DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION COMMITTEE
JOHNSON COUNTY DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION COMMITTEE
MEETING MINUTES
TUESDAY, November 17, 2020 9AM-10AM
Via Zoom Meeting
Members Present: Maysa Ahmed, Dawn Alam, Donna Brooks, Keshia Fields, John Hannaford, Kristen Morrow (new member), Laurie Nash, Annie Nugent, Alyssa Palante, Lynn Rose, Heather Sanderson, and Lora Shramek.
Approval of Minutes: Approved October 20, 2020 minutes.
Next Meeting Date and Time: Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Ice Breaker: Keshia. What is your guilty pleasure?
Budget Balance: $8,783.72 left in budget. T-shirts for ambassadors and welcome cards pending.
D&I Committee Strategic Plan: Anti-Discrimination Policy. Each member should read the JoCo handbook portions and Iowa City, Linn County, Scott County, and Polk County policies. We will discuss at next meeting. We can change our handbook policies and they have to be reviewed by the County Attorney’s Office. Submit draft language to BOS at a work session to discuss.
Ambassadors: The ambassadors met in October and are waiting for bios from each member to put on the website.
FY22 Budget: We are going to propose a budget of $75,998. There will be a base budget of $15,220 then decision package items of Supervisor & Hiring Manager training, $7,748, D & I Assessment, $25,330, Qualtrics, $10,000 + 1 of the implementations, each of the remaining Qualtrics implementations, $3000 to $5100 each. This benefits the whole county, this is a major functional area with a FT employee so this is their functional budget. Cost per employee is low. All approved the budget and some will attend the budget work session.
White Privilege Symposium, Nov 6-7: Laurie Nash attended. Liked it a lot. People didn’t feel defensive. It was thinking about privilege in many different contexts.
Let’s Talk, White Influence, Nov 10: Keshia and Latasha facilitated with about 26 attending. Maysa liked it. Many people shared stories. Maybe do this training every other year.
*ACTION ITEMS*
If you are doing an article for the JoCo Weekly, please provide a date of when you will submit it and what topic you will discuss. I would like these a month in advance.
November – Donna
December – Keshia
December - John
Diversity Calendar. Review calendar.
Upcoming Internal Events
In December do a scavenger hunt with clues for people to find out about other departments. Have prizes for 1,2,3rd place winners.
In Spring, have a JoCo Committee Fair with a panel from tall the committees. Tell employees about each committee. For D&I Committee have a game. Zoom meeting.
Other Items not on Agenda
Highly encouraged to listen to the UI Writer’s Workshop lessons on writing with disability awareness. Disabled writers have many insights on how to interact with those with disabilities.