swap some of its state-owned land on University Drive to enable taxable development without the cost of building dorms. The town manager should designate a specific entity – Planning Department? Redevelopment Authority? – to work out the details and make this work for all of us.

We have the chance to get it right this time – let’s not blow it. Back to the future!

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.

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Filed under Economic Development, Master Plan, Town Meeting

April 24, 2009

Smart Growth in a Recession

Spring in Amherst is beautiful. Have you seen the lovely Amherst 250th daffodils springing up all over town? You can almost ignore the potholes. A drive down North East or South East Street can give you a gorgeous, clear view of the kind of rural vista small-town Amherst is all about.

While we revel in our bucolic living, we might forget that these things come at a price. We still need to plow our roads, educate our kids and give our residents police and fire protection. These services are paid for with local and state taxes, and as goes our economy, so goes our tax support. And right now, reality bites.

Some good news though: with CPA money (that’s the specially designated Community Preservation Act tax money we collect) we can afford to support the Habitat for Humanity program, preserve the Dickinson gravesite (probably the biggest tourist draw in town), protect more open space, and properly display our Civil War tablets (honoring Amherst’s brave African American volunteers in the first black regiment in that war). These are just a few of the great things we can do, showing we are a thoughtful, forward-looking community that preserves and honors its diverse, rural past.

Yet at the same time we are left to deal with the painful present. We are stuck with the reality of state aid in freefall, local revenues limited by Proposition 2½, and not enough reserves to help us pretend none of this is happening. Our reliance on dwindling state aid and our stagnant property taxes due to a lack of smart growth in town means we are going to feel the real pain of cuts and reductions in services unlike anything we have experienced in past years.

What we really need is to see some strong smart-growth projects in town to boost our tax base. Sadly, it seems we’re seeing more property come off the tax rolls than on. With the loss of the Lord Jeff (in hiatus) and the old Peter Pan building being purchased by Amherst College, it feels like a slow slide backwards. And that further jeopardizes what this town has depended on: the quality of our schools, police, fire and libraries.

But hey, we’re in a recession, how can we expect smart growth now? The answer is we have a strength that few other places do: our colleges. In this recession, more people are going back to school, especially the state university. They need places to live. Developers want to build housing for which there is a demand – and we have the demand.

UMass has always been open to private, taxable student housing being built adjacent to the university. Let’s use this major resource in our town to generate new property tax revenue to fund our schools and town services. The town should be working with the university now to identify a workable site for a taxable “student village” near the university – and then actively seek a developer to build it, so we can get our revenue picture moving in the right direction.

So often we get hung up on the NIMBY issue and can’t seem to get over it. Without a collective will focused on the greater good, we remain at the mercy of the few who are determined to protect their own turf. Too often good ideas are met with “No.” We don’t need more reasons why positive change can’t happen. We need more “Yes, we can.”

As the fiscal choices committee reported, we can’t just cut our way out of this budget mess. We can close a school, we can ask our employees to give up their earned raises, we can cut libraries and leave potholes unfilled, but then what? When do we decide enough is enough? And how do we get moving in a positive direction?

We have an answer staring us in the face: taxable student housing. What are we waiting for? Sometimes, even in Amherst, reality is not optional.

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.

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Filed under Economic Development, Finances

March 27, 2009

Fiscally Sustainable Leadership

On March 31st, we will head down to the local precinct and toss a ballot in the box for our local leadership. If you’re like us, you’ve been talking with your friends and neighbors about the various candidates. But you still might be wondering, who am I going to vote for?

What do we look for in our local leaders, besides a thick enough skin to work in the Thunderdome of Amherst politics? What yardstick do we use to make our decision?

We here at Amherst Center use the candidates’ voting records to guide our ballot decisions. So we’ve spent some time again this year looking at the tally votes cast in Town Meeting. But which votes should we use as our yardstick?

The primary issue facing Amherst for the past five years has been the fiscal sustainability of our town. How can we afford to keep and strengthen all that makes Amherst such a beautiful and wondrous place – strong public schools, green open space, diversity, a family-friendly, small-town feel? It takes cash to ensure all these values – to pay teachers, to preserve open space, to develop affordable housing, to build sidewalks so kids can walk safely – without taxing our residents out of town.

For the last few years we have argued that we need to create a fiscally sustainable town that is built on a strong local economy. We believe fiscal sustainability can be achieved through long-term, strategic planning that broadens our town’s tax base. This includes actively promoting green, sustainable, Amherst-appropriate economic development; actively marketing our town to attract new knowledge-based businesses; co-investing with our local colleges and the university in joint projects that benefit both; as well as creating efficiencies in our town government and spending wisely.

We have identified 34 key votes in Town Meeting over the past five years that we believe support these goals. You can view our analysis of Town Meeting members’ voting records and a description of the votes on the Web at www.sustainableamherst.org/tmscorecard. Based on this voting analysis, we offer our endorsements for Tuesday’s election.

Many of your neighbors serve (the three of us are all members), and together they are responsible for the town’s laws and budget. After analyzing votes and talking to candidates, we endorse 41 hardy souls, but you’ll have to get the list on our Web site: www.sustainableamherst.org/candidates.

We are concerned about the number of uncontested seats, though – it’s hard to hold Town Meeting members accountable if they don’t face competition for election. Maybe Amherst should consider shrinking the size of Town Meeting – say from 240 to 120 members. With fewer seats, it would be easier to hold our representatives accountable at the ballot box – and the meetings would probably move along a bit faster, too!

Please vote on Tuesday, March 31, polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Responsible leadership doesn’t happen by accident. It starts with a ballot.

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.

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February 27, 2009

Providing an “Amherst” Education

Everyone is getting a crash course in how the economy works. Have you figured out the local situation yet? And if you have, can you explain it to us? It sounds like the state’s fiscal picture is really bad. But wait, Obama’s stimulus may save the day. Or not. When will we hear? Who knows? It’s a moving target, and while we hope for the best, sadly, budgets need to be planned for the worst.

This affects all town departments, but with a focus here on schools, the question is this: What does it mean to provide an “Amherst” education? What pieces of that are at risk? How do we decide what has to be cut? And where do we draw the line and say, this is something to fight for?

Amherst has a tradition of great schools, and they are a big part of our town’s public identity. Ask any realtor why people want to move to Amherst and why our houses are worth what they are, and the schools are right up at the top of the list. As we work on solving our fiscal problem, we need to do so in a way that doesn’t irrevocably damage something valued by all.

So, what is an “Amherst” education? It’s not just putting 30 kids in a room with a teacher and drilling them on MCAS. In Amherst we believe in educating the whole child. We teach art and music and languages. We have clubs and athletics. We have math and science coaches to help our teachers challenge our kids. We have support staff helping struggling readers and children with disabilities, which helps classroom teachers meet the needs of the rest of the kids.

But there is a budget gap to close. School administrators are dutifully making lists of things to cut, and there are some doozies on those lists: eliminating band and orchestra in the elementary schools, eliminating all languages in the middle school, cutting after-school clubs and some of the athletic program and putting students in more study halls in high school, and on and on.

Cutting programs isn’t the only option, of course. Other choices include raising fees, closing a school, using reserve funds, renegotiating wages, or even – gasp – asking the voters for a tax override if necessary. No single option will close the gap, and getting the mix and timing of options right is critical if we are to keep our “Amherst” education.

We are not at a decision point yet. The scope of the gap that needs to be closed is not yet clear, and the lists of options are still being assembled. But this very difficult decision-making process is underway.

This leads us to ask: Is our committee deliberation process equal to the challenges we face? Does it give us the level of public input, open access and time for group deliberation that we should expect in making hard decisions about town values and resources?

Maybe it’s time to start using 21st-century communication tools as a way of increasing the level of public exchange among the full school committee and the community. What if the entire School Committee could have its own online blog, where all of the members could post topics for discussion and discuss them together, along with any interested members of the community?

The committee would be deliberating online, for anyone to see, which would seem to satisfy the concerns of the Open Meeting Law. It would introduce a new level of exchange into the board deliberation process. And it would enable the community to chime in without having to make the meetings in person.

However our boards decide to deliberate, they need to hear from the community. If you have an opinion about what an “Amherst” education should look like, make your voice heard. You can reach the School Committee and school administrators by clicking on the “contact us” tab at www.arps.org. Or maybe, watch for a blog coming live near you.

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.


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Filed under Schools

January 30, 2009

Budget Techniques

Last week the town manager released his FY2010 budget for municipal services. But when he reviewed it with the Select Board (his boss), members raised some good questions. The questions weren’t just about the cuts he made but about the “budget techniques” he used.

Back in October, the Finance Committee released its budget guidelines mandating a 2 percent budget increase cap. Mr. Shaffer’s budget increases spending of town departments by 3.2 percent, then generates $400,000 in new revenue from the services provided by those departments, for a net increase of 2 percent.

Shaffer feels that his budget meets the 2 percent mandate, calling the 3.2 percent increase in real spending, which is offset by the revenue increases, “a budget technique.” When asked about it by the Select Board at its recent meeting, he replied it was just “accounting.”

On the one hand, we understand this. We applaud the town manager’s efforts to generate revenue via increased fees for ambulance service and LSSE classes. And if a department can find revenues to keep it from making deeper cuts, that sounds good, right?

But our town is larger than just Shaffer’s domain – it also includes the libraries, four elementary schools, and middle and high schools. In fact, about two-thirds of the town’s budget is taken up by services outside of the domain of the town manager. Our town is one entity, providing a wide range of services to all Amherst residents.

The townwide question is, once again, what are our priorities? Looking across our whole Amherst budget, what areas should we protect from further cuts by applying new revenues, and what areas should we not? If each area does what Mr. Shaffer did, the decision is made for us, without any cross-budget prioritizing.

We cannot afford to have each town manager budget with only their departments in mind. For example, the planning department generates significant revenue via inspections, but it does not get to keep that revenue just for use in planning. Our ambulance receipts generate significant revenue, but they do not get to keep all of their revenue to use on just ambulance services. These revenues are spread across the priorities of all the town.

Mr. Shaffer’s budget also makes creative use of enterprise funds to pay for some town employees. This is another good idea, but these new sources of revenue to cover costs previously on the municipal books should be allocated like any other revenue – to townwide priorities. It should also be recognized that this source of funding has not generally been available to school and library budgets, another argument for spreading the revenues around.

Mr. Shaffer has said, “I’m trying to provide practical options for the community to consider.” In reality Mr. Shaffer has not given the community the option to decide which priorities should be funded with the $400,000 in revenues he has raised. Keeping spending to a true 2 percent increase as mandated by the Finance Committee gives the town “practical options.”

If each department – town, schools, library – makes a list of all the cuts needed to get to the 2 percent level, and another list of all the revenue increases they can come up with, then budget-makers can talk about which cuts should be avoided, townwide. Allocating all the new revenue up front eliminates the town’s options for this kind of prioritizing. We would much rather have seen the town manager come to the Budget Coordinating Group or Select Board and say, “Hey, I found a way to raise $400,000 in revenue, what are the town’s priorities to use this money?”

In the end, slick accounting won’t save us. It is the hard work of prioritizing which town services we will invest in. Amherst is a single entity. We derive revenue from many sources – property taxes, state aid, federal aid and fees. Where the law allows it, the revenue to the town needs to be seen as a single pot of cash that is then budgeted based on hard choices about what we value most.

Amherst Center is a monthly column 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.

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Filed under Finances, Town Administration, Town Meeting