NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton Reparations Study Commission will ask the city to extend its operations for an additional year, amid contentious debate among members over whether additional public input from Black community members is needed before submitting recommendations to the City Council.

The commission met last week to discuss whether to submit to the council its final report containing numerous recommendations to address historical racial inequity in the city. Recommendations listed in the draft of the final report include the city issuing a formal apology for past “racialized harms,” incorporating public artwork by Black artists into planned redesigns of Main Street and assisting first-time Black homeowners with down payments of $25,000.

“The recommendations ... are not, in themselves, reparations,” the report states. “Rather, they are concrete policy and programmatic pathways the City Council and Mayor may pursue as part of a broader, long-term project of reparations.”

But at the commission’s June 10 meeting, members voted 8-2 to extend its work for another year, as well as create an “Implementation Commission” to work in tandem with the commission.

In a separate decision, commissioners voted 6-4 to submit the current report to the council with the caveat that the recommendations are subject to “appropriate edits if needed.” Another vote to submit the recommendations as-is failed 5-4 with one abstention.

Commission member Marsha Morris, who advocated for extending the commission and voted against submitting recommendations to the council, said in an interview her main concern was that the commission had not heard enough from the public and in particular the local Black community before making its recommendations.

“The major disagreement is that we need to, from my perspective, gather more Black input,” Morris said. “We’ve been getting lots of white input all along the way because white people have been over-represented, and this was my concern from the beginning.”

According to the final report, the commission conducted a survey in January among community members for input on possible reparative ideas and feedback. Of the 424 responses the commission received, only 5% of respondents identified as Black, although that figure is higher than the percentage of Northampton’s overall Black population. In addition, five separate interviews with Black community members were conducted by commission member Emikan Sudan.

“Why is the report being rushed when we haven’t had any public hearings on the [final report] draft?” Morris told the Gazette. “There’s some drive for this report to be accepted because they don’t want us to align the feedback of the Black community with the recommendations.”

At the June 10 meeting, one of the commission members pushing the strongest for immediate approval of the report’s recommendations was Bill Newman, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I’m saying it’s urgent that it be done. I want to see reparations now,” Newman said at the meeting. “[If] we go on with this commission, by the time we get through all the other processes in the city, we’ll put reparations back a year.”

Member Renika Montgomery-Tamakloe countered that she felt not enough public input had been given by the Black community.

“I think it’s actually rather paternalistic and hubristic of us to put forth these recommendations having only talked to five Black residents of Northampton,” Montgomery-Tamakloe said. “It is very much like, here children, this is what we think you should want.”

Later in the meeting, commission chair Ousmane Power-Greene defended the amount of community input the commission has received so far, saying it is sufficient enough to bring forth the recommendations.

“Much of what we’ve been doing over the past year, at least since January, is actually to engage the community and to educate them about the work we’ve been doing,” Power-Greene said. “As a study commission, we have in my opinion no obligation to necessarily have the community vet this study.”

In an interview with the Gazette, Power-Greene also pointed to several other instances of community outreach by the commission, including film screenings on the topic of slavery and reparations held at Edwards Church that were open to the public. But he said he also understood the push to want to have more community feedback and to continue ongoing work and research on the topic of reparations.

“Any frustration that’s expressed to me is just passion to engage the community, and I think that’s positive,” Power-Greene said. “I personally support further efforts for this commission.”

The commission, established by the council in February of 2023, is charged to consider what initiatives should be funded and implemented by the city to support redress and fair treatment for Black people who live, work, and learn in the community, examine ways to restore, grow, and nourish Black community and culture in Northampton for future generations, and suggest ways the city might meaningfully atone for historic wrongs.

A preliminary report in December highlighted the existence of more than 240 historical property deeds, covering approximately 55 properties across Northampton, that contain language of racial exclusion for those properties. The final report recommends that the city acknowledge and amend those deeds to reflect its commitment to racial equity and inclusion.

The final report will be presented to the council during its meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.