Connie Kruger worked in the Amherst Planning Department for 16 years and is now a member of the Planning Board, but when she tried to convert finished space above her garage into a bed-and-breakfast in 2010, she found it hard to wend her way through the permit process. "What upset me was the not knowing," said Kruger, who ended up paying $530 in mandated fees and application charges as she made the rounds of various town departments. Even then, she ended up opening Hop Brook Bed & Breakfast last March without obtaining the required innholder and common victualler license.
New University of Massachusetts football coach Charley Molnar will earn a base salary of $250,000 over the five years of his contract, but that only scratches the surface of his earning capability.
Some folks go out of their way to help others. The Amherst Club is a case in point. Every year around this time, the organization hosts a musical fundraiser called "Love Notes" that benefits organizations that offer various forms of assistance to local people. Proceeds from the shows are given to non-profit agencies that help the Amherst community meet important health and welfare needs, said Ruth Miller, the publicity chair for the Amherst Club. Over the last 28years, the Amherst Club has raised over $310,000.
Todd Diacon, deputy chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for the past 18 months, is leaving to take over as senior vice president and provost at Kent State University in Ohio. He will assume his new position June 1.
Diacon said he in looking forward to the job. "I feel like it's a university on the move," Diacon said of Kent State.
Just when you thought your children were spending too much time on frivolous pursuits, such as watching television, 13-year old George Hamilton of Amherst comes along and saves his mother's life using a lesson he learned on an episode of NBC's sitcom, "The Office."
After close to eight years watching our former governor try to buy the nation's highest political office, and these many months of spectacle as he and his opponents fight for the Republican presidential nomination, I thought I had become pretty much inured to hypocrisy, big lies and Orwellian double speak.
Cuts to senior meals will hurt
To the Bulletin:
Governor Patrick's recent budget proposal includes an item that would severely cut funding for elder nutrition. I have deep concerns over the proposed $1.5 million cut to that program.
Laurie DeVault, a former Orchard Valley neighbor, didn't send a postcard but an email that was filled with good news about a trip to Peru. She went to Peru with her son, David Goldberg, and David's father, Eddy Goldberg. She wrote that they attended the wedding of their niece, Lauren Nussbaum, to Javier Arana Lopez in Lima.
