Snohomish County government urgently needs to recruit minorities for county jobs and business, County Executive Aaron Reardon said.
But the County Council continues to question whether taxpayers should hire a point person to better connect minorities and immigrants with job opportunities.
County government is “not as diverse as our community,” Reardon said.
“The business community has grown more and more diverse, and at the same time, internally, we want to make sure the face of our employee base emulates the face of Snohomish County,” Reardon said.
“As this economy grows and diversifies, we need to make sure that prosperity reaches everyone in this community, not just a few,” Reardon said.
As part of the 2007 budget, Reardon won approval from the County Council to hire an “inclusion manager” to draft and launch an Inclusion Initiative. The position is proposed in the county’s new economic development office.
However, the council froze the money and is scrutinizing the job description.
“We’re questioning the philosophy of where it (the job) should be and how effective it could be,” said Democratic County Councilman Kirke Sievers, chairman of the council finance committee.
Sievers said for all of Reardon’s urgency he hasn’t heard from anyone in the public pushing the county to hire an inclusion manager. He hopes they call him, he said.
The position pays $61,000 a year. The council delayed voting on the position Wednesday and scheduled its next discussion for Jan. 24.
Republican County Councilman John Koster said he is skeptical and wonders if the position is “another guy doing what we’re already doing in this county.”
The County Council cut a half-time diversity analyst in 2003 and assigned the person to general human resources work, officials said.
An estimated 82 percent of the people in Snohomish County are white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey. Another 7.6 percent are Asian, 6.3 percent are Hispanic and 1.8 percent are black or African American.
As of October, about 8.3 percent of county government’s 2,715 employees were minorities or people of color, county Equal Employment Opportunity Investigator Mark Knudsen said.
Hiring an inclusion manager would be a good move on the county’s part, said Janice Greene, a member of Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson’s diversity advisory panel. She also coordinates supplier contracts with minority- and female-owned businesses for the Boeing Co.
The county has boomed with immigrants and with creation of the Navy base, she said.
“You have to acknowledge there’s room for improvement,” Greene said.
Reardon said the person hired would tally the number of female- and minority-owned businesses in the county and create programs to connect with those businesses. Large contracts might be restructured to allow small businesses to be hired, he said.
Inclusion committees would be created in each department and the person hired would look at training to foster inclusiveness.
“I think that this is an important position, assigning responsibility for the county to include all groups as it grows,” said Winnie Corral, program manager of Familias Unidas for Lutheran Community Services at the South Everett Neighborhood Center. “Our county has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
“Our community is richer by including a number of voices in decision making and we are richer as a community if we all feel we belong.”
Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
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