My first talk before the select board on Parking:
December 2005
In my first talk before the Amherst Select Board I presented a number of issues regarding parking.
I had the misguided fantasy that a member of the Amherst community would be welcome to help to contribute their time and energy to help make the Town a better place.
The truth is that Amherst Massachusetts is not run by the Select Board at all. Amherst Massachusetts is run by the Town Staff, structured as a bunch of little power fiefdoms. The Amherst Select Board is largely powerless to control the Town, and keeps these staff members on because they recognize that they themselves are amateurs, and although the staff makes it miserable for everyone who lives in the town. Speaking separately with two members of the Select Board, they have told me that they keep these malicious staff members on because they do not think they can find anyone better to run Amherst in the incompetent labor pool of Western Massachusetts.
And, since the Amherst Select Board can not control their staff, the people actually running the Town do not take direction from anyone. The Town staff’’s goal is to keep and grow their power positions at the expense of the tax payers of Amherst, and the comfort and safety of every person who visits the Town.
Although well written, here is link to my ultimately valueless first talk before the Amherst Select board.
My second talk before the Select Board announcing this site:
July 2006
In six months following my first talk before the select board I understood that what will be needed to make change in Amherst is damage to the Town on a massive scale.
The people who are actually running Amherst Massachusetts, like Clare McGinnis the Amherst tax collector and parking ticket hearings officer, are largely anonymous and unaccountable to the citizens.
What will be needed to effect these well bunkered staff people are economic losses so great that the Town can not afford to actually maintain its own infrastructure. To this end in July of 2006 I launched AmherstParkingTrap.com to begin the destruction of the reputation of Amherst as a place that anyone would want to visit. What I have now recognized is that although this site ranks only below the Town’s own parking web site it is ultimately ineffective because it mostly speaks to people who already know there is a problem.
A better approach would be to target market the people who would come into Amherst, Students who would go to School in Amherst, Patrons who would eat at Restaurants in Amherst, Visitors who would go to Museums in Amherst, and Potential Residents who would buy Homes in Amherst. If all of these people could be driven out of the Town, the economic basis for running Amherst could be eroded finally causing some effect on the people who actually run the Town.
When I announced this site a number of Town Residents contacted me voicing their approval, although nothing was done by the Town itself. As it is, AmherstParkingTrap.com just stands as a dim beacon to tell the few people people who care that there is a pot hole in the road that they should be careful to avoid called Amherst Massachusetts.
In my dreams I would hope that this site would provide some lasting annoyance to Clare McGinnis in compensation for her incompetent handling of my parking matter in 2006. To this day I do not understand how someone with no legal credentials can be in the position of adjudicating civil fines. Clare McGinnis simply does not know what she is doing. I had hoped that this site would hurt Clare McGinnis’s credibility as hearings officer, but in her position she doesn’t answer to anyone.