Receive Update and Take Action to Advance Racial Justice, Equity, and Social Diversity Information
Department: City Manager's Office Sponsors:
Category: 07. Study Sessions
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Racial Equity Assessment Tool
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Recommended Action
Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council review and comment on the FY 2023-24 Equity Plan for the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team in the City Manager’s Office and direct staff to proceed with the implementation of the plan.
Staff Report Body
Executive Summary
Santa Monica, a renowned global leader in the areas of sustainability and innovation, has recognized the need to address equity gaps within its community. Years of community engagement efforts and shared insights from community stakeholders have shed light on the disparities faced by Black and Latino communities in the City, revealing that unfortunately, despite its reputation as a progressive city with equity and inclusion as some of its central values, communities of color have experienced division and competition for limited resources. While the City has made significant efforts to address these challenges through internally focused changes and periodic investments into equity focused initiatives, to date there has been no cohesive, community facing plan to treat equity in Santa Monica as a core function of the City. To move forward into an inclusive, multi-faceted and coordinated approach to equity, the City has devised a comprehensive plan that involves evaluating policies for unconscious bias, conducting equity impact assessments for a selection of City projects, empowering residents through grants, and fostering staff growth opportunities, along with a robust community engagement effort that will culminate in the City’s first formalized Equity Plan.
The City will kick off the process with a panel discussion featuring diverse representation to explore the concept of strategic allyship. This will be followed by a seven-month community engagement phase dedicated to collective issue identification, focused on gathering information about residents’ equity priorities and challenges. These engagement opportunities will include large City community listening sessions, held both in person and virtually, as well as smaller, community led meetings. The City will offer stipends to community groups to host these sessions, ensuring diverse voices are heard and their insights can be incorporated into the DEI team’s analysis.
The DEI team will review community input, identify key issues, and collaborate with relevant departments to collate existing programs and policies addressing these challenges. We will then return to the community to co-generate solutions to key issues, with the knowledge of the City’s existing programs as a foundation for the discussions.
Following the community engagement process, the DEI team will present priorities and proposed solutions to the Council and ask the City Council to identify priority areas of focus. An Equity Task Force will be established to manage progress towards Council’s selected priority areas, comprising staff from relevant departments, and a regular system of engagement with the community, the Community Equity Coalition, will be created to foster collaboration among major city institutions, public and private sector partners, community stakeholders, and staff. By implementing this comprehensive plan, Santa Monica aims to proactively address equity challenges, strengthen community engagement, and build a more inclusive and equitable future for all residents. Through a collective effort involving residents, City departments, and diverse stakeholders, Santa Monica is committed to fostering lasting change and achieving multi-dimensional progress that benefits the entire community.
Background
The City of Santa Monica has long been recognized as a leader in municipal governance, from our AAA bond rating to our five-star rated library system, to our long list of accomplishments in the realm of environmental sustainability. However, one area in which the City has yet to play a leading role is in racial equity, as evidenced by our outcomes in this area. According to various sources including Race Counts and Healthy City, Black, Latinx, and Native American Santa Monicans fare worse than white Santa Monicans across nearly every quality-of-life indicator, and many of these inequities have worsened since 2020. As many of us in the community recently learned from reading “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee, these inequities not City of Santa Monica
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only impact People of Color who feel their effects most directly, but the community as a whole suffers when they are not addressed. A look at just one economic consequence of racial inequality—Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—reveals that the LA regional GDP would be 58 percent higher if racial gaps in income were eliminated, according to the National Equity Atlas. As an economic engine for the region, the City has both a moral and economic obligation in closing these and other racial disparities. Further, due to the pervasiveness and entrenchment of existing inequalities, a strong and focused approach much like the City’s efforts to address climate change will be required if we ever hope to be a truly equitable community.
Throughout the nation, other municipalities have taken focused actions aimed specifically at addressing institutional racism, starting with the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative in 2004. Since then, dozens of cities have launched offices of equity and other initiatives explicitly targeting institutional racism, leveraging the lessons learned in Seattle. Unfortunately, Santa Monica has taken a slower and more diluted approach in its efforts to combat racism to-date. Though some efforts at inclusion have been made, particularly around affordable housing, the Pico Wellbeing Project and the Black Agenda, the City has yet to take cohesive, citywide action aimed at moving the needle on racial equity. As a result, despite being the 18th largest city in LA County with the fourth largest budget, Santa Monica’s communities of color have at times expressed concern over projects and approaches that favor specific groups over their own, seeing the current equity efforts as “special projects” that have limited reach. This has had the effect historically of turning groups that should be allies into adversaries, who believe they must compete with each other for scarce resources.
While the City organization has lacked robust structures to advance equity in the ways that many other cities have, leaving progress in the hands of a few dedicated City staff, Santa Monica has continued to make progress due to its best resource: its residents. Santa Monica is rich in community organizations that have dedicated, in many cases, decades of energy toward righting the wrongs of the past and closing equity gaps. These groups include, but not necessarily limited to the Human Relations Council (HRC), the Committee for Racial Justice (CRJ), Santa Monica Black Lives Association (SMBLA), Familias Latinas Unidas (FLU), Parent Connection Group (PCG), Pico Neighborhood Association (PNA), the Church in Ocean Park, the Human Services Commission, Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commission, The People Concern, Community Corporation of Santa Monica, Pico Youth and Family Center (PYFC), Black Santa Monica Tours, Ethiopian Community in Santa Monica (ECOMISM), Santa Monica College’s Public Policy Institute and its Division of Equity, Pathways, and Inclusion, the Black Agenda, Virginia Avenue Park Advisory Board, Quinn Research Center, Juneteenth Celebration Committee Inc, Santa Monica League Women Voters, Westside NAACP, Westside MLK Day Coalition, Rent Control Board and Agency, and 18th Street Arts Center along with many other willing allies who have created a strong foundation for the advancement of equity in Santa Monica. It is now time for the City to step forward as a leader in equity through ambitious goals and sustained actions as detailed below.
Past Council Actions
Meeting Date Description
07/07/2023 (Attachment A) July 2023 Equity Update Information Item 09/08/2020 (Attachment B) Fall 2020 Equity Report
Best Practices from across the Country
Municipalities across the country have devised programs to repair the harm caused to Communities of Color by structural racism. Each of the cities discussed below has engaged in the development of a citywide equity plan or has created a citywide equity toolkit that guides action and measures progress, and have used these tools to advance transformational equity projects. These programs, examples of which are listed below, can serve as a model for possibilities the City could explore with input from residents, staff, and the City Council. The City is already exploring potentially creating a cannabis equity program in the future as detailed below.
City of Evanston Restorative Housing Program Funded by Cannabis and Real Estate Property Transfer Taxes In June 2019, the governor of Illinois signed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act into law, which made the sale of recreational marijuana legal effective January 1, 2020. The tax act allows municipalities to adopt ordinances to impose a local tax (up to 3 percent of retail price) on the operation of recreational cannabis dispensaries. In November 2019, the Evanston City Council adopted a resolution to commit the first $10 million of its cannabis tax revenues to fund reparations for housing assistance and relief initiatives for African American residents, economic development programs and opportunities for African American residents and entrepreneurs, and education initiatives for African American residents. The first reparations initiative the City introduced is the Restorative Housing Program, which addresses discriminatory housing policies and practices and inaction by the City from 1919-1969. Program goals include increasing Black homeownership and building generational wealth, improving the retention rate of Black homeowners, revitalizing Black owner-occupied homes, and building intergenerational equity among Black residents. Eligible residents can apply to receive $25,000 toward one of the following areas: down payment/closing cost assistance, home improvement, mortgage assistance and most recently a direct cash payment. With the rollout of its housing initiative, Evanston became the first municipality in the country to fund a reparations program. The City has since passed a real estate transfer tax on the sale of real estate valued over $1.5 million to help boost its reparations fund. The City will continue developing additional reparations initiatives in the future that align with the recommendations listed in the City Council resolution.
City of Saint Paul Children’s Savings Account, Guaranteed Income Pilot and CollegeBound Boost The City of Saint Paul launched three related initiatives aimed at helping families meet basic needs to pave the way for economic prosperity while also investing in savings for their children’s education. The People’s Prosperity Guaranteed Income Pilot ran between October 2020 and April 2022. Funded by a mix of public and private dollars, the pilot program provided 150 families with $500 per month in guaranteed income for 18 months to pay for essentials, including food and housing. The City opened the pilot program to families enrolled in CollegeBound Saint Paul, a savings initiative launched by the City to provide each child born to a resident on or after January 1, 2020, with a college savings account, a $50 seed deposit and a $10 bonus deposit in their account every month. Funded by a variety of sources (i.e., City funds and staffing, local community foundations, corporate foundations and donors, and individual donors), CollegeBound Saint Paul is part of the City’s broader efforts to address financial insecurity and educational disparities, which deeply affect households/residents of color in particular. The City’s latest initiative, CollegeBound Boost, builds upon the guaranteed income and college savings initiatives by providing 333 low-income families participating in CollegeBound Saint Paul with $500 in guaranteed monthly income payments for two years and $1,000 deposits in each child’s CollegeBound Saint Paul college savings account. CollegeBound Boost is funded by $4 million in American Rescue Plan funds and $1 million in charitable funds. Income assistance programs of these types are growing in popularity and can also be found in San Francisco, Oakland, Birmingham, Alabama; Phoenix, Arizona; Gainesville, Florida; and Cook County, Illinois, to name a few.
City of Durham DEAR Program for Residents with Suspended Drivers’ Licenses After conducting an analysis that found that the licenses of one in five adults were revoked or suspended because of failure to appear in traffic court or pay court costs, the City of Durham launched the Durham Expunction and Restoration (DEAR) Program in October 2018 to offer free legal assistance with license restoration and expunctions. The analysis also showed that the suspensions disproportionately affected People of Color, and most were as a result of minor offenses such as expired registration or driving without a license. Individuals participating in the program were required to have their driving privileges suspended for a minimum of two years. The City’s Innovation Team collaborated with the Durham District Attorney’s Office, North Carolina Justice Center, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Durham County Criminal Justice Resource Center, and a host of other agencies (i.e., law schools, philanthropies, social justice organizations) over a two-year period to waive $2.7 million in fines and fees that kept more than 11,000 individuals from having their drivers’ licenses reinstated. The City and its partners continue to offer the DEAR Program to assist residents with expunctions and license restoration.
City of Long Beach Cannabis Equity Program
Recognizing that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected Communities of Color, the City of Long Beach established its Cannabis Equity Program to provide equitable opportunities for individuals who have been negatively affected by the criminalization of cannabis. The program aims to address the long-term, negative social impacts to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income communities in Long Beach, including but not limited to loss of property, permanent disqualification from employment opportunities and family and community disintegration. The program provides opportunities in following three areas:
· Business ownership: Equity applicants interested in opening a cannabis business can receive the following assistance to guide them through the application process: access to application workshops, fee waivers, direct grants, expedited application and facility plan check review, cultivation tax deferrals and direct technical assistance. · Employment opportunities: Equity applicants interested in cannabis employment opportunities have access to employment opportunities, job fairs and orientations, and job search assistance. The City connects applicants to adult-use cannabis businesses, which are required to hire equity employees for at least 40 percent of the work hours performed at the business. · Community reinvestment: Every adult-use cannabis business is required to submit plans detailing how it will reinvest in communities affected by the war on drugs and how the business will support one or more of the following community priorities within eligible social equity program census tracts: child and youth development, violence prevention, re-entry, and economic inclusion.
Consideration of Adult-Use Cannabis in Santa Monica and Cannabis Equity Program In November 2022, Santa Monica voters approved Measure HMP, which will allow the City to impose a tax on all commercial cannabis activities. The City Council on June 13, 2023, held a study session on adult-use cannabis. The Council received a presentation on key policy considerations for allowing adult-use cannabis businesses and other non-retail cannabis business types within the City, discussed options for allowing adult-use cannabis sales and associated regulatory restrictions, and provided direction to staff to commence the necessary steps and analysis for creating an adult-use cannabis program and ordinance. The Council expressed interest in establishing a variety of adult-use cannabis uses in the City with clear rules that will provide options for both retail and non-retail uses, protect sensitive uses in the community and advance social equity. The Council’s direction to staff included commencing a cannabis equity study to help inform future policy options for promoting opportunities so those negatively impacted by federal and state enforcement policies can benefit from the newly legalized industry. Staff is working on advancing the Council’s direction beginning with an ordinance to allow the conversion of the existing medicinal cannabis retailers to adult-use later this year. The Council will subsequently vote to affirm permit use, standards and limitations, policy, and regulations at a future meeting prior to implementation. Read more in the staff report (Attachment C)
Actions We Can Take Now
Given the documented disparities in our community and the growing momentum within the City organization to address equity, there are many things that can be done now to address past harms, break down systemic barriers, and advance equity for all our community members.
Strengthening Staff Expertise
In 2022, representatives of nearly every city department participated in the city’s Racial Equity Committee and undertook projects that made their department’s community engagement strategies more inclusive, opened new pathways into the organization for those wishing to join our workforce and new pathways for mobility within the organization for those wishing to grow their careers, and modified policies to embed equity into daily operations. In 2023, the committee will continue to take on department level projects and will also begin to serve as a resource to the City when issues of bias or hate occur in the community by providing insight to City leadership about effective communications and community involvement. The committee will also spend a portion of its time evaluating existing policies and programs for unconscious bias and sharing its findings with City leadership.
Outside of the Racial Equity Committee, all staff will continue to have opportunities to participate in trainings about Implicit Bias, Interrupting Microaggressions, Bystander Intervention techniques, and more. These trainings provide staff with opportunities to connect with each other, discuss sensitive topics in a supportive environment, and learn how best to integrate the values of equity and inclusion into their daily work, creating a better environment for both staff and our community. The City’s affinity groups, Black Leadership Advocating for Change through Connection and Kinship/Knowledge (BLACCK), the Coalition of Asian and Pacific Employees of Santa Monica (CAPE SM), CommUNITY (a multi-identity affinity group), Out in Santa Monica, and the Santa Monica Alliance of White Anti-Racists, will continue to provide opportunities for staff to grow stronger as allies and advocates.
In addition, to expand our shared understanding of equity and how local government influences equity outcomes for all residents, DEI trainings will be arranged for both Councilmembers and Board and Commission members in 2023-2024.
Assessing Our Impact
Taking the time to consider the City’s work more deeply and how it impacts specific communities will allow us to make informed decisions, proactively address potential disparities, and ensure that our policies and programs uplift and support all members of our diverse community. To that end, the DEI team will initiate a 12-month pilot program that will allow the City to analyze new work in new ways by performing equity impact assessments on four projects selected from a list of initiatives submitted by City department heads for consideration. The team will use an equity impact assessment tool (Attachment D) to review current and future policies, programs, services, procedures, and budget decisions for the City. The analysis process will include understanding the scope and project area of the project/program, population(s), and areas of quality of life that may be affected, strategies for community engagement, potential impacts from the policy/program, and potential mitigation approaches for any negative impacts identified through the analysis process.
Throughout the assessment process, the DEI team will actively collect feedback from the departments leading the work. These engagements will serve to refine the assessment tool throughout the pilot period, ensuring its effectiveness and relevance. By incorporating the valuable insights and experiences of staff, the goal is to enhance the assessment process and strengthen its applicability across various City projects.
The DEI team is committed to providing comprehensive trainings on how to effectively utilize the equity impact assessment tool. Once the pilot period concludes, these trainings will be offered to all City departments. The objective is to encourage widespread adoption of an equity assessment process as an integral part of the regular workflow. By equipping departments with the knowledge and tools necessary to conduct equity impact assessments, we aim to embed equity considerations into the fabric of our decision-making processes, ultimately fostering a more inclusive and equitable city for all residents.
Grants for Equity
Many communities, including our own, have found significant value from developing a grant program that provides residents and community organizations with funds to advance equity in their communities. Santa Monica has done this through Cultural Affairs’ Community Access and Participation (CAP) program that funds exceptional artistic and/or heritage experiences and cultural opportunities which respond to community needs, and via Wellbeing Microgrants, which funded resident led projects that improved quality of life over a variety of areas. The DEI team will develop a similar grant program using the funds generated for equity uses from the Out of Home Kiosk Program, which will be available starting in 2025. In addition, there are vast resources available outside the City that can be applied toward equity programs. Staff will contract with a grant writer to assist with bringing outside funding to equity priorities to further amplify our progress toward transformational change for the communities that need it most.
Developing a Citywide Equity Plan
The efforts detailed above summarize the actions the City can take now with available resources. However, there is a larger goal for this work, and that is to develop and adopt a citywide equity plan that reflects the priorities of the diverse identities in our community, with an approach that is informed by insight from every City department. To develop this plan, we cannot rely on data and information collected prior to the pandemic. We will build on the work produced in advocacy by our community stakeholders in recent years by engaging deeply in the community to understand the specific equity priorities for each community, and how the City and community can achieve multi-dimensional progress together.
Creating a citywide equity plan that leverages municipal resources to address equity challenges means aligning views and fostering a sense of mutual support and shared goals among community members. The kickoff event for the community engagement process will feature participation from individuals representing diverse races, sexual orientations, ages, abilities, and more. The focus will be on encouraging the open sharing of identitybased challenges and highlighting the significance of allyship among different identity groups. Actively involving voices from various backgrounds from the start will set a tone of ongoing collaboration and problem-solving, ensuring that our engagement efforts genuinely reflect the needs and concerns of all community members.
Following the kickoff, through a series of open and inclusive discussions, community members will have opportunities to freely express their concerns, share their experiences, and contribute to shaping our collective vision for a more equitable future. These opportunities will include a City hosted community listening session, which will be accessible both in person and virtually, providing an opportunity for a broader audience to come together and voice their perspectives on the critical issues of equity. Offering multiple platforms for participation ensures that community members can engage in a manner that suits their preferences and circumstances, fostering a rich and comprehensive dialogue around equity challenges and potential solutions.
To further amplify community voices and ensure a holistic representation of perspectives, stipends will be made available to individuals and community groups to assist them with holding their own listening sessions. The stipends, funded with 25% of the DEI team’s annual budget will be approved on a first come first serve basis via a public application and will remain available until funds are depleted. The stipends can be used to make the meetings as inclusive as possible, which could include paying for food, location, childcare, interpretation services or other accommodations for participants.
These stipends will enable community members to convene focused discussions, allowing for deeper exploration of specific equity concerns within their respective groups. To facilitate meaningful analysis and incorporation of the discussions in the development of citywide equity priorities, we will provide standardized documentation packets to guide the sessions and ensure that the valuable insights gathered are effectively integrated into our equity team's analysis. Listening sessions will run for a duration of eight weeks, providing ample time for comprehensive engagement, and capturing diverse perspectives from across the community.
This approach aims to create a robust framework for capturing resident input, understanding their unique equity priorities, and leveraging their collective wisdom to drive informed decision-making. By engaging residents at various levels, from large community sessions to focused group discussions, the DEI team is committed to fostering an inclusive and participatory approach that empowers every member of our community to contribute to the advancement of equity and social justice.
Following the community engagement process, the DEI team will review and analyze the community feedback to identify major themes and collaborate with departments to identify existing programs and policies that could address each theme. From there, the team will develop a reference guide listing existing City programs, policies and priorities that have been created to address the challenges identified and will share that information with the community.
The DEI team will host hybrid community meetings to share the major themes identified during the engagement process and share the existing City programs, policies, and priorities currently in place that are related to the areas of focus from the community. The team will again open an application process to offer stipends to individuals and community groups to host a series of working meetings where residents will document recommended solutions to the major themes to help bridge the gap between solutions offered by existing City programs, policies and priorities, and new programs, policies and initiatives that could be developed.
At the conclusion of the analysis stage, the DEI team will present the community identified priorities, along with proposed solutions to the City Council for consideration and endorsement, to ensure that the Council is informed about the identified areas of focus, can share their preferred priority areas from those identified by the community and staff, and can provide support and guidance in driving equity initiatives. These priorities will become the City’s equity plan for the following five years, and the team will provide regular updates to the Council and the community regarding the progress made toward each goal.
Implementing the Citywide Equity Plan
To facilitate internal collaboration in service of the identified equity priorities, many of which will likely require many departments to collaborate, a dedicated Equity Task Force will be established, consisting of staff members from relevant departments. This task force will convene monthly meetings to develop a comprehensive work plan that includes clear milestones and a timeline. With recognition that, for most departments, the initiatives selected will create additional work for City staff, the DEI team will also be available to embed within departments for three-month rotations, providing support and expertise in research and development to prevent delays due to lack of capacity. This approach ensures that progress is achieved in a coordinated and consistent manner and allows departments to serve as valued subject matter experts in shaping new equity initiatives that are created to respond to the priorities set by the community.
Communities are not stagnant, and a one-time engagement process will not yield the deeper connection and collaboration with our residents that would best serve the work of advancing equity in Santa Monica. A Community Equity Coalition will be created following the principles of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation model. This engagement will involve major city institutions, both public and private sector partners, community stakeholders, and staff members. These quarterly meetings will emphasize truth-telling, addressing systemic racism, and fostering healing and transformation. These sessions will also provide dedicated time to address emerging community concerns, ensuring that evolving needs and challenges are promptly addressed and incorporated into ongoing equity initiatives.
By implementing this comprehensive approach, the DEI team aims to foster a culture of equity, inclusion, and active community engagement. Through collaborative efforts, transparent decision-making processes, and ongoing dialogue, the City seeks to achieve meaningful and sustainable transformation while ensuring that community priorities remain at the forefront of its endeavors.
Legal Considerations
While the advancement of equity is a priority for the City, it is also important to keep in mind the existing state and federal legal framework regarding preferential treatment, based upon race, sex color, ethnicity, or national origin, including Proposition 209 (which prohibits preferential treatment in the areas of public employment, public education, and public contracting) as well as the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on the grounds that these programs violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Staff will endeavor to address the equity gaps in Santa Monica in a manner that both addresses systemic racism that was generated and reinforced by historical wrongdoings while being mindful of the considerations above, with the understanding that within each individual effort a myriad of social identities including gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability benefit from the more inclusive policies generated by these efforts.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
The stipends referenced in this report will be funded via the DEI team’s budget at $25,000, which is included in the City Manager’s Office budget for Fiscal year 2023-2024.
This report was prepared by:
Lisa Parson, Equity and Inclusion Manager
Delana G. Gbenekama, Acting Communications and Public Information Manager David Gardinier, Acting Equity and Communications Coordinator Powered by Granicus