When will the city of Northampton stop giving away our community owned land ? Why does the the Center for the Arts have no home today? Is it because Old School Commons was given to private developers? When will elected officials who are in the real estate business recuse themselves from these public property give aways? After the financial debacle of the abbutters to the landfill on Glendale Road ,haven't we the public had enough? This extensive article with a paragraph titled "MUST SELL" doesn't tell us anything about the WHY , except to state that a realtor who is an elected official thinks it is a good idea. The next time our town feels like we need more public space ,with this leadership, we are likely to pay through the nose for it .Meanwhile the Florence building "breaks even" and it isn't clear, from the article, that this is true currently for the Community Music School property . A quick look at your own tax bill suggests that the land alone that these properties occupy has considerable value that we ,as the town, will give away forever . Finally ,the Florence Grammar School did not close because of a lack of enrollment in Florence, but a politically popular ,but there had been a really not needed expansion of the Leeds school building. It was then necessary to close Florence and bus children to Leeds to fill up that school.. Fortunately the leadership that has preserved Look Park and Childs Park for public use does not have the short sightedness of our elected officials. Ironically these are private self perpetuating boards. ...(full comment)

And who can forget the video of former judge Mike Ryan's arrest by the NPD and how unnecessarily violent it was? Atty. William A. Norris (ret) ...(full comment)

Not quite - in the end, the takaway point from the Gosnell murder trial is that late term abortion is a barbaric act that by definition entails eviscerating the tissue of a living creature. Its a helpless baby waiting to be born - not a choice. Thats what you guys don't get. And now we have in the news another similar case in Houston. It would be nice if the gazette would cover it in detail. But becasue late term abortion can't be anythiing but repugnant to any reasonable person getting out the details of this grizly act wouldn't move forward the progressive agenda of the gazette's editors. And couldn't you point out in your editorial that the guttmacher institute has always been very pro abortion and is part of Planned Parenthoon - the largest abortion provider in the US? Start acting like progressional new people please. It used to be unbiased reporting would say something like 'alan guttmacher institute, an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States, reports that XXXXX illegal abortions were performed in the country in 1950... Instead you make it sound like they are not using their statistics to further their pro abotion agenda. ...(full comment)