NORTHAMPTON — Saying that his “voice was ignored,” Douglas Ross resigned Monday from the city’s Human Rights Commission — the third member to step down this month and fifth in the last year.
Meanwhile, Mayor David J. Narkewicz has submitted the names of three potential new members to the City Council, which will consider the recommendations when it meets at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Wallace J. Puchalski Municipal Building.
While all three members who resigned this month expressed concerns about the role of the commission, Ross claimed specifically that he was ignored by administrators and fellow members.
“The fact is that my voice was ignored when I was appointed by you to provide a voice to those who didn’t have a voice,” Ross said in his resignation letter addressed to the mayor. “I continuously pressed this commission and my fellow commissioners on vital issues and yet was still silenced myself.”
Ross said he had been attempting to improve race relations and police transparency in Northampton. In recent talks with Police Chief Jody Kasper, Ross said he made suggestions about monitoring police stops of black people when no citations were issued in an effort to prevent racial profiling. However, when a committee was created to consider the issue, Ross was not named as a member.
“To discover then that the (issue) of police data is now being taken up by a separate committee with the police chief, including two of our Human Rights Commissioners, but not including me, is deeply disappointing,” Ross wrote in his letter.
The three latest departures from the commission coincide with increased racial tensions in the U.S., after a rash of police killings of unarmed black men and the killing of five police officers and wounding of several others in Dallas, where hundreds of people had gathered to protest those earlier deaths.
Carolyn Toll Oppenheim and Jordana Amato resigned from the commission July 1. Both women cited the commission’s ambiguous role since 2014, when the city adopted a new charter. Under the charter, the commission does not have investigative power and plays an advisory role.
In her letter, Amato said the commission “has been drifting without clear guidelines” and implored Narkewicz to supply better guidance and leadership.
Narkewicz, however, said he did not understand the commissioners’ confusion about their purpose and attributed that to the high rate of turnover.
“There’s been turnover, and sometimes when you have a significant amount of turnover, you start to lose some of the institutional memory, especially with some of the longer-serving people stepping down,” Narkewicz said.
Oppenheim cited the issue of chronic vacancies in her resignation letter, writing that the nine-member commission had a minimum of two empty seats the entire time she served. She also said she had made recommendations to fill the vacancies that were never addressed.
Narkewicz now has recommended software administrator Brian Barnes, of 269 Main St. #2A, criminal defense attorney Tara Ganguly, of 55A Chestnut St. in Florence, and foster care administrator Christine Young, of 1443 Westhampton Road in Florence, to fill three of the commission’s vacancies.
Because the commission now has just four members, it is unable to hold a meeting until at least one of those vacancies has been filled. The remaining members are Laurie Loisel, Joel Morse, Natalia Munoz and Carla Velez.
Narkewicz said he plans to talk to the commission at its next meeting and he remains confident about its potential.
“I think part of the goal now will be to really take stock and come up with a plan for things they want to work on,” Narkewicz said. “I don’t view this as any kind of crisis. The HRC model is sound.”