The Iowa City Council on Tuesday dealt another setback to its commission meant to propose solutions to systemic racism. 

On a 4-3 vote, after more than a dozen older residents questioned the very existence of the Ad Hoc Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the council denied the lone applicant seeking to guide the TRC’s work. 

Kearns & West was listed on the council’s agenda for approval as the TRC’s new facilitator, but the discussion quickly expanded when members of the Black Voices Project showed up to oppose the TRC itself. That group was led by Johnson County Supervisor Royceann Porter.

“The current membership of the TRC, as well as the majority of the City Council, is out of sync with the wide cross-section of the black community that does not support this,” Porter said.

The TRC was created by the City Council in September 2020 on a 6-1 vote after mass protests in the country calling for racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The TRC was tasked with listening to the truth of racial injustice in Iowa City and making policy recommendations to the City Council by June 30, 2022.