City Council Adopts 'Roadmap' to Fight Racism, Promote Diversity, Equity After Three Years of Work

At busy council meeting, city leaders also update regulations for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and approve more funding for program to aid the unhoused

The following post by freelance writer Sam Richards is made possible by the financial support of paid subscribers and other donors to the newsletter. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber if not already to support more journalism such as this.

By Sam Richards

After three years of work, the Martinez City Council on June 21 approved a “roadmap” for future city efforts to fight racism and discrimination in Martinez in general, and to further instill inclusion and pro-equity policies in city government.

The council voted 4-0 to approve a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Roadmap born from over two years of work by the council’s Anti-Racism & Discrimination and Pro-Inclusion & Equity Task Force – referred to as ARDPIE – with the help of a consultant working as an outside facilitator.

Councilwoman Debbie McKillop was absent from this meeting.

The original 12 members of ARDPIE were tasked with providing recommendations — in the form of a work plan — to the council on how to increase diversity representation and eliminate or prevent implicit bias, racism and/or discrimination from influencing municipal activities. The goal there was to make Martinez a more inclusive and welcoming place for anyone who lives or works there.

“We’ve come a very, very long way,” Linda Olvera, one of five ARDPIE members still on the task force after two years, told the council.

The task force was created in November 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing by Minneapolis police, and subsequent racially charged incidents in Martinez, including the defacing of a George Floyd street mural on Court Street (which received national attention), the distribution of racist fliers in the downtown area and a subsequent Black Lives Matters march in Martinez in July 2020 in which an estimated 2,000 people took part.

The 12 task force members were appointed in June 2021. They generally met monthly, and hosted three community “listening sessions.” The task force also reviewed city policies, including Civil Service rules, as well as the city’s mission and vision statements, and identified strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for updates and revisions to existing policies, especially regarding diversity and equity.

Mayor Brianne Zorn rejected the idea that residents who don’t take time to understand the task force’s work are the ones who most need to hear it. So too did Jacques Whitfield, the outside facilitator, who noted that many who came to the various listening sessions and forums heard friends’ and neighbors’ “lived experiences” that fostered a better understanding of the diversity, equity and inclusion issues in Martinez.

That doesn’t mean everyone understands the work done by a task force like ARDPIE, Whitfield stresses, saying that defining the work the task force – and now the city – is doing in this area is key.

 “There is always room for improvement,” he said. “When folks understand the work, they have no problem engaging.” He also said the work is never really finished.

The city doesn’t have the resources to give to a permanent DEI-focused commission. But in its roadmap report to the council, the task force “strongly recommends” the city consider these recommendations through its annual budget prioritization process. 

The ARDPIE “roadmap” is a living document, council members said, explicitly designed to be added to, updated and otherwise modified as needed in the name of improving Martinez’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and to make those ideals, as Whitfield put it, “part of the city’s DNA.”

Olvera told the council members it will be up to them, and other city leaders, “to be the messengers and ambassadors,” leading by example. “You must continue to voice this message,” she told them.

Councilman Satinder Malhi agreed. He was the original chairman of this task force, and he said it was this work that led him to apply for appointment to the City Council, which happened in January. He said there’s been a lot of DEI work overseen by this task force, and, without a permanent commission to continue the work, the City Council will have to oversee the continuance of its work.

“It is going to take leadership at the top level to see that this report doesn’t just go on the shelf,” Malhi said. “We’re going to embrace it.”

The roadmap can be viewed by clicking here. It is divided into the following five sections:

1. Strategic Imperative and Strategic Direction

2. Recognition of Different Viewpoints

3. Community Involvement and Outreach

4. Training and Education

5. Operationalizing Equity and Inclusion within the City Organization

ADU regulations updated

Another of the ARDPIE task force recommendations is that city leaders continue to explore housing affordability as a way to promote greater equity and inclusion. And in a later, separate issue on the council’s June 21 agenda, the council approved by a 4-0 vote a series of changes to the city’s accessory dwelling unit (ADU) regulations to help encourage their creation.

These changes are intended not only to bring those regulations closer to state standards but to encourage creating more ADUs, to enable Martinez to better meet  state-required housing goals in the city’s 2023-2031 Housing Element, and to better offer more affordable housing.

Martinez recently submitted for state review its sixth cycle (2023-2031) Housing Element, the document that will inform and guide how the city will plan to accommodate housing growth in the city over the next eight years. Making it easier to approve ADUs is part of the plan for many cities to meet their state-mandated accommodation numbers, and the state has removed some regulatory barriers to incentivize creation of ADUs.

In Martinez, ADUs will be 1,200 square feet or smaller, be ground-floor units or second-story units (above a home or garage, for instance). Their exterior materials must be consistent with the main structure on that property (typically a house), and each unit must have one off-street parking space. ADUs cannot be used as VRBO-type short-term rentals of less than 31 days in Martinez.

Brandon Northart, a Martinez associate planner, said the pace of ADU creation has picked up in recent years. Twenty of them were approved in Martinez from 2016 through 2021; 13 were approved in 2022; and 12 in the first four months of 2023.

Zorn said she was aware of long waits for ADU permits, and asked whether city staff could keep up with increasing demand for such approvals. Michael Cass, the city’s planning manager, said a newly hired staffer has helped with shrinking that backlog.

The changes are to take effect Aug. 19.

More funding directed toward services for unhoused

The City Council on June 21 also voted to use about $140,000 in General Fund money and another $130,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 COVID recovery funding to increase the Coordinated Outreach Referral and Engagement (CORE) program outreach services through Contra Costa County from 20 hours a week to 40 hours a week for one year. The goal is to improve outreach to the chronically unhoused to connect them with everything from toiletries and other basic needs to getting health care and homes for them. The two-person teams identify unhoused people, assess their housing and service needs, and help connect them to services and, ultimately, space at a shelter or even more permanent housing.

CORE teams, overseen by the county, operate in 13 Contra Costa cities. Martinez and Pleasant Hill jointly hosted the first such outreach team in 2014.

Jenny Robbins, chief of programs at Contra Costa County Health, Housing and Homeless Services, said the CORE program in 2022 moved more than 100 people from the streets to a shelter. 

The homeless problem in Martinez and elsewhere, Robbins said, can largely be traced back to one basic problem. 

“Housing is the answer to homelessness, and the cost of housing is one of the biggest predictors of why people are experiencing unsheltered homelessness,” she said.

Martinez police Chief Andrew White said the ARPA funding comes at an opportune time, as his department’s community resource officer recently left the force. With no grant money on the immediate horizon, and with no anticipated increase in police staffing until at least 2024, Martinez’s homeless outreach could suffer greatly without the ARPA infusion.

The two new CORE teams, Robbins said, would enable expansion of services to daytime hours.

Zorn and Malhi said they believe the messaging behind CORE’s work needs to improve; that especially, downtown merchants need to be looped in to what CORE does; and that CORE teams need to be readily available (they can be reached now by calling 2-1-1).  Malhi said he’s heard from people who stay away from downtown because they’ve experienced, or heard about, unpleasant encounters with homeless people.

Robbins agreed that everyone needs to be aware of how CORE can, and can’t, help.

“It’s going to take a village to move the needle on this,” she told the council.