 So good evening, folks, to our community equity audits presentation. My name is Sandy Cooler. I am the town manager. And the first thing I'm going to do is to read our land consultant. We acknowledge that the town of Arlington is located on ancestral bans of the Massachusetts tribe, a tribe of indigenous people from whom the colony, province, and Commonwealth have taken their names, pay a respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. So Arlington is engaged on this equity audit. It is part of a lot of things we've been doing in town recently around equity and DEI diversity, equity and inclusion training and understanding and conversations. I say conversations because this is a journey for us. Tonight is a sort of milestone and important milestone. This is a very important equity audit that was done taking a lot of time to engage with citizens here in town and making a set of thoughtful and important recommendations. For Arlington, we've been directly involved in DEI for several years. We were one of the first communities in the state to hire a DEI director who I'll introduce in a second. But for Arlington, I think these issues aren't having been important for a long time. I was really struck by our Martin Luther King Day celebration this year, first time I had been to one here in Arlington to find out it was the 35th anniversary of that celebration and that this isn't happening for a long time with a really impressive list of speakers and attendees over that time. So with that, I'm going to introduce Jill Harvey, who is our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director. And she is then going to lead the rest of the program. Jill? OK. Thanks. I tried to move the board so people can see what was going on for a working on deck. I'm Jill Harvey, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director. So yeah, thanks, Andy. That was great for us. I'm really excited that we are wrapping up this project. It's been a long journey that we started around this time last year. But it's the board at the University of Arlington Board, and in fact, we found opportunities that would be on us. But I'm really excited for these findings and recommendations to be shared in our community so we can really start to make some steps to make friends in a more equitable place. So I'm going to just kick it over to Yasmeen Gordon, who's our project director and opportunity consultant. Hi, Gordon. I am the director of equity, equity and culture for opportunity consulting. And I have been the project lead for the entire community equity project here in Arlington. I have on the screen, as well, over to y'all's right, my colleague who will introduce and kick us off for the start. I'm going to give you a little bit of background about opportunity consulting. And then I will take over and talk about the findings and the recommendations. All right, great. Can everyone hear me? Hi, everyone. Good evening. My name is Iris Von Gill, and I'm CEO of Opportunity Consulting. And I thank you for the introduction, Yasmeen. I'm very excited to be here today. I had every attention of being there in person. And unfortunately, COVID got the best of me. So I am homebound instead, but very thankful for the ability that the team offered so that I could still be here with you all virtually. And as Jillian mentioned, our firm conducted this community equity audit for the town of Arlington. We're excited, as I said, to present tonight the findings and the recommendations from this work. And so thank you for having us here. Thank you for this opportunity. We'll take some time to walk through a highlight of us. Yes. Sorry, excuse me. We just had a little bit of an interruption here from the standing to be heard from who needs to introduce this as a forum or as a select board meeting, because we do have a forum online. Oh, OK. Yes. Yes. So we need to allow Len Diggins, the chair of the select board, to officially call this order as a select board meeting. Absolutely. Thank you. Jill, I don't know how who would promote Len so that he can speak. Ashley is on. OK, Ashley, can you promote Len on the screen? Yes, Len's a panelist now. Len, Mr. Diggins can go right ahead. Thank you. It's not about my ego. It's just about keeping us all out of jail because we'll be meeting long. I have to read through this because it's the law. So welcome. I'm calling the order. This meeting of the select board on Monday, February 13th, 2023, also known as the day before Valentine's Day. I am selected to hear Len Diggins, and I will not confirm that all members and persons participated on the agenda are present. They can hear me. They can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. I am behind. Yes, Mr. Chair. And it's Gallentine's Day. Thank you. Oh, OK. Thank you. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. Eric Helmuth? Yes. And staff, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Sandy Fuller? Here. And Ashley Meier? Here. Thank you. Nice meeting of the onsite select board is being conducted in a hybrid format consistent with Chapter 107 of the Acts of 2022, signing the law on July 17, 2022, which further extends certain COVID-19 measures regarding remote participation until March 31, 2023. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted via Zoom. It is being reported. And it's also being simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Second, persons wishing to join the meeting by Zoom may find information on how to do so on the town's website. Persons participating by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, you are asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons are not required to identify themselves. Both participants and persons watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website using the Novels Agenda platform. And finally, each vote tonight will be taken by roll call. So, OML requires that when a meeting in which a quorum of select board members is gathered for discussion, then that meeting must be recognized as a formal meeting of a select board. This will be the case until this meeting ends or until one of my two colleagues indicates that he or she will part the meeting. At that point, I will take a motion to join the select board meeting. After the adjournment of the select board meeting, however, this quorum may continue. So, I'll now return the meeting into the hands of Ms. Harvey or whoever was meeting the discussion. And if necessary, I'll chime in to acknowledge any questions from my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diggins, and greetings to this evening to members of the select board. I'm trying to remember where I was. So, we are going to, as I was saying, walk through some findings and recommendations tonight from this equity audit. And I did just want to say that we do this work around the country. This is really a core part of our work, both doing equity audits, working with stakeholders and communities and doing strategic planning as well. And I want to just say this takes a lot of courage to be a community that invites outsiders in to say, come and take a look at the work that we're doing and tell us how we might be able to do this better and in a more equitable way. And so, we just want to name that, that this is a town that has really shown that commitment to equity, both in the work that you've commissioned and also in the work that you've done with us as partners throughout this journey. So, you can move to the next slide. So, just to give a little overview of this, we kicked off this work, I think in April or May to really start to explore the town's impact on resident life and to discover how the town might be able to be more equitable in relationships with the community. And we specifically looked in three areas and that's housing, residence experiences with town workforce and civic participation. And in designing a project that looks across three areas like this, it really allows us to see it from the perspective of the community members who experienced these services versus seeing it from inside the system where it may be siloed in bureaucracies. And so, our goal was really to think about how did these three issue areas and these three service areas really impact individuals who live in the town and experience it every day. Next slide. All right, a little bit about us. Opportunity Consulting is based in Washington, DC. We've been around since 2012. We work with cities, school districts and other public serving organizations around the country to help improve outcomes for those who are most marginalized in our systems and institutions. As I mentioned earlier, a core part of our work is conducting equity audits in a number of public policy issues, education, housing, workforce. And so, this work with our listeners, we are endeared to us, but also a core part of the work that we do as a company. The presentation tonight at high level, it will be an opportunity to sort of provide with you all with some highlights and some of the bigger themes. And so, what we wanted to do was also provide you with some QR codes that could take you to much more detailed information that will allow you to go more in-depth with the work that we're talking about tonight. So, on the left-hand side of the summary report, and I would actually encourage you all to take a look at the QR code on the right-hand side, which is the full report that will give you context to tonight's discussion and also provide for you the finer details around the findings and the recommendations. Just take your phone and just click on the picture and pull it up that way if you'd like, save it. Okay, so a few points about the audit and our approach to the audit. Before we talk about that, I think one area that we really wanna be able to highlight for you all today is that this community equity audit is probably different from some other audits that you've seen where people go in and sort of open up your books and immediately start looking at the policies and the practices. And what we do is we really approach this from the perspective of looking at outcomes and what those tell us. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And then also having a robust stakeholder engagement experience, which is where we will use that information and the perspective of community members to determine where to dive more deeply. And then that's what will guide us into the rest of the audit. And so this was kind of the approach that we took here as well. Just a few other points. We know that research shows that people are motivated to participate in their town when they connect with the cultural identity and they feel like they belong. And so that was another sort of guiding principle about how we approach to this. And then finally, sometimes people say, why are you starting with race? And much of our approach leads with race because we recognize that the creation and the perpetuation of racial inequities is really in many ways baked into the fabric of the country and that by identifying what those areas, those gaps, those ways to improve and provide more equity and dismantle some of those systems, we know that other marginalized communities, whether it's gender and sexual orientation and ability will also benefit. And so that is why for us, in many ways, that is just a starting place. Oh, you cut out there, Iris. Oh, next slide. Oh, this is the- Thank you. I forgot. This is really how we went about getting the findings and this is our methodology. So how we went about this, as I was talking to you, you really start with outcomes. And the outcomes are what ground us in where we find gaps in areas where inequities show up in the town. And in doing that, we looked at publicly available data, either through the census, we also looked at data collected by the town. So there's a lot of data that the town collects and they were gracious enough to allow us to look at that data and do a lot of analysis on it. We produced both maps, charts, graphs, things like that that you'll see in the report and also past survey data that the town had. From there, once we identified what some of those gaps were, it allowed us to really think about how we wanted to engage the town around those areas. And so we brought together town members in focus groups. We did four focus groups. We held about 30 individual interviews with residents, with individuals who work at community-based organizations that really gave us a lot of context for what we were learning and what we were seeing, as well as town leaders and other stakeholders in the community. And then from there, we looked at the reports that the town has. We identified some policies and practices that are in place that really kind of fed into what we were hearing from the town residents. And then with that information, using both the data that we saw, the stakeholder engagement and the feedback that we heard from residents and from the review of the policies and practices, we then developed out what the findings are, which we'll hear more about. And before I turn it over to Yasameen who's going to walk through those findings, we just wanted to give a special shout out to the lead team community members who came together. I think there were eight of them and really guided our practice and assisted us with this audit from the beginning to the end. These residents gave their time, energy, perspective and commitment to the project. Also all of the residents that engaged with us, we also provided a survey. We had people take the survey and so the survey instrument provided a lot of information for us to dig in more deeply as well. And so we just appreciate all of the contributions that the city and the town made to this project. And certainly the project team there who is hosting tonight, we thank you for your time and your partnership around this. So with that, I'll turn it over to Yasameen. Yeah, thanks so much. We really want to make sure that we thank you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? All right, I'm going to have to lean over a little bit as I do this, okay? If folks in the back are not able to hear me, please feel free to just raise your hand or something so I can lean a little bit closer. So I'm going to dig right in knowing that we do have some time constraint tonight and I'm just going to read through each of the findings. I'm going to elaborate on a couple of findings and then if you need more information or if you'd like to kind of see how we got to some of the findings, like Iris had said, they are available in the two different types of workforce that we shared with you earlier. So the first finding that we found is that public participation opportunities, things like joining commissions, things even like being able to engage in town events, and participation on a select board and town meeting, those opportunities are not really designed to be accessible to diverse residents. And we found that because we looked at a lot of demographics around who makes up those groups and they're very, they are very much kind of heavy to one side, one particular demographic. And they're not very diverse whatsoever. And I think that I see a lot of kids shaking their memories over here. That's not really surprising about who not we do. Finding number two is that town events are not really available for residents to form true connections and relationships. Arlington does have quite a few town events that they promote throughout the year. However, once again, when you think about inclusive design, we determined that there isn't a whole lot of inclusive design that goes into the structure of those events and that it actually just kind of creates some barriers for particular members of the community that are not able to access. Finding number three is that town officials and town leaders do not make the time really to get to know the most diverse residents in town. Residents spoke a lot to not having relationships and not even really knowing who the folks are that sit in leadership positions within the town. And that said to us that there's quite a disconnect between folks, particularly in marginalized communities within the town, not really feeling connected to the people who are making decisions about their daily lives and the decisions that impact their behavior. Finding number four is that diverse residents don't trust that the town is meeting their needs. That was something that was particularly loud and clear during our stakeholder engagement process. And we get into a little bit more of that important work that we talk about in the feeling of inclusion and belonging. We talk about the importance of representation and when people can see themselves in leadership and people can see themselves in positions of power, it encourages them to be more involved and encourages them to get on the feeling of a sense of inclusion and a sense of this is for me. We are not finding a lot of that in the town of Arlington and that was definitely something that we heard loud and clear through our statement. Finding number five is that black, indigenous and people of color who live in Arlington are not seeing themselves as potential employees in the town workforce. One of the town's DEI goals is to diversify their workforce across the board. And once again, it's a very homogenous workforce. We have some evidence in the report that shows just quite what the disparities are and it's less than 2% of people who work with the town are people who identify as black and indigenous people of color, which means everyone else is white. And so that's quite a heavy imbalance and without representation within the town it might folks have a hard time seeing themselves working in the town, but I would like to see more of a place where people like me are in positions of power or in leadership and that will encourage if the town is successful in diversification, that will actually continue to encourage more and more people even from areas outside of Arlington to come in and want to be a part of that. Finding number six is that black and indigenous people of color residents have a negative view of the town as a workplace. And that is due to a number of reasons which I will talk about a little bit further in the recommendations. Once again, that lack of representation is hard for people to imagine themselves as being successful in the workplace. And then folks start to ask questions about what's it like for a person like me to work for the town of Arlington and if there's nobody there, those questions don't make the answer. So we did hear a lot of that from the residents. Just a little pause to talk a little bit and to pull some quotes that we got from our stakeholder engagement process. As Iris was explaining that there was a lot of very robust community-based efforts to get out and talk to the folks in the community that are not heard of and within the town of Arlington. People who have never had a seat at the table. People who don't have the opportunity to show up to public meetings. Really, we came to Arlington on multiple occasions and made connections with people from different communities and we were able to speak to, we were able to host even a focus group in the language of Mandarin for an entire group of Mandarin speakers who have never had the opportunity to provide feedback to the town because they don't speak the language. And so these are just some whole quotes from the experiences talking about, the town tries to recognize indigenous people but it seems like to the very few indigenous people who live here in town that really it's colonizers just kind of give each other a pat on the back with no actual indigenous leadership. So there's that, you know, that it calls into question what leadership looks like. It calls into question making those connections with marginalized communities. Some other folks talked about, you know, people thinking and making the assumption that all black and brown people are liberals. And that came up in our discussions with the community that it's not all black and brown people have the same political views and people say that we're saying that they, as in the town and other organizations that are working to try to help diversify town leadership. They think that just because we're black, our views should be the same as theirs but black Republicans have the right to exist and have their voices for justice matches like Democrats and they all experience the same racism. I thought that was a really powerful quote to put in because when you're thinking about, you know, diversity, thinking about inclusion, you really need to keep in mind that it's all groups and all perspectives that should be entertaining. And then the third quote that we have here is that it's clear that many town leaders and homeowners feel that renters are not as important as owners. And this particular person said that they have a great career, contributed in many ways. They feel though like they're expendable members of the community because they rent. And that was another message that we heard loud and clear from the resident communities that we were speaking to was that renters pretty much feel ignored by the town because most of the policy and all of the driving factor in housing is really geared towards homeowners or dictated by homeowners. And so that was something that absolutely came to me. In finding number seven, we found that white employees of the town make more than non-white employees. And that was a disparity that is illuminated and illustrated in the full report. There is a chart that explains and it shows that there's quite a level of disparity between what white employees make and all other categories of race. But the largest disparity was between white employees and people who identify as blind. Finding number eight is that the civil service membership of the public safety departments is actually preventing the hiring of diverse public safety staff and officers. A lot of people might not understand what that means and I wanted to elaborate that on that just a little bit. Civil service membership is like a job category for the public safety department. So for lease and fire within the time of quarantine and being a member of the civil service, there is a priority that is placed on those departments to prioritize the hiring of staff for people who live in the town of Arlington. And so it's telling people that you have to give the jobs first to the people who live in the town of Arlington before you can go and look outside for other employees. And the reason why that is a barrier to diversification is because the town of Arlington itself is extremely homogenous. And we talked about this at the beginning, right? There are very few people of color who live in the town of Arlington, yet the town as a whole is trying to diversify and that includes the public safety departments. So having that thought, is having that rule that folks who live in Arlington the first priority to be a police officer or to be a firefighter, to be an emergency services officer is a direct barrier to the chiefs and the leaders actually being able to diversify their work force. If the town of Arlington was able to remove itself from the civil service category, then they would be able to more widely recruit from neighboring areas that are much more diverse. Town is literally that border on Arlington. And that in turn could also increase people coming into the town and the town diversification of those found jobs that actually work here and might encourage them to move here. Fighting number nine, we found that the town of Arlington is in fact racially segregated, which restricts housing options for black indigenous people of color residents. So I'm sure that everyone who is watching this knows about the difference between East Arlington and Brestland. That was something that we heard that clear from day one as we started looking into kind of what are people's experiences. I think, you know, I came and I walked, literally walked with a couple of folks from here down Massachusetts Ave. And even as I was walking myself, I saw a difference about a quarter of a mile down from here. And I started to see a much more diverse culture. I started to see different storefronts. I started to see and feel a different energy than when I was walking in different neighborhoods that were on the other side of Arlington. So that's definitely something that we heard from people in the town as well. People, you know, for black and indigenous people of color, feeling like East Arlington really was the place for them. Feeling like there wasn't a whole lot within the other places in town to offer them. And feeling more comfortable in the spaces where they were seeing more people who looked like them. You know, who looked like yourself and who looked like from your own community. It gives you a feeling of comfort, gives you a feeling of home. And because of that, there tends to be a lot of plumping that happens when there's housing, when people are spending their money, when people are engaging in social activities, tends to be segregated into a large area. There are other pockets that you'll see that we mapped out in the report. There are just a couple of other pockets that are very much confined to areas where the Arlington Housing Authority has their properties. The two housing authorities that are intent to get the name of the town. And so that also, you know, looks, when you look at housing segregation, you think about affordability. And when we are thinking about the people who can afford or who have low income or even middle to low income, only being able to rent in the town of Arlington, not being able to afford property or houses or homes, single family homes inside Arlington, that contributes to that segregation. I'll get into that a little bit more in the recommendations when we talk about that. But I think number 10, and the final finding is that we talked about ventures feeling unsupported by the town. Really very little to no policy that is being developed to support ventures current and past. I know that there have been some great efforts by the town of recent, you know, there was a recent study that went out there is the Housing Action Plan, which is a great step forward, that is still something that is being felt by the community as I chose. So I'm gonna move forward. I just have a little reminder that, you know, research has shown that residential diversity actually improves individual and collective quality of life for people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, income and ability levels. It improves it both in the short term and in the long term. And there's actually a lot of research out there that actually ties that also to economic opportunity where people spend their money. Right? If you think about that, there's a lot of research out there next to it. So that's just a little reminder. So what are these findings telling us really, right? So we came in, we looked at data, we talked to people, so what, right? These findings truly are the amplification of the voices and tell the story of the most marginalized folks in Arlington. Those were the folks that we were really trying to get to find out what's your experience and how does it differ from the people who always have the opportunity to come forth and talk about their experiences. They helped us to understand what ways people's experiences are different and who benefits the most from the current services and current practices of the town. We absolutely found that folks' experiences in Arlington, not unlike any other town or city in the United States at the moment and throughout history, people's experiences are unequal. And so the town has a responsibility to try to mitigate those services. They try to reduce those barriers, to try to increase opportunity for the folks who have them. And that's really what these recommendations that I'm about to go through give the town of Arlington an opportunity to do some things that are actionable, to try to change those outcomes for the most marginalized. So we're diving into the recommendations now and the first one that we absolutely think that the town should engage in is to establish a community engagement team that can work to make meaningful connections with residents who have experience and quality in the town of Arlington. Inclusion and belonging is absolutely paramount in being able to increase opportunities for civic engagement, which then needs to policy change and further further on that one. They can give folks from marginalized communities much needed support and they build connections and they can continue to identify and address local needs. And so that's the wonderful thing that research has shown around towns and cities who establish a team like this. It's really, it's a funnel for two-way information. So not only is it an opportunity for the town to give residents who don't have the opportunity to or don't have access to information, that information that they need, but also for the town to learn about what the needs are of those communities so that they can address them on a more regular and ongoing basis. There's a lot of research out there that actually shows that this is one of the number one strategies to increase community engagement. Recommendation number two is to develop a town-wide system for ongoing information gathering and communication. And so the town just, you know, every town in the United States and the town of Arlington does a pretty good job of putting information out there. There is definitely a missing piece of getting information. And so the community engagement team is an opportunity to increase that. However, there are other things that the town can be doing, for instance, you know, the town of Arlington puts out a community survey every year. We heard from the community that that's not enough and it doesn't ask the right questions, right? So they were, you know, the questions are based on what the town leadership think. The needs are in the community, but there's definitely a disconnect between what those thoughts are or what those assumptions are and what are the actual needs of the community. So establishing something that is more regular and more ongoing, for instance, you know, holding community listening sessions on a regular basis in targeted areas of the community where you're not finding or getting a lot of information. That is something that a community engagement team could come and facilitate that would funnel information back to town leadership on and on. Recommendation number three is to establish a fair election and green access plan. And what that, the purpose of a plan like that is to do is to allow for every member or every eligible resident who can vote in either a town election or a federal election to have people access to that opportunity. We did find that there were a lot of residents who were feeling disenfranchised because of a lot of information that was just very unclear around polling locations and how to vote. And if the town of Arlington has mail-in voting or not, who will let their elected officials are and things like that. And these, you know, that can happen, especially for newcomers who are coming into the town who may be voting for the first time. So really the town of Arlington can create a plan to establish kind of universal goals and universal practice around, you know, elections and voting, around commission appointments, around how commission, open commission seats are communicated to the public so that if anybody does want to or wants to choose to run for one of those positions, they know when and how to do so. Right now, a lot of the information for those particular seats at commission appointments is we found that it's done through, it's conducted through word of mouth. And so when you think about how much power and privilege there is in a word of mouth system, you think about how many people that we left out of that who don't have the connections to hear what the word of mouth actually is. So if there was something that was a universal practice to make sure that all, you know, all residents have the opportunity to know when those appointments are coming out for me, that would make it, that would make things more equitable. Recommendation number four is to invest in the language and communication access policy and plan. And that is something that Jillian and her team are actually already working on. And it's something that we absolutely found is the need to. There are many different languages that are spoken in the town of Arlington. A lot of people might not know that. There are folks who are non-traditional English speakers, meaning there are folks who have limited English proficiency, whether that means they come from the middle of the English community or they come from a community that is English as a second language. Accessing written only information can be really difficult for a lot of folks. And, you know, that goes from voting information all the way to advertising for community events that they could not take in and how those events are actually set up and how we think about how people need to have different needs for engagement. Those are all things that can be included in a language information access plan to really think about all of those communities that are affected by written only information. By written only communication system, just what the town of Arlington has to come up. Number five is to establish an equity dashboard that's reviewed quarterly by town English. An equity dashboard is really, it's a way to collect data around people's experiences and outcomes versus people as numbers. It really seeks to look at and provide insight into the impact of all of these initiatives that the town is looking to implement in the next few years in the DPI strategy. Analyzing those types of metrics can absolutely measure progress, how well the city is doing. It can also measure progress in the impact of what those systems, those newly developed systems are on the community. And it can be used for accountability. Number six is for the town to leverage local universities and community groups to establish relationships specifically for improvement. One of the things that we saw was missing in town workforce development, if a town is looking to diversify, they need to get a little creative in the ways that they are looking to recruit members from marginalized communities. Really it's about making those connections. You have many institutions that lie literally on your step and those, if you establish recruitment relationships with those institutions, you can create pipelines and pathways for people who are music graduates to enter directly into the town workforce, especially in many of the universities and colleges that are in Cambridge right over there, right next door, who also has a much higher rate of black and indigenous people of color, residents and then college students on the homeless institutions. That is another research-based recommendation that a lot of towns are implementing across the nation and it's been quite successful. Number seven is to allow the public safety departments as inclusive service. We talked a little bit about that before. Number eight is to address the income inequality that currently exists in the town workforce to talk about that pay disparity, to actually conduct a pay equity audit. And so that's a little bit different from the type of audit that we just did, where it really hones in on the pay structure and how in the equipment structure positions really looks at the types of positions that are available and how people can actually rise from entry-level positions into leadership positions as well. So that's definitely something that will suggest the town take a deeper look at. Number nine is that the town continue the diversity equity inclusion training that has been ongoing with a little bit of a shift now towards more cultural responses. So typically, once folks have universal language, once people understand the importance of inclusion and belonging within the town, really now it can be time to focus on what are the different cultural connections that folks need to understand? What are the different cultural differences that folks who are serving a multicultural town need to know when they're engaging with residents that will absolutely boost and improve the services of that which we want. Numbers 10, 11 and 12. Number 10 is to establish and hire housing specialists for housing liaison positions. This is also something that we have seen be extremely successful across cities and towns. We didn't actually bought it for a town up in Vermont. For a city up in Vermont, that is now they just approved in their budget to actually hire a liaison position because there was so much that was happening in the community between landlords and illegal practices from landlords and from renters not knowing kind of how to navigate systems. And so if the town were to work to establish a position like housing specialists or housing liaison, that person would kind of be the conduit and the one stop shop for people who need support and who need to kind of be pointed in the right direction if it's something that's outside of the town's purview. It has been extremely successful like I said in other communities and it gives residents who rent specifically a place to go to to find all the types of supports that they might need. So it's not necessarily that the town itself is providing those supports but at least providing the information for people to be able to get those supports in one place. That's been very successful. Number 11 is to develop a community fund for rental assistance and rental housing improvement programs and a centralized system for funding. This is where you actually put the town food diet in and get landlords who support this well. A lot of folks are a lot of towns and cities have implemented such funding. And I think the town of Arlington is also got like a housing fund or that they're working on but focusing and trying to figure out how a piece of that fund can go to support renters and support relationships between landlords and renters can be really beneficial. One of the towns that we worked in and decided to use their community center and on a monthly basis have, you know, have their landlords come in, have renters come in, have people who are assisting with social workers and things like that all just use the space so that people can come in and ask questions. They'll, you know, they utilize interpreters just because they're people who are not new or speaking or can go and have onsite support and information. And that's all funded through the community on this site. Number 12 and the last recommendation that we have is to distress the restricted zoning districts to allow for desegregation. So a lot of folks here might know that the town of Arlington's current zoning policies, this is, if you trace the history back to when they were first developed and how they were developed was actually through some pretty racist clauses that were introduced into land covenants when a large section of the town was being sold off and separated into, I think it was 200 different parcels of land were being sold by a particular family who had quite a lot of power in this town. Sold all of those parcels of land and put land covenants in every single one of those parcels so that that land could not be owned or occupied even by people of color. And because of that, those parcels were then bought or were then sold to, you know, people who were half human, people who were in the white community, they were able to build their single family houses on that. And those are the same districts that are zoned for single family housing today. And so when you look at that history, that has not actually been addressed yet in the town, then you really need to examine what those zoning policies still need and how they're actually perpetuating significant sedugation here in the town. Arlington has done a great job of being able to kind of identify spaces outside of those districts to build low income housing. There was a new building that had gone up by 100,000 employees in the last couple of years, which is wonderful. However, when we continue to build low income housing in the same areas over and over again because of the restrictive zoning laws, then we are only perpetuating that same sedugation. So really it's about thinking about how the town of Arlington introduce multi-family zoning districts within some of those parcels that have been the same types of parcels for many generations. What happens now? I think I was gonna hand it back over to my colleague for this one to introduce some of the town staff to talk to if anyone's here around. What the next steps will be not to have these recommendations and findings. Absolutely, I'm sure you all are ready to engage and have questions and I know that the town project leads are going to also come up and address questions, particularly questions around what now, what next? And one thing I think we always wanna say is that there are many different entry points for a town to address issues of inequity in a school or in a system. And so really the next steps we were thinking and I know the town is really considering our around strategic planning and really coming up with this what are the actual steps that we're gonna take? So we've got these 12 recommendations and within each recommendation, there will be steps that you will wanna take but you may have a different starting point than another system. You may have particular opportunities that are coming up. You may be going through your budgets right now and really thinking about from a policy perspective, what changes could you make or where you could make additional investments. So we would encourage you to think about those kinds of opportunities that may exist. So not just starting with one place, they're really thinking about where in your system and within your context, do you have those kinds of opportunities? So we wanted to just share that with you. And in particular, when we're thinking about that, we're really saying it is the town's responsibility to create the conditions for the residents to engage, feel supported and have an opportunity to access all of the various components of city and town life. So with that, I wanna just stop everybody, heard a lot tonight. Again, we would encourage you to take a look at the report for the finer details. When we say things like, oh, there's segregation, we actually have maps that demonstrate that. When we say there are paid disparities, we have the charts and the graphs to demonstrate that. So take a look at that report, but yeah, I'll turn it over back to you, Jillian, and you can moderate Q and A. Great, thanks for that presentation. So we're gonna open it up for some Q and A. I think we're gonna move forward a little bit, so I don't know what people can see or they can see that. So we're gonna do questions kind of backing forth in the room and taking virtual ones as well. So what we'll do is we'll take two questions from here live. Then, Tim, I think you'll read two questions and you can pass them and then we will do some answers. So anyone either? Are you ready to say anything? Hi. Hi, my name is Mark Keplin. I'm a town meeting member from Precinct 9 and I'm also the new chair who wrote the podcast. And we do that a lot in Paris. So in my Precinct of 9, I was fully in Precinct 7, which included more single family ownership in the district and the redistricting. So it's almost all entirely parental property that may be going in the wrong direction. I had a number of comments. I don't know. First of all, the greatest inequity in this town is the teachers in the primary schools that are almost no man teaching homerooms in the elementary schools. Male children do not have global models to then become teachers themselves in an elementary school. And so you have this perpetuation. More also seems to be discrimination by these female teachers against male students. See them favoring the female students. As far as zoning regulations go and some of the old covenants, I don't think that makes much of a difference these days because they're not enforced and there's no multi-generational homesteads that you find where a family will remain generation after generation of seniors in Parliament. So even if it had been racist and only one bit of whites, the places have changed in the area. So it's not kept that way. And some of the properties have been found but not very desirable either. It tends to be in a flooding area. It was probably better suited for agriculture as it started out. Can I open this up for questions? Usually the question ends with a question mark. So if you have a question, great. Otherwise, I appreciate your comments but let's try to keep it down. Well, how do you see the town fixing the inequality and the schools getting more built? I mean, you ask, the schools actually conducted their own equity audit. So I believe that that's being worked on. That audit was completed at the end of last year. So that's also available to the public to read your view. I mean, I don't do hiring for schools. So that's definitely a school side discussion because we're kind of in a school committee. Sort of. Robin Birdman, you recommended some of this for town meeting, the World Outtawn Commissioners and Chairs. Additionally, Sound Clerk is recommending changing that position to be appointed rather than elected. How will this report impact the decision to give any recommendations for term limits and accessibility? Is there a question to be repeated, say that again? So I think there were two parts to that question. One was about there being recommendations for term limits for various boards, committees, town meeting, et cetera. And that sort of segue into the discussion about whether we would change our town parks position for one that is now elected to be appointed. Can I get those ready? Yes. Okay. So first I have to say I don't know. And I very specifically don't know because this is the beginning of the conversation about everything that's in this report. Jill and I have already talked about basically a strategic conversation that we'll have together over the next month to lay out priorities, engage other people with them, so forth. So there are recommendations in here. I'm not going to try to say tonight. Yes, we're going to adopt everything we know of here, but we're going to look at all of things in here. I think the issue of the town clerk being elected or appointed, that's going to be an interesting conversation in town meeting. That's where that conversation is going to happen. And so I don't want to preempt that. And frankly, as the manager tonight I'm not taking the position on that issue either. But I do think those issues of things like term limits are worth having to discussion them because there are plenty of people on both sides of those issues thinking about what is it more democratic going to do things? And I think those are the kind of things that are coming out of this report that deserve conversation and engagement and discussion. And that's what we're looking for. Regina's asked, how all the work that went into this by opportunity itself in the department does the report include the total number of people interviewed in their industry? Yeah, I can answer that one. The report does go into the numbers of the folks in the interview. So interview 31 on one. We have 31 on one interviews. The respondents to the community survey were 126. And then we have four different focus groups where it's in the report. But I believe that there were roughly about 35 people who attended the four different focus groups. And the community survey does have racial demographics that are broken down. And you can get that information on the top. In here. How did we find them? Yeah, so I actually traveled to Arlington four different times throughout this audit and literally went around shaking people's hands and forming connections with folks. The first engagement that I attended was the national night out that happened over one of the elementary schools. And really what it looked like was me walking up to people and talking to them and telling them who I was and what I did and asking them if they had an opinion on anything and if they wanted to get in touch with me. So I did a lot of handing out of business cards. And then people did, people emailed me. And then they referred me to other folks and other friends of theirs, in the one on one conversations that we were having. And so that ended up, that was about an eight week process where we started in the summertime getting people and then initially we were only thinking we would interview about 15 people but so many people kept referring me to other people that I absolutely was really trying not to exclude folks from the conversation. And so I was just not taking anybody who wanted to talk at this point. And that actually happened all the way up through November. I had some folks that were emailing me asking me to engage. And then the community survey was open for four weeks, a four-week period and over started in November and closed in December for people to engage that way. My recent time, but the civil service exam and removing that, well, okay, the civil service procedure membership. There is an exam for that. So that provides a certain level of competency that's important in these jobs that are at a high level. So, and there's also a fellowship towards veterans and the military is very diverse. I'm not sure about that, about removing the civil service requirement. That's true for senior members of management but individual workers, there should be certain level of competence. And I'm also concerned about adding more services. You talked about adding more services. For 10 years, I was renting my first 10 years and I was unaware and involved in the water flow, the trash got taken away, called 911, people with great numbers came very quickly. So I felt that all my needs were being met by the town. Is there a question for you? Yeah. So what do you think about the cost factor of adding more services, more jobs and still keeping rents affordable for low-income people? They can't do that. So I think one of the things is we deal with budgets all the time is that there's sort of a way more need and demand for services than we have money at any point in time. So we always are making choices about what our priorities are, what we can add. I think the town has done a good job in the last few years of being able to add things like the DEI office and do that within the resources that we have. I see you're struggling your shoulders. I would lift my hands and say congratulations. Arlene's done a great job that way. So thank you very much for the report. Thank you very much. So we will continue that and evaluate these different recommendations. I think there are many things in this report that are thought provoking, good suggestions, things that we will look at and discuss and see how we can fit in and what we can afford. And then we will start to make those recommendations. And ultimately it's a democratic process. It's up to town meeting and to the voters to decide what it is that they'd like to see in their government. That's what I think the government is all about, being able to mediate priorities and opportunities to build the type of town that you want to look at. Anything on this from your point of view? It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, I don't know. You go ahead. Well, as the funeral has asked, how can we make sure to improve the elderly and people of color get hired to marry us and our businesses? Are people trying to do that? Yes. How do we make sure diversity is included in the hiring of family owned businesses? So I say that I go back to the first recommendation around engagement and we don't, there's not a lot of engaging with folks that are other than you. And so for me, that question is really just talking to your neighbors, going into different businesses, stepping out of your comfort zone. And I think for us on the town side, it also includes us providing some opportunities for engagement for folks to be able to come together. I know we could do low programming with our Denver Commerce and get them involved, just making different connections and establishing relationships and relationships that are actually meaningful, not just transactional. So I think that's something that's absolutely usable. It's just gonna take time. We can go to relationships overnight. So definitely something that we can do. Christina has asked, can you please tell us about the dissemination of the works and clients? And also they're wondering if there is a community in view of the plan for a similar board or what's like that? Could you give me data communications for me? So to answer the second part of the question, that's going to be in the works. So this next month is really gonna be that stage of taking these recommendations, sitting with them and processing them and coming up with an actual step-by-step strategic plan and that includes that engagement piece as well. The first part I hardly forget the question. Oh, the report is on the DEI page on the town website. We'll be putting links around with that QR code. It's been shared out. It'll be shared out again through different town channels, tele-front and tele-friend, you know. If you've read it, ask an alum. As we know, one of the recommendations is communication problems. Here we are, we need to work on it. I also wanted to add that we disseminated the community summary of the report to everyone who was a stakeholder in the stakeholder process. And so all of the folks that we spoke to received a copy of the summaries. Mark, if you have a question, we'll take some more questions. Well, it's a con. I wanted to say you guys hit the nail on the head with inclusion part. As a 30-year renter here, I find this not a lot of community. You know, maybe if you had more block parties, I mean, we've got the Feast of the East and the Town Day and the Heights has their own things. Again, at the business district, but it's not a lot of outreach for people to really connect. Nice and chill. Nice. Love the block party. Excellent. They are very good. I am seeing that we are kind of running out of questions. Is that right? Okay. So I'm just gonna say a couple of things myself in closing. I don't know if you want to say anything. One of the things that Arlington did, I think we are maybe unique in this community in the state is we did a DEI training for all 400 townside employees. Schools have been doing their own, but we brought everybody in. Department edits, we brought in police and fire, we brought in DPW workers, we brought in administrative and office staff. And we went through a lot of the issues around the DEI. And I just want to make note, it's mentioned in the report here, of five goals that the town staff decided that they wanted to work on. I think their work mentioned it tonight. We will create an inclusive town culture. Two, we will examine and improve our organizational structures and processes to align and advance DEI in our town. We'll explore and test reassessed ways to increase DEI in all areas of town services. We will provide excellent, equitable town services. Finally, we will learn with each other and from each other in service in the Arlington community, continuous improvement. So we're all at this now. This is not a one-stop-shop. This is not something that's going to be decided overnight and taken care of. This is something where we need to continue to talk with each other, communicate with each other, listen to each other, that's a big part, and work together. So I am very excited about this. I very much want to thank opportunity consulting for the excellent work that you've done for your straightforward recommendations. And I'm looking forward to working with all 45,000 members of this community, with our staff, and other visitors to continue to develop diversity and good inclusion here in Arlington. Jill? I'm going to then turn this over. Sorry, we have one of our select board members, Eric Pellman, this year. We gave them a chance to say something. And then after that, I think we're going to turn this over to Len to close out the select board meeting. Thank you, Sandy. I'm going to try to keep my remarks brief, because I think one of the best things that someone in position of power and privilege can do is listen. It's been really good to listen tonight. And I also want to express gratitude to Jill for the vision to do this to our former town manager at a chapter lane for the impetus to Sandy for carrying that through to completion to the department heads here tonight. I've been caring enough about this to be here. My experience as a volunteer leader of the town, as a resident of the town, is that we have really good intentions about DEI. But intentions aren't good enough. And I think what I've heard tonight in the reading of the report is that we need to do a lot more listening. As what happens when you ask the people that you say that you care about, that you think you know what they need, and you might even speak for them as a person of privilege, is that you hear something different. I will tell you that some of the things in this report were hard to hear. We have a long way to go. Our intentions aren't going to bring us there. Our continued listening, our hard work, our accountability. I want that dashboard. I want to come back after a appropriate period of time and do another one of these to see where we come and hold ourselves accountable to that guard stick. Resources are the resources and it's tough. But one thing I know about this town is that when we put our mind to something, we care about it, we think it happened. I will do my part, and I know that my colleagues are important to that part of future leaders. But with that, I think it better not sit down and start listening to someone. Thank you. Len, if you want to close out the meeting, I think we're ready. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. I'll just check to see if there's anything. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to everyone, Opportunity Consulting and Jillian Harvey. I'm going to stop naming people because I'm going to get in trouble because there's probably another 30 people. I should be naming. And I agree the biggest thing that I've learned over the past couple of years that we've started to take baby steps in this process is really to listen and not to retort back because that's sort of a natural instinct. And one of the biggest lessons I've learned is if I've heard something and I want to say something back to say, that's not true, we have this. I stopped from doing that because it doesn't matter if you have all the answers in government, if somebody is citing a need that they have or something that they feel that's missing or something that they feel that's not welcoming, it doesn't matter if that puzzle piece is already there, what matters is what they know. And my job is to listen and to learn from them to say, what's the best way for me to help other people learn and know, not just to stop citing ABCD. So that's all I have to say. I went a little bit longer, but I agree with my colleague in the chair that really listening is the big part of this. And I think you all wouldn't have done your job if you gave us a report and there weren't a couple of issues or I don't even know how many suggestions that didn't make us uncomfortable because that's what we want because things can be better. And I look forward to moving forward and hopefully making some of that happen. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome. And the great part about being chair is that usually my colleagues have said it all and there's no sense in repeating what they've said, but I will repeat me what Ms. Gilthum said early on and that is that it was a brave thing for the community to do. And I'm really proud of the community for taking this step. I mean, it was something that we talked about doing and actually when I was campaigning the first time, so we had the funds to do it and we did it. And a lot of the recommendations mean, I think there are things that we can do from the recommendations that we can do within our current budget. I mean, other things we'll have to figure out how to pay for it. And as we often say, I mean, I just reflect our values. And you get what you pay for and also mean, if you don't pay for something, let me rephrase this, there's no such thing as a free lunch. I mean, so either you pay for it or you pay the consequences of not having it. I mean, and so as a community, we will make some decisions, mean and decide on how to go forward. And with respect to going forward, I will now take a motion from my colleague to adjourn. So moved. Thank you, Mr. Helmets. Thank you. From Mr. Mohan and so I need to call a roll. And so Mr. Helmets. Yes. Mr. Mohan. Yes, and thank you. You're welcome and I hope yes. So thank you everybody. Have a good night. Take care.