Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Aim Equity Tool topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City staff present AIM equity tool and seek community input on wildfire research
Summary
City staff described the AIM equity tool as a simplified framework to help staff identify equity impacts, track outcomes and course-correct, and invited the Human Rights and Equity Commission to engage with a paired wildfire risk-reduction research project that will collect resident interviews through early December.
Lindsay, a city equity staffer, told the Human Rights and Equity Commission the AIM equity tool is "a set of guiding questions that help city staff examine how decisions affect or could affect either our internal, our external customers, or a mixture of both," and said the tool’s measure component will track outcomes to surface disparities and guide course corrections.
Assistant City Manager Stephanie Betteridge said council goals and an earlier equity framework led staff to develop the AIM tool because the prior framework "was not nimble enough" for routine use. She described the AIM tool as "right sized" for varied city work and said staff will pilot it on topics the commission will see, including water rates, housing and wildfire resiliency.
Lindsay said the current rollout is focused on internal staff adoption and training so the tool can become a routine part of departmental processes rather than an optional resource. Commissioners asked whether advisory bodies and committees would be expected to use the tool; staff said that question remains under consideration and that HREC is developing a complementary HREC lens they will workshop in December.
On wildfire work, Lindsay described a city partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Center for Public Impact on a wildfire risk-reduction research project. "The project team is in the process now of scheduling interviews with Bend residents and organizations," she said, and invited commissioners and community members to volunteer for hour-long interviews through early December; the research phase is scheduled to conclude in June 2026. The Center for Public Impact may offer compensation to community interviewees.
Staff said future work will include an indicator report and an internal feedback loop to measure where the tool is being used and to improve its ease of use. Staff asked commissioners to review draft materials ahead of the December meeting when the commission will workshop an HREC lens to complement AIM.
The commission did not take formal action on the AIM tool at this meeting; staff committed to follow up with materials and examples at the December session.
