Nearly nine months after a small group of residents approached the Board of Selectmen (BOS) about forming a human rights commission, town officials are now ready to send the proposed commission to a public hearing on Monday, Feb. 4.

The commission has to go to public hearing because it requires an ordinance amendment to the Code of the Town of Guilford. The exact language of the ordinance can be found with this story online or at the Town Clerk’s Office.

Residents April D’Amato, Judith Keogh, and Clarice Yasuhara came before the board in May 2018 as representatives of the Guilford Human Rights Advocates (GHRA) asking for the formation of a commission. According to the proposed commission language, the movement for a formal commission came after the destruction of the Roses for Autism garden, incidents of racist graffiti, and damage or destruction of many “Welcome Neighbor” lawn signs last year.

At the time of the initial proposal, Keogh said there would no cost associated with the commission beyond paying a recording secretary and that the primary goal of the commission would be to foster acceptance through education. She said the commission would look to partner with other organizations and departments including possibly the schools.

The selectmen didn’t raise any objection to the concept of the commission, but wanted to be sure there were no potential legal issues. At the BOS meeting on Jan. 7, First Selectman Matt Hoey said the commission will focus on education, not enforcement, satisfying any legal concerns.

“It’s predominately going to be an awareness and education role basically to assist those in the community and to raise awareness in the community over the importance of treating everyone with respect and dignity in this community,” said. “They can take the opportunity to provide educational sessions and outreach and programs.”

Hoey said a commission like this could have been an important resource for the community after events such as the recent incident were a family was verbally harassed based on their race by another patron in a Guilford restaurant.

“We talked about how that would have been the perfect opportunity for them to hold a forum in the community and for people to be able to talk about it and express their opinions,” said Hoey. “More importantly, that would have created an opportunity for the commission to develop some kind of training curriculum for all small business employees who may not necessarily have the HR capacity to do that at the front end.”

Hoey said he realizes it took a while to pull together this commission, but he thinks it will be a good resource for the community.

“Unfortunately sometimes government moves at a pace that is not quite as quick as we would like it to be,” he said, adding that town officials and the three co-founders of the organization are now in agreement on an ordinance. “This is a great opportunity for our community and I want to thank you for bringing it to the board.”

The public hearing is Monday, Feb. 4 at 8:30 a.m. at the Community Center, 32 Church Street.