Title
Equal Opportunity Plan to Address Race and Socio-economic Issues Within the Gainesville Community (B)
Explanation
The Office of Equal Opportunity provided information on the programs and services offered by other human rights agencies in the State of Florida at a special City Commission Meeting on June 4, 2007. That information indicated that most of the agencies only offer core equal opportunity services and also that the City of Gainesville's program is more comprehensive than most, particularly with our focus on the external community. Most of the other agencies only address the concerns of employees of their local governments. "Promising Practices" related to equity and inclusions as identified by the National League of Cities (NLC) were also discussed. The City Commission then directed equal opportunity staff to: 1) work to identify areas of inequity with the City of Gainesville; 2) identify best practices as it relates to those inequities; and 3) develop a plan based on those best practices to the address them. Staff has developed the following plan while taking into consideration budget constraints:
(1) Staff concluded that any discussion of inequities within our community must have and begin with a race component. After conducting a community-wide Race Summit last September, Phase I of a "Dismantling Racism" process was initiated in July 2007. The process is designed to increase awareness of institutional racism and then to develop action plans to eliminate it.
(2) Implementation of a long-term equity indicators process that includes citizen involvement, such as, the Baltimore Indicators Alliance will be investigated. Considering potential budget implications, staff will simultaneously work to identify indicators concerning education, crime/law enforcement/justice, income/wealth/employment, and housing that may be readily available in anticipation of City leadership using them to generate action in the near term.
(3) City Commiss...
Click here for full text