At the October 16, 2023, Richardson City Council meeting, the City demonstrated it can react quickly to suggestions if it has a mind to. The City Council meeting agenda had this item:
"D. REVIEW AND DISCUSS STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND INVOLVEMENT"
This was a direct outcome of the September 16, 2023, worksession to develop the 2023-2025 Council Goals. At that meeting (which was not recorded or documented by the City, so I'm relying on notes taken by Justin Neth), Jennifer Justice wanted to establish a Community Engagement Board. Mayor Pro Tem Arefin suggested adding a Diversity Board. The Council felt that this was covered under the Community Engagement Board. Now, just a month later, City Manager Don Magner brought this tactic to the City Council for their deliberation:
"Explore the creation of a board to celebrate and promote diversity, inclusion, accessibility, etc."
Mayor Bob Dubey described the problem as he sees it:
Everyone on this Council is in favor of inclusion and diversity and taking care of that because we feel like there's a void there. The community feels like there's a void there. Where we're coming short is we can't get the involvement. We ask people, get engaged, get engaged, get engaged, and then they don't get anyone to follow them as they try to get engaged. So we call on the same five people year in and year out. And they're the ones that represent the diversity and we're trying to include them. We need them to help get people involved.Source: Mayor Bob Dubey.
I personally think this is backwards. It's as if Mayor Dubey sees the problem as residing with the community, not the City. They don't respond to the City's earnest invitation to get engaged. He wants this new board or commission to plead better. I think the answer lies in fixing the City, not the community.
Other councilmembers had their own ideas. Their thoughts were all over the map. They talked about a name for the new body. They talked about how many members it should have. The talked about how often it should meet. What they didn't do so well on is reach agreement on a purpose for the new body.
Jennifer Justice put it well: "We've had boards in the past that there was strong support for in the beginning and then eventually were disbanded because they didn't have a clear purpose and clear support from the City Council. So we need to understand what is the purpose of the board so that it can be successful and thrive."
Joe Corcoran correctly identified a fundamental question. He differentiated between "outward-facing" actions vs "inward-facing" actions. For example, an outward-facing responsibility of the Unity Council in Arlington, Texas, is to "Advance unity through communication, education, and programming." An example of an inward-facing responsibility of the Community Inclusion Advisory Committee of Dublin, Ohio, is to "advise Council and review policies through [an] inclusive lens." The distinction is important. Trying to do too much risks overloading the new body. You might be able to guess I think that inward-facing actions are what's needed here.
City Manager Magner had his own ideas. One slide that he used as introduction included this proposed charge: "The committee is charged with promoting harmony, education on diversity, and constructive collaboration amongst all diverse communities." To me, that reads like outward-facing tasks. There's no way an inward-facing action like Arlington's, "Monitor city departmental equity and equality efforts" would arise from City Manager Magner's proposed charge.
If the goal is to "Get engaged, get engaged, get engaged," as Mayor Dubey put it, the problem is only going to be solved from the inside-out, by changing the culture inside City Hall, inside the City Manager's office, and inside City Council. The most effective way to do that is to charge an inclusion commission with inward-facing tasks. Unless we make such tasks the primary, even sole, responsibility of the new commission, all we are likely to get from a new commission are outward-facing tasks, e.g., more parades.
For example, the single-most important change the City of Richardson could make to increase diversity on City Council itself would be to adopt single-member voting districts. The Richardson ISD did this, and within one complete electoral cycle, the voters in the five single-member districts elected two Blacks, two Hispanics, and one white trustee to represent the five districts. The public was naturally engaged by this systemic change, unlike continual exhortations to "Get engaged, get engaged, get engaged." If single-member districts is too big a change for this Council to contemplate, start with the many smaller structural changes the City of Richardson could adopt that would result in increased diversity in City government. It's time for a board or commission to dig into that.
"There's a void we see,
Get engaged, embrace the plea,
Diverse unity."
—h/t ChatGPT
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