Conservation Commission And ZBA Meetings Cancelled For Lack Of Quorum
Photo: Flckr.com. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Scheduled meetings of the Amherst Conservation Commission on October 12 and the Zoning Board of Appeals on October 13 were cancelled for lack of a quorum.
If there has been any attempt to fill the ZBA alternate positions since I was denied one because of ideological differences with the Amherst Forward clique, I was not apprised of the opportunity to reapply, as per the promise of the Town Council president. This more than a personal rant. The debacle last summer left many in the community with the impression that volunteering to work on town committees is not just time-consuming and thankless, but downright toxic.
The desire of the ‘pro-business’ faction to dominate Amherst politics is now grinding town government to a stop by default.
Doing away with town meeting was seen as a way to streamline Amherst governance. Having been a town meeting member for 6 years, I can attest to the problematic functioning of that unwieldy body. However, the poorly thought-out alternative – our current system of a town council with no control over the budget, essentially fully deferring to the town manager who sees his sole function as the balancing of the budget and who seems only marginally concerned with the changing demographics of the town, is less democratic, and now demonstratively less functional, owing at least in part to the lack of desire to have a full and truly representative slate of volunteers assisting in the process.