AMHERST — Over the past year, Amherst teenagers have rallied on the Town Common to reduce gun violence and combat climate change. They’ve also successfully petitioned Town Meeting to adopt resolutions supporting the Paris Climate Agreement and cutting local greenhouse gas emissions.
Julian Hynes, a seventh-grader at Amherst Regional Middle School, is pleased to see his peers so engaged.
“I really appreciate their political action and political care they showed toward our town, and I hope they continue to do that,” Hynes said during a recent interview with the Gazette at Town Hall.
Hynes has similar concerns about the present and future of Amherst, and lately, he has been a regular presence at Town Council meetings, attending all but two sessions since the council’s first meeting Dec. 3.
“I want to understand how people on the council can make decisions that will affect my life,” said Hynes, who has offered spoken comments before the 13-member council on a range of matters, from the need to preserve the Central Fire Station building when a South Amherst fire station opens to his concerns about the size of a new elementary school building. “What I want is to be heard and have my issues explained and discussed.”
Hynes sees the council’s public comment period as an opportunity to tell councilors what an incoming generation would like to see happen in Amherst, whether that be more development in the town center and village centers, improved sidewalks to help people get around on foot, or affordable housing so people of all income levels can live in Amherst.
Before each week’s meeting, Hynes finds the council agenda on the town website, amherstma.gov, along with a packet of additional information, and then decides what topic to speak about — generally doing so off the cuff. He drafts his notes at school in a guided study class (known as study hall to older folks). To squeeze his comments into the three-minute window allotted for the public comment period, he types them into a document and then has a Google program read them back aloud so he can time the session.
“I can write something up ahead of time and form a professional opinion before the meeting,” Hynes said.
When he’s not focusing on town government, Hynes is busy being a regular teenager, watching TV shows like “Black-ish,” “Kids Baking Championship” and “North Woods Law,” which features locations in New Hampshire and Maine where he has vacationed.
His friends discuss political issues with him and debate differences of opinion, “but to a point, and then get bored,” Hynes said. They sometimes tease him by calling him “mayor,” and he responds by reminding them that Amherst has a town manager.
Once he and his friends move on from a political discussion, they play hockey or video games.
Though he said more students his age would like to be involved in local government, Hynes noted this can only happen if the council makes efforts to accommodate them, such as having meetings between 3 and 6 p.m. That would be after school activities and before dinner. Hynes, for example, plays Ultimate after school and is on the debate club.
He generally eats supper before any night meeting. He loves Mexican food, and as a vegetarian, bean and cheese tacos are his favorite meal. That gives him the energy needed to get through what can be long meetings.
“I’d like to encourage higher-up people in town to schedule things at times convenient for young people, not during regular workday hours, and not late at night,” Hynes said.
The council could also have meetings outside Town Hall, he said, pointing out that when it voted on submitting a statement of interest for building a new 600-student elementary school to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the council could have met at either Fort River School or Wildwood School.
Hynes, who graduated from Fort River last year, said he isn’t sure how he first became interested in Amherst government but does remember attending a Select Board meeting, more than two years ago, which focused on how the town deals with licensing food carts and food trucks.
His full-fledged participation in local politics began in the lead up to the March 27, 2018 town election in which voters changed the town charter. He saw people petitioning in his neighborhood for the change in government.
In opposing the charter change, Hynes wrote letters to his neighbors and placed advocacy cards at the entrance to Wildwood School, one of the town’s voting locations, for voters to take with them.
Last summer, after attending one of the final sessions of Town Meeting, Hynes decided to align himself with what he terms the “progressive independent” candidates, largely residents who preferred Town Meeting form of government and supported the campaigns of Jacqueline Maidana in District 4 and Jim Pistrang and Rob Kusner for at-large seats.
Maidana said she was delighted to meet Hynes.
“His enthusiasm is just contagious — he’s so bright and articulate,” Maidana said. “He’s an exceptional young man who really knows his stuff and comes at issues with an experiential knowledge.”
She notes that when Hynes spoke about why he is concerned about a large school replacing both Wildwood and Fort River, he was able to talk about what he liked in the learning environment at Fort River.
Pistrang, the former town moderator who coaches the Hynes on Ultimate team, praised the 13-year-old for how well he understands local government.
“He’s got to be the most politically knowledgeable middle school kid I’ve ever encountered,” Pistrang said.
Hynes said he appreciates that former State Rep. Solomon Goldstein-Rose, who joined the Amherst School Committee in high school, also attended Fort River and was similarly inspired by a civics class there.
Hynes laments the loss of Town Meeting and calls on the council to find ways to increase participation. “I truly feel the amount of voices you had in Town Meeting, with a diversity and range of opinion, has gone down with the town council,” Hynes said.
And the dynamics changed, too, with people no longer speaking in front of 240 neighbors who happen to be elected representatives, but rather before councilors whom he considers professional officeholders, though Hynes adds “they’re all good people.”
Seeing the council as a less diverse audience, and one in which his endorsed candidates didn’t win seats, prompted Hynes to want to participate regularly. “It pushed me to come more,” Hynes said.
His comments don’t always win support from the council. In fact, he preferred that the town abandon plans for the large single building to replace Fort River and Wildwood, even though the application to the state indicates that the 600-student building is the desired outcome.
“I certainly feel I wasn’t heard with the school vote, but I do feel heard with other votes,” Hynes said. “I feel like I have gotten respect. I personally believe they listen to me, and I’ve been able to play the devil’s advocate role.”
With respect to development issues, he wants councilors to debate the merits of zoning that has allowed large, mixed-use projects at the north end of downtown. “I would like to see some political debate and discourse on the council,” Hynes said.
Hynes’ other main activities outside of school are landscape design and lawn care — he can sometimes be seen sporting a ball cap that reads Julian’s Lawn Care — and he has been known to go to Shade Tree Committee meetings. On Wednesday night, Hynes had plans to attend the Planning Board meeting to advocate for preserving a catalpa tree that may have to be cut down to make way for a development on South East Street
He sees the town’s tree warden as a position that would bridge his political and landscaping interests.
“I feel if I can mix these two interests, that could be successful for me and other people in town,” Hynes said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
