CC WORKSESSION PACKET 03062017 - Laserfiche WebLink

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3301 Silver Lake Road, St. Anthony, Minnesota 55418-1699 Office: (612) 782-3301 • Fax: (612) 782-3302 • www.ci.saint-anthony.mn.us Our Mission is to be a progressive and livable community, a walkable village, sustainable, which is safe and secure. Our Racial Equity Story Recent events in our community and around the country have motivated us to evaluate how we serve the variations and differences in backgrounds, experiences, values and beliefs among individuals and groups within our community; in furtherance of the City’s mission, vision, initiatives and goals. It has given us an opportunity to focus our immediate attention on racial equity and prompted us to examine our biases and respond to how we can be more inclusive as a community and workplace. This attention to a long-overdue topic allows us the prospect for conscious decisions to implement a thoughtful review of our policies, practices, and procedures. Every step we take regarding racial equity and inclusivity will be a major leap to bring our community together. To fulfill the City’s mission to welcome all to St. Anthony, we will build racial equity at the same time as we move toward healing a divided community; we will be stronger together as a whole. We share our vision of inclusivity through listening and acknowledging the journeys of all of our residents along with educating and building awareness of changed policies and practices created to be a sustainable community. We use the advantage of being small in size and numbers and, therefore, more nimble. We actively work to examine current practices to make thoughtful, deliberate and sustainable decisions regarding racial equity. Working together with other agencies, we are participating in simultaneous racial equity initiatives in the St. Anthony Community. These initiatives will involve community listening sessions, speakers, and other exercises which, through implementation and practice, will allow us to be sustainable for the future. Additional resources are available to us through our various partnerships with community organizations and area groups. The choice to focus on racial equity in St. Anthony is a chance for us to effect sustainable change. Implementation and adherence to our racial equity initiative will fulfill, more completely, our mission to be a “progressive and livable community, a walkable Village, which is sustainable, safe, and secure.” St. Anthony’s Racial Equity Cohort Bonnie Brever, Councilmember Mark Casey, City Manager Charlie Yunker, Assistant to the City Manager Mike Larson, Liquor Operations Manger Stephanie Johnson, Projects & Outreach Director, MWMO “It’s not all lives matter and black lives matter; it’s good people and bad people. It’s good and evil and it can come in any form, shape, or color. We need to figure out who is good, work with them, stand by them to change the minds and the hearts of the bad ones. And until we can do that together without discriminating and bullying at each other because they don’t agree with everything we do, we’re going to keep having problems and they’re only going to get bigger.” - Kelly Ibekwe St. Anthony student of color Class of 2017