Letter: Opinions Are Not Statements Of Fact
Photo: PxFuel.com. Public Domain
The following letter was sent to the Amherst Town Council on June 29, 2023.
The proposal to loosen regulations for new duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, and conversions has undergone blizzards of revisions since its first public appearance in January, and when last seen looked like a splatter painting of color-coded updates. Presentations of its content seem no less confusing, going at lightning speed, flurries of titles, bullet points, tables with no time to make sense of them. Town of Amherst planners have spent umpteen hours trying to decipher, analyze, and improve the package of proposed changes, as have members of the Planning Board, and the board recently recommended unanimously that it be rejected.
In addition, a petition asking the council and Planning Board to reject the proposal and move on was signed by about 270 residents, as you probably know because I sent it to you. Now, it is possible that the then-current version actually included abutter notification in certain situations that had not been in earlier versions and it is possible that a comma in the petition is confusing, not unlike the Hanneke-DeAngelis proposal itself, and not unlike the comma in the Second Amendment about the right to bear arms, and the comma in the case of Portland, Maine workers against their employer, Oakhurst Dairy about their right to overtime pay.
Either way, true or untrue, Mandi Jo Hanneke’s accusations at last week’s Town Council meeting, when she disparaged Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals nominees who signed that petition, are uncalled for and she should be reprimanded. Tantrums should not be tolerated.
The council situation is especially disturbing because at the same meeting, councilors who made relatively mild statements of opinion, not heated false statements of fact, about a different nominee were reprimanded. And this is not the first time that the public has had the opportunity to observe this double standard.
To claim, as did Hanneke, that nominees could not have read the zoning proposal in full and that the petition “had obvious factual errors, which anyone reading [it] and having a minimal amount of zoning understanding would recognize as incorrect immediately” is inexcusable.
Hanneke’s diatribe leads me to wonder, not for the first time, “How much of what’s contained in this sweeping package of zoning amendments is not accurately understood by individual members of the council, let alone residents who have not taken on responsibility for the future of Amherst?”
In a town where divisiveness is recognized as a problem, I urge councilors and council leadership to be curious and respectful of others. And if that doesn’t work for you, then allow all councilors, not just a few, to express their personal opinions of elected and appointed officials, members of the public, and the issues facing all of us.
Kitty Axelson-Berry
Kitty Axelson-Berry is a resident of Amhers, and an editor at the Amherst Indy.
Relative to “that” meeting:
Councilor Devlin-Gauthier stated, “I plan to enthusiastically support Johanna’s appointment, especially because of her expertise. Those with climate action knowledge are needed on all of our committees.” In addition, she urged “all of us to check how we are speaking publicly about our neighbors and do it with kindness and empathy.”
First, I support a commitment to Climate Action, but wonder why then Devlin-Gauthier voted “Hell, yes”, to support artificial turf at the High School track. And when Johanna Neumann was asked to take a stand against its use, she refused to do so. This, as there continues to be mounting evidence of its adverse effects on the environment and the health and safety of its users.
Also, I trust that Devlin-Gauthier’s comment about “speaking publicly about our neighbors” was meant to include how Councilors publicly speak to those on each side of their own table, in Town government and appointed positions, and the general public. The well-enunciated tirade by Ms Hanneke last week was just the most recent example of her frequent, condescending, if not bullying, manner of speaking AT fellow Council members and others who disagree with her. One has to wonder why Council leadership repeatedly fails to insist on the same professional decorum from Ms Henneke that it expects from others.
Many of those whom Councilors are supposedly representing would prefer not to be lectured to about our opinions or characterized as “resistant to change” because we don’t support the change the speaker seeks. Instead, it would be helpful if certain Councilors would refrain from using their time before the public for stump speeches about how tired (and beyond) they are with those who disagree with them. Personally, I’m not interested in a Councilor’s personal assessment of swaths of people in the community, only in their reasoning behind their own vote on an issue. “Take responsibility”, as the saying goes.
Anecdotes:
During my years in Town Meeting it was not unusual for meeting members to be told (though it felt more like scolded) by some elected or appointed leaders of our community that we needed to trust the recommendations of professional staff and those on boards whose charge it was to thoroughly study an issue before making their recommendation.
Now, we have members of Town Council who, with no background or training in related areas (e.g., city planning/zoning), and with plenty already on their plate (e.g., lengthy Council agendas, long meetings), have chosen to propose significant changes to our by-laws (e.g., zoning).
“Town of Amherst Planners have spent umpteen hours trying to decipher, analyze, and improve the package of proposed changes, as have members of the Planning Board, and the Board recently unanimously voted that it be rejected”.
Trust the professional staff and those on the board charged with thoroughly studying an issue before they make their recommendation? Whoa, not so fast. Apparently, now the unskilled in this area know better.
Meanwhile, at a CRC meeting several weeks ago, comments were made by each of the two Councilors who have authored and are proposing zoning changes that a built-in “deed restriction” will prevent an owner occupancy requirement in a multi-unit dwelling from becoming a situation in which an owner occupant is no longer required.
At that point, the Planning Department Director (a career professional in the field) was recognized. She politely advised all that “A deed restriction is only good as long as the owner agrees to it. If the owner decides to take off the deed restriction and do something different with the property, then the deed restriction can go away.”
Notably, neither Council member sponsoring the by-law changes had anything to say. Long pause and the sounds of silence…
How was it that something so basic and integral to concerns regarding a loosening of zoning regulations and housing issues in Amherst, could after all this time spent, be presented as fact (aka law) when it was not.
(see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzpZwPIr5dk&list=PLcnmFtV6BPFNMy91aoq_IT3gZ9IuNGxli&index=83&t=1372s&pp=iAQB at approximately 1:16:00).
Enough already!
I was on the Planning Board in 2009, when an article initiated by the then Planning Director was brought before us at the last minute, as we were preparing a number of significantly complex zoning articles for the Fall Special Town Meeting (see Article 9 in the Town Meeting warrant for the fall of 2009). It was clear to me that this article had been crafted specifically for one individual who had tried to get approval to build a medical office in the PRP in Amherst Woods, and whose application had been rejected because such a use was not permitted in that zoning district. In order to make this project happen, Article 9 was proposed. There were a number of objections, concerns, and questions raised as the article was examined during various meetings; after each meeting, a new and even more complex version arrived in our inboxes. In order to shoehorn the project into the PRP, byzantine and unrealistic definitions of types of medical facilities and care providers were ideated, with corresponding limits on numbers to make the bylaw palatable to Town Meeting. After much discussion and a dizzying number of versions, the Planning Board voted 5 to 3 to recommend the article to Town Meeting. When it was presented to the Selectboard, I remember seeing Alisa Brewer sitting with papers spread all over her desk, looking up and saying that there were so many changes that she had little idea as to exactly what the most current version of the article actually was. I objected in part because I felt that the bureaucratic parsing of what constituted a medical provider would effectively limit any growth of the practice the article was intended to aid. I shouldn’t have worried. Those limits were basically ignored, and what was supposed to be a small medical office is now clearly a medical center, a use that the article had been designed to prevent. Is this medical center a good neighbor? I can’t answer that. But I continue to object to zoning proposals that are so complex and artificially restricted, that likely will produce unintended consequences, and that may end up simply being ignored.
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsxxt”.
WC Fields
Meanwhile, the record shows that two former Planning Board members (Ms Barbaret and then Michael Birtwistle), who happened to be minority reporters of their time on the Board, were not reappointed despite their experience, admirable attendance record and obvious attention to the issues before them.
So much for Councilor Steinberg’s reasoning to vote for J. Neumann’s reappointment.
We have coined a verb after this practice: to be “barbaret’d”. To be kicked off a board because of having offered alternative opinions or practices.
The correct spelling of this verb should actually be “barberet’d” (misspelled on these shores since 1889). Given my linguistic background, I am very pleased to have given rise to a neologism, and even more so to one that describes the action of silencing those who dissent.