By Mike Dixon / Herald Forum

Earlier this spring during our the Mukilteo City Council’s strategic retreat, the Council established our 2024 short-term and long-term priorities.

One of our short-term priorities was to better utilize our diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), Mayor’s Youth Advisory and other committees. I, myself, was a member of the DEI Commission, as was Jason Moon, a fellow councilmember. In fact, during our respective tenures on the DEI, we were elected by our peer volunteers to serve as the chairs of the commission.

Mukilteo grows increasingly diverse with each passing decade. The “browning” of America continues apace, and Mukilteo is no different. A little over a third of our residents are of other than European descent, up from a quarter just 10 years ago, per Census Bureau data. Blacks skew highest as a group to above median incomes in our city, while Asians are the fastest growing group comprising more than 20 percent of all residents. With so much to offer, new residents will continue to come here to raise their families and enjoy our quality of life. These new residents will be increasingly diverse, and it will be our strategic asset to be a welcoming place for these new prospective residents to choose to come and build their families, start their businesses, and raise their children.

And, as a city, Mukilteo is not only named, literally, to pay homage to our indigenous neighbors, but we also display numerous examples of indigenous art and artifacts found throughout our city. We take pride to work with our federally recognized indigenous neighbors and to pay respect to their desires. Mukilteo is a great place to live for us all.

Our appreciation for diversity does not end with our appreciation for our indigenous neighbors. The council has consistently funded the DEI Commission each year since its inception and has supported its nascent efforts to find its footing and provide value-added service to the community. The first step the commission took was to survey the community, author a mission, vision statement and strategic plan, and establish operating policies and an organizing framework for the structure of the commission. In 2022 and 2023, the commission hosted annual multicultural book readings for the community which have been extremely well attended and uniformly enjoyed by our residents.

The DEI Commission authored the Land Use Statement adopted by the council in 2023. And this year, the commission partnered with Jason Moon, Louis Harris and myself to host a community social at Tapped Mukilteo featuring a panel of four diverse Mukilteans. Lastly, it just completed Implicit Bias training with a noted consultant from the Association of Washington Cities, an effort I would like to see replicated for the council and throughout the administration.

As a budget hawk, I am proud to note that in no year did the commission spend more than $6,000. This is why I am so proud to join several fellow council members to march annually with the DEI Commission in our annual Lighthouse Festival. The commission does great work, is very responsible with its limited budget and is much needed and appreciated.

Building on those successes, this May the Council assigned the task to the DEI Commission of formally reviewing our comprehensive plan with a DEI lens to ensure that no groups are ignored in our planning processes. The Commission did an admirable job on that ambitious task of reviewing the comprehensive plan and working to provide meaningful input from their unique vantage point as the Council’s conduit to identify and bridge the gap to potentially underserved pockets of our community. DEI is for all and I thank them for their work.

Despite the prioritized express will of the council, the preliminary budget did not fund the DEI Commission this year, as it did last year. Last year the council addressed that oversight by reducing their council travel budget to fund the Commission with $6,000. Given the now expressed council prioritization of the DEI Commission’s work, Steve Schmalz and I made the motion to address the new oversight, and thankfully, the council agreed, and the DEI Commission received funding of $5,000 for 2025 and 2026, as part of our $19 million general fund expenditures in 2025 and our $20 million general fund expenditures in 2026. That’s 0.025 percent of the general fund; a bargain for a wonderful service to our community.

The commission is always in need of volunteers. If you are looking to contribute your talents, please do look at the city website and fill out an application for consideration to serve on a city commission. We are always looking for great talent.

Mike Dixon lives in Mukilteo and is a member of the Mukilteo City Council.