Shaffer's suggested position receives mixed reactions

By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer

Published on April 13, 2007

Town Manager Laurence Shaffer's proposal to spend $60,000 to hire an economic development director - if voters approve a three-year financial plan May 1 - brought a mixed response at Monday's Select Board meeting.

Broadening the tax base is "the third leg of the stool," Shaffer said, with the other two legs being the $2.5 million override and a campaign to get more revenues from campuses or through a meals tax.

"We need a focused effort to identify opportunities that exist to expand the tax base and move forward in a concerted effort to secure those enhancements," he said.

Amherst needs to create partnerships with the campuses, Shaffer said.

"There are a lot of reasons for them to get on board with us because we share significant mutual interests," he said.

Shaffer has been meeting with University of Massachusetts officials about encouraging new businesses arising from faculty research to locate in Amherst, he said.

Select Board member Anne Awad said she couldn't support creating a new staff position. The town's needs might be different in three years, and hiring consultants and grant-writers would provide more flexibility, she said.

Gerry Weiss, chairman of the board, has compiled statistics on economic development and concluded that the benefits are not clear-cut.

The average single-family tax bill in Amherst increased by 40 percent between 2000 and 2006, but the hike was only 27 percent in Hadley, where residents bear a much lower share of the tax burden, according to his statistics.

Although Amherst residents pay 90.4 percent of the property taxes, that number has increased over the past six years much less steeply than statewide or in neighboring Northampton, Weiss' statistics show. While commercial tax levies are down slightly in Amherst, they are up by 20.3 percent statewide and by 41.2 percent in Hadley.

Select Board member Alisa Brewer supported Shaffer's plan. In a town with a lot of services and three tax-exempt campuses, the goal of an economic development director isn't to lower the tax rate but to find other ways to pay for those services, she said.