town

At a contentious session of Town Meeting on November 14, opponents of the plan to replace the aging school buildings in town, succeeded in shooting the plan down. This is an ongoing problem in how the system of government is organized in Amherst. Too often, self-appointed and unaccountable people succeed in throwing a wrench into carefully made plans that took thousands of hours to construct.

Compromises like the school plan are difficult because, in the end, they don't give anyone what they really wanted. And people that come in at the end or that look only at one piece of the project can always find reasons to shoot it down. But a complex plan like this can only work if everyone is respectful of the process.

That means that people need to ensure that the process is constructed correctly at the beginning: that it identifies the appropriate stakeholders, selects competent representatives, and that those representatives are empowered to act in the interests of the stakeholders. And then, if at the end, the group can't reach a compromise, then the project shouldn't go forward. But if the group does reach a compromise, its the responsibility of those who empowered the representatives to respect their judgment.

What *shouldn't* happen is for people outside the process to come at the end and reject the compromises that were reached. That just ensures that no-one competent will be willing to do the work going forward. And that will make it impossible to make the process work.

After my unsatisfactory chat with "Tina", I decided to take the outdated cablebox to the local Comcast office to get it replaced. Alisa and I went together and, after a short wait, we were able to speak with a real, live human being.

After a great deal of discussion and back and forth, we eventually decided to use this opportunity to change over the billing from my mom to us and to switch to one of the discounted digital packages. We called people and signed things and got a bunch of new hardware (new router, new cable boxen, new remotes). It must have taken at least 45 minutes. The line behind us grew longer and longer and longer.

I was only snarky a couple of times. When she kept talking about prices as if the cost of the first 12 months was the price, I complained that I thought that practice was deceptive. Her hackles rose a bit at that. It turns out that you basically need to follow up with them every year to see what the "new deal" is or you get screwed in terms of pricing. I remember phone service used to be like that and it always pissed me off then too.

I was also perhaps a little snarky when she asked if we wanted HD and I calmly indicated that maybe when we could get PEG access in HD, I'd switch.

The funniest part was when she explained how Comcast prices things. It was actually a great explanation, but when she starting talking about the role that the "Mayor of Amherst" plays, Alisa nearly burst. The rep had no way of knowing she was talking to the President of the Board of Amherst Media and the Chair of the Amherst Select Board. We just nodded and smiled and listened.

The rep was actually fantastic and probably took much longer than the corporation would rather she would and helped us figure out a better arrangement than we otherwise would have. I said I hoped they paid her well. Her look made it clear that they don't.

Eventually, we got home, swapped the router, and then I began trying to get everything put back together. I had to set passwords for wifi and administration, set up a static IP for the server, set up port forwarding, and update the DNS for my domain name. Then I tried to set up the cable boxen.

We wanted to put the little box in Lucy's room, where space is at a premium and to put the big one in the living room, where there's plenty of space. But neither wanted to work there. I tried over and over again getting cryptic RDK-03004 errors and XRE-10007 errors. I spent several hours reading forums, checking connections, and plugging and unplugging things. Eventually, I switched them around. Like magic, everything started to work. Lucy will just have to live with having the big box in her room.

With that, I think everything is set up. I can watch Amherst Media again. And it only took me a whole day.

:-/

I don't have any inside information about what's been going on in the schools in Amherst, but I had an insight many years ago that provides a lens to help me understand what's happening now.

When my children were in elementary school, Alisa got involved in the Parent Guardian Group (PGG) at Mark's Meadow. Later, she ran for School Committee and, after a relatively tough campaign, won a seat. What struck me more than anything else was our first parent-teacher conference after she was a school committee member rather than a parent: it completely transformed her relationship with the school. And she discovered she needed to be very careful of what she said and what issues she tried to address: because everything she said was interpreted differently.

I came up with an analogy that helped me understand what had happened: As a member of the PGG, it was like she had a fly-swatter, which was great for addressing small problems in-and-around the school. But it wasn't effective for crafting policy or making real change. When she joined the school committee, it was like trading in her fly-swatter for a hammer. A hammer is great for accomplishing real work -- but it's terrible for swatting flies. And if you try to use it for swatting flies, you just break everything. This is exactly what I think we've had over the past few months.

When you serve on a committee, you choose to invest your effort in helping the committee craft effective policy. But it means you lose the ability to try to address problems directly, outside of that venue. You get to influence the actual policy but, if you don't agree with the outcomes, you have to either accept and support them — or leave the committee. What you *can't* do, is try to have it both ways: you can't have an inside track in trying to affect policy and, at the same time, try to rabble-rouse outside the committee to put pressure on the process. You have to choose one or the other. When you don't, you end up with outcomes like what we've seen: where the committee has lost the ability to provide effective governance.