Move the BOF Classic Out of the Business District
— and Account for What Happened on Race Day 2024
This petition has two layers. The first is practical and straightforward: after 44 years, it is time to reroute the Bridge of Flowers Classic away from the core business district. The second is harder to ignore: what happened on race day, August 10, 2024, was not a routine crowd-control disagreement. It was one more episode in a documented, six-year campaign of selective enforcement and civil rights violations by the Shelburne Police Department against a specific resident — and it happened in plain view, on camera, in front of witnesses.
©2026 John F. Sendelbach · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts
A Note on Names and Geography
The Bridge of Flowers Classic does not cross the Bridge of Flowers. It crosses the Iron Bridge. The Bridge of Flowers — a public landmark maintained by volunteers, funded in part by donation boxes that sit empty on race day while the village is cordoned off and visitors are rerouted — plays no role in the event that bears its name except to lend it distinction it did not earn.
The race is built around Crittenden Hill. That is the honest heart of the course — the climb that defines it, the reason runners come, the geography that gives the event its character. Everything else is staging. And the optimal staging location has been sitting there the whole time: Mohawk Regional High School on Route 112, on the far side of the ridge Crittenden Hill actually climbs. Start and finish there, and the course still conquers the hill — in fact it conquers it more cleanly, with the school's parking, its grounds, and its infrastructure absorbing the logistics that currently land on a commercial village with no capacity for them.
The benefits cascade immediately. The PA system that currently rattles State Street storefronts for hours goes with it — Mohawk High School is not a residential neighborhood and not a business district. The road closures that eliminate tax-free weekend revenue for merchants who were never officially notified shrink to nothing. And the argument that the race brings people to town — which McCusker has made publicly and which deserves the third-party accounting it has never received — actually becomes true. Runners and their families, parked at the school, finishing the race, looking for food and coffee and a place to sit: they can now walk directly into Shelburne Falls under their own power rather than being funneled through a closed course that treats the village as an obstacle. The town gets the visitors. The Bridge of Flowers gets its foot traffic back. The donation boxes get used.
On the matter of naming
Call it the Crittenden Hill Classic. Move it to the high school. The name fits the event. The logistics fit the town. The Bridge of Flowers gets its name back and its day back — and the race gets a home that was designed to host exactly this kind of thing. Names mean something. They should mean what they say.
The Race and the Business District
Every August, the BOF Classic shuts down the commercial heart of Shelburne Falls — the streets that businesses depend on, the roads residents live on, the property owners who were never officially notified. In 2024, the race fell on tax-free weekend, the single biggest retail event on the Franklin County calendar. The town was closed for it. Businesses that count on that Saturday got nothing. A resident trying to make a 20-minute round trip to his own office spent 30 minutes in detour, couldn't make his postal deadline, and lost that workday entirely — because Chief Gregory Bardwell's personal truck was one of the vehicles blocking his road. Nobody had called. Nobody had knocked. There was only a sign on a telephone pole.
When that resident attempted to seek basic redress from race director Michael McCusker — a completely legal act on public property — McCusker got in his face, offered nothing, and made a sarcastic remark about the resident's memory. When a race volunteer then escalated by threatening to go on Facebook and wreck the resident's reputation, McCusker stood by and watched. He did nothing. Then came the Shelburne Police Department.
One of the volunteers actively confronting the resident was Amanda Kingsley, who played a central role in blocking passage and verbally abusing him. When the resident explained he needed to reach his office and the post office for time-sensitive business shipments before the 11:00 AM deadline, Kingsley and others refused to allow passage, called him an asshole, and escalated. During the confrontation Kingsley stated: "We've been through this before."
AMANDA STAR KINGSLEY- OVER-CERTIFIED LIFE COACH
Amanda Kingsley is a certified Life Coach, not a therapist or medically trained mental health professional. This website is for informational purposes only.
"Amanda expressly disclaims responsibility, and shall have no liability, for any damages, loss, injury, or liability whatsoever suffered as a result of your reliance on the information contained in this site. "
(this is your moral authority)
This was not a neutral interaction. In June 2020, Kingsley had explicitly called for boycotting the resident's business and advocated creating lists of "racist" local businesses so residents could avoid them. The resident had never met Kingsley prior to race day 2024. Her prior public calls for economic harm against him, combined with her statement on race day, demonstrate that the obstruction and verbal abuse were not spontaneous crowd-control measures but were influenced by a documented four-year personal and political grudge. This volunteer-led escalation directly preceded Chief Bardwell's arrival and his threat of arrest. The race organization empowered individuals with clear conflicts of interest to act with the authority of event officials, then relied on the Shelburne Police Department to suppress the resident's complaints rather than address the volunteers' conduct.
What the Police Did That Day — and Why It Was Not Routine
Chief Bardwell approached the resident and threatened him with arrest for disorderly conduct. Not the volunteer who had just threatened a citizen with public defamation and was actively hurling expletives. Not the man who was shouting. The resident. The one trying to get his grievances heard.
When the resident asked Chief Bardwell to define "appropriate level" — a reasonable question when someone threatens you with arrest — Bardwell scoffed and walked away. He never answered. He issued a threat and retreated. Under the First Amendment, threatening a citizen with arrest to suppress speech on a public road is not a gray area. It is a civil rights violation. The chief of police used the threat of arrest as a tool to make a complainant shut up and go away. Bardwell didn't want to hear the grievance. He wanted the noise to stop. That is not policing. That is suppression.
Chief Bardwell, Sgt Gilmore, Michael McCusker, Turquoise shirt guy
At the same time — simultaneously, while the chief was threatening the resident — Sergeant Kurt Gilmore was doing something the video documents clearly: he was physically moving his body back and forth to keep himself between the resident's camera and the volunteer. Not for safety. The resident was 30 to 40 feet away. Gilmore was actively, deliberately blocking the recording of a citizen on a public road. He jockeyed. He moved when the camera moved. He shook the volunteer's hand as the man drove away.
Obstructing a citizen's right to film on a public road is a First Amendment violation. Doing it while your chief is simultaneously threatening that same citizen with arrest for speaking is not a coincidence. It is coordinated suppression. Two officers. One target. Two constitutional violations running in parallel, on camera, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.
Unidentified race voluteer shown verbally assaulting me.
This Was Not a One-Off. This Is a Pattern.
The race day incident would be troubling if it stood alone. It does not stand alone. It sits inside a documented, six-year record of the Shelburne Police Department systematically violating this same resident's civil rights — a record that includes sworn judicial findings, a federal civil rights lawsuit, a formally documented permission structure written by Sergeant Gilmore himself, and a POST-decertified officer who was accessing child sexual abuse material on department devices while on duty.
Sergeant Gilmore — the man who jockeyed his body to block that camera on race day — is the same officer who wrote in Report 21BUC-54-OF: "I told Hennessey that I was not going to call Sendelbach because it hasn't worked in the past."That sentence is departmental policy. It states explicitly that one party in an ongoing dispute would receive police engagement; the other would not. It was never retracted. It was followed for four years.
Sgt. Gilmore Actively moved to block my filming= civil rights violation.
Chief Bardwell — the man who threatened the resident with arrest for speaking on a public road — is the same chief who, on October 16, 2025, was videotaped refusing to feel the wrist of a citizen presenting in documented atrial fibrillation, saying "I don't want to," and walking into a gas station for coffee. The same chief who publicly defended Detective Tucker Jenkins after Jenkins was personally denied qualified immunity in federal court (Mlynick v. Town of Erving, 3:24-cv-30108, March 12, 2026) on a finding that he had manufactured probable cause. The same chief who, thirteen days after that federal ruling, submitted a merit raise request for his "fantastic crew."
This is not a department having a bad day. This is a department that has decided, in writing, which residents receive its protection — and which do not. The volunteer who threatened the resident was being disorderly. The cops knew it. Gilmore was close enough to hear every word. Bardwell arrived moments later. Neither said a word to the volunteer. Both directed their enforcement attention at the man who had been threatened. They protected the person threatening. They silenced the person threatened. That is not a judgment call. That is a choice — and it is the same choice this department has been making, in documented incidents, since at least 2021.
Sgt. Gilmore about to shake the hand of my accoster.
The Practical Problem That Needs a Practical Fix
None of the above negates the fact that the BOF Classic has a solvable geography problem. The heart of the course — Crittenden Hill — is not in the business district. It never was. The route through downtown exists because nobody has been required to reconsider it. Rerouting through Mohawk Regional High School on Route 112 is not a radical proposal. It is a map correction that benefits runners, merchants, residents, the Bridge of Flowers, and the race itself.
McCusker claims on the public record — it is on video — that the race is an economic benefit to the town's businesses. He should be required to prove it. Multiple business owners report the opposite. The 2024 race fell on tax-free weekend and those businesses got nothing. If the race genuinely generates the economic activity claimed, a third-party verified accounting should be easy to produce. If it cannot be produced, the claim should be retired.
We the Undersigned Demand
1. Reroute the race. Move the start and finish to Mohawk Regional High School on Route 112. The course still climbs Crittenden Hill. The business district is no longer a staging ground for an event it never consented to host. Rename the event accordingly — the Crittenden Hill Classic is an honest name for an honest race.
2. Direct notification required — every affected property owner and business, at least 14 days prior, by personal contact or certified mail. Not a sign on a pole.
3. Publish verifiable economic impact data before the next permit is issued. Third-party verified. The claim has been made publicly and is now on the record. Back it up or stop making it.
4. Independent review of race-day police conduct — specifically: Chief Bardwell's First Amendment threat and Sergeant Gilmore's documented physical obstruction of a citizen's camera on a public road. Both are on video. Both belong in the ongoing civil rights review of this department.
5. Formal acknowledgment that a citizen seeking redress from a race director on a public road has a legal right to do so — and that threatening that citizen with arrest to suppress that speech, while protecting the person who threatened him, is not consistent with the First or Fourteenth Amendments or the equal protection this department is obligated to provide.
©2026 John Sendelbach