By Alex Cox || coxalexj@gmail.com
A report on the Regular Meeting of the Amherst Town Council on Monday, April 28.
Town Council Refers Black Reparations Committee Charge to Committee Again
The Town Council considered a revised charge for the Amherst Black Reparations Committee (ABRC) at its Monday meeting. According to the proposed charge, ABRC’s mission would be “to implement reparations in Amherst, as supported by international human rights standards, for harms caused by support of slavery and post reconstruction discrimination by the Town, residents, businesses, and other Amherst associated entities.”
ABRC is designed as a successor body to the African Heritage Reparations Assembly (AHRA), which was formed in June of 2021 “to study and develop reparation proposals for People of African Heritage in Amherst.” AHRA was an outgrowth of the Town’s commitment to end structural racism and reject white supremacy, which was codified by a unanimous vote of the Council in December of 2020.
To learn more about how reparations are “the first step in repairing the devastation inflicted by slavery and racial discrimination,” see the 2019 Resolution titled Reparations from the NAACP. For a more general overview of the theory behind reparations, see the Reparations webpage from The United Nations.
AHRA submitted a final report in 2023 which detailed next steps for the Town, including the formation of a permanent standing committee to carry forward the work of the Assembly. The final report also contained a Draft Committee Charge (pages 111-112) for ABRC which provided a range of committee structures for the Town to consider.
A charge for ABRC based on this recommendation had previously been considered by the Town Council on October 21 of last year before being unanimously voted back to the Governance, Organization & Legislation Committee (GOL). GOL was tasked with considering the original proposal and extensive amendments, submitted by Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke (At-Large), and submitting a new recommendation to the Council.
The proposed charge brought before the Council on Monday was a more detailed document based on AHRA recommendations and previous Councilor feedback. “This version is much fuller,” said Councilor Pamela Rooney (District 4), noting the work that GOL and other councilors had put into the revisions.
Despite the general agreement that the current proposal was an improvement over past versions, Councilors still had concerns and questions surrounding the composition and authority of the ABRC. Several Councilors asked if the current charge did enough to empower the members of ABRC to enact reparations, while others questioned the membership terms and appointment procedures.
Councilor Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5, GOL Chair) made it clear that the intention of GOL was to empower members of ABRC to directly implement reparations projects to the extent allowable by law, saying that, “ultimately, this group is doing more than support and advise. They are making recommendations on funding expenditures…”.
Councilor Hanneke further stressed the importance of precision in the charge, citing the relatively unclear legislative landscape surrounding reparations. “Right now, even spending money out of that [Reparations Stabilization] fund is so unsure, in terms of legality,” said Hanekke. Many other councilors agreed that further refinement would be necessary to ensure the ABRC was effective.
To that end, Devlin Gauthier agreed that GOL could reexamine the charge and consider alternative wording as submitted by Councilors. Every councilor in attendance voted to refer the charge back to GOL along with suggested revisions (12-0, 1 absent).
While GOL considers amending its proposal, many Councilors encouraged the Town Council as a whole to continue engaging in dialogue surrounding reparations. Councilor Ndifreke (Freke) Ette, Ph.D. (District 1) urged “for the Town Council to reflect, in its own time, what exactly it is looking for from ABRC”.
Town Council Refers Proposed Fiscal Stabilization Task Force(s) to Sponsors and Other Business
At the remainder of the Monday meeting, the Town Council considered two proposals regarding long-range fiscal planning. The first proposal, submitted by Councilor Devlin Gauthier and Sarahbess Kenney (Chair of the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee) with input from Jennifer Shiao (Chair of the Amherst School Committee) was carried over from the March 24 and April 7 meetings. The second proposal, submitted by Council President Griesemer and Councilor Cathy Schoen (District 1, Chair of the Finance Committee), is, in many ways, a “2.0” of the original proposal, said Devlin Gauthier.
“It’s really hard to have a body that is truly equitably representative and compliant (with state laws,” Devlin Gauthier added. Councilors cited various strengths and weaknesses from each of the proposals, with some noting that existing committees and/or the Four Towns Meeting might be able to lead the conversations surrounding fiscal planning that both proposals are trying to foster. All named sponsors of the proposals (Kenney, Devlin Gauthier, Schoen, and Griesemer) agreed to spend time discussing revisions and possible unification of the initiatives.
Before adjourning, the Town Council also passed a proclamation recognizing Jewish American Heritage Month, approved a long-term public way request, and referred amendments to water and sewer rates to committee. The Town Council also approved a debt authorization for the Regional School District. The Council is not required to approve such authorizations but has traditionally done so.
The next Town Council meeting will be on May 5 in Town Hall at 6:30 and will include a presentation on the Fiscal Year 2026 budget. Town Council meetings are also accessible via Zoom, livestream, and Amherst Media broadcast. Meeting details, agendas, and access are posted on the Town Council webpage. If you’re interested in knowing more about upcoming Council meetings, you can subscribe to text and email updates from the Town. If you want the Current’s coverage of the next Town Council meeting delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe using the field below.
Alex Cox (he/him) is a current graduate student at UMass- Amherst studying Regional Planning (MRP) and Public Policy and Administration (MPPA). He currently serves on the Amherst Affordable Housing Trust Fund and as the Graduate Director of the Student Union Art Gallery. He has been a member of the Amherst Current editorial board since 2024.
THE AMHERST CURRENT 
This reparations undertaking, continued while the Town has trouble paying its bills for the fundamentals of Anytown, Massachusetts, USA, is beginning to remind me of another Amherst town policy will-o’-the-wisp of yesteryear: the provision of voting rights in town elections to resident aliens here. I voted for that idea twice, while I was in Town Meeting, and was ridiculed for it heartily at my workplace out of town. And it went nowhere, like something gaseous, with the state legislature……As has, come to think of it, instant run-off voting, which I thought was part of what we voted for on the charter. We seem to have a tendency frantically to generate ideas that we can proudly show off as “justice” to the rest of the nation (like CRESS, the solution still searching for a problem it’s equipped to address), without fully thinking through on how to get to the final destination, AND without being able to build a sustainable tax base that could be depended upon to pay for our ever-burgeoning basic municipal needs. What if we paid attention to the truly soporific, boring stuff and made headway on it, beyond simply giving them lip service at candidate forums once every two years?
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Provides a lot of detail . . .
https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/56040/7a-20210513-DRAFT-Reparations-Report
Reparations for Amherst, Massachusetts
Report on Anti-Black Racism and Black/White Disparities in the Town of Amherst, DRAFT March 9, 2021
A recent Amherst College study documented the extent of the College’s wealth that accumulated through slaveholding. My understanding is that future action items identified during conversations of the study’s findings, beyond increasing awareness of race and equal rights, include potentially renaming some buildings that were named after those benefactors who benefited significantly from slaveholding. . . . similar to how Amherst College’s mascot became the Mammoths instead of the Lord Jeffs.
https://amherststudent.com/article/researchers-lay-out-amherst-history-of-racial-exploitation-slaveholding/
But I agree with Rich, if we are talking about diverting monies in a Town that has trouble paying its bills due to a lack of a commercial tax base, a plethora of tax-exempt land ownership that put a burden on town services and infrastructure, etc., etc., then we’ll probably be shooting ourselves in the foot if we overpromise . . . and I would like to understand the cost/benefit of CRESS better . . .
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For a more in-depth look at the work of AHRA and reparations in Amherst, I invite you to read an article by former AHRA chair Michele Miller (published in the Current in 2022).
I apologize for not including this link in the original article – I am still familiarizing myself with the pieces published by the Current before I moved to Amherst. Michele Miller is an expert in this area and their writing provides a wonderful introduction to the Case for Local Reparations. Thank you, Michele, for your meaningful contributions to the Town, the Current, and the AHRA!
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