Two efforts this month to gauge public opinion about downtown Northampton should provide valuable information to better understand its strengths and weaknesses.
We encourage anyone with an interest in downtown — whether they live, work or play there — to complete an online survey sponsored by the Panhandling Work Group advising the mayor. While some of the 42 questions focus on the reactions of people to panhandlers and what might be done to aid them — beyond handing them money — the survey also covers a wide range of other issues affecting downtown.
It is available through May 2 online at www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZMW289N.
Mayor David Narkewicz said the survey is intended to gather information, and is not motivated by a plan to legislate against panhandling. In the two weeks since the survey has been online, it has been completed by nearly 5,000 people.
The survey follows a forum on downtown issues sponsored April 3 by a new group called Northampton Connects that hopes to promote community conversations on a variety of issues involving residents with varying points of view. The goal of the first forum was to start a dialogue about how to make downtown a safe, vibrant and welcoming environment for everyone, according to Ward 2 City Councilor Dennis Bidwell, one of its organizers.
Bidwell said it was an outgrowth of the last year’s debate over the proposal by Police Chief Jody Kasper for increased use of municipal surveillance cameras downtown, and the concern expressed to him that the issue had polarized the community. Bidwell and another organizer of Northampton Connects, Stan Schapiro, a clinical social worker and behavioral health consultant, co-wrote a column published by the Gazette.
They wrote: “We hope Northampton Connects can provide some of what other more formal settings are not able to provide by turning down the heat and dialing up the curiosity and a sense of understanding. One way to understand downtown Northampton is to consider it as a web of interrelated human stories … The more of these stories one hears, the more it becomes clear that broad generalizations about people simply don’t hold up. If there’s one thing we hope comes out of the Northampton Connects project, it’s that the varied faces of downtown Northampton be understood as unique human individuals whose stories connect them to the rest of the community.”
We hope that the information being gathered by the Mayor’s Panhandling Work Group — both in the online survey and separate questions asked of panhandlers themselves — will be used in that same spirit of better understanding the many reasons why people are downtown, what keeps them away and what might make it more attractive.
The Panhandling Work Group resulted from the City Council Committee on Community Resources recommending “that the mayor convene a task force of city employees, representatives from social service, housing and advocacy organizations, downtown stakeholders … to explore non-ordinance and non-punitive ways of addressing the needs of downtown at-risk populations and ways that expanded resources can be directed towards the agencies and organizations doing direct work with our at-risk populations.”
The survey asks respondents about their experiences downtown with street performers, representatives of groups asking for donations to support a particular cause, and panhandlers seeking money for their own use. There are also specific questions about whether panhandling is viewed as detrimental for downtown, and how unsafe it makes people feel.
Other questions ask for reaction to ideas that would reduce the number of people who need to panhandle. Among them are creating a fund to provide emergency services, including shelter and food, and a “job bank” overseen by a nonprofit that would coordinate short-term jobs offered by merchants and service agencies.
The broader issues measured by the survey include what specific events bring people downtown (from the annual Pride Parade and Bag Day to the many rallies and vigils staged there), as well as open-ended questions such as what people like most about downtown Northampton and identifying the biggest issue facing downtown today.
We look forward to hearing what conclusions Northampton Connects draws from this month’s conversation about downtown, and the findings from the research conducted by the mayor’s Panhandling Work Group. Both should be instructive in coming up with strategies to ensure that downtown Northampton is welcoming to a broad cross section of people.