Tompkins County staff outline plan to embed equity across county operations; $15,000 set for mini grants

Charlene Holmes, chief equity and diversity officer for Tompkins County, presented the county's newly adopted Institutionalizing Equity report and described how it will be used to align department work plans with the county strategic plan.

The report will require departments to choose equity indicators, collect data on those indicators and report progress on either an annual, biannual or quarterly cadence, Holmes said. The goal is to identify disparities in services, hiring and resource allocation and to create a shared, measurable framework rather than a checklist approach.

Holmes said departments have been using similar practices already and that county administration will support implementation and data collection. "Departments will either update on their current equity indicator or identify a new one that they will continue to pursue," Holmes said during the committee meeting.

Committee members pressed Holmes on how department‑level indicators will be aggregated and reported. John Halachik, assistant director of 911, asked whether department metrics will be reported back in future annual reports and how the work will translate to front‑line personnel. Holmes responded that aggregated data will be published, where appropriate, to protect privacy, and that she expects to present a more concrete, scaffolded reporting approach in the coming months.

Members also discussed implementation supports: Annie Korman, vice chair of the committee, asked whether the legislature could help by asking departments directly about their indicator needs during committee review. Holmes encouraged the committee and legislature to coordinate support and emphasized department heads as subject‑matter experts who should be resourced rather than micromanaged.

Holmes also described one near‑term funding item: during the last legislative budget process, an additional $15,000 was added to the equity and diversity budget, and Holmes said $5,000 of that allocation was intended for a set of mini grants to minority‑led or minority‑serving organizations. She said the county attorney advised building the distribution mechanism carefully; WDIC and Team JEDI members were invited to serve on the grant committee and to keep the application process low barrier.

Committee discussion ranged from questions about how the county will train hiring committees (Holmes said implicit bias training for hiring committees is in development) to whether a future climate survey should be run by an independent third party to ensure anonymity and candid responses. Several members emphasized the need to track whether repeated climate survey findings are being addressed by concrete actions.

Holmes closed by asking for committee support in communicating the operational focus of the report and for continued coordination with Team JEDI as departments implement equity indicators.