And so it begins: Charter proponents seek change in the form of Town government

On Thursday afternoon, members of a new group, whose existence had long been predicted, rumored, or mentioned in hushed conversation, came out into the open. "Amherst for All" officially announced its presence by filing papers for a ballot initiative that would create a Charter Commission to review and (presumably) change our form of town government.

Charter supporters gather before visiting the Town Clerk (blogger Larry Kelley at right)

Front row: Yuri Friman, Michael Alpert, Andrew Churchill, Niels la Cour (and son: behind, left), Adam Lussier (with clipboard), John Kuhn, Richard Morse
Rear row: Jerry Guidera, Jackie Churchill, Peter Vickery

at the Town Clerk's office

Town Clerk Sandra Burgess explains the signature-gathering process

Poll positions

Town Clerk Sandra Burgess took the time to explain in great detail to the group (joined by Town Meeting member Clare Bertrand, who arrived later) what constitutes a legal and verifiable resident signature. 3,215 such signatures would be required to get this measure on the ballot next year. As Larry Kelley notes: last time, that took nearly two years, whereas this time, the organizers are shooting for the spring election, which is but seven or eight months away. But as he also notes, we now live in the age when internet access is taken for grant and new social media amplify and speed up the conversation.

A side-issue is the date of the spring election: traditionally, it takes place between the last days of March and the opening days of April, but this year, another option is to make it coincide with the presidential primary, whose date of March 1 is mandated by State law. There are arguments on both sides. Some think it would make sense to combine them, for the sake of efficiency and better turnout. Clerk Burgess expressed strong support for keeping the two elections separate, arguing that combining them would (because of the technical requirements of local and state ballots) in fact not result in any monetary savings and, rather, simply overstress Town staff. (The last time such elections coincided was in November 2008, when, however, the presidential contest caused more residents to volunteer at polling places.) The issue will soon come before the Select Board, which has the authority to set the date.


Scrap Town Meeting or throw all the bastards out?

Everyone "knows" that this pro-Charter movement is primarily an anti-Town Meeting movement, and that it would replace our current system of government with a mayor and city council, right? The first is clear. The latter, not so much. 

The desiderata, according to the website, are:

Accountability, Representation, and Year-Round Decision-Making.

The last of these looms largest in the explanation, but the former two are the proverbial elephant in the room. Clearly, Town Meeting is the main target of all three:

Our government structure isn’t built to keep up with these challenges and maintain our great quality of life. We have a Town Meeting that meets twice a year.  We have a five-member Select Board and a Town Manager.  Too many issues have to wait until the next Town Meeting to be addressed – and if a proposed solution needs some tweaking, maybe the next Town Meeting after that. 

Another passage at least implicitly references former Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe's editorial on the problem of executive authority and accountability:

with leadership diffused across the Select Board and Town Manager, it’s hard to know who’s in charge.  Who represents us with the state, the colleges, businesses, and citizens?  Who can we hold accountable for meeting the many challenges of maintaining our quality of life?

On the other hand, the organizers claim to be agnostic about the precise nature of the alternative arrangement:

We don’t know what the right government structure is for Amherst.  That’s why we support electing a representative study group to take a look at it.  Whatever the final proposal looks like, we think it should meet a few clear standards – it should be year-round, representative, and accountable.

I think we can take them at their word. We should after all remind ourselves that the last (unsuccessful) Charter proposal indeed proposed replacing Town Meeting and the Select Board with a mayor and council--but also retained the institution of a professional, appointed Town Manager, which Amherst has had since 1954.


What are the issues?

I wouldn't presume to analyze this in depth here: just a snapshot and some guesses.

We've been through this before, in 2003 and 2005, when Charter initiatives came within a hairsbreadth of winning. Many of the underlying issues are the same, though the dynamics as well as the players are, I suspect, somewhat different.

Last time, it seemed, Town Meeting was the focus of much of the dissatisfaction. Critics charged, for example that it was inefficient, consumed with process and deliberation rather than action (and too eager to take on issues beyond the local realm). The Select Board was unpopular in many quarters, as well. Critics accused it of the double sin of inefficiency and intrusiveness: it was seen as meddling and micromanaging.

This time, I think, the active hostility is directed principally at Town Meeting. There is the perennial complaint that it spends too much time talking and is too slow to reach decisions, but I think it is more about the substance. In the last three to five years, Town Meeting has become increasingly polarized around a set of issues that could be broadly grouped under the rubric of "development": from zoning changes to the permitting of major new downtown construction projects (and of course, the ill-conceived and stillborn "Retreat" proposal for commercial student housing). Only the zoning changes strictly fall within the remit of Town Meeting, but ill will over the other issues clearly shapes the course and character of our debates.

At the risk of oversimplifying for the sake of clarity:

One faction sees large new downtown construction projects and measures promoting greater density in village centers as jeopardizing Amherst's comfortable "rural" or "small-town" feel. It accuses Town Hall (especially the Planning Department, and to some extent the Town Manager) of turning a deaf to ear to residents' fears over loss of neighborhood character and instead catering to the interests of developers. The role of the University and the problem of off-campus student housing is a closely related concern. Among some, the distrust extends to all at the "front of the table"--i.e. the appointed Planning Board and Finance Committee and elected Select Board--accused of thinking and voting in lockstep. As a result, this faction sees Town Meeting as a watchdog that should view major planning and economic development proposals with great skepticism, and in many cases, block them.

The other faction sees economic development and increased density in village centers as a form of smart growth: the only way to begin to shift more of our tax base from residential (currently: 90%) to commercial property and to address the housing shortage that is pricing many would-be residents--including young families--out of town. It sees the other faction as creating a toxic atmosphere characterized by incivility and lack of trust between residents and government. As a result, it despairs over the possibility of change, believing it has become nearly "impossible to get anything done," meaning, for example: pass comprehensive as opposed to incremental legislation in crucial areas such as planning and zoning.

As a result, following last spring's Annual Town Meeting, one heard increasing concerns that our system of government was caught in a sort of gridlock with no solution in sight.

Obviously, Town Meeting encompasses a wide variety of individuals and people, including many who belong to no "faction," and even those associated with one of the aforementioned groupings do not necessarily vote together on all issues. Still, these seem to be the dynamics driving much of the renewed interest in a Charter vote.

Then again, I am not part of this Charter movement, so you'd have to ask them. I'm sure we'll soon find out.


I don't intend to provide detailed coverage of the issue in these pages (hyperlocal blogger Larry Kelley seems to be taking care of that). Rather, I just want to note it, because I've been talking about Town government, and this could radically affect what all of us do in the civic realm (including my own post as an elected official).

For the record: no one on the five-member Select Board has publicly discussed or taken a position on this initiative. We have been elected to carry out the duties of our office, we have a great deal of work to do, and it is on that work that we are focused.

*  *  *

Fun facts to know and tell:

Contrary to concerns raised in a recent op-ed piece by veteran Finance Committee member Marylou Theilman, the Town would not be obligated to pay present Town Manager John Musante half a million dollars (or whatever fearsome sum some have in mind) in the event that a Charter change occurs. Town Counsel confirmed to the Select Board, and we stated in our press release on his contract renewal and salary, that our original interpretation of the original 2010 contract holds: 9 months' severance pay if the contract is terminated.

So, at least you can cross that issue off your list as you ponder the change in form of government. Debate away, in the confidence that the determining factor will be the effectiveness of government rather than the bottom line.


Footnote (can't help myself):

Props to the Amherst for All website designer (whoever he or she may be) for a clean aesthetic and good navigation (you can't always take those essentials for granted, even nowadays)--and some interesting image choices.

Start with the organization's logo:

Smart choice: not just the iconic 1889 Town Hall (as both landmark and seat of government, with the word, "Amherst," mostly but not entirely below it), but also individual houses: underscores the "for all" and "for everyone" message. And, given that much debate in and around Town meeting has focused on both affordable housing and the threats posed to existing neighborhoods by predatory rental conversions, it reminds us of the substantive issues under debate.

Finally, although the length of the image series is dictated by the need to match that of the text below, there is just something about the two-tiered horizontality of the icons that to me subtly underscores the message, "for all" and "everyone."

(Of course, one might instead choose to read the Town Hall and houses as the Town Manager and five Select Board members, since that's one theoretical outcome of a Charter Commission, as well. Okay, clearly time to stop this.)


Another example: the top of the page borrows from the Town's promotional slogans: a great place to live, study, work, play.

But for "a great place to study," the image used is that of the beloved Jones Library, thus referencing a Town civic institution rather than having to choose between the University of Massachusetts and the private Amherst and Hampshire Colleges. Smart move.

On the other hand, inclusion of that atrocious hippie-flavored student mural near Rao's and the Bangs Center (admittedly, I think I know some people who took part in creating it) toward the bottom of the page? Not so much. Or maybe that is a very subtle way of indicating the need for a break from the ways of the past?

{corrected; apologies: a trackpad error caused the post to go up before it was complete}

Small Beer? Student Culture of Yore

As a footnote to the recent posts on student culture and problem drinking culture, this account by Elijah Kellogg of commencement day in the early years of Bowdoin College, which opened its doors to students in 1802:

With dignified officials, sober matrons, gay belles and their beaux came also horse jockeys, wrestlers, snake charmers, gamblers, and vendors of every sort. The college yard was dotted with booths, where were sold ginger-bread, pies, eggnog, long cigars, beers small, and alas! too often for the good order,  beers large. While seniors were discussing Immortality, jockeys outside were driving sharp trades and over-convivial visitors were enjoying fist fights.

— cited in Herbert G. Jones, The Amazing Mr. Longfellow: Little Known Facts About a Well-Known Poet (Portland, ME: The Longfellow Press, 1957), 19

In other words, the proverbial good time was had by all, but not all were happy about it.

Increasing Outrage Over Student Disturbances

An increasing number of people in Amherst feel that the town is under assault: from bad student behavior, and from predatory landlords, who convert former single-family housing to student rentals, which in turn encourages bad student behavior, or at the least brings it into the heart of formerly stable residential neighborhoods.

It's no wonder. Every week, it seems, the newspapers and blogs bring reports of new outrages. The lead story in the print edition of the Bulletin this past week was "Rowdy partying unabated." Police Captain Christopher Pronovost's observation, "'It's not a good start' to the school year," was a masterful piece of understatement. "Young people" threw bottles at police attempting to break up out-of-control parties: in one case, overstretched public safety forces dispersed a crowd of over 1,000 frenzied fraternity folks and issued $ 9,600 in fines. In other incidents, "college-age" brawlers in a bar attacked police officers.  And, in the most alarming incident, because emergency vehicles were busy dealing with student disturbances, first responders had to scramble to find a means to assist an "unresponsive baby with difficulty breathing."

Clearly, things are getting out of control.

Responding to my previous piece on the unusually dirty and nonsensical Massachusetts senatorial campaign, one of my readers said that politicians should not expect a bed of roses. I of course agree. Still, some of the criticism being leveled at Town and University officials is ill-informed and off-target. It's wrong in principle and in point of fact, but more important: for that reason, it will not solve the problem.

The Amherst Bulletin cites contrarian former Planning Board member Denise Barberet as saying "This is getting the in-fill the master plan calls for, but not the type of in-fill and density people wanted." Um, no. None of this really has much anything to do with the Master Plan, which some of its supporters and critics alike still do not understand. (Full disclosure: I was the final chair of the committee that produced the Master Plan, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what it says.) Ironically, in fact, some of the people who are today complaining about the current housing and behavioral mess also two years ago opposed and defeated the crucial Development Modification Bylaw that would have been the first major application of the new Master Plan. It would have begun to put in place measures to deal with at least some of the problems that so exercise everyone today.

In a citizen editorial entitled, "Town officials need to get tough with landlords," resident Steve Bloom takes up an even broader brush, tarring in one stroke elected officials, Town staff, and the University. He likens Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe to a Polyanna and Planning Director Jonathan Tucker to a pedantic Emperor Nero (I've heard him called many things, but not this; it's silly, but at least printable), and asks (only rhetorically?) whether Ms. O'Keeffe would be willing to see "law-abiding, tax-paying, year-round residents with families [driven] out of Amherst until all that's left is a vast student slum of marginally maintained, unsupervised rentals." (Next time try decaf, perhaps?)

By contrast, another editorial, "Climate action stymied by neighborhood chaos," by the progressive trio of columnists Rob Crowner (current Planning Board member and a former member of the Master Plan committee), Steve Randall, and Larry Ely, stands out as by and large nuanced and constructive. As they correctly point out, residents' complaints are legitimate, but the complainers are in some cases firing on the wrong targets (in the olden days, we used to refer to this as false consciousness). As they put it, the generally progressive planning and zoning measures that we have in place are all the more needed in an age of "climate change." (Yes, that's their hobby-horse, but it is a valid point, and it's a convenient shorthand and means of focusing the mind on a variety of problems that can be subsumed under the heading of sustainability.) It is therefore wrong, they say, to attack the planning measures as such, rather than focusing both on enforcement and on—something that others, who unrealistically put all responsibility on the University leave out or refuse to contemplate—"where alternative housing serving the inevitable student population can be properly and safely integrated into the community."

I'll return to the planning and zoning questions in future posts, because they have come to be intertwined with questions of historic preservation. In the meantime, though, just a few more remarks about behavior and enforcement.

We in Town government certainly understand the frustration of many residents, which Mr. Bloom expressed:

We don't need anymore [sic] university-community breakfasts or student information sessions. What we need are simple, common-sense measures.

Expressed in those terms, that does sound silly. But it's a cheap shot. Studying moldy bread sounds silly; discovering penicillin does not.

Believe me: no one thinks those steps in themselves are the solutions to the problem. Rather, they are the prerequisite. The Town and the University have to work together to address the problems or they will fail together.

The strategy pursued by Town Manager John Musante, Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe, and our public safety officials was:

1. to establish a better working relationship with the University,
2. to convey to the University the seriousness with which we view the issue,
3. to demonstrate that we are taking firm action against offenders, and 
4. to give the University to understand that we expect it to do likewise. 

The purpose of all those "breakfasts" and "information sessions," then, was to send a message to administration, students, and residents about values and expectations. One way that the Town took matters seriously was by getting the University to apply its code of conduct to off-campus as well as residential students: something that is by no means a given in this country, though it is growing in appeal (1, 2). The University now better and regularly communicates its expectations to students. But obviously, expectations have to be enforced as well as expressed.

Following some vandalism in town last spring around graduation time, I happened to have a conversation with one of our police officers. He thought that things were improving precisely because the authorities had made clear they were treating antisocial and criminal behavior with great seriousness. The students were feeling the bite of the $ 300 fines (the state maximum) for nuisance and alcohol violations, but perhaps more important, they knew that the University would call them in and hold them accountable (the latter also seemed to make a stronger impression than a mere fine when it came to dealing with mom and dad).

At last week's Select Board meeting, we heard from Town Manager John Musante and Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe about ongoing town-gown cooperation and intensified efforts in enforcement, as reflected in a new report from the police. The document compared summons and arrest figures for the beginning of the academic years 2011 and 2012. This year's figures showed a marked uptick.

 

[enlarge]

Amherst Police Department Selected Violations & Under 21 YOA 

Selected Violations Beginning of Semester to Present 2011 to 2012 Comparison 

Total Summons: 

2011: 36 

2012: 107 

% Change: +197% 

Total Arrests 

2011: 52 

2012: 67 

% Change: +29% 

Total Charged Under Both Summons and Arrest: 

2011: 88 

2012: 174 

% Change: +98% 

Summons in all categories at least doubled, while nuisance house citations increased by a whopping 900% (new regulations went into effect). There were fewer changes among arrests because they are, obviously, reserved for the more serious infractions, such as operating motor vehicles under the influence of alcohol.

As we noted on Monday night, statistics need to be interpreted. To some, the marked increase in summonses and arrests signals a much more serious situation. It well may. But it also reflects a much more serious approach to enforcement. Over the course of the next few years, when we can compare figures over a larger time span, we will have a clearer picture.

What's the takeaway?

Seen from one perspective, the town is becoming fatally polarized. Seen from another, there is actually a fairly broad range of agreement:

1. There is a real problem of student behavior.
2. It is related but not confined to housing issues; 
3. Residents, government, public safety officers, and University administration agree on the need for action.
4. We can start to address the problem by enforcing existing regulations on both behavior and housing.

The problems facing the town are real, and they are serious. If we expect to address them, we will need to do so together. I would therefore hope that residents will start from that common ground of agreement and credit town government with both good will and good sense. We're all in this together, and we need your support.

9-11 and Amherst: Why Do They Hate Us? (part 2)

Why do they hate us? (douchebags, turds, socialists, Muslims, libtards, Democrats)

 

Even though, as the previous post explained and the following one shows, Amherst annually marks the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks by lowering its flags to half-staff and holding a ceremony at the Fire Station, people persist in believing that we ignore the date or even that we never fly the American flag.

Strictly speaking, I suppose, Part 1 already explained why they hate us.

Here the question is, rather: How do they hate us?

Let me count the ways.

Along with those who simply disagreed with the Town's policy were those who expressed more hostile feelings. Many emphasized the strength of these emotions by threatening to boycott the town. (How many of them actually have shopped here as they claim is anyone's guess. I want to see receipts.) Many called us names. Some suspected we were trying to establish Sharia (or the Gulag). Some wanted us to move somewhere else (whether expressed as a general desire, or with reference to specific destinations, from just south of the border to the infernal regions). Some wished us bodily harm.

When I arrived at Monday's Select Board meeting, I saw uniformed police officers outside the Town Room and thought I had perhaps missed an earlier ceremony or failed to notice a public-safety topic on the agenda. As I later found out, the police were there for our protection: it was September 10, and we were to hear more public comment on the flag controversy. We never felt unsafe, but that gives you a sense of how high the tensions had risen.


The following is a little selection of the angry talkbacks and emails directed at us.


Impeach, hang, or exile the Prius-driving, weed-smoking hippie terrorist sympathizers

From responses to Conor Berry's piece in the Springfield Republican:

• Maybe the officials of this town secretly believe that the attacks were false and actually government created...as I have heard from some people who also feel the government is poisoning us secretly and moving towards a new world order

•  Only figures from a town named after a genocidal maniac Amherst who by the way infected local Indians with small pox to steal their land , keep up the good work.....

•I've stopped doing any business with anybody connected to or in Amherst . . . . it's just a typical college town full of people full of themselves. I love all those Prius, Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Lexus owners trying to portray themselves as Americans.

• Maybe Northampton [sic] is taking it's cues from the DNC. The convention is starting with 2 hours of muslim prayers... Our country is going to hell.

• There is a perversion that patriotism, religious beliefs, marriage between a man and a women, and respect for life at conception is some how out of date and unpopular. Maybe in places like the people's republic of Amherst Massachusetts they are. Please Amherst, secede from the United States of America.

• Sounds like the town officials are oblivious to the pain of the country. May they should go live in Mexico.

• Speaking for my ancestors who fought for our country dating back to the Revolution, I am appalled that a minority of self serving small town politicians would be allowed to dictate to the masses when our US flag can fly on the town common. Impeach 'em!!

• Amherst is one of the most disgusting and unpatriotic cities in the U.S. How can a city not allow to fly the flag of its own country???? I just don't get it. The city councilors who banned the flag display should all be put on trial for treason. And then hanged in the city square in place of the flag display.

• Remember all those hippies from the 60s who were smoking weed, dropping acid, and denouncing everything that had to do with the government? Well guess what? Those same hippies got old and are now in positions of authority.

• HEY TERRORIST, please target Amherst, I'll supply you with a map.

Amherst: it's just un-American; Hell, it's not even in America

From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

• This is the SAME community that said, pre 9-11, that the red in the American flag stood for "all of the blood of the innocent victims of American terrorism all over the world."
Can we really expect anything different from them?

• Thank God I don't live in Amherst.... It is questionable if it is part of the USA

Love it or leave it, you limp-wristed, spineless, namby-pamby, anti-American jackwagons, gay, Muslim-loving supporters of fluoridation and taxation

From responses to Diane Lederman's piece in the Springfield Republican:

• Why would some one want to live in a country that offends them? I'm not suggesting we run them out of town. But, these people who find our flag "offensive" should ponder as to why they want to be here, and whether or not they would be happier elsewhere.

• I am so sick of the spineless people in this country and our government who kowtow to every whiner who shows up with a gripe..We are Americans and our Flag is a emblem of freedom and pride--don't like that? Then go some where you do like

• GOOD GRIEF WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA. IF SOMEBODY FINDS THE FLAG OPPRESSIVE THEN GET THE HECK OUT OF DODGE. THERE ARE SO MANY STUPID PEOPLE WHO DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE IN THIS WONDERFUL COUNTRY AND LORD HELP US THEY ARE ELECTED OFFICIALS. MAROULIS [Chamber of Commerce Director, who actually wrote in favor of flying the flags but happened to refer to opposing views] YOU ARE A PUTZ AND DO NOT DESERVE TO CALL YOURSELF AN AMERICAN.

 • I suggest any person or community in America that finds the AMERICAN FLAG polarizing and a brazen symbol of might and oppression to pick up, pack up, and head to a country with a flag they find less polarizing and a brazen symbol of might and oppression. Any communist country should do.

To think hundreds of thousands of patriotic Americans died so that limp-wristed, namby-pamby, anti-American jackwagons could occupy space and vote in this, the best country ever to have been founded. Disgusting! 

•  It never fails to amaze me how stupid, ignorant or naive some people can be. You don't want fly old glory, our country's flag because you are embarrassed by it. Or is it because it might offend some Islamic residents of what 9/11 really means to real Americans. 3000 innocent Americans were murdered by Islamic radicals and you are afraid to respect their loss to our country by displaying the American flag. If you cannot respect what the American flag represents, you should move to a country that agrees with your perspective. Some suggestions: North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia as well as half the United Nations who laugh at us and disrespects what America has contributed to the world.

• This in the all "inclusive" town where the flag of Puerto Rico was was torn down because it was mistaken for the state flag of Texas, home of a republican president. I guess that means you can be included, welcome, and vital to the community as long as you agree with the view of the few. Well at least Amherst will be spared Armageddon, as it was voted a nuclear free zone. No mushroom shaped clouds, or American flags allowed. The sign at the town line should read, "Welcome to Laughingstockville"

•Every city official who voted for this idiocy should be hit with a petition demanding they resign immediately. Vote every single one of them out of office at the earliest opportunity and replace them with true patriots.

From WWLP Channel 22:

• Do you even consider yourselves Americans?   Please drive your stereotypical green Subaru Legacy hippie wagons off a cliff while you listen to NPR on full blast.

• Bet they still fly the Muslim flag on Ramadan

• No problem flying the gay pride fag...er...flag on any day of the year though

•  what a dumb thing to do. There is a small country in northern south america that wood love to have people like you. So move and let the flag fly.I served my country and flag, many have given their lives for it. I will never visit this town and hope others join me.

• The selectman should be removed from their positions for trying to dictate when and where the American Flag can be flown.

•  can we just ban amherst from the states already

•  What an abomination.....Amherst is a perfect example of everything wrong with our Nation.  Insane property taxes (to pay for all the welfare), a police state, fluoride in the water and hippiecrities running around destroying the Flag that represents our Republic.  Shame on you town of Amherst

• Amherst . . . you all should be ashamed to call yourselves Americans!!  This is why our Country is falling apart. Disrespectful, ignorant, naive people.  They don’t fly our Flag but they do have aPot Fest every year that forces the Police to let people smoke Pot and do nothing about it.
Something is wrong here.

 • Yup and they are always the first in line for welfare and food stamps with the amount of people that qualify there. Figures they had [hate??] the government except when they want that free hand out

• Only in the Socialist Republic of Amherst.

• What a bunch of pretentious d-bags.

• What a bunch of self righteous t*rds.

• Go to H3ll, Amherst.

Dear Assholes: You and your communist, Muslim-loving cesspool of liberals make us sick, you ingrateful spawn of elitist hypocrites

Oddly, perhaps, some of the nastiest comments came not in anonymous newspaper talkbacks, but in direct, signed letters to the Select Board. We certainly cannot complain about reticence:

• I am dismayed by the report that your town does not see fit to honor the singly significant event and heroes of that infamous day when we were viciously attacked by radical muslims. I believe that the 'politically correct' Massachusetts beliefs have brought a disservice to all involved.

• Any Board Member who votes not to raise the American flag in memory of 911 should be sent to Siberia. You people are like that idiot professor. Why do you liberal democrats have to appease a few? Doesn't the majority rule?
You idiots should be ashamed. I will make it a point to circumnavigate your cesspool of liberals the next time I need to pass through.

• Ever wonder why a lot of our kids show little to no respect for the flag,well, you sure show them the way.Bet you’d be happy to fly a Muslim flag everyday.Thanks for ruining our country.

• ARE YOU GOING TO LET A COMMUNIST COLLEGE PROFESSOR RUN YOUR TOWN?????----MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION FOR US AMERICANS-NOT THE COMMUNISTS---HISTORY LESSON COMMUNISM HAS BEEN TRIED AND FAILED (SOVIET UNION).

• It is a blatant and outright disrespectful statement to this country and the men and women who have served in the past and continue to serve presently. They are the ones that will protect your pathetic, spineless self when the rubber hits the road since all you have done is welcome terrorists and illegals into my country. I am personally deeply offended and will not support your personal agendas.... I am ashamed of each of you, the select board as a whole and the town that you are supposed to be assisting in managing; representing the town as a whole and making decisions in the best interest of the community is a sham. I am disappointed that you all fail to do the right thing, time and time again. You sicken me.

•  I read your explanation on your ideas of displaying the American flags every five years to commemorate 9-11. As usual it's a ridiculous left wing argument....

I think for the most part the people of Massachusetts are very unfriendly and cynical. We visited there once and couldn't wait to leave, just the traffic showed us what nasty people were behind the wheels of the cars racing around cutting each other off.

I will be forwarding this to help get the word out that picturesque little Amherst is just another socialist city like Berkeley, Ca.

• APPARENTLY THERE ARE ENOUGH COMMUNISTS WHO SIT ON YOUR COUNCIL WHO FEEL THAT THE AMERICAN FLAG IS A SYMBOL OF OPPRESSION.... IF YOUR SITTING COUNCIL MEMBERS ARE OFFENDED BY THE SIGHT OF THE AMERICAN FLAG THAN MAYBE THEY SHOULD PACK UP THEIR SHIT AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS COUNTRY. LET THEM GO LIVE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY SO THEY CAN LEARN FIRST HAND WHAT OPPRESSION REALLY IS.

 • Hi!
I would like to fly the American flag everyday at my home. Will I be arrested and fined? Is this true?
Thanks

• You are a disgrace to your office. Your entire board is a disgrace to the blood that has been spilled by those who have defended this country. Of course we should not be surprised as it is once again Massachusetts and the crazy loons on the left that are the disgrace of the nation.

• your town is a DISGRACE to this country. If your little ''Mayberry'' is that ashamed to fly the American Flag on 9/11, a symbol of hope and courage to millions of people around the world, then I strongly suggest you get the hell out of MY country. Leave it to a handful of hillbillies in the bowels of the northeast to make waves by your disrespectful actions.

• What country are you clowns from?.....,,You are appearing as clowns, trying to be politically correct. I’m not sure you are true Americans, especially in a state founded as one of the original colonies, you should have a clearer understanding of the symbols of this country and their meaning. Shame…

• If you don't fly the American flag every September the 11th it proves you are communists, bent on the destruction of the remembrance of that horrible day and wanting to undermine the destruction of America.
To even think of not flying the flag on September 11 of each year shows each of you are a communist.
You need to be proud of America, the greatest nation on earth and drop your communist principles.
We live in a republic form of democracy (just in case you were not taught that in school) and not in a commy country!

• Dear Assholes of Amherst, MA:

So you think the American flag is a "sign of oppression." Having lived through 9-11 in NYC -- I lived in Manhattan, I think there is nothing quite like a hijacked boeing burning in the worlds tallest office building with innocent people dying for not being deemed worthy to live and in that to be murdered any less painfully, since they were not Muslim.... Further, you may find that my US dollars to be derived from the oppressive American government. So I will keep mine, and you commie bastards can go fuck yourselves. I will further encourage all I know and meet to also boycott your little wonderland of derision, utter disrespect and to reject you, your town and ingrateful spawn of you elitist hypocrites.

As we keep telling ourselves: 82 cents a day. That's what we earn. At times like this, we feel overtaxed as well as underpaid.

Two seats open in the spring. Anyone want to run?

Stripping, vomiting, and drinking themselves unconscious...Amherst and the culture of problem drinking

"Stripping, vomiting, and drinking themselves unconscious...•Undergraduates seen urinating in the flower beds •Revellers vomited just metres away from where young children played •Blood shed between rival college drinking societies •Girls held upside down as alcohol poured into their mouths"

A typical bad weekend in Amherst as chronicled in Larry Kelley's blog?

Nope, just what one of my tweeps called: "The perennial Cambridge 'students get eye-poppingly drunk and do awful things 'newspaper story (Telegraph edition)" (h.t.: S.J.)

But it could in fact describe our worst fears—and, on at least one day this year: realities. In March, when customers traditionally line up early in front of several downtown bars on one of the weekends around St. Patrick's Day, both we in Town government and the newspapers received multiple complaints about shocking behavior that ranged from the distasteful (vomit on the sidewalks) to the disgustingly dangerous (alleged attempt at molestation of a young girl).

The Gazette editorial—"Darkness Before Noon at Barney Blowout" (good title, though I doubt many readers got the Koestler reference)—lamented:

The reports are sadly familiar in Amherst: young people throwing bottles, picking fights, vomiting and urinating in public. "Drunk kids everywhere," one Amherst police officer noted. The chairwoman of the Select Board observed: "It's appalling to be downtown and to see that happening."

Familiar at night, perhaps.

But the middle of the day? With St. Patrick's Day still a full week off, students engaged last weekend in what was billed as the 13th annual Blarney Blowout.

And in the words of The Republican:

Officials here described a weekend bacchanalia that made downtown Amherst seem more like a town ransacked by barbarians than the proud home of the state's flagship public university and one of the nation's top private colleges. [evidently Hampshire College is unknown in Springfield; JW]

Not for that reason, but also not unaware of this larger picture, the Select Board has subsequently twice voted to deny liquor license applications from convenience stores.

It has long been clear that antisocial student behavior, much or most of it associated with consumption of alcohol, is a real problem for the town. It is a problem in two ways: the bad behavior, as such—which, we should stress, most rational observers attribute to a small minority of the roughly 27,000 students who learn and work here—and the fears arising from actual or potential misbehavior. Concerns over what was invariably referred to as "student housing" helped to sink even the heavily revised rezoning proposal for North Amherst village center at this spring's annual Town Meeting. Addressing the cause is more difficult than recognizing the symptom.

Representatives of organizations concerned about alcohol abuse who come before the Select Board invariably make the argument that there is a correlation between availability of alcohol (density of sales points plus low price) and alcohol abuse. I don't doubt that. But if it is plausible, it is also neither very interesting nor totally compelling. Stuff that's easy to get is, well, easy to get, and thus more easily abused: this is not exactly sophisticated social science. By that measure, we could "solve" the problem by just reducing the number of liquor licenses. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts gives us a quota of 40, though we are under no obligation to fill it (at the moment, we are using only 34). And of course, the US still has a great problem with illegal drugs, which, by comparison, are neither widely available nor cheap in comparison with alcohol.

When we on the Select Board debated, or rather, shared our ideas on the issue—for we unanimously opposed both applications—I expressed the view that the problem was ultimately one of culture rather than the market. That is: the Town may regulate licenses to the maximum possible extent, but people are allowed to buy and consume alcohol, so what matters in the end is how those consumers behave, which is in turn a matter of how the community expresses its social norms, and how the authorities enforce our legal norms.

I can illustrate that on two levels, historical and contemporary.

As a historian, I can assure you that the levels of alcohol consumption today are nothing like those of the past (a description, not a judgment).

As the late great historian of modern Europe Eugen Weber noted in a bestselling textbook, the eighteenth-century author Samuel Johnson once drank thirteen bottles of port without rising from his chair: a notable feat, Weber said, in more ways than one.  Still, it was not in other ways atypical. It wasn't just a British or continental thing, either. In The Alcoholic Republic, (Oxford University Press, 1981), a study of American habits between 1790 and 1840, W. J. Rorabaugh notes that, even as the Founding Fathers condemned alcohol abuse, they drank heavily. Our own staid and conservative John Adams consumed "a tankard of hard cider" at breakfast every day, while worrying about "this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance" (p. 6).

Others didn't seem to worry much at all:

New York Governor Georg Clinton honored the French ambassador with a dinner at which 120 guests downed 135 bottles of Madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of English beer, and 30 large cups of rum punch. Even in staid New England the upper classes continued to imbibe; at one Congregational minister's ordination in 1793, the celebrants consumed dozens of bottles of hard cider, wine, sherry, cherry brandy, and Jamaica rum. (48)

As Weber put it, the decent folk of that time were drunk all the time, dead drunk most of the time, and apparently none the worse for it except in the long run, and perhaps not even then.

This is not to say that we should drink like Johnson and Adams, and the cautionary message of Hogarth's "Gin Lane" remains relevant. But we need to remember that Hogarth contrasted the depravity of "Gin Lane" with the salubriousness of "Beer Street" (it was moreover a contrast between "foreign" and "native" beverages). Early Americans took a similar view: a famous "temperance thermometer" (still sold in reproduction at Colonial Williamsburg) contrasted supposedly healthy low-alcohol beverages such as beer, wine, and cider, with dangerous distilled ones. A prominent physician considered one bottle of wine per evening moderate (32), and he was not unusual. Of course, as Rorabaugh observes, it may be that early Americans were simply, let us say, in training:

As a shrewd Scot by the name of Peter Neilson pointed out, the nation's citizens were 'in a certain degree seasoned, and consequently it [was] by no means common to see an American very much intoxicated.' In other words, as a result of habitual heavy drinking Americans had developed a high degree of tolerance for alcohol. Even so, in the opinion of Isaac Candler, Americans were certainly not so sober as the French or the Germans, but perhaps,' he guessed, 'about on a level with the Irish.' (7)

We drink less today, and that's probably a good thing. Whether we handle our drink any better is another matter.

I can affirm, however that mere availability of alcohol and presence of large numbers of students does not have to mean that the barbarians are at the gate.

As chance would have it, we left Amherst the week after the "Blarney Blowout" for a long-postponed cultural tourism vacation that took us to Savannah and New Orleans, American cities distinguished as leaders in historic preservation.
Among other things, I was interested to study the workings of two of the most famous American local historic districts (1, 2) as we were in the process of trying to create one here in Amherst. As it also happens, these are two cities whose tourist trade is for better or worse closely tied to a public party and drinking culture.

One automatically associates that with New Orleans but it had barely crossed my mind in the case of Savannah, for we chose to travel on March 18, a day after the biggest event of the year. Perhaps because we live in the northeast, in the shadow of Boston and Holyoke, and not all that far from New York, I had only recently learned that Savannah claims the second-largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the world. Founded by the nucleus of what became a thriving Irish community, it dates from 1813 (Boston claims the first in the New World: 1737).

 

Irish-American Monument, Emmet Park: decorated for the start of the holiday

We didn't know what to expect, for upon arrival, we heard that the parade had attracted a record-breaking 15,000 participants and, according to parade organizers, 1,000,000 visitors—many of them students—for the spring weekend. It turned out: nothing out of the ordinary. The cleaning crews had hit the streets of the festival area at 3 a.m., so the thoroughfares and "squares" were spotless, the lingering green dye in the public fountains the only clue as to the previous day's activities. City spokesman Bret Bell said, "I call it the St. Patrick's Day miracle that every morning it looks like there has not been a quarter of a million people there."

It was the more remarkable given that Savannah and New Orleans are among the few cities in this country where it is legal to carry an open container of alcohol in public. I was of course particularly intrigued by the fact that Savannah allows this only in the historic district: any beverage of up to 16 ounces is permitted. We saw people of all (legal drinking) ages calmly and contentedly strolling the streets and parks with beers, Bloody Mary's, and other libations in hand. Just to check things out (it was, after all, a local historic district), we tested the custom ourselves, and can affirm that it was safe and enjoyable. (No worries: not part of our own local district bylaw.)

This was more or less the mood throughout the entire holiday weekend. One bar served over 3,000 customers and reported that its only alcohol-related problem was that the green Bud Light sold out by 9 p.m. "City Embraces St. Patrick's Day, sets record," "St. Patrick's crowds mostly tame," and "St. Patrick's Day brings well-behaved spenders," read the story headings in the Savannah Morning News.

In the words of Savannah-Chatham Police spokesman Julian Miller, "People behaved. They just had fun. They did what they were supposed to do." Just compare that with Amherst's talk of "appalling" "barbarians" and "bacchanalia." In Police detective David Foster's lament, "There were drunk kids everywhere. It wasn't a pretty sight."

The statistics convey the contrast, too. On the notorious weekend of the Blarney Blowout, tiny Amherst, with a population of under 38,000, registered, according to Larry Kelley's blog:

• 14 Noise Bylaw tickets
• 12 Noise warnings
• 7 Nuisance House violations
• 12 open container infraction arrests

By contrast, in Savannah, with a population of nearly 135,000 and a million visitors, there was a total of only 31 arrests over the entire four-day festival (down from 190 the previous year):

• Disorderly conduct 9
• Battery: 7
• Public urination: 5
• Obstruction: 3
• Reckless conduct: 1
• Criminal trespass: 1
• Larceny from a building: 1
• Marijuana less than one ounce: 1
• Open container: 1
• Begging: 1
• Striking a law enforcement animal: 1

[nice name-and-shame slideshow here]

The stupidest one was of course the latter: a 24-year-old Duluth resident slapped a police horse on the rump and was moreover dumb enough to flee, resist arrest, and injure an officer (thus earning an additional two charges of obstruction as well as some bruises). This one brainiac alone therefore accounted for nearly 10 percent of the citations. The Police Chief observed, "I'm surprised that somebody would slap one of my horses." Perhaps he should not have been totally surprised, for the print report goes on to note that someone pulled the same stunt last year. (What is it about these horse's asses?)

Clearly, alcohol alone is not the problem. In fact, in Savannah, it wasn't much of a problem at all.

Rules and warnings help, but they are only as good as the will behind them. That's what I meant when I said that ultimate solution to the problem in Amherst lies in changing the culture.

So why did I vote against granting liquor licenses to both convenience stores? (1, 2) Because they served no clear useful purpose. In both cases, the stores were moreover in the immediate vicinity of other businesses offering alcohol for sale: in the former, across the street from a liquor store noted for its extensive wine and craft beer selection, and in the latter, located next to a craft beer pub and across the street from a liquor store.

As I put it in our Select Board discussions, the town would not gain appreciably if we added these new licenses, and the chain store franchises, which had other specialties and were already prospering, would not materially suffer if we denied them. Simply put: there was no compelling need for another outlet offering cheap run-of-the-mill alcohol. Ensuring that we do no harm is often a good starting principle in politics as well as medicine.

The same studies that warn against proliferation of liquor stores and low alcohol prices generally also stress the need for a comprehensive policy including education and enforcement. We are not going to eliminate the drinking and the party culture of student life; they have a long tradition as well as contemporary causes. As Savannah shows, even public drinking is not necessarily problem drinking.

When push comes to shove, a reasonable person can generally tell where harmless boisterousness ends and unacceptable boorishness begins. And in the case of those who cannot, is up to the community to delineate and reinforce that boundary. That's what changing the culture means: sending a clear signal as to what we—residents, government, and public safety—will or will not tolerate. If Savannah can handle the problem, we should be able to, as well.

In an online Telegraph poll, votes cast on the British student behavior described at the beginning of this post split almost eventy between "Yes, it is bad for the reputation of Cambridge University and a nuisance for locals" (50.86%) and "No, students should be allowed to let their hair down after working so hard" (49.14%).

Just so you know.

I think the numbers would be rather different in Amherst. That's a start.

The Select Board Welcomes the Amherst College President, Anno 1994

As I noted in my last post, I would, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Amherst College president, have preferred to offer just some pithy and witty remarks.

Problem was, a predecessor, Brian Harvey, beat me to the punch in this pitch-perfect greeting to President Tom Gerety more than a decade and a half ago:

Town Greetings

From Brian C. Harvey
Chair, Amherst Select Board

On behalf of all the people of Amherst, I congratulate Tom Gerety and welcome him—officially—into our community. In preparing for today's festivities I tried to think of an appropriate presentation I could make on behalf of the Town. I wanted something that would capture, at a stroke, the special place of higher education in our community, and that would symbolize the role of the President of the College as a leader both of the campus and of the intellectual life of the community.

So I am happy to present to you, Tom, in token of your high calling and in recognition of the awesome responsibilities that you now undertake, the following touchstones of academic leadership:

• the Town's keg-licensing by-law;
• its noise ordinance
• the caution that no person shall play at ball or any similar amusement in any street of the town;
• our local regulations regarding the application of Recombinant DNA Technology; and perhaps most important,
• our requirements concerning the control of cattle and other animals in the public way

So welcome, Tom. Please accept our congratulations and best wishes, and remember: there is no overnight parking on the public streets between December 1 and April 1.

It's what I wish I could have said. Damn, Brian. You scooped me.

Then again, any mention of kegs and noise ordinances would have brought up the ultra-sensitive current topic of "students" and their antisocial behavior (alleged or real), and then I would have been in what former President Bush called "deep doo-doo": rowdiness and party houses, as well as the ongoing debate about "student housing."

Not exactly the thing for a festive occasion. Might as well just lick the third rail of the IRT.


Or, as I decided: talk about history and education and that sort of thing. In the past. Much safer.

Town Greetings: Inauguration of Carolyn "Biddy" Martin as President of Amherst College

As noted in the previous post, I was deputized to represent the Town at the inauguration of Amherst College President Biddy Martin. Because several people requested that I share those remarks, it seemed simplest to post them here.

The event, as one might expect of the sponsoring organization, was a dignified and immaculately organized affair. Inauguration Coordinator Pat Allen saw to it that everything ran like clockwork (do we still say that in the digital era?). Nature, history, and a sizable endowment combined to provide the ideal setting: the southern end of the quad at the War Memorial, looking out over acres of protected land, with the magnificent Holyoke Range as backdrop. Even the weather cooperated, granting us a crisp and sunny morning after a stretch of rainy days.

musicians arriving for the ceremony: barely 20 minutes to go, and most seats still empty

The only thing that proved beyond the limits of planning and organization was: the students. Not only as we arrived for assembly in Pratt Hall (originally the wonderful old natural history museum, since refurbished as a dormitory), but even as we finally "processed" to the dais, young scholars were few and far between, as the rows of empty seats testified. It was, after all, 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning, which, as we know, follows Saturday night. (In fairness, some could plausibly plead to having stayed up too late at the inaugural dance, which President Martin herself visited until the wee hours.) At any rate, they eventually drifted in.

dignitaries line up in their regalia

outgoing President Anthony Marx pauses to greet a young well-wisher

The ceremony was complex, and if anything, threatened to burst the bounds of the schedule if not tax the patience of the audience. Careful planning and careful instructions prevented that. Speakers were given strict instructions on time limits, which most managed to obey. There was a lot to get done.

After a slightly wobbly rendition of the overture from Händel's Royal Fireworks music by the college orchestra (one could almost hear the waves rocking the barges), things got underway. There were numerous "greetings": from Amherst College and its alumni, trustees, staff, and students; from other institutions of higher learning; from the town (I represented the Select Board, and Superintendent Maria Geryk, the public schools). There were honorary degrees and various ceremonial gifts, from the symbolic keys to the College (many or most from buildings that no longer exist) to a volume (just on loan) from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington; few outsiders know that it belongs to Amherst College. There was music, old and new: in the latter case, an original piece by composer and faculty member Eric Sawyer. Among the highlights—in addition, of course, to the actual inauguration act and the address by President Martin—was Richard Wilbur's (Class of '42) reading of his poem, "Altitudes," which, concerned with spirituality and art, references both classical Europe and the nineteenth-century Amherst of Emily Dickinson.

(the full program booklet—all ten pages of it)

As on most such occasions, you ponder what to say—only more so. You don't know the audience and its tastes. The only thing you do know (and had better remember) is that they're not there mainly to hear you. Given my choice, I would have preferred to come up with something brief and witty.

In the end, lacking sufficient inspiration and creativity, I decided to stick with what I knew best: Amherst history and the Five Colleges. It proved to be the right choice. As chance would have it, several of us, including Dean of Faculty Greg Call and President Martin herself, gravitated, independently and in complementary ways, toward similar themes. We all dealt with the pattern of experimentation and change: Amherst College, despite its elite status (and at times, marked awareness of same), always had a democratic streak that made room for or even encouraged visionary change. We all mentioned the educational innovator and gadfly Alexander Meiklejohn, who served as president from 1912 to 1924. We all noted the College's tradition of assistance to students of merit rather than means, and we all noted the eventual and essential acceptance of diversity, and the significance of selecting a woman president.

* * *

Remarks for the Amherst Select Board, on the Occasion of the

Inauguration of Amherst College President Carolyn (“Biddy”) Martin

16 October 2011

When Noah Webster—whose birthday it happens to be today—spoke at the laying of the cornerstone here in 1820, he praised the location in part by virtue of the townsfolk, “whose moral, religious & literary habit dispose them to cherish the cultivation of the mind.”

The town seal depicting “the book and the plow,” invented by an Amherst professor [for our Bicentennial] in 1959, reflects our self-image. None of the pioneering institutions of higher learning in Amherst would have come into being were it not for the peculiar passion for learning evinced by the residents of this rural community.

It was the people of Amherst who created the Amherst Academy in 1814, to provide a modern secondary education for women as well as men. Citizens associated with the Academy in turn created Amherst College, to provide future Christian clergy with a new liberal-arts education, regardless of financial means. The ordinary citizens of Amherst were no less enthusiastic, donating not only money, but also stone and lumber: laboring day and night, we are told, “like the Jews in building their temple.”

When the Morrill Act of 1862 created land grant colleges to advance democratic education and scientific agriculture, our residents fought to win a charter for the new Massachusetts Agricultural College. To be sure, Amherst College, with its, shall we say, typically complex mixture of altruism and acquisitiveness, unsuccessfully sought control over the new institution—but its intellectual elite both shaped and led it.

A century later, the four area colleges—led by visionary Amherst administrators and alumni—created Hampshire College, which offered an experimental interdisciplinary education suited to a coming information age and global community.

Amherst College was conceived of as a bastion of Calvinist orthodoxy, and yet from the start, it grew and adapted. It never imposed a religious test on students or faculty. It graduated its first African-American student in 1826. It (finally) admitted women in 1975.

Vice President Webster envisioned a college shaping a world devoted to learning rather than destruction:

Too long have men been engaged in the barbarous works of multiplying the miseries of human life. Too long have their exertions been devoted to war and plunder: to the destruction of lives, and property; to the ravage of cities; to the unnatural, the monstrous employment of enslaving and degrading their own species. Blessed be our lot! We live to see a new era in the history of man . . .

In welcoming President Martin, we also mark a new era: in the history of men—and women.

Amherst College has not always been kind to its presidents: in the 1920s, when Alexander Meiklejohn tried to update that vision, he was forced out for being too radical. Today, his vision of progressive, interdisciplinary education and community-engaged learning seems, well, visionary. He left for the University of Wisconsin. In a happy irony, we today install as President a graduate of that great institution.

On behalf of our government and residents: Welcome! May we always embrace rather than fear new ideas and approaches. May your efforts be crowned with success as the partnership between the Town and College of Amherst approaches its third century.

Resources

• Information on Biddy Martin (including her inauguration) (official Amherst College President website)
• Video of the inauguration and text of President Martin's address (official Amherst College website)
• Video of the inauguration (YouTube)
• "Carolyn Martin inaugurated as first woman president at Amherst College," Hampshire Gazette, 17 Oct. 2011
• "Amherst College president inaugurated," Boston Globe, 16 Oct. 2011

Your Select Board: Covering Amherst 100% (another example)

Even two weeks before the premature blizzard caused the Snowpocalypse last month, your Select Board had the town covered 100-percent, in a manner of speaking.

All members of the Select Board were invited to attend the inauguration of new Amherst College President Carolyn "Biddy" Martin on Sunday, October 16.

As it happened, that was also the date of the annual  Shelter Sunday, on which volunteers fan out into the town, raising funds for service organizations that help our neighbors in need. (In 2010, they raised over $ 34,000.)

Because Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe was committed to her customary service on behalf of that effort, I was deputized to represent the Town at the celebration of the gown.

And so it happened that, while Stephanie was going door-to-door on behalf of the "99 percent," I was wearing a suit (for the first time in ages) and sitting on the dais among and for the sake of the "1 percent"—not exactly a role I'm accustomed to.

Between us, we covered the town 100-percent. As in the case of so many political issues, I guess that's all that counts: compromise, teamwork, and getting the job done.

Details to follow.