Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist presents to Human Rights Commission (August 19, 2022)

The Jamestown Human Rights Commission is being asked to help the City of Jamestown research social equity platforms.

Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist, at the HRC meeting on August 19, said the city has been discussing providing equity in services and where those services are delivered. He said the city has been working with a provider through the National League of Cities to use property information to determine how healthy a neighborhood is and to use that data to create a social equity index.

Sundquist cited a social equity index being used by Tacoma, Washington, “Which is their equity index that will highlight areas of higher and lower opportunity for services and helps them be a little more equitable in how they provide services across the city. So they use 29 indicators. They use 197 census blocks. And they also use a racial demographics overlay to create this equity index.”

Sundquist said Tacoma uses the index to prioritize funding, resource planning, and loan distribution, “They use it to figure out where they spend their budget on, which is interesting. But more importantly, their City Council, after they created this index, directed all departments to use the index to help determine services in those departments.”

Sundquist asked the HRC to help research other equity index programs in the country and whether Jamestown should create one, including what metrics they’d recommend. He said the Department of Development has been looking into programs as well and that the HRC would assist them in the task. Sundquist also recommended the HRC reach out the IDEA Coalition as part of the process.