Former REI task force member summarizes recommendations: permanent body, trainings, recreation and speaker series

Ashley Naughton, the vice chair of the county’s prior Racial Equity and Inclusivity (REI) task force, told the Los Alamos Inclusivity Task Force on Zoom that the REI group’s work over a year during the COVID-19 pandemic produced four primary recommendations for county leaders.

The recommendations, Naughton said, are: 1) create and implement a standing volunteer inclusivity board to continue task-force work; 2) provide county-sponsored community trainings and expand access to a training platform the county purchased (GARE); 3) expand outdoor and recreational access for BIPOC residents, including possible fee waivers or scholarships for county facilities; and 4) sponsor county oversight of REI topics and a public speaker series to share community stories.

“These recommendations came from what we heard in the community and our experience as task force members,” Naughton said. She told members the task force held three town halls, solicited community stories by email and worked during “a political environment” shaped by the pandemic and national events.

Naughton described two categories of recommendations. She said recommendation 1—establishing a standing body—was intended to provide the ongoing leadership and institutional “muscle” needed to advance and sustain initiatives the task force could not complete in a single year. Recommendation 2 centered on broadening access to the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) trainings the county had purchased for employees so community members could also use the resource.

She characterized recommendations 3 and 4 as nearer-term “wins” that could show progress quickly: recreational scholarships or expanded access to pools, golf and other county facilities, and public events or a speaker series that would allow residents to hear and share personal experiences about race and inclusion in Los Alamos.

On outreach and data, Naughton told the task force collecting anonymized, pattern-level stories was difficult in a small community because respondents may still need to work with the people they might criticize. She said the task force had promised anonymity to some contributors and that timing constraints—its one-year charter and limited ability to incorporate a county health council’s contemporaneous outreach—reduced the amount of anonymized survey data available to inform tightly targeted solutions.

“There were a lot of personal stories we could not publish,” Naughton said. “If you can find a way to get the data, capture those stories, make those changes, that would hopefully send you a long way.”

Members asked whether surrounding communities and regional tribal nations had been included. Naughton said the task force invited anyone who interacted with Los Alamos County but that the group did not receive substantive input from neighboring pueblos. A staff member later confirmed the County Health Council’s preliminary community-health report was distributed after the REI task force ended and could be used as a data source going forward.

Naughton closed by recommending that the new inclusivity body be organized with a clear project plan, realistic short-term targets and defined stakeholder responsibilities so members do not overextend their volunteer time.

Ending: Task-force members said they would use the presentation and the REI report as background as they consider whether to recommend creation of a permanent inclusivity board and which short-term projects to prioritize.