There is a grave moral crisis underway in Northampton: namely, the economic injustice being perpetrated on working- and middle-class people in our community by city government. Understandably, the focus of news coverage has been on the inexcusable actions of the city toward the schools and what I believe is an undisguised effort to destroy the long-accepted notion in Northampton that a public education is a right — and this is happening with a shrug and an “Oh, well” by many people in town, especially the mayor’s most ardent supporters.

At the same time, the city has just sent out tax bills to elderly residents, many poor or on fixed incomes, with dramatic increases on modest homes they have lived in for decades that haven’t been recently renovated. Oh, sure, they’ll wash their hands in City Hall and the assessor’s office of this highway robbery and lay the blame for the increase at the feet of the state. But just as they’ve failed to get Smith College to provide more money to the city, they will do absolutely nothing to stop the unconscionable soaking of homeowners, including the most unfortunate among us.

Anyone who willingly hops aboard with them — because in exchange for killing off the schools and kicking granny out of her house they get a few ugly, hulking “green buildings” or a generous donation to a nonprofit run by extravagantly compensated executives — is not only willfully turning a blind eye to the suffering of their neighbors, they are in my view morally bankrupt.

John Ciavarella

Florence