HASSLING THE HIPPIES?

The Extravaganja festival may survive another year on the Amherst
Town Common, but one organizer believes some town bureaucrats are
trying a new tactic to derail the event.

After last year's Extravaganja festival on the Amherst Town Common,
event organizer Terry Franklin stayed up late picking up garbage and
assembling the full plastic bags where he could easily pick them up
when the dump opened in the morning. When he came back the next
morning, though, the dozen or so bags were gone. A few days later,
Franklin received a bill from the town for disposing 8,000 pounds of
garbage.

That would be a lot of garbage "four tons, the equivalent of a
full-grown female elephant. Franklin said he was certain that there
hadn't been that much trash. Being overcharged for trash removal is
just one in a series of hurdles the event, which promotes the
decriminalization of marijuana, has faced over the years, Franklin
said.

"You have to stand up to [Amherst's town government]," Terry said.
"Otherwise, they'll whittle you down with petty bureaucratic
annoyances and harassments. Every year it's something different. In
the late '90s, it was real overt police harassment. They'd show up in
large numbers, just for intimidation purposes. "After 2000, when
Amherst town meeting voted to legalize marijuana, they backed off a
bit. But every year, it would be something different. Maybe [we'd
have] a car on the Common for the sound crew. For the town fair,
they've got tractor-trailers out there, but we get grief for our one
car. Another year, they said they needed a building inspector to
inspect our stage. "A couple years ago, the police chief didn't want
me speaking on stage, because I criticize him personally. So, he's
advising the organizers to keep me off the stage, and what are they
supposed to do? Argue with the police? I actually had to file a
misconduct complaint about that two years ago, and he's backed off
since that."

The overcharge for trash removal last year was eventually fixed.
Nearly a month after the April 21 festival, Town Manager Larry
Shaffer sent Franklin an email, dated May 16, 2007.

"I just got off the phone with Guilford Mooring [Superintendent of
Public Works] relative to the issue of charging for 8,000 pounds of
trash for the Extravaganga [sic] Festival... the weight was incorrect
(the truck weight was not deducted)." He said the bill would be
revised, and he followed up with, "I attended Extravaganga and enjoyed
the music and the crowd. It was a good event and I am happy to
recommend that it continue."

Shaffer didn't return calls from the Advocate seeking comment, so
it's hard to ascertain why it took so long to run down the obvious
overcharge. Perhaps Shaffer's attention was turned from the mundane
details of administering town government to loftier matters, albeit
matters for which he is hardly responsible. Why else would Shaffer
take the liberty to offer his recommendation that Extravaganja continue?

As a political event, Franklin argues, Extravaganja is protected by
the First Amendment. Provided the organizing group follows the
required permit procedures and acts peaceably when assembled, it is
protected by the constitutional right to assemble. In that context,
how Shaffer feels about the Extravaganja and his personal
recommendations of the event are irrelevant. Franklin worries that,
despite constitutional protections, efforts have been made by town
officials, without involvement and oversight by the town Select
Board, to impede efforts to stage Extravaganja on the Town Common.
For example, a month after the trash issue was resolved, the
Superintendent of Public Works issued the following memorandum: "Due
to budgetary changes effective July 1, 2007, the Amherst Police
Department no longer can supply police officers without assessing a
fee for certain requested events that are scheduled on the town
common. Please contact the office of the Chief of Police so a
determination can be made whether police officers are needed for your
planned event.

"All requests for officer details must be prepaid before a common
reservation is valid.... If contact with Amherst Police Department is
not made by September 1, 2007 your permit is determined to be VOID
and your reservation date may be reissued to another request."

Though the memorandum was issued in June, Franklin and his colleagues
did not learn of the change of rules until November, when they were
told that their permit had been cancelled and they would need to
follow the new procedures. Franklin's group called members of the
select board, all whom were equally ignorant of the new "law."
Meanwhile, calls to the police office and Town Manager confirmed that
Extravaganja would need to pay overtime for the two officers the
police felt were required to monitor the event. On December 3, 2007
Franklin brought the issue to the Amherst Select Board, the members
of which unanimously claimed that they'd been unaware of the change
in rules. Board Chairman Gerry Weiss said that the rule would be
suspended until he had heard from legal councel and from those town
officials who had tried to enforce it. Two months later, neither
Shaffer nor the town's lawyer had responded.

In an interview with the Advocate this week, Weiss said it was
unclear why Shaffer felt he was empowered to change policy without
the board's approval. Weiss said that, given the board's strong
reaction against the decision to charge for police details, it was
unlikely that such a law would ever be passed" at least not without
a lot more discussion.

Weiss assured Franklin in an email earlier this month that "no groups
will be charged for police." Such assurances, however, have not
allayed Franklin's fears: "With all due respect, if I had 10 cents
for every time some government official told me something 'wasn't a
problem, don't worry about it,' only to have some subsequent
bureaucrat say 'I don't know (or care) what they told you, but hey,
it's on the books,' [I'd be rich]."

Franklin said he doesn't want the policy simply "suspended," but
taken off the books altogether.

Weiss, meanwhile, contends that Franklin is "pounding at a
technicality." In his email to Franklin, he points out that "There are
other by-laws and policies on the books as well that aren't enforced
for similar reasons" they need review." The larger question,
however, appears to be what role the Town Manager and Public Works
Department have in setting policy, and how those officials can
enforce rules that not even the Select Board is aware of.