NORTHAMPTON — Nuclear weapons, medical aid in dying, surveillance cameras, school bus safety. All of these topics were addressed in resolutions passed by the City Council Thursday night.
Although they are not legally binding, resolutions do express the will of the council.
“No cameras. No nukes. And I want to go when I want to go,” said Carolyn Oppenheimer, which appeared to be a sentiment shared by many of the people in attendance, a number of whom also spoke during the public comment period.
One of the resolutions that passed on second reading voiced support for the “End of Life Options Act,” a bill before the Legislature that would legalize medical aid in dying in the commonwealth.
Speaking in favor of the resolution, Sigrid Schmalzer described how she had helped her father die when he was in considerable pain by allowing him to refuse food and water.
She said that she’d gotten the idea for her father to end his life in this manner after reading The Daily Hampshire Gazette’s coverage of Lee Hawkins’ success with this method.
“I will be forever, forever grateful for that coverage because it gave my father one option that he could actually face,” Schmalzer said.
Nevertheless, it took her father six days to die, and she spoke of the difficulties he endured doing so.
“The best option my father had was to die of thirst over six days,” said Schmalzer, in urging the passage of the resolution.
“I’m asking you to help give other people a better choice than he had,” she concluded.
Another person who spoke in favor was 84-year-old Margaret Rasmussen.
“This is a bill with safeguards that will have lasting value in Massachusetts,” she said.
As he did before the resolution passed in first reading, Chris Palames was the only person who spoke against the bill.
Palames, who is disabled, once again made the point that one cannot die with dignity if one cannot spend one’s late life with dignity, and noted that some people are unable to get medical care, care which may help them to recover.
“There are false diagnoses, after which people who I know have lived extended periods of time, having come through their suicidal depression with a diagnosis that would support it,” he said. “It is simply more complicated.”
City Council President William Dwight was moved by the testimony.
“Personally I would like to move this as fast as we can because I don’t think I can emotionally bear any more testimony to be honest,” said Dwight, opening the council’s discussion of the resolution.
Later on, he also spoke to Palames’ concerns, saying that life with dignity and death with dignity are not mutually exclusive.
“One should not come at the expense … of the other,” he said.
The resolution passed unanimously in its second and final reading.
Another resolution that passed in second reading was the council’s stand against the installation of additional municipally operated surveillance technology downtown.
Everyone who spoke to this resolution during public comment opposed it.
Caty Simon linked the proposal from the Northampton Police Department to a “decade-long war in Northampton for public space.”
She equated the proposal for cameras to a proposed 2008 anti-panhandling ordinance, the 2013 removal of benches downtown and the dissolution of the Business Improvement District.
“We won’t stand by while the poor’s civil rights are abrogated,” she said. “And make no mistake, the cameras are an anti-poor people measure.”
The resolution passed on a 7-2 vote, with Ward 5 Councilor David Murphy and Ward 2 Councilor Dennis Bidwell voting against, as they had when it passed on first reading.
The council also unanimously passed, on first reading, a resolution opposing the Trump administration’s proposal to move $54 billion from social services, education and environmental spending to military spending. The resolution asked that Congress move funds in the opposite direction, and appropriate no further funding for the development and production of nuclear weapons.
This resolution was drafted at the request and with the help of Jeff Napolitano and noted local peace activist Frances Crowe.
“The community has come together on this issue, and that’s where the power is,” Crowe, 98, said after the resolution’s passage. “Right here. Not in Washington.”
An amendment was also made to the resolution that it be sent to the president.
“Well there’s something that’s going to sit in an inbox for a while,” said Dwight, who nevertheless voted for the amendment, which passed unanimously.
A fourth resolution, which passed unanimously on second reading, supported legislation in Massachusetts that would allow school buses to record the information of cars that illegally pass them when they are stopped, and allow the offending motorists to be ticketed based off the video.
The text of all the resolutions can be found at http://northamptonma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_11022017-3285?html=true