Fall River councilors table harm reduction bag review, ask state health officials, Seven Hills and SSTAR to attend
Council President Cliff Ponte said Seven Hills would not attend without a state Department of Public Health representative. The committee voted to table the item and invite the state and both groups.
FALL RIVER A Fall River City Council committee on Tuesday night, Oct. 27, put off its review of the harm reduction supply bags handed out in the city by Seven Hills Foundation and Stanley Street Treatment and Resources (SSTAR), voting to table the item and to invite the state Department of Public Health and both organizations to a later session.
Neither organization sent anyone to the Committee on Finance meeting. Council President Cliff Ponte, who filed the resolution that called the session, said "Seven Hills did not want to attend the meeting tonight unless a representative from DPH was here with them." Ponte said Mayor Paul Coogan had met with Seven Hills and was told that people do not receive a full bag of supplies and instead ask for each item they need.
The resolution, which the council adopted Oct. 13, says "recent reporting has raised public questions regarding the contents of harm reduction bags distributed by Seven Hills Foundation in the City of Fall River, including syringes, glass pipes, cookers, and other supplies," and that residents "deserve transparency" about how the supplies are handed out and disposed of.
What city health officials said
Tess Curran, the city's director of health and human services, told councilors the city does not pay Seven Hills for the program. It is a statewide program, she said: Seven Hills gets its supplies from the state and reports its data to the state Department of Public Health, and no opioid settlement money goes to it. She said 91 cities and towns, Fall River among them, have had a Board of Health vote allowing syringe service programs. State law lets the Department of Public Health run needle exchange programs once the local board of health approves.
Curran said Seven Hills asks people who come in about their drug use, including whether they inject or smoke, and hands out the supplies that fit. Offering pipes, she said, brings in people who smoke drugs and were missed before, so staff can offer testing for HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections and stay in touch until a person is ready for recovery. Harm reduction that includes syringes "does not encourage folks to utilize drugs or do more drugs," she said. "It simply makes it safer for those who are currently using drugs to not have communicable diseases."
Thomas Cory, a Board of Health member, said he visited Seven Hills, which has a kiosk for returning used syringes, sends staff to the Kindness Kitchen on Monday afternoons and escorts people without identification to the registry to get an ID. "I think it might behoove everybody to just go down and chat with them for a few minutes," he said.
What councilors said
Council Vice President Michelle Dionne said the mayor passed along Seven Hills' explanation that snorting or smoking drugs is safer than injecting them. "I'm hard pressed to believe that giving a mirror and an item to cut cocaine so people can snort it or smoke it with a pipe that's supplied is harm reduction," said Dionne, who said she once worked in a prison. She said she supports exchanges that trade a few clean syringes for used ones, and that she saw a bag from SSTAR holding what she said were 20 syringes, a pipe, a cooker and step by step directions. "I'm not accusing anybody here of anything," she said.
Councilor Christopher Peckham, who said he comes from a family in which several brothers used heroin, called the programs "a way to keep people addicted so the money keeps coming in, our people keep dying, and the people at the top keep making money." He said such services should not be on South Main Street. Curran answered that "the data does not support that."
Councilor Linda Pereira said letters the council received from SSTAR and Seven Hills say they do not give out bags like the ones councilors have seen. Ponte said the bag he obtained came from Seven Hills; Dionne said the one she saw came from SSTAR. "We need to know who the heck's telling us the truth and who's lying," Pereira said.
What happens next
Councilor Shawn Cadime said that whatever councilors think of harm reduction, the committee could not have a real discussion without the organizations present, and he said he was disappointed it would take the state to bring them in. He asked the administration to request that the Department of Public Health, Seven Hills and SSTAR send representatives, and to gather the state grants the groups receive and their reporting rules before the next session.
Answering for the administration, a city official at the table said the department had agreed to come but, to the official's knowledge, was not invited to Tuesday's meeting, that SSTAR had said it would send someone but no one came, that the city funds none of these organizations, and that the mayor has told the city's state lawmakers the state needs to be part of the talks. The administration also said Seven Hills has helped the city's homeless outreach team remove needles during encampment cleanups, because city employees do not handle hazardous material. Ponte said state Rep. Carole Fiola has set up meetings with the department, SSTAR and Seven Hills.
On Cadime's motion, seconded by Councilor Michael Canuel, the committee tabled the item on a voice vote. It set no date to take it up again. The City Clerk's office, which posts council agendas, can be reached at 508-324-2220 or city_clerk@fallriverma.gov.
Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.
Notes
Every quote, statement and vote comes from the Fall River Government Television video of the Oct. 27 Committee on Finance meeting, checked line by line in two independent transcripts of that video. The resolution's words, its sponsor and its dates come from the council's Oct. 13 and Oct. 27 agenda packets; names and titles from the council's roster, the committee's Sept. 22 minutes and the Board of Health's page; the state law from the Legislature's site. We read them on Oct. 28. We checked each date and weekday against a calendar.
Corrections
No corrections to this story. If something here is wrong, tell us. Every correction is dated on the story and listed in our public log.
Sources (7)
- Fall River Government Television: 10.27.2026 Fall River City Council (Committee on Finance, item 3, harm reduction bags)Published Oct. 27, 2026. Item runs 2:08:00 to 2:36:40; table vote 2:36:29. Quotes checked in two independent transcripts. Read Oct. 28, 2026.
- City of Fall River: City Council agenda packet, Oct. 13, 2026 (item 18 and the resolution filed Oct. 7 by President Cliff A. Ponte; Committee on Finance minutes of Sept. 22, 2026, on page 109; City Clerk phone and email in the page footer)Clerk stamped Oct. 8, 2026. Read Oct. 28, 2026.
- City of Fall River: City Council agenda packet, Oct. 27, 2026 (Committee on Finance item 3, adopted Oct. 13)Clerk stamped Oct. 23, 2026. Read Oct. 28, 2026.
- City of Fall River: 2026 Elected Officials and Email ListUpdated Oct. 19, 2026. Read Oct. 28, 2026.
- City of Fall River: Board of HealthMembers list. Read Oct. 28, 2026.
- Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 111, Section 215: Needle exchange programsRead Oct. 28, 2026.
- Fall River Now (podcast listing)Used only to confirm the spelling and title of Health and Human Services Director Tess Curran. Read Oct. 28, 2026.