FALMOUTH — Town staff said they are committed to coming up with a plan to address systemic racism town wide.
Town Administrator Nathan Poore told the Town Council Monday that he will work on a plan with council leadership, which may include training for city staff as well as policy review, to address systemic racism in town.
Residents object to using outside company for comp plan
Future iQ presented their plans to the Falmouth Town Council Monday to create a new comprehensive plan for the town, which sets guiding rules for how growth should look.
However, residents criticized the choice to have an outside company come up with a plan for Falmouth – while city officials argued that having a company without local bias would be beneficial – and that the town should save the money they would spend with Future iQ.
Beurle. Courtesy photo
“I don’t think hiring consultants is necessarily the way to go,” resident Lisa Joy said. “We the people could run this better with some staff oversight, I’m very wary of bringing in an outside consultant.”
Residents also raised concerns that Future iQ and town officials are giving too much of a voice to stakeholders that are not residents in town, but Future iQ CEO David Beurle said that their data-driven approach insures everyone is heard.
The plans to revise the comprehensive plan will start out with a round of surveys over the course of a year, he said, which the firm hopes will reach at least half of the town’s population.
“This is a chance for people to express their thoughts and people will be able to see that data as it comes in,” Beurle said. “The demographic portions of our surveys also allow us to pick apart the answers and isolate the input from say residents or stakeholders.”
The council said that work on reworking the comprehensive plan, last done in 2013, began after a number of residents began to express frustration with new developments that are against the character of Falmouth, most recently the Homestead Acres development.
“The people (dissenting) are the reason we are doing this,” Councilor Jay Trickett said. “They said the previous councilors didn’t do a good job reaching out to them. This will give us the legitimacy that people have called into question with the previous comprehensive plan.”
The council unanimously approved the plan.
“This really started with (protests) in June and I have been doing a lot of learning,” Poore said. “How do you address this? I am committed on the operations side and to do the staff trainings, and we would take look at our operational policies.”
Poore also mentioned the input from the July 8 workshop on racial disparities in Falmouth policing data, which point towards systemic bias in the town.
At that workshop, data provided by Police Chief John Kilbride showed from 2016-2019, out of 448 people arrested, 4.5% — 20 people — were Black. However, Black people make up only .1% of the town’s population.
It also showed that Black people were involved in 3.6% of all traffic stops, and 10% of the 26 instances where force was used since 2016 involved Black people.
Poore said a plan could include town-wide trainings on systemic racism, Black history and implicit bias for staff, a town-wide resolution and reworking policies that may support systemic racism, though the question remained as to what policies those would be.
“I could use some (training), especially the background information,” Councilor Ted Asherman said. “I’ve learned a lot reading about biases of the lately and they certainly impact me, so I think I’d look forward to that training.”
Other councilors cited other issues that could better address systemic racism in town compared to training and increase overall diversity, focusing on Falmouth’s lack of housing options.
Councilor Jay Trickett speaks out against implicit bias training, which he says is ineffective. Instead, Trickett said, the town should focus on policies that possibly support systemic racism, like policies that promote expensive single family housing. Courtesy photo
“We’d have more diversity if we had more diverse housing options,” Councilor Jay Trickett said. “We resist rental housing in our policies for example, that makes a difference. We’ve resisted affordable housing for years. If it is the case that there is systemic racism, which I believe there is, and there is economic segregation and disparities between races from that, then it’s certainly the case that if we have policies around land use and housing and attitudes in our town that promote only single-family homes approaching $1 million in cost during a housing crisis, we will have a very segregated community. Is that something we as a council are willing to discuss, look at and talk about changing?”
Town councilors will go over a more concrete plan at their next meeting, Poore said, which will include public comment.
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