Select Board packet for December 15th

Can you post a copy of the DPW's recommendations for high-priority road repairs? Thank you!

Karen Eddings of 84 Blackberry Lane has dog that has bitten three people. It did not bite all three people at the same time.

After her dog bit the first person, she was unable to train or control her dog so that it did not bite a second person. And after her dog bit a second person she could not train or control her dog such that her dog did not bite a third person. At some point, she was ordered by the town to muzzle the dog and she did not. We have three incidents and one official action – muzzle the dog so that it can’t bite a person, which was not heeded.

“The [people who were] victims [of a dog bite also known as “an assault by a dog”] include a 14-year-old Amherst boy bitten while rollerblading in July 2006, a 56-year-old bicyclist bitten in November 2006 and an 8-year-old girl bitten while riding a bicycle Sept. 22.” That the third victim, who was an 8-year-old, was bitten after Karen Eddings was ordered to muzzle the dog should not be lost on anyone considering the disposition of this case.

If Karen Eddings had done the biting, should would have been arrested by town police and charged with assault but instead it’s her dog Leah that assaulted three people. And somehow, in a way I don’t understand, we are more willing to restrain and hold accountable human beings than we are to restrain and hold accountable a dog, which is known to be a danger to people.

I wish no harm upon the dog but that is not the risk. The risk is harm to people and it is a confirmed and well-known risk. Instead of making the difficult decision, we are hoping against hope that Leah can be trained or at least restrained and that Karen can do it. Karen’s good intentions notwithstanding, what evidence do we have that a second experiment in dog training or dog restraining will work? Mr. Shaffer could write the most extraordinary prescriptive course of action for Karen and Leah and we have no evidence or reason for optimism that it will work. Shaffer’s “solution” is not based on canine expertise or an honest assessment of the record but rather on good will and lack of reason. There was no offical action after the first biting incident. After the second the problem was confirmed. The owner was ordered to take prophylactic measures. Another biting occurred, that should NEVER have happened. An 8-year-old girl was the victim. Now? Now we are going to try again?

Police Chief Charles Scherpa, our top safety officer, testified at the hearing that the dog should be removed from Amherst. In other words, he doesn’t need any more evidence to decide that the dog is a danger and will not be less of a danger in Karen’s care, and that Karen has already been given a chance to demonstrate that she can keep the dog from being a danger to people by my muzzling Leah and it did not work.

Furthermore, why did the Select board weigh the advice of the town manager, who chaired the hearing, over the advice of the top safety officer?

Call me what you will but I think Sherpa and Weiss are correct, and Shaffer and Stephanie O’Keefe are ruling with their hearts and not their minds. The dog is a danger. The owner has been given ample opportunity to train the dog, and finally muzzle the dog, so that it does not harm people, and she did not.

Even if it were a close question, you would have to side with the safety of people over the desire of the dog owner to keep the dangerous dog. It is not even a close question.

Frankly, Shaffer’s prescription gives me no confidence that he has experience in dog training. What does it mean to make the dog owner act more responsibly? What reason do Amherst residents have to believe that Karen will be able to keep her dog from biting another person? Will she keep it in her house, fenced in the yard, chained in the yard? Leashed? Muzzled? What?

Apparently, Karen is not supposed to walk the dog “during peak bicycle and play times, including weekends and afternoons.” Does that mean I run the risk of getting bitten by Leah if I go for a bike ride on Grantwood Dr on a weekday morning?

Eddings signed an agreement, which lays out five steps to making the dog, named Leah, better for the neighborhood.

If “better for the neighborhood” means Leah cannot bite people, ok.

“I agree that Leah is sensitive/anxious to certain stimuli, such as wheels. She reacts, not attacks."

This quote is troublesome. The owner is making excuses for the dog, still at this late date. What Karen has to admit to herself is that the dog bites people and that she absolutely cannot put the dog in a position so that this can happen and that she is responsible for all of the dog actions.

The agreement states that Eddings will only have adults familiar with Leah walking her, always having her wear a muzzle or be on a leash, not walk her on Blackberry Lane and Grantwood Drive during peak bicycle and play times, including weekends and afternoons, having Leah take obedience lessons from an animal behaviorist and trying to change Leah's apparent aversions to wheels.

Does that say muzzled or leashed because it should probably say muzzled and leashed when walking, and fenced or chained when in the yard.

If these things keeps Leah from biting good. If not, then Shaffer has failed the community. Is Shaffer a specialist in dog behavior and training because if not, this whole prescription thing is a joke.

Hayden said he would like to add language to this agreement that shows a way of measuring that this training is actually working.

I sadly predict the dog will bite again because there is no aspect of this situation that signals a good outcome. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong.

>>and Shaffer and Stephanie O’Keefe are ruling with their hearts and not their minds.

The conclusion you have drawn about how I made my decision on this matter is not an unreasonable one, based on the small amount of information you have. If you had more information, I believe you would come to a very different conclusion. Which is an excellent illustration of what was my whole point in this discussion at the meeting: facts matter. The more facts one has, the more informed one's decisions/conclusions will be. That doesn't mean that everyone with the same amount of facts would come to the same conclusion. But does it make more sense to "trust" the conclusion of the person with more information or the one with less?

I will be writing more about this. It may not change any minds on the best course of action related to the dog, but it will better explain my position on the matter. Going with my heart would be the easy way out. But it wouldn't be the right way.

If you had more information, I believe you would come to a very different conclusion.

Yes, I have limited information... from the Bulletin.

My assumptions and observations based on too little info may be held by other under informed citizens too so maybe my comment is of some use to you when you write more about it. Thank you, Stephanie. You're the best.

I have no opinion on the substance of this doggy to-do, but I would make the following observations.

1) I continue to see Select Board as quasi-judicial in its decisionmaking, and that seems to be borne out in this instance. The significance of that lies in the kind of personal temperament that works best on the Board, a kind of judicial temperament. I think that we have it more now than before, and it's reassuring to those of us watching at home. The second point of importance concerns how much we want Select Board members doing public politicking as incumbents in election contests not involving them. I think that it undermines the confidence that everyone will be heard and considered judiciously by the Board, in matters such as this one.

2) I must share two great quotes that seem to apply here, especially when it comes to reaching conclusions through the papers, or, worse, through the blogosphere. First, attributed to Mark Twain, but perhaps from a competing humorist, Josh Billings: "It's not what we don't know that hurts us. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

Second, from one of the great moments in the history of lawyering, John Adams, in his very unpopular defense of British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre of 1770: "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

3) If it happened, one must pay attention carefully to any conclusion come to jointly by Gerry Weiss and Charlie Sherpa: that's like double sixes rolling the dice or a very unusual bowling split after the first ball. Shaffer and O'Keeffe on one side and Sherpa and Weiss on the other: without hearing more, could we safely say that reasonable people could disagree on the matter at issue? As always, it's easy to second-guess the ones entrusted with the decision, until you have to do it yourself.

4) Thank God for ACTV and the constant replays of meetings.

Rich Morse

Some thoughts on appearances:

Many Amherst valuations adjusted after hearings

By Nick Grabbe

AMHERST - By the time Principal Assessor David Burgess held a third public meeting about valuation increases Dec. 4, feelings were running so high among some homeowners that he asked two police officers to attend. // Since then, the process has been more civil.

Taxpayers are angered that their property valuations are rising as homeowner real estate values are dropping all over the Commonwealth, and as real income has lost ground, and as some face threats of job loss... in the context of a town facing a structural budget shortfall and town government having shown a preference to increase tax revenues by override or other means, as opposed to finding places to cut budget.

If the headline is accurate, then there are questions about whether the valuations were appropriate in the first place, or alternatively, that if residents show up to complain, they can have reasonable valuations adjusted downward.