Activists keep pressure on Mill Valley for equity progress

The Mill Valley City Council and activists are still at odds over the best ways to implement greater social equity.

Linn Walsh, a city analyst, presented a batch of 15 recommendations to the council on Monday. The recommendations — identified by the former Diversity Equity and Inclusion Task Force before it was disbanded — focus on hiring practices, recreation, arts and the library.

Some ongoing actions by the city include: creating a core team of department directors to review action items identified by the former equity committee; making hiring practices equitable and diverse; identifying homes that still have deed restrictions or covenants; creating recreation partnerships countywide; implementing diversity training; and creating opportunities to support Black entrepreneurs.

Damian Morgan, chair of the Marin City Community Services District board, said more needs to be done to provide direct help to Black people who have endured generations of inequities in Marin.

“Where are the business opportunities to make money?” Morgan said. “You guys shut Black people out of the banking industry. We’ve been redlined and now I guess you want to erase all racial covenants. What will that do? The city should buy some homes and give them to Black people. Create some grants, business grants, and give them to Black people to start a business.”

Zoe Fry, a Mill Valley artist, said she supports Morgan’s perspective.

“I would propose that if you’re going to do an erasure of the covenants that you couple that with an organized, committed annual campaign of community education about the past,” Fry said. “Whitewashing that away is not ideal unless you bring something in its stead.”

Out of the recommendations, Mayor John McCauley suggested carrying out a community survey; publishing regular summaries of core team meetings as community updates; disseminating when training policies have been approved by the city manager; tracking organizational progress annually; and creating a list of accomplished goals.

Councilmember Sashi McEntee said staff should not publish summaries of core team meetings.

“I think the way to achieve it is to have certain milestones and then have staff report out on those milestones,” McEntee said. “I think a moment-by-moment, meeting-by-meeting summary isn’t going to give us anything except maybe an opportunity for people to criticize that it’s not happening the way they want it to happen.”

As a way to measure work toward diversity goals, Walsh said the city has adopted a model inspired by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a national network of officials and activists.

McCauley, however, said a detailed list of accomplishments is needed.

“We’re doing a lot of stuff here, some of them are words and some of them are actions,” McCauley said. “From day one, I’ve always said when it’s all said and done we’re going to look back and say, what has changed? … Forget all the words, what’s physically changed?”

The Mill Valley Force for Racial Equity and Empowerment, group with members of the former equity committee, urged the City Council to consider adopting racial equity addendum to its general plan.

“As it stands, none of the 13 values articulated in the plan mentions racial equity, which is also entirely omitted from the plan’s goals, policies and programs,” said Jasson Minadakis, a member of the group. “A racial equity addendum to the plan’s values would direct the city to consider this issue in all of its work going forward.”