Civic Engagement - City of Staunton's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission

By Leslie Beauregard, Interim City Manager, City of Staunton

It’s been almost a year now since Staunton’s City Council adopted a motion that established the city’s first Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission (first name was the Equity and Diversity Commission). It was groundbreaking - not only because it seems rare that it’s a Council appointed commission, but how through up front community engagement and a different nominations process than the norm, it evolved into a commission that now comprise of 14 passionate, incredibly diverse and engaged citizens.

The month after Council first adopted the motion to create a Commission, city staff returned to Council for more direction, and that direction was to create a community survey that would help inform the Commission’s framework and its charge. The survey received almost 200 responses over a several month period. The survey was not a simple, multiple choice survey. It asked respondents to think hard about equity and inclusion - such as desired qualifications of commission members, desired focus areas of the commission, and it asked respondents to think tell us what they thought about Staunton’s current efforts in the area of DEI, or if the city had any efforts in place at all. The responses, almost 200 of them, were thoughtful and provided valuable information in the remaining steps of establishing the commission.

With the help of Dr. Robin Stacia through a grant the City received from the Virginia Risk Sharing Association’s Inclusion Residency Program, we then took those survey results and built an application. And in particular, we reflected as much as possible those qualifications identified in the survey results, including input from City Council, and asked those who wanted to apply if they possessed those skills, abilities and behaviors.

Another very unique aspect of this process is how, from the 30 plus pool of applicants, they were ranked, interviewed and chosen. City Council decided to be a nominations committee of the whole. Normally, a subset of Council would interview first and nominate members of boards and commissions for the whole body. But for the DEI Commission, City Council decided to interview and choose members as a whole group. So every single member of Council ranked their candidates and as a body, interviewed the ones that received the highest rankings and narrowed it to the final 14 that were nominated and approved with an unanimous vote. Every City Council member was engaged in this process.

The DEI Commission was formally named on May 26, 2022. Their work has just begun and it’s very early in the process; but i have great hope in this group of individuals who came together as strangers and are already bonding as a team. To follow their work and progress visit their website at Staunton’s DEI Commission.