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Members of the city of Hamilton’s new diversity and inclusion commission are making moves to address what they have determined are the city’s most pressing issues that limit the diversity of all its residents and employees.
Though they’ve only had two monthly meetings to date, commission chair Mark Mercer, a deputy fire chief for the city, said that members are ready to tackle these issues.
“It’s a little frustrating on the front end, because people are ready to do something,” he said. Not that those meetings haven’t already been fruitful; the commission has created their mission — to identify barriers to diversity and inclusion in Hamilton and to make recommendations — and have formed three subcommittees to focus on the problems and perceptions of problems that exist in trying to represent everyone in Hamilton
Mercer is confident that the individuals chosen for the commission would be up for the challenge of identifying the issues involved in making sure all city residents and employees feel represented.
“This is a topic that is very important to me, personally,” he said. “Between my family and my wife’s family, we’re about as diverse a family as you can get.”
Seven community residents were appointed by Hamilton’s City Council members from a pool of applicants, and eight city employees were appointed by City Manager Joshua Smith. Community members are required to be Hamilton residents; city appointments are not, according to Smith. Members have a term position of either three or four years, depending on who appointed them.
“It is a very diverse group, and no one was asked to be on the committee,” Mercer said. “They all have a particular passion, for the job.”
City employee members cover a wide spectrum of racial backgrounds, genders, ages, and roles, from civil service, to finance, to public safety. For the residents, members cover different racial backgrounds, genders, ages, and abilities.
The focus of the first of the three subcommittees, Mercer said, was to look at promotional opportunities within the city and whether steps are being taken to ensure that all individuals feel included in the process.
“We want our diverse work force to reflect the diverse population,” he said. Currently, the city’s employee makeup doesn’t reflect its population — women employees make up less than 20 percent of the overall workforce, with 123 employed versus 500 men employed by the city, according to city data — and the subcommittee will search to find the reasons behind that.
“Our goal is not to say it’s wrong, but to learn why it’s that way in the first place,” Mercer said.
A second subcommittee will focus on delving through city ordinances, resolutions and other city legislation to see if there is any wording or phrasing that exists that is discriminatory toward any individual — whether intentionally in the past and never changed, or unintentionally placed there. The subcommittee would then make recommendations to City Council and administration to make changes to the legislation to remove the discriminatory language.
A third subcommittee focuses on an often overlooked demographic gap but one that the city feels is crucial to its continuity: the generational gap in the workplace. City officials have been working on a program called EMBARK that looks to identify high school-age students and show them an opportunity for a career path with the city through mentorships and exposure to the various lines of work within the city.
“We have, in many ways, an aging workforce,” Mercer said. “We have cut employees, there’s an older workforce, so we’re looking at how do you make that opportunity open and available to them.”
The program would not only be looking to link students up to opportunities within City Hall, but at jobs all around Hamilton that may not need a four-year college degree to excel in.
“There are prospective employers coming into town in the next year who will need a employee base,” Mercer said, adding that people may not know that an electric lineman, for example, can make a six-figure salary without a college education.
“Dayton Power and Light holds job fairs to hire their workers, and we’re not sure that we’re doing the same thing,” he continued.
Using that program as a pilot, Mercer says the goal is to see how they can use it to improve recruiting efforts across the city, especially in his own department of public safety.
The commission will also be working closely with Dr. Ron Jackson, a diversity consultant hired by the city to conduct an anonymous survey for all city employees to find out what issues they view as barriers to diversity. Jackson attended the first commission meeting to run a workshop and help get the commission talking, and will attend one more meeting before the commission’s first annual report is due in 2016, Mercer said.
According to a report presented at the Dec. 17 City Council meeting, $50,000 will be budgeted for the city’s training efforts in 2015, “which will include city-wide diversity training and contracting with a diversity consultant to work with the Diversity and Inclusion Commission as needed.” The $50,000.00 will be paid 20 percent out of the general fund and 80 percent out of the utility funds after reimbursements.
The Diversity and Inclusion Commission meets on the last Monday of the month in Council Chambers, 345 High St.
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