City Finance Chief Chris Pile in the News

The city of Northampton was apparently wise to minimize its investment in the Massachusetts state pension fund, the Pension Reserves Investment Trust, or PRIT, this past year, a fund which suffered a loss of 29.5% in 2008.

The State House News Service reported the following:

"The best-performing fund in 2008 was the $60 million Northampton Retirement Board fund, which covers the benefits of 683 active public employees and 338 retirees. Its 19.3 percent loss in 2008 was the smallest in the state.

“We’ve done consistently well and that’s without doing some of the more risky investment types,” said Christopher Pile, city finance director and chair of the board. “We didn’t get into hedge fund or any of that kind of stuff.”

Pile said the board has about $2 million invested with PRIT, but wants to remain independent from the state fund. “We don’t feel any pressure to put any more in there obviously since the state pension fund did far worse than we did,” he said. “I think we’ll just stick with what we’re doing.”

Investments in cash and bonds helped insulate Northampton from losses that other funds took in riskier categories, such as emerging markets and international equities, but the local fund is moving back towards stocks again. Pile credited the advice of the DeBurlo Group, a fund consultant that also advised Malden retirement officials."

Springfield's Spiraling Poverty

Two great essays appeared this week on the subject of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the descent of its inner neighborhoods into poverty.

Poor Springfield, written by the Springfield Intruder's Bill Dusty, cites compelling Brookings Institution statistics on the state of the city's South End, and reports on controversy surrounding a plan by WinnDevelopment to develop more low-income housing in a neighborhood that is already tanking fast. Dusty writes:

"In Springfield’s South End - a prime breeding ground for the kind of despair that grips much if the city - the neighborhood suffers under the burden of a 50% poverty rate. Things are about to get worse, too, as the former Longhill Gardens site will be bringing in over one hundred more low income families just up the road..."

Maureen Turner, in this week's Valley Advocate, reports on a new book entitled "Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley" (Baywood Publishing, 2009) written by UMass-Lowell professor Robert Forrant.

Turner writes:

"Companies like Bosch played a crucial role in Springfield's development. For 150 years, Forrant writes, the city sat at the center of a prosperous manufacturing corridor that ran along the Connecticut River, stretching from Bridgeport up into Vermont. Springfield's good fortune began back in the late 18th century, when Congress selected it as the site for a federal armory; the armory, in turn, helped spur other manufacturing development in the city, with a particular focus on metalworking and machine parts. Springfield became known as an area for innovation—Forrant calls it the Silicon Valley of its day—where new techniques and technologies spread from plant to plant, and drew new businesses to the area."

Dusty, in his essay, makes the following observation:

"The two primary industries in the city today appear to be infrastructure improvements via state and federal aid and the construction of affordable housing. Few private businesses come here. And when large companies like Baystate Health or MassMutual do invest in the city, the skilled jobs they create are mostly taken up by people who reside elsewhere. Or by people who want to reside elsewhere. One would be hard-pressed, indeed, to find a family hoping to someday move into the city of Springfield. And that is a shame."

Poor Springfield, indeed.

Here's a link to the Boston Globe's review of Robert Forrant's "Metal Fatigue."

NPR on Noho/Regional Amtrak

Nancy Cohen of Hartford's WNPR reports that states are competing for the $8 billion in federal stimulus money that is designated for rail improvements--and that New England rail advocates are calling for multi-state collaboration instead. (Northeast environmental coverage is part of NPR's Local News Initiative.)

Here's a link to Cohen's writing and audio report, which references Northampton, Massachusetts. Will Amtrak service be restored to the Connecticut River Valley route? Here's WWLP Channel 22 News' coverage:


Local journalist Mark Roessler has followed the issue; here is a link to his Amtrak-related stories in the Valley Advocate.

Here's a compendium of MassLive's reporting on the Amtrak issue, and here's what the Daily Hampshire Gazette has had to say about the proposal to return passenger rail service to Northampton.

Food Inc. at the Amherst Cinema

New York Times print journalist and blogger Nicholas Kristof, in a recent column about our nation's food supply, commends a new documentary called Food, Inc.

Opening at the Amherst Cinema on June 26th, Robert Kenner's "Food Inc." features NYT writer Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilmena), Joel Salatin of the innovative Polyface Farm, and Gary Hirschberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt.

The Valley Advocate's Mary Nelen writes eloquently on issues of local food and agriculture here in Western Massachusetts. Here is a link to her archived "Locavore" articles.

Find local farm products on the CISA website. CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) is the organization that produces those happy yellow "Be a Local Hero" bumper stickers you see everywhere in the valley.

Bill Peters, who writes for the online Local Buzz, has published a series of articles on the politics of locavorism. Peters asks: Do Locavores Make Life More Difficult for Farmers and Schools?

Hilton Garden Inn gets Financing

From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

NORTHAMPTON - After months of discussions with bankers from the United States and abroad, the development group planning to build a 101-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel downtown has secured financing right in its own backyard.

Shardool Parmar, the president of Pioneer Valley Hotel Group, said his company received a financial commitment letter this week from Berkshire Bank of Pittsfield.

Here are links to local reporting on the issue:

Chad Cain on Gazettenet

Fred Contrada on MassLive
update 6/22 from Contrada

For full video of Planning Director Wayne Feiden's presentation of the revised hotel scheme to the city council on June 18, visit Daryl LaFleur's Northampton Redoubt on the Valley Advocate website.

The hotel plans were the center of some serious controversy two summers ago,
when it was revealed that the the city had issued the hotel developer a special permit for the project before site plan review, a violation of the city's own rules.

Young@Heart@Manchester UK

Florence Waters, who blogs for the telegraph.co.uk, has posted an interview with Northampton, Massachusetts great-grandmother Pat Booth, who is traveling to Manchester, England, to perform with the Young@Heart Chorus. In the interview, Pat talks about singing the Buzzcocks song "What Do I Get" in her car on the way to rehearsal for their "End of the Road" tour.

Ms. Waters' Bio:

Florence Waters works for Telegraph.co.uk and studies cultural memory in her free time. Before she joined the Telegraph she was a journalist in Berlin for a newspaper about virtual worlds. Florence did her BA in history of art and photography at The Courtauld Institute in London.

Northampton, Massachusetts' Y@H perform at The Manchester International Festival, held from the 10th to the 18th of July.

Here are the Buzzcocks performing their famous tune:

King Street KFC/Taco Bell Honored

Northampton's Taco Bell/KFC on King Street has been awarded LEED Gold certification. Check out the story on Business Wire.

rare bird sighting

Here's the BF, in a rare moment, washing the dishes. Had to document this.

Biomass: Greenfield, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Russell

Four large-scale wood-burning biomass electrical plants are planned, by private developers, for the Western Massachusetts towns of Russell, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Greenfield. (A smaller plant is planned for the central Massachusetts town of Fitchburg.) The Russell, Greenfield, and Springfield plants are well along in the permitting process, having cleared a significant hurdle— MEPA (Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act) approval by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The Springfield plant is the only one of the four permitted to burn construction and demolition debris (C&D).

MEPA approval was not as onerous for these project developers as it could have been. Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles, for both the Greenfield and Springfield plants, has ruled that no Environmental Impact Report (EIR) need be filed. Bowles has chosen to examine each plant as a separate entity, ruling that the cumulative impact of the five plants on the region need not be considered in any individual MEPA review. "While MEPA requires that a proponent assess the cumulative and indirect impacts of a proposed project, there is a clear distinction between that obligation and a requirement that the review of a single project serve as the vehicle for long-range sustainability planning," Bowles wrote.

On June 16, the Springfield Area Sustainable Energy Association (SASEA) sponsored a panel discussion at Western New England College on "The Dangers of Wood-Burning Electrical Plants (Biomass Incinerators) in Greater Springfield and Western Massachusetts." Speakers included Dr. Ellen Moyer, Ph.D, P.E., principal of Greenvironment LLC; Chris Matera, P.E., founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch; Jana Chicoine, spokesperson for Concerned Citizens of Russell, and Margaret E. Sheehan, an environmental lawyer from Williamstown.

Biomass incineration, attorney Sheehan told the audience, while banned in New Hampshire and Connecticut, is encouraged in Massachusetts through provisions of the Green Communities Act and Global Warming Solutions Act. Federal and state funding, she continued, is available for the construction and operation of biomass plants, and ratepayer subsidies for "green energy" further sweeten the deal.

"The four western Mass plants...have collectively been granted one million dollars from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to develop their plans and permits...The plant in Greenfield will be eligible to collect 60 million dollars in federal stimulus money from within three weeks of coming on line. It will receive production tax credits and investment tax credits, and (on the state level) will generate RECs, or renewable energy credits, that coal-burning utilities must buy.

"The typical wood-burning plant emits more greenhouse gases, such as CO2 (carbon dioxide), than the worst coal-burning plant...Biomass, unlike coal, does not have to comply with any cap-and-trade program, because the state has decided that these plants are carbon-neutral...

"But the USA EPA in April issued an endangerment finding, saying that CO2 emitted today will not be absorbed for hundreds to thousands of years...yet the DEP, in issuing its air permits for these plants, does not consider greenhouse gases in its determination."

Chris Matera focused his presentation on forestry impacts."190 megawatts of electricity will require 2.5 million tons of wood per year...a tripling of current logging practices in the state will be required...generating 600 logging truck trips per day...They can't be fed on waste wood alone; there is nowhere near an adequate supply."

Matera argues that a state Department of Energy Resources report showing that the forest can be sustainably harvested to feed five plants is in error. "The numbers just don't add up. You can be assured, clear-cutting and heavy logging methods will occur." According to Matera, the report targets state forests to provide 532,000 green tons of wood annually to the biomass industry, a tenfold increase over historic state forest logging levels.

Dr. Moyers, an environmental scientist, reported on a 2006 air quality study, often cited by industry proponents, that examined the burning of construction and demolition wood. "The Northeast States Coordinated Air Use Management Report, or NESCAUM study, relied upon very little data...the NESCAUM report is seriously flawed...This report should not be relied upon for any public policy regarding the burning of C and D wood. Much better science is needed."

Russell resident Jana Chicoine received a strong ovation. "Over the past four years, I have transformed from a housewife, who was just trying to mind her own business, to a community organizer and public speaker. My goal is to help every community that is faced with one of these proposals to develop the will and tools to politely say no...Ultimately, we must address what's driving all of this—the renewable energy subsidies, which are being taken away from technologies like wind and solar, and being given to biomass incinerators and other combustibles. Right now, 79 percent of the so-called clean energy in Massachusetts is coming from a smokestack....We're being told one thing, and being given something quite different."

Our Sister to the North

In the latest edition of the Valley Advocate, I offer a recap of the Greenfield mayoral election. Candidate Bill Martin, coming out of nowhere sixteen days before the primary, is the new mayor of Greenfield. Martin made his mark as the chair of the Greenfield Redevelopment Authority (GRA), the entity that is coordinating the revitalization of an area comprising Bank Row, the Garden Cinema, the old Toyota dealership, the Mix-n-Match building, and more.

But Biomass Won't Effect Northampton...

WNEC Biomass Conference Part 3

Mass Forest Watch founder Chris Matera (file photo). Below, an excerpt of his comments at the WNEC conference.

Biomass Conference at WNEC Part 2

Jana Chicoine, Community Organizer from Russell, Massachusetts