December 15, 2020 Page 1 of 10 \\CI.RICHMOND.CA.US\S1\MYFILES1\CITY_COUNCIL\JACKSOT\MY DOCUMENTS\JACKSOT\MY DOCUMENTS\AGENDA ITEM REQUEST FORMS\2020\JOHNSON AR GARE TEAM AND REAP UPDATE.DOC
CITY COUNCIL
DATE: December 15, 2020
TO: Mayor Butt and Members of the Richmond City Council
FROM: Councilmember Demnlus Johnson III
SUBJECT: WRITTEN UPDATE FROM THE RICHMOND GARE TEAM
STATEMENT OF THE ISSUE:
The Richmond Government Alliance on Race and Equity Team would like to provide a written report on activities. An oral report and presentation will be provided in early 2021. The following information will provide details on the team’s activities, successes, challenges and necessities.
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
RECEIVE a written report from the Richmond Government Alliance on Race and Equity Team on activities and the progress of the draft Racial Equity Action Plan - Councilmember Demnlus Johnson III (620-6568)
FINANCIAL IMPACT OF RECOMMENDATION:
There is no financial impact to the general fund at this time.
DISCUSSION:
GARE is a joint project of the Race Forward and The Othering and Belonging Institute. In 2016, the Richmond chapter of the Government Alliance for Racial Equity (GARE) was established and a multiracial team comprised of an interdepartmental group of city staff and community partners participated in a year-long learning cohort. The team developed a draft Race Equity Action Plan (REAP) during the introductory learning year and has since worked to strengthen the REAP, promote equity work to improve racial outcomes within the City of Richmond through training and community outreach.
Racial Equity Action Plan (REAP)
AGENDA
REPORT
December 15, 2020 Page 2 of 10 \\CI.RICHMOND.CA.US\S1\MYFILES1\CITY_COUNCIL\JACKSOT\MY DOCUMENTS\JACKSOT\MY DOCUMENTS\AGENDA ITEM REQUEST FORMS\2020\JOHNSON AR GARE TEAM AND REAP UPDATE.DOC The draft REAP Plan was initially created by city employees that volunteered to join the Richmond GARE Team and participate in the GARE Network Learning Cohort. The team from various departments used their experience from serving Richmond residents in their respective departments to create action items that could lead the city to achieve the four goals to increase racial equity outcomes in the City of Richmond.
Goal One Internal Work – City of Richmond employees understand and are committed to achieving racial equity
Goal Two Community Engagement – Richmond Residents View the Jurisdiction as an Effective and Inclusive Government that Engages Community Goal Three City Service Provision - City of Richmond is a Racially Equitable Employer and Promotes Racial Equity in Contracting and Procurement
Goal Four Healthy Life Outcomes - Healthy life outcomes are increased and racial disproportionalities are eliminated
Seven to ten action items were created for each goal. During the community forums, participants were given colored sticky dots to prioritize their top four action items for each goal. The following action items rose to the top for the participants and employees that attended the forums.
Goal # Action Item Action
Item #
Goal 1 Meet with department directors to develop Departmental Racial Equity Plans: Discuss city-wide plan, analyze the need for specific strategies in the department to expand racial equity work. Assign a minimum of one person to be the GARE team liaison to share info w/ dept.
A4
Racial Equity Training: Establish a city-wide training program for employees and community partners consisting of Race Equity, Structural & Institutional Racism
A3
Use of a Racial Equity tool with Policies or Programs: Develop a racial equity toolkit to assess policies, initiatives, programs and budget issues.
A6
Goal 2 Inclusive Outreach and Public Engagement Training: Create relationships with community groups aiming to improve equity in Richmond. This also involves collaboration with community organizations to develop a shared vision for roles in shaping racial equity policy.
A2
Establish a Framework for Effective and Inclusive Engagement with Richmond's Diverse Communities: Improve equitable
outcomes of City services by using a racial equity tool to weigh impacts of programs on community.
A3
Community Engagement Taskforce: Strengthen the City's
community engagement efforts to increase transparency and trust to provide authentic spaces for information sharing.
A1
Goal 3 Training on Equitable Hiring Practices for All Hiring Managers: A4
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Strengthen personnel policy and job descriptions- HR to review job specs & strategize to eliminate racial disproportionality in depts.
A2
Workforce equity in departmental Racial Equity Action Plans- Improve hiring and promotion equity to enhance and maintain a workforce representative of the community.
A1
Contracting and Procurement Policies and Procedures to
Eliminate Racial Equity Barriers: Create and implement the use of a Budget Map to assess funding distributions.
Outcome
3b, A3
Goal 4 Equitable Housing Opportunities- HiAP 4F efforts to protect displacement of residents.
A4
Improve access to healthy food in neighborhoods- HiAP 3B to review liquor store permits and develop healthy food corner store program.
A2
Neighborhood Safety – Data Taskforce to work with depts to assess programs that increase neighborhood safety ie street lighting, abandoned houses.
A5
Bay Area Jurisdictions
Richmond is one of twenty jurisdictions in the Bay Area that are members of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity national network. Many of the jurisdictions have an equity division and/or a dedicated equity officer. The City of Richmond does not have either, but we do have the support of the City Council, City Manager and Senior staff by the approval of activities, the adoption of resolutions and permitting staff to voluntarily work on the Richmond team to improve equity outcomes in the areas of awareness, community engagement, and policies and programs.
Jurisdiction Equity Division Equity Officer
1. Contra Costa County Pending Yes
2. City of Berkeley
3. City of Richmond No No
4. Marin County Yes No
5. California State Coastal Conservancy
6. City of Oakland Yes Yes
7. Alameda County
8. Bay Area Air Quality Management District Yes Yes
9. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
10. City & County of San Francisco Yes Yes
11. San Francisco Planning Department
12. City of San Mateo Yes Yes
13. Bay Area Regional Collaborative
14. City of San Jose Yes Yes
15. Merced County Department of Public Health
16. Monterey County
17. City of Salinas
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18. Sonoma County Yes Yes
19. Napa County
20. Solano County
21. WCCUSD (Non-GARE Member) Yes Yes
There are over 130 jurisdictions nationwide that are members of the GARE Network. Several of them have equity officers, divisions or councils to focus on race and health equity initiatives.
More information on the GARE Network can be found at http://www.racialequityalliance.org
Since the inception of the Richmond GARE Team held in 2016, the team has held many events, trainings and presentations to provide information and garner input from the community and staff.
GARE Activities
1. Community Workshop 2. City Staff Workshop (Lunch and Learn/Healing Circle)
3. Presentation 4. Training
Date Accomplishment # of
Attendees
August 9, 2017 Staff Workshop: Lunch and Learn 15-20
November 30, 2017 Staff Workshop: Employee Lunch Session 15-20 December 12, 2017 Staff Workshop: Employee Lunch Session 15-20 January 30, 2019 Presentation to Senior Staff 20
March 14, 2019 Implementation Training for team- GARE Network 6 April 11, 2019 Implementation Training for team- GARE Network 6 June 7, 2019 Implicit Bias Training for Staff with Fogbreak Justice 25+ July 18-19, 2019 Implementation Training for team- GARE Network 4 August 15, 2019 Implementation Training for team- GARE Network 4 September 26, 2019 Staff Workshop: Lunch and Learn 20
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60 October 28, 2020 Presentation to the Richmond Rotary 20+ October-November
2020
GARE Team Orientation Training 2020 6
October 29, 2020 Racial Equity Action Plan Feedback staff Workshop #1/3 5 November 5, 2020 Racial Equity Action Plan Feedback staff Workshop #2/4 3 November 19, 2020 Community Workshop on Draft Racial Equity Plan 15 December 15, 2020 Staff Report updating City Council N/A
Due to the city’s participation in the GARE national network, the team was equipped and ready to respond to COVID-19 and the unjust murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others. The team disseminated a public statement and held two Healing Circles on June 30th and July 1st. The purpose of the Healing Circles was to provide a platform for employees to express their thoughts and provide information on what they needed from executive staff to support them through the pandemic and the civil unrest. A memorandum detailing the findings of the Healing Circles was provided to the city manager and senior staff for their review and consideration.
At the onset of the pandemic, the city staff worked diligently to build an extensive website to provide information to assist community members to find resources for funding, food, housing and testing for the coronavirus. Like many jurisdictions across the nation, impacts of the pandemic disproportionately impact people of color. One of the impacts is the lack of access to
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The most recent activities have attracted the interest of 6 additional team members, bringing the membership total to 15 and an additional community partner for a total of 3.
City of Richmond Team Members:
Trina Jackson - City Council Office (Team Lead)
Johann Fragd - Community Services Division
John Hill- Information and Technology
Ana Crespin - Water Resource Recovery Division
LaShonda White - Children and Youth Division
Bruce Soublet - City Attorney’s Office
David Padilla - Children and Youth Division
Dominique Roache-Greene - Mayor’s Office
Emily Carol - Planning Division
Gabino Arredondo – Environmental and Health Initiatives Magaly Chavez – Richmond Rent Program
Patrick Seals -City Attorney’s Office
Roberta Feliciano - Planning Division
Samantha Carr - Environmental and Health Initiatives
Shivali Gowda - Environmental and Health Initiatives
Community Partners:
Healthy Richmond
Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services
Richmond Rotary Club
One of our most active community partnerships is with Healthy Richmond. Healthy Richmond pushed the GARE team to join a collaboration with the Facilitating Power, Healthy Richmond and the WCCUSD to coordinate and co-facilitate the Spectrum on Community Engagement to Ownership Workshop.
On October 1, 2020, Healthy Richmond and the City of Richmond’s GARE team hosted over 60 members of various community based organizations, city government entities, school district leadership, and parent/resident leaders for a half-day online workshop focused on centering resident voice and community leadership for racial equity in the city of Richmond, California.
The purpose of the workshop was to create a space for collaborative learning and capacity building to promote equitable community engagement and fair outcomes for all Richmond residents by centering historically marginalized groups impacted by structural racism.
The workshop included seven breakout group discussions to gather input from service providers, public officials and parent leaders of the WCCUSD. The following findings from the discussions will assist the participating jurisdictions to improve community engagement when developing programming for the community.
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● Need for greater focus on community ownership within equitable housing ● Need tools for standards for hiring and training, need for conflict resolution management ● Housing providers can be racist; we need resources to intervene here
Enhance Community Equity Profile
● Go into the community to share and gather info early on. Build relationships, find out who trusted community leaders are
● Agencies need to find out what the communities are interested instead of taking in pre- thought programming
● Take info and make it actionable; no ‘us-against-them’ mentality ● Importance of training, background info and data that’s accessible for community participation: the acronyms, the budget breakdown - give the tools so they can be decision makers
● Compensate for their info
● Make the meetings happen at times and places that actually work for them
Assess & Improve Diversity in Boards & Commissions
● Website for city of Richmond and school district needs work (User Interface) ● You either know the power and how to get involved, or community people try to get involved and think it’s just talking, discouraged by self-interest of politicians ● City council members are supposed to be liaisons for boards and commissions but they don’t attend
● Moving ideas forward: how do we set goals about getting ideas heard? ● Youth and adult mentorship: “What is a board and commission” getting youth informed and tapped into leveraging this power
● Building relationships with orgs that are doing this work and connecting them to the boards, commissions, etc.
● Start from a circular approach
● Know that you can propose something, demystifying and showing what their power is so the community can get involved.
● #inform #empower
Use Racial Equity Tool to Determine Local Budgets
● Building budget literacy, stakeholder ability to understand budget and process, approval and what approval means for the people
● We have so many spaces for the community to engage, but we still have to leverage them and people still don’t feel truly engaged.
● Making info digestible and accessible; more than just emails: broader ● Relationship and trust building
● Early and Often: bring community along with us thru the process versus after decisions have made and asking for feedback
● Key step is to stop and educate people, provide info in ways that matter to the community (take the audience into account - break down information into pieces that are easy to understand and matter to specific populations/areas)
Apply a Racial Equity Lens to Improve Hiring & HR Practices
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● Once you do see the jobs, short windows, people think they’re unqualified when they are based on wording
● More opportunities for job training, collaboration in community with orgs already doing job training
● Reform the way applications are processed, reform ‘minimum qualifications’ that are real life versus jargon
● HR hiring/vendors should be centered around Richmond — getting community voice on this idea,
● Examine how we’re recruiting and partnering with agencies
Develop a Framework for Equitable Community Engagement
● GEOGRAPHY of marginalization
● Inclusion and efficacy in decision making process
● A way to make people feel safe to share
● Identify cbo’s that have these connections to avoid tokenization ● Programs that facilitate pathways to decision making
● Emergency relief funding, building in hoops that prevent people from accessing funds ● Capacity training and compensation for time and voice. And acknowledge their work. Give residents credit.
Establish Practices for Equitable Policy Development & Racial Equity Departments in each Major Jurisdiction
● Spaces and places where language is understandable to community so they see themselves
● Conversations about how policy affects lives
● Digital divide: how to get people into the online conversation ● Systems struggle to figure out who what issues to include the community in ● Task force is triggering language to formerly incarcerated ● People need to see themselves in the room
● Hope: there’s folks in west county working on this and there are already relationships ● Parents have educational rights to participate in decisions ● This is a revolutionary time and we need to repair real harms ● Build on the Y-plan model, we have a relationship with students, it will create agency in their school, education, etc.. Don’t wait for students to engage because it will translate beyond their schools
The workshop helped the team to gather valuable data and is one of our successes, there are many challenges that we face and prevent us from doing more and reaching more to improve racial equity outcomes.
Staff Capacity
The team would be more effective if an equity officer or staff person was dedicated to race equity work. An equity officer or dedicated staff would have the time and capacity to conduct a racial equity analysis of city programming and policies, work with senior staff to garner their input on
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The team also needs the City Council to
provide direction on establishing a timeline on benchmarks within the draft racial equity plan,
a champion to spearhead race equity efforts,
establish a directive to prioritize race equity work to increase staff capacity to work on goals.
Next Steps:
Meet with senior staff to review recommended action items that impact their department to receive their input on goals and methods to achieve said goals. The GARE Team will incorporate the input from the forums and meetings with senior staff into the draft Racial Equity Plan, including prioritization of the action items and written comments
Present the updated plan to the City Council for review and adoption The GARE Team wants to establish an Advisory Committee comprised of residents and community organizations to meet on a quarterly basis to review team activities and provide input
Implement the task forces on Data, Training, Community Engagement and Contracts & Procurement
Launch Transparent Richmond GARE page to keep community members informed and updated.
Additional staff capacity will significantly contribute to the ability to move this work forward in an effective and impactful way. The REAP is a living document and needs collaboration from the city council, city manager, senior staff and the community. The team has been able to make progress over the last four years, including pivoting to a virtual format; however, additional resources and capacity are needed.
Needs/Expectations
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, racial inequities have been exacerbated and it is vital the City of Richmond leadership is invested in achieving racial equity. The team has faced a number of challenges in achieving our goals in the past few years. The largest challenge is achieving input, support, and representation from all City departments. There are some departments that prioritize Richmond GARE and others that have not supported or participated. In addition, because staff are volunteering time to work on race equity, there is a lack of staff capacity to accomplish all the goals the Richmond GARE team would like to achieve. It is vital that racial equity is an urgent priority for leadership.
The main need for Richmond GARE is the staffing of an Equity and Inclusion officer. Contra Costa County has established an Office of Racial Equity and WCCUSD has an Office of Educational Equity and is launching a Racial Equity Oversight Council in the next few months.
This shows that our partners are prioritizing investment in racial equity and the City of Richmond
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As the Richmond GARE team enters its fifth year, it is our hope to continue this work with a higher level of support and capacity to achieve the goals of the REAP.
Additional information is available on the Richmond GARE Team webpage. http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/3701/GARE
DOCUMENTS ATTACHED:
1. Findings from the Richmond Employee Healing Circles
2. Report on the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership
3. 11-19-20 Community Forum PowerPoint Presentation
4. Draft Racial Equity Action Plan
5. Richmond GARE Team Brochure