May 13, 2021
Hello! Just wanted to give a quick DEI update.
Consultant and Staff Timing
As many of you know, we’ve spent the last few months doing a lot of DEI research. After meeting with other cities and area consultants, staff really started leaning towards hiring an expert consultant first, instead of hiring a part-time coordinator.
Staff met with four area consultants and one stood out for us. Chanin Kelly-Rae has experience developing DEI action plans with city governments (among many other amazing qualities and extensive experience). On April 9th and April 18th, Chanin met with the city’s internal Diversity committee leaders, city staff, and community members to discuss her recommended scope of work and how we could work with the community to develop a DEI equity plan. We received really positive feedback after both of these meetings.
Staff is going to recommend to Council on May 18th to contract with her until no later than Dec 31, 2022 (see draft agenda bill detailing reasons why). We believe the DEI plan she helps us create, along with her expertise, will help us have a better recruitment for permanent staff.
Improving Processes
We still don’t have all of the resources or processes in place yet to do robust and authentic community engagement, but we are working on it
- We set up a DEI subscription list to start collecting stakeholder emails
- We are consolidating demographic group leaders and key stakeholders so we can effectively reach out to the right folks, at the right time. If you know formal/informal leaders for different demographic, underrepresented, faith-based communities, etc, please send them to me so I can ask to add them to our database. Also ask them to subscribe at www.bothellwa.gov/NotifyMe DEI updates (these emails from me will eventually be done using that list only).
o For us, we have to organize info, contacts, and language data in some systematic and standard way. We use Census data and will refer often to our demographics. These will change once we get the new Census data. So, folks could be on multiple lists! One for a racial identity, one for language skill(s), one for a faith-based group, etc.
- Our DiveIn committee helped draft an Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month proclamation presented to Council this week and planning these in advance now. We all have much work to do here! Eventually, we’ll share more info for each of the federal heritage months and connect with the community on educational events and celebrations.
DiveIn Committee is Changing - We’ve been working to transform our internal DiveIn committee into a Core Equity Team (see fact sheet). The original team members are super excited to expand their efforts and start working with all of you. We should have new members in place by the time a consultant (or staff) starts to lead our engagement efforts this summer. If you have any feedback on this team, let us know.
Community DEI Survey – We are almost done analyzing this and will give highlights on the 18th, I’ll post/share the full survey results as well next week. There were so many comments about desires for community/relationship building, sharing and learning about each other’s cultures/difference, and DEI education …and that is a wonderful thing.
What’s around the corner?
- If Council approves the contract, we’ll schedule some DEI training with Chanin and Council/Management team
- If they opt to move forward with part-time staff instead, we’ll finish up that job description, share with you, and move forward with hiring
- Deciding what community engagement processes/methods need to be put in place to help build the DEI plan and involve the public.
o Top things we are considering are police advisory committee, community police academy, and/or City DEI advisory committee.
- DiveIn Team is drafting a Pride Month Proclamation for a June council meeting. If anyone is interested in helping with that or connecting us to LGBTQ community groups/leaders, please let us know.
- Next community meeting with Police Chief is June 10th at 7pm
I know I’m forgetting some things, but wanted to send out something (these updates will eventually be on a DEI web page). Don’t hesitate to email or call us if you have any questions at all. Please keep your suggestions and comments coming, they are very helpful. Thanks!
Becky
Becky Range
Assistant to the City Manager
18415 101st Ave. NE
Bothell, WA 98011
direct: (425) 806-6144
www.bothellwa.gov