FAIRFIELD — After more than a year of work, the Racial Equity and Justice Task Force sent the blueprint for a racial equity plan over to the town.
The plan outlines some first steps in a continual process of making Fairfield “a town where people of all backgrounds and cultures feel safe, valued, and heard.” The task force will likely present the plan to the Board of Selectmen during at the Jan. 31 meeting.
“We believe that this is just a 15-month effort toward best practices,” Selectwoman Nancy Lefkowitz, who co-chairs the task force, said of the 50-page document. “It’s a launch point for further discussion. There’s no line in the sand.”
The task force recommended the town immediately take up five actions and offered more recommendations to advance racial equity. While the first two are more clerical — as they involve the board hearing a presentation of the blueprint and voting it into the public record — the next three constitute more substantial steps.
First, the task force recommended the town issue a proclamation acknowledging the existence and impact of systemic racism in Fairfield, as well as a resolution to address it in town governance and operations.
The document argues that acknowledging systematic racism as an issue clears the way for addressing the disparities and inequities it causes. It also noted the American Public Health Association, as well as almost 20 municipalities in Connecticut, have declared racism a public health emergency.
The next recommendation is to create a permanent commission to build upon the task force’s work, as the task force will be disbanded after presenting to the board. The task force suggested the commission be vested with a number of responsibilities, including monitoring the progress of the possible plan implementation and serve as a Citizen Review Board when there are instances of racism, racist slurs or related issues in town.
The final immediate action item called for the town to hire a director of community justice and belonging to oversee and manage Fairfield’s racial equity planning and response. The position could complement the permanent commission and would work with the head of human resources to create a strategy to recruit diverse candidates across all town departments. That person would also develop and support executive training and culture management initiatives and find and address disparate impacts of town policies and projects.
The task force voted unanimously to send the blueprint to the Board of Selectmen at last Thursday’s meeting. Lefkowitz said the group is proud of the work it is presenting.
First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick created the task forcein the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020. As part of its mandate, the task force was charged with reviewing town policies to find if any have explicit or implicit racial biases that contribute to racial inequity in all aspects of Fairfield governance. The group then had to provide formal recommendations to the Board of Selectmen, including a racial equity plan by Jan. 31, 2022.
Lefkowitz said the task force found areas where there was room for improvement as it looked at government operations through a lens of racial equity and justice. Those areas were identified through discussions with town employees and residents, as well as researching best practices in the public and private sectors.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” she said. “We’re looking to the success that other communities have had.”
The other recommendations targeted the areas of governance, criminal justice and policing, housing, education, community engagement and arts and culture. While not exhaustive, the task force lists suggestions within each category that could help make each more equitable for all residents.
For instance, the task force recommended the town collect, review and publish data on the racial, ethnic, and linguistic makeup of the town’s workforce. It also recommended developing procedures to increase the recruitment, retention and promotion of people of color within the workforce.
The plan recommends all town employees take racial equity and cultural competency training, and suggests having translation services available for people who don’t speak English.
The task force’s recommendations for the town’s approach to criminal justice primarily involved looking to community policing and keeping the police practices more transparent to the public.
Lefkowitz said the creation of a permanent commission would allow the town to further discuss or “battle test” the task force’s recommendations.
“Unless they do steps 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, the rest of it would be hard to implement,” she said.
Lefkowitz said group will discuss how to present the document to the selectmen during the task force’s next meeting on Thursday.
“We were a group of committed, dedicated volunteers who wanted to look at the issue of racial equity and who were tasked with… looking at government operations,” she said, later adding the recommendations they make are not the end-all-be-all for the issue. “It’s not the only solution. It is a solution. It should be the continuation of many conversations that need to ensue.”
joshua.labella@hearstmediact.com
