Former Northampton Mayor Mary Ford addresses the planning board and about 135 members of the audience July 19, 2007.
In my view the most compelling five-minute testimony delivered among the 40 or so public comment speakers the evening of Thursday, July 19 was that of former mayor Mary Ford. Nestled among 135 meeting attendees and after receiving gracious applause prior to speaking, Ford outlined events that transpired during her tenure in office as mayor and city council president. She said that neither her administration nor the downtown business community advocated for adding a new hotel downtown, rebuking the claims of the Higgins administration that this project has been "thirty years in the making." She noted the current absence of a strong push by the business community advocating for this project. While Suzanne Beck, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce spoke in favor of the project, only a few of the speakers identified themselves as downtown business owners and several decried aspects of the project as too large and out of scale. Ford added that when she advocated for new large scale building projects or renovations during her time in elected office she insisted that they have a strong component of benefiting the public good.
She outlined how as mayor she signed a Round House parking lot environmental grant application as submitted to her by Wayne Feiden, and questioned at that time the economic development language that was included on the form because there was no intent during her administration to develop that land. Acknowledging the signature as a Mea culpa last night, she was assured that the grant was for test ground borings only and that it was very possible that nothing would come of it. After planning board chair Frandy Johnson hammered his gavel on her for exceeding the three minute time limit, Ford continued for another minute or two, and sat down to thunderous applause. When Johnson hammered his gavel on the crowd for silence, the crowd clapped on longer and louder.
The balance of the hearing that ran from about 8 PM until midnight included much commentary such as been found on this web log, online forums and local media outlets. I did not hear very much that I haven’t written, heard or read of prior, but this was a formal public hearing so it was comforting that so many people showed up to make their comments an official part of the public record.
There was no consensus of the board on how exactly to proceed but members agreed to perform a site visit and to continue the public hearing to August 16 at 8:30 PM in council chambers.
