The Amherst Current

Who Owns Amherst’s Future?

By Sarah Marshall

Amherst residents are passionate about what they want and don’t want, from the look of the downtown, residential, and rural landscapes, to the types of housing that can or should be built (and for whom), to our budget priorities.

I have many times heard comments that begin, “When I moved here 40 years ago,” or “When I first came to Amherst…” Frequently, the commenters lament the various changes that have occurred or are proposed. Some of these complaints target new apartment buildings (existing and proposed) in Amherst Center, or the loss of downtown grocery stores, hardware stores, small local businesses, and beloved restaurants. Such commenters often explicitly demand that Amherst be preserved as it is or restored to what it was. I sympathize with this view, because much of Amherst’s built and natural environments are lovely.

Accompanying this desire to keep-everything-as-it-is, many complain about the influx of undergraduates and graduate students, the decline of families looking to put down roots here, and the high cost of housing. The influx of students is sometimes blamed for loss of businesses that the long-timers miss and our decreasing elementary and secondary school populations. In my view, the causes of these trends are multiple, and blaming the University of Massachusetts for our woes is an unhelpful simplification. Even if the University is the cause of our woes, it will not be leaving Amherst any time soon, and we need to look to other solutions.

As we debate, I wonder:

Whose interests should we be prioritizing as we make decisions that will affect the town for the next 20 years or more? The interests of property owners who have lived here the longest? The wealthiest? The poorest? The loudest? The people who want to live in Amherst but cannot, whatever their marital, educational, or economic status?

At what point does preservation of a small town’s look and feel limit our ability to provide services? Does privileging quaintness, or the look and feel of the town, effectively create a financial burden that will limit our ability to maintain excellent schools and public services?

Does a preference for leafy, single-family residential areas, or a disdain for apartment buildings, effectively shut out people who “aren’t like us”? Does wanting things to stay the way they are make Amherst less welcoming to BIPOC people and people of moderate or low incomes?

Are we a small rural town, a college town, or a small city? Will we, or should we, become more like Northampton?

What do today’s residents owe tomorrow’s? How did the generations before us prepare Amherst for its future? What are we willing to invest in?

Obviously, only the people who do live here can vote, but I wonder if we should think harder about the people who are not here yet, and be willing to lose a bit of what we love in order to welcome them into the community.

In my view, Amherst, like businesses in the early days of the internet, will wither if it does not adapt to new pressures and needs. Attempting to force a model of the past onto our present situation will hurt us in the long run.

What do you think?

Reflections on the Charter: Participatory budgeting

By Jon McCabe

When considering the way forward, many in Amherst tend to engage in binary thinking. We play one value or priority against another. A school against a library, a fire station against a school, one budget item against another, preservation versus economic development. The thinking tends to be zero-sum.

That said, current town leadership has made real progress in taking a more holistic or organic approach to planning and problem-solving. The position taken by Town Council and the Town Manager on the four major capital projects is a good example of this. Instead of playing one project against the other in a self-defeating zero-sum game, they recognized that state funding ($13.8 million for the Jones renovation and more than $30 million for the elementary school project) should be considered a major contribution to Amherst’s capital needs as a whole. State funding for two much-needed capital projects frees up town funds to cover the cost of two other essential projects, building a new fire station and a public works headquarters, that do not have access to state funding. Instead of zero-sum thinking, this approach seeks to creatively grow the capital budget pie.

The recently concluded Amherst Commission on Participatory Budgeting was required by Section 10.11 of the new town charter. As a member of the commission, I was glad to see that we considered a similar strategy when thinking about the feasibility of implementing a participatory budgeting process here in town. Participatory budgeting (PB) — which I will describe in more detail in a moment — is a laudable ambition that we as a town should take seriously. Citizen participation is the hallmark of democracy, and that should include participation in budgetary decisions.

But given the budget pressures we face as a result of the Covid pandemic, and the push to implement the town capital plan, we decided that recommending a carve-out from existing capital resources to fund PB would be unrealistic. We did recommend, however, that funding request processes for the Community Preservation Act, Community Development Block Grants and the town’s Joint Capital Project Committee be simplified and better publicized to increase citizen participation.

As the commission explored what PB is and how it is implemented in a variety of communities across the country and around the world, we began to see the creative possibilities for securing new resources for the initiative beyond reliance on the town’s annual budget.

First, let’s describe what PB is. In brief, it is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making in which ordinary people are invited to decide how to allocate a part of a municipal budget. Typically, these are capital expenditures or one-time operating expenses. As implemented in places like Cambridge and New York City, a designated funding pot is made available to elicit project proposals from citizens to meet small-scale local needs. Project selections are then vetted for feasibility and
affordability and then voted on by the public. Cambridge’s most recent PB cycle funded projects ranging from urban micro forests to pedestrian controlled cross-walks: https://pb.cambridgema.gov/pbcycle7 .

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

PB efforts have garnered considerable attention in recent years from both academia and the philanthropic world. At a time when democracy has come under attack at home and abroad, PB is viewed by many as a way to promote and expand grass roots political participation. PB has become an area of study in both public policy and political science programs across the country. The PB Commission recommended that the town pursue possible collaborations with our Five College partners as a way to leverage our unique position as a multiple college town.

PB collaborations could include securing seed funding from our college partners or in-kind contributions through faculty release time or credit-bearing student internships to help staff the development and implementation of PB processes in town. Faculty could also be instrumental in helping secure philanthropic support for PB. The Robert Wood Johnson and Geraldine R. Dodge foundations, for example, have provided significant funding to promote PB processes in towns across the state of New Jersey. Grant writing is now an essential requirement for academics seeking tenure. We can leverage that and offer opportunities for town/gown collaborations.

Most important, an entrepreneurial approach to PB would seek to get away from zero-sum thinking about our town budget. Instead of trading one project against another, we should be looking for ways to grow the size of our overall budget pie. PB might offer an opportunity to do that.

Editors’ Note

Check out our new pages under the heading, Town Government 101. We aim to collect sources of information on a variety of local efforts, and begin with general resources (if you are new to Amherst, have a look) and resources to help you get and stay up to speed on the four major capital projects, such as video, documents, and other websites. Please let us know if you come across broken links.

Power and loathing in Amherst

By Bob Rakoff

Control over the levers of government in Amherst has shifted, and it’s driving some people bananas!

Many observers have commented on the toxic nature of recent political discourse and activity in town. Is this simply obstruction for obstruction’s sake? An angry campaign for revenge by neglected groups? The result of a failure to understand and respect other points of view and seek common ground? A rejection of democracy?

All of these may well be factors that help us understand what has been going on. But I think there is a more basic explanation for the changing nature of our local political culture.

It’s all about the loss of power.

The minority of people who were able to wield power in the old Town Meeting have lost their power to set agendas, manipulate the rules, and frustrate the will of majorities. In response, they have resorted to name-calling, conspiracy-mongering, promoting citizen limits on our elected Town Council, and wielding various means of obstruction in an effort to regain that lost power and influence. Just in the last few months we have seen local officials called autocrats, claims that petition-signers were singled out for retribution by the Town Clerk, and the filing of lawsuits to override Council decisions that were approved by overwhelming majorities.

The roots of the shift in power and the quality of our political life are well known. The immediate cause, of course, was the infamous vote in Town Meeting to reject the huge state grant for a new school, despite voters’ support, and the subsequent abandonment of Town Meeting for a Town Council. But those events were merely the culmination of several decades of more fundamental change in town, moving us away from that small, relatively homogeneous, pre-1960s New England college town.

Think about what’s been behind the big changes in town in recent decades. The explosive growth of UMass, with its ever more diverse population of students and staff. The disappearance from downtown of many basic, locally owned businesses — the hardware stores, the supermarket, the clothing shops — all unable to compete with nearby malls and big box stores. The growing diversity of our local schools
and the demands placed on them by students and families from so many different backgrounds.

In all these cases, change has been driven, not by the longtime families that dominated local politics and commerce for generations, but rather by newcomers. People from all over the globe, connected to the University and the colleges, believing that government could be a force for good, espousing the liberal ideals of post-World War II America. Build new schools. Expand the library. Intervene in the market to create affordable housing. Raise taxes to pay for these efforts.

The more a minority of Town Meeting members were able to block these sorts of programs and policies, the greater the resolve of the newcomers to find a way around what they saw as knee-jerk obstruction. This led to the successful campaign to replace Town Meeting with a Town Council form of government, one less amenable to behind-the-scenes manipulation by those who had resisted change.

So what we have been seeing in the current struggles over new capital spending, the direction of the schools, density and development downtown and in neighborhoods is, at heart, the playing out of the shift in power over the levers of local government. Some people have, inevitably, taken advantage of this unsettled period of change to fight old battles, attack opponents, propose limits on our elected Town Council, and try to destroy reputations. But I think that, on the whole, this inaugural Town Council has reflected the divisions in town pretty accurately. And in contrast to Town Meeting, it has deliberated and acted largely in the way its proponents hoped: with reasonable competence, attention to detail, and the promise of accountability.

Amherst House Prices Shoot Up

by Nick Grabbe

A flurry of home-buyers caused sale prices to jump in Amherst this spring, with houses often selling for more than their asking prices.

“It was such an unusual time, and we were all walking around scratching our heads,” said Kathy Zeamer, a spokeswoman for Jones Realty. “Even realtors who have been in business for 40 years said they’d never seen anything like this.”

“Frenzy” isn’t too strong a word for the bidding wars that real estate agents saw over houses that were well-maintained and priced reasonably, she said. She offered some eye-popping examples:

A two-bedroom house on East Pleasant Street (shown at left) was listed for sale at $299,900. In three days, there were 50 showings and nine offers, and it sold for $345,000 to an out-of-town buyer.

A house on Middle Street was listed for $599,900, and someone bought it the first day it was on the market, for $612,500 – in cash.

A house on Amity Street was listed at $665,00 and sold for $708,800 in four days.

(For a list of recent sale prices of single-family houses in Amherst, click on “Recent House Sales” at left.)

If you already own your house, this white-hot market means it is now likely worth more than a year ago, and your net worth just went up a notch. My own Amherst house, which I bought for $66,000 in 1984, is now worth about six times as much. This hot market also works well for people who have just sold a brownstone in Brooklyn for $2 million and want to buy a house in Amherst and still have plenty of money left over.

But for middle-income people and first-time home-buyers, it’s been a frustrating time. And this price run-up has increased the already-wide wealth gap in Amherst between people who own homes and those who rent.

During the pandemic, many people living in urban areas and working from home figured they could do that just as easily in Amherst. Some were attracted to the cultural and outdoor activities in the area, and some had family members here, Zeamer said. Many sales this spring were to buyers from urban areas.

“They come with a lot of cash, and look at the prices of properties here, and it looks like quite a bargain,” she said.

It’s hard for a local buyer to compete, Zeamer said. Presented with a cash offer, many sellers don’t want to take the risk that a bidder won’t be able to get financing. It can take four to six weeks to get a mortgage commitment.

Some bidders have taken to writing letters to the sellers pleading their cases, or even agreeing to waive inspections or pay closing costs, she said. But many companies counsel against writing letters to sellers “due to the possibility (or even the perception) of favoritism that may be interpreted as discriminatory,” Zeamer said.

One buyer sold his house in California for $5 million and bought a house in Amherst for $1.4 million, said real estate agent Nancy Hamel. “A first-time buyer putting down 5 percent might as well not even make an offer,” she said. “FHA buyers don’t have a chance. How do you compete with that kind of money?”

Another reason for the frenzy is that there have been fewer houses for sale than usual. Normally, there are about 100 houses for sale in Amherst. By mid-June, there were around 10.

“Many homeowners did not want people coming through their homes during the pandemic,” Zeamer said. “Since vaccines have become available, people are more relaxed about opening their homes.”

Another attraction for buyers is that mortgage interest rates are very low now. Many people worry that inflation will cause them to go up next year, so they figure that now is a good time to buy.

Although your house is worth more now, you are paying taxes on only a portion of its value. But that will change.

Many houses have sold in the last few months for 30 percent more than their assessed value, which is Town Hall’s estimate of how much a house is worth. It is calculated to determine how to distribute the property tax burden, but it takes a while for assessed values to catch up with increasing sale prices .

For example, a house on Aubinwood Road, assessed at $338,900, recently sold for $485,000. A house on Baker Street, assessed for $290,300, sold for $450,000. A house on South East Street, assessed at $365,800, recently sold for $532,000.

Property taxes are due Aug. 2. Your annual property tax is calculated by dividing your assessed value by 1,000 and then multiplying by the tax rate, which was $21.82 in the fiscal year that just ended. The tax rate for the new fiscal year has not been set yet.

The median assessed value for a single-family house is $365,650, with an annual tax obligation of $7,978 in the fiscal year that just ended.

Assessed values will likely increase next year to reflect higher sale prices this year. That will probably cause the tax rate to go down. But tax bills always go up because the amount the town needs to raise in taxation always goes up by slightly more than the 2.5 percent limit set by state law. Changes in assessments don’t directly cause tax increases and happen every five years or whenever the average sale price is more than 10 percent above assessed values.

The frenzy of buyers is now past. “It’s calmed down a little bit, and in the summer things slow down,” said Zeamer.

But the price of a house in Amherst is likely to remain high.

Editors’ Note

We’ve made a few changes to the site. You can find short bios of writers on the Contributors page, as well as information about the upcoming Town elections on the Elections Update page. Both will be updated from time to time.

A Crowded Future for Amherst Elementary Students

by Sarah Marshall

With distance learning disallowed for the 2021-2022 school year, all of Amherst’s primary and secondary school students will attend school in person. However, students will find that all three elementary schools, which were reconfigured last summer to allow improvements to HVAC systems and at least six feet of distance between students and teachers, feel crowded. How can this be, when enrollments are dropping?

At Wildwood and Fort River schools, the infamous quads, with their incomplete walls, poor ventilation, and spaces with no windows, were transformed into two classrooms each, with floor-to-ceiling walls, amped-up ventilation, windows, and desks widely separated. This reconfiguration cut the number of classrooms in half. During the spring, some students attended class remotely, meaning that the schools hosted less than 100 percent of the student body.

Next year, as 100 percent of students return, spaces such as cafeterias and specials rooms will be turned into classrooms, and many support services will operate out of the libraries. There will be no dedicated art and music classrooms, and instructors will take their carts from room to room, with obvious limitations to their curricula. Students will eat lunch in their classrooms. At Fort River, the successful and growing bilingual program, Caminantes, also affects space allocations, as each grade level offering Caminantes needs three classrooms, two for Caminantes and one for the standard program. Crocker Farm was not built with quads, but space was also reallocated to improve ventilation and spacing within all teaching areas. The unique space pressure at Crocker Farm comes from the growing preschool program, which enrolls all of the district’s special-needs 3-to-4-year-olds.

What can be done to get all elementary students back in true classrooms, restore the art and music rooms, and leave cafeterias for diners? Some options have been mentioned at School Committee meetings and others can be imagined, but the feasibility, timeline, and cost of each option must be determined. However, it is probably not possible to solve the problem for the 2021-2022 school year.

For the 2022-2023 school year, we can: (1) Do nothing, and live with the current space plans. (2) Buy or rent modular classrooms for some of the elementary schools. (3) Rip out all of the changes made to the buildings last summer and let the schools revert to their prior states. The changes made to prepare for teaching during the pandemic did not cost Amherst taxpayers a dime, since federal and state relief funds paid for the construction. However, reversal of these changes would be paid for entirely by Amherst. (4) Make the Middle School a 6-8-grade school, a common grade configuration in Massachusetts and throughout the U.S. The Middle School currently hosts about 425 students, but as recently as 2000 hosted about 725 students. The Middle School can easily absorb all of Amherst’s 6th-graders and ease space demands at all three elementary schools.

The possibility of reconfiguring our elementary and middle schools has been contemplated for years. In 2018, Regional Schools contracted for a study exploring the feasibility and potential costs of creating a grades 6-8 Middle School and a grades 7-12 High School. The second option was estimated to cost at least $40 million, whereas the cost of the first option was deemed to be essentially zero. In 2019, and in light of the study, the Regional School District authorized formation of a Middle School Grade-Span Advisory Committee, tasked with exploring the factors, impacts, and potential pros and cons of moving 6th-graders to a Middle School; the committee was not tasked with developing a recommendation, which falls to the elementary school committees of our region (that is, Amherst, Pelham, Leverett, and Shutesbury). The Advisory Committee was about to issue its report in the winter of 2020 when the pandemic struck, upending all plans.

With the pandemic receding, the Grade-Span report was released this past April, and the Regional School Committee began discussing the matter in May. The only decision yet taken at the Regional level was to allow the elementary school districts to begin their own deliberations, if interested. The Amherst School Committee has decided to study the pros and cons of moving our 6th-graders to the middle school, and in the fall will begin a community engagement process in which information, options, and feedback will be shared and gathered. The goal is to arrive at a decision before the December holidays so that teachers and administrators can begin planning how to best design and accommodate the chosen programs beginning in the 2022-2023 school year. The crowding of the elementary schools described above (as well as the need to define the size and scope of the new elementary school building project) now gives urgency to the question but is not the original impetus for considering the move.

Some families are alarmed at the possibility that ARMS might become a 6-8-grade school. I served on the Grade-Span Committee with outstanding, thoughtful elementary and middle-school teachers and administrators, as well as other parents. I am confident that, should the 6th-graders move to ARMS, they will do so only after a well planned curriculum, environment, and support systems are developed that are appropriate for these young people’s educational and social/emotional needs. I do not believe they will be tossed into the current 7-8 program and left to make their own way. However, as our community begins the discussion about where to best locate 6th grade, it will be important to have an understanding of the alternative – what the elementary school environments will be like during the next several post-covid years.

Don’t Fence Me In

by Kristin Leutz

In Robert Frost’s poem, “The Mending Wall,” two neighbors meet in the Spring to repair damage done to a stone wall forming a fence between their properties. While one questions the need for a barrier in that particular location, the other brushes the suggestion of change away, referring to his father’s old adage, “Good fences make good neighbors.” As a life-long New Englander, I have often told friends from other parts of the country that we may be a little irascible in our debates, but in the end, we are devoted to our communities. We may not be the type to always pop over to borrow a cup of sugar, but we still go deep when we connect. Like the two men in Frost’s verse, we find ways to meet up and reaffirm our boundaries from time to time.

In Amherst, this used to happen at Town Meeting. My husband and many good friends served their time at Town Meeting. They all saw the appeal of pitching in and having discourse in this uniquely quaint form of democracy. But rather than encountering a folksy connection, they found something else. They came home with tales about witnessing rudeness at the meetings, or about bitter debates, with grudges formed and held by bullies. I thought to myself back then, “Gee, really? How can the stakes be so high in a small town like this? We all know we’ll bump into each other at the grocery store. Can’t we just get along?”

Now, we have a new form of government, but things have gotten worse. The ideological camps in town cemented when the school vote failed. It seemed as if a door to civil discourse had closed with a heavy thud and many are still labeled according to their chosen side in that bitter contest. Various friends over the years were flattened by stress as they took public roles, either by writing, serving in office, or taking jobs with the town. They remained quiet about it when they were torn apart on Facebook or in blogs by people engaging in cyberbullying. But their burnout was real, and we may never know who decided not to run or to write because they did not want to risk feeling exposed to such negativity. We have squandered some of our best human resources.

It doesn’t even matter what position you take. Almost anyone who takes a position on something in Amherst will be subject to some level of “call out” culture. After I penned a recent opinion piece in the Bulletin, I saw an immediate personal effect. I received disturbing direct messages online and heard through the grapevine about which folks I’ve known for years now were “so mad” at my article. The messages happened to all be sent by men, which felt threatening as a woman just beginning to find her voice in public discourse. On the other hand, I felt emboldened to keep writing as I also got a big handful of emails from others whom I haven’t spoken to in a long time, thanking me for expressing what they often feel – that our town’s political culture has grown toxic. I called a few other women working in public spheres in town to ask if they had similar experiences of feeling targeted. Sadly, each at some point had to ignore anonymous phone calls, troubling emails, and other personal attacks.

Come on, Amherst, can’t we do any better? I am turning to myself first to ask what it will take to hold judgment, to engage authentically, and invest some time into putting myself out there to call folks in, not call them out, so I might hear differing views. I will need companions in this effort. I hope you will join me.

We will need first to ensure that we can find real facts to formulate our opinions and to center our discussions. As an organizational psychologist, I am well aware of the many forms of cognitive bias that keep us apart from each other in civil life. We tend to find facts that align with what we already think we know. We simplify and center other people’s comments based on our own egos and sense of moral righteousness. We all do this, regardless of what side of the fence we’re on.

Good neighbors may benefit from tall fences between houses, but we have to take a moment now to cast away the stones that have driven us apart in our civic life, rather than tossing them at a neighbor. We are all human, subject to our psychological limits, living in a small town that faces real and modern challenges. The only things that will enable more civility are acknowledging our shared humanity, moving beyond the idea that our self-proclaimed rational arguments will solve anything, and committing to shared responsibility to understand and deeply listen to each other.

We also need to lavish some energy and attention to curb the slow, but steady erosion of local journalism outlets. Our local papers, like most small media businesses, have faced consolidation, downsizing, and other challenges that have left the facts just out of reach. As we know all too well from our recent painful federal political turmoil, finding and discerning facts without trusted journalistic sources is tough and fraught with destructive potential for a media diet that only serves to deepen the sense of the “otherness” of our neighbors.

Where do we go from here? Build in time for self-reflection and mindfulness – we happen to have a local expert or two on that subject in Shalini Bahl-Milne. Reach out to write and share with your local blogs. Subscribe to local media. Attend more meetings and listen before judging. Consider your social media habits and tilt towards hosting more real discussions, not to posting. And, now that the weather is good, call a neighbor to meet over the fence, not just to rebuild it for the oncoming winter, but to truly value what they bring to your life here in Amherst.

Hello, Amherst!

The Amherst Current will focus on our town’s pressing issues: local elections, infrastructure projects, our changing demographics, new construction, taxes, and much more. We are working with contributors who have deep experience with Amherst issues, and we hope to post twice per week, generally alternating between “explainers” and opinion pieces.

With the decline of traditional media, many people are confused about the many complex challenges Amherst faces. We hope to increase understanding of these issues and provide perspective on them. And we feel that Amherst could benefit from another discussion forum.

Few people have the time to attend or watch the many meetings of Town Council and our boards and committees (thank you, dedicated volunteers, elected officials, and town staff!). So we will try to help you by focusing on what is most critical as you decide what petitions to sign or not sign and for whom to cast your votes.

We want to be clear: we favor building the four proposed capital projects (Jones Library expansion, Public Works headquarters, South Amherst fire station, and a new Wildwood/Fort River elementary school) in a fiscally prudent manner. We support increasing the density of downtown and village centers, as recommended by the master plan, and support business growth and a broadening of the tax base. We will favor candidates who support these goals.

We want to promote civic engagement, civility, and open discussion of the issues that Amherst confronts. We will encourage residents to vote in the November election.

Let us know what you think, and what you want to read about! Subscribe and be alerted to new posts. Email us at theamherstcurrent@gmail.com. And feel free to comment, as long as you can abide by our comment policy and will give your name and email address (we won’t ever display the latter). And, lastly, please forgive technical glitches as we learn how to do this!

— Sarah Marshall and Nick Grabbe