The following is a submission from the City of Santa Monica.
The Santa Monica City Council Tuesday approved the first-ever Citywide Equity Plan, a roadmap to advance the city’s core values of equity across the organization.
The goal of the plan is to ensure that all community members, regardless of race, gender, ability or background, have equitable access to opportunities, resources, and city services. It reflects commitments from all city departments and establishes clear goals, strategies and accountability measures across five key strategies:
- Building a deeper understanding of equity
- Transforming city operations for equity
- Expanding community engagement and access
- Opening doors to opportunity
- Restorative justice and repairing historical harms
In recent years, the city has taken steps to enhance the city’s equity initiatives, including establishing a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, team in 2022.
To create the Equity Plan, the DEI team conducted a year-long community engagement effort to gauge residents’ equity priorities and challenges. This included virtual and in-person listening sessions led by the DEI team, staff surveys, equity workshops, and more than 60 community-led meetings.
From the feedback, the team identified key issues and collaborated with relevant departments to assess and refine existing programs and policies.
“Santa Monica is known as a place where our policies are guided by our values, and the Citywide Equity Plan is critical to our work as a city,” Mayor Lana Negrete said. “We always say that Santa Monica is a place for everyone, and this plan will help ensure that we are advancing equity for all our community members.”
Along with its approval of the Equity Plan, the Council also authorized the DEI team to launch and fund a community equity grant program.
Read the full staff report here and view the council discussion here.
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