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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuman Rights and Diversity - 08/13/2020APPROVED MINUTES EDEN PRAIRIE HUMAN RIGHTS & DIVERSITY COMMISSION THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2020 7:00 P.M., Eden Prairie City Center Heritage Rooms COMMISSION MEMBERS: Greg Leeper (Chair), Shahram Missaghi, (Vice Chair), Katherine Lucht, Leslie Philmon, Sana Elassar, Philip Skeie, Asad Aliweyd, Tyler Aman, Anjali Limaye COMMISSION STAFF: Megan Yerks, Staff Liaison Julie Krull, Recording Secretary I. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL Chair Leeper called the meeting to order at 7:05 p.m. Commission Member Aman was absent. II. INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS There were no guests this evening. III. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Lucht had the following amendment; under New Business she would like to add, Commissioner Report on Community Churches and stated this is regarding race equity and efforts. MOTION: Skeie moved, seconded by Aliweyd, to approve the amended agenda. Motion carried 8-0. IV. APPROVAL OF THE JULY 9, 2020 MEETING MINUTES MOTION: Lucht moved, seconded by Aliweyd, to approve the July 9, 2020 minutes. Motion carried 8-0. V. STAFF REPORT – MEGAN YERKS A. HRDC/Community Events Census 2020 Updates: Enumerators are out in the community as the timeline for completion has been moved to September 30th. The City will be sending out a HUMAN RIGHTS & DIVERSITY MINUTES August 13, 2020 Page 2 press release in the next few days to notify residents and provide information about how to verify a census taker. B. OHCS Updates Yerks stated she has been working with the Fire Department and Senior Center staff to look at additional training for Fire staff on resources for seniors and organizations offering additional COVID response supports. The Fire staff will address immediate needs and give seniors information on follow up and will also put them in contact with appropriate personnel that can assist them with their needs. Sue at the Senior Center is also preparing a document containing pertinent information. C. HRDC Upcoming News Student Commissioners will have orientation on August 25th and will join the HRDC Commission meeting in September. D. Subcommittee Updates Survey Update: Print Demographics: Review respondents, 691 participants as of August 5th. Discussion will consist of data analysis, priorities for analysis, volunteers to help Yerks take a critical eye to getting useful information from the data pool. The benefits of the data will be a large data pool, and a lot of information condensed into an easy to read format. The weaknesses will be that it is online, English only format, there is no input about solutions and reasons and it does not give details about experience. VI. OLD BUSINESS A. PEOPLEFEST! VIRTUAL EXHIBIT HALL Yerks asked the committee, Elassar, Missaghi, and Aman, to update the Commission on this event. Missaghi said his involvement was limited. Elassar said they had trivia questions at the HRDC virtual booth and stated it was nicely done given the situation. Yerks showed the website for PeopleFest and all the events and exhibits associated with it. She also showed the HRDC trivia game. Yerks also pointed out that all of the performers were compensated this year. Chair Leeper thanked the Commissioners that worked on this event. Yerks stated as of last Wednesday, there were over 1800 visits to the site. B. ONE EDEN PRAIRIE: LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT STATEMENT HUMAN RIGHTS & DIVERSITY MINUTES August 13, 2020 Page 3 Chair Leeper asked Philmon and Elassar to update the Commission. Philmon said Elassar, Lucht and herself, with help from Yerks, worked on the Land Acknowledgement Statement and came up with 3 options along with word pronunciation. Philmon said she read one of them before the Native American Pride Dancers performed. Yerks showed the content document to the Commission. Elassar said they are also working with Christal Moose, their Indigenous partner. They would like her to do word pronunciation and they would also like to give her credit for her work on this. They are looking for next steps from Christal and should receive it in the next week or so. C. MNDHR CALL: MEETING WITH LT GOV FLANAGAN AND LOCAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONS Chair Leeper said he was unable to attend this meeting and asked Skeie to summarize this. Skeie said there were a few key topics they discussed. They are: 1. Digital divides in rural areas, especially school age children. 2. Band convergence therapy in vulnerable adults. 3. Addressing the bias in housing. 4. Bias in insurance based in zip codes. Elassar said she was on the call but did not have her notes. She said everyone can sign up for local engagement emails for discussions regarding Covid and housing. Elassar will forward the email to Yerks and she can send it to the Commissioners. VII. NEW BUSINESS A. LOCAL COMMISISON REPORT FROM COMMUNITY CHURCHES REGARDING RACE EQUUITY AND EFFORTS. Lucht said this call happened today and some of the individuals on the call were, Father Michael from Pax Christi Church, Pastor Paul from Immanuel Lutheran Church, Pastor Gail from St. Andrew Lutheran Church, and Mary Brown, a pastor working at PROP. These individuals would like to partner with HRDC to do outreach work. They are very excited to help and get this going. Yerks stated Mary Brown had reached out to her as they wanted to offer their support and get involved in outreach. Yerks said she told Mary the Commission was not quite ready for outreach but are working towards it and would welcome their help along with other religious organizations in Eden Prairie. Chair Leeper stated he was pleased they had reached out to the Commission. Yerks said the two tasks she had left them were to keep doing the work in their communities and build interfaith partnerships that can be used for outreach across faith communities. Yerks said there was a survey that went out to the residents of Eden Prairie. The group that put it out was POLCO. She pointed out the City did not write it or HUMAN RIGHTS & DIVERSITY MINUTES August 13, 2020 Page 2 modify it. She stated the document is on-line and only in English. The data coming in was from 691 participants as of August 5th and went out via the City Facebook page and other sources. The survey will be open until the end of this month. An encouraging item that came out of this was that the breakdown of who is taking it matches what is in Eden Prairie; 75/80% white with the remainder being other racial identities. Yerks pointed out this could turn into a significant source of information for the Commission. She said the Commission can ask POLCO for specific analysis at the conclusion of the survey. Skeie said the Commission should focus on just a few variables in the survey. Lucht asked if the Commissioners could get free-form text from them. Chair Leeper agreed it would be nice to get the raw data from them. Yerks said she will follow up with them and give them a list of requested data. The survey closes on August 31st so she would like to get it to Katie prior to that date. Lucht read the variables that were on the survey. They included; race, age, SES, language, education, country of origin, armed forces, gender, political affiliation, income and religion. Lucht said she thought these might be the best variables the Commission could look at; they are age, race, education, county of origin and English as a first language. Yerks said she would like to know what to ask them specifically. Skeie stated there should be an overall response then maybe a pivot table breaking them down. Chair Leeper said we should see the overall results broken down by 5 variables, race being the most important than age, country of origin, language and education. Skeie said they should be able to design a pivot table for this information. After some discussion it was decided to take out education and replace it with gender. Chair Leeper said it is important the Commission get the raw data. Yerks said she will request the following information to POLCO: raw data, final reports, and for each of the five categories a pivot table for two demographic variables. B. EDEN PRAIRIE RACE EQUITY INITIATIVE Chair Leeper stated Rick Getschow, City Manager, presented this document to the City Council and they have accepted it. He would like to go over the document tonight and get the Commissioners involvement in it. Chair Leeper pointed out the Commission has a 6-9 month time frame and can engage with the City Council during that time. He also commented they will be engaging a consultant. He discussed it with Yerks and they thought 3 subcommittees should be formed focusing on two areas of the document. Elassar and Skeie stated they would be chairs, along with Chair Leeper. Skeie would like to focus on numbers 1 and 5; Elassar’s group will focus on numbers 2 and 4; and Chair Leeper’s group will focus on numbers 3 and 6. He asked the other Commissioners to think of where their interest would be. Each group will also have 2 student commissioners. Chair Leeper asked Yerks where they are in regards to getting the consultant involved. Yerks said she gave all the information she had to Rick Getschow and they will HUMAN RIGHTS & DIVERSITY MINUTES August 13, 2020 Page 3 locate a pool of consultants and then Yerks and Chair Leeper will interview them to find the most beneficial candidate/s. Yerks commented she would like everyone to think about what they would be interested in and think about outreach strategies that go along with that. Yerks said she will email all the needed information out to the Commissioners. Chair Leeper stressed time is of the essence and they will need to be on top of this. He said by September they would like everyone assigned to their groups. Yerks said they need to be thinking what they want to do for outreach strategies. By the next meeting she would like a report from each subcommittee which will include: priorities, outreach strategies and overcoming challenges in outreach and participation barriers, and lastly what areas will they need the most help with. IX. UPCOMING MEETING A. SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 X. ADJOURNMENT MOTION: Aliweyd moved, seconded by Skeie, to adjourn the Human Rights & Diversity Commission meeting. Motion carried 8-0. The meeting was adjourned at 9:03 p.m.