Shifting demographics in Bellevue have challenged the city for years to better serve its diverse population, but a new City Council-driven initiative lays out a long-term plan for ensuring residents here no longer find themselves lost in translation.
It’s been more than 10 years since the city adopted its first diversity plan, and in that time Bellevue’s minority population has tripled, as high as 41 percent in 2010. From 1990 to 2010, the foreign-born population comprised 81 percent of Bellevue’s growth.
While the foreign-born population continues to grow, the city has long struggled to meet growing demand to integrate services and culture into government operations.
“The gap that we noticed was more of an internal organizational development,” said Camron Parker, senior planner for Parks and Community Development.
The Diversity Plan goes beyond translating government documents into more languages and providing interpreters at meetings. It also sets the stage for diversifying its municipal workforce and improving the cultural competency of its current employees.
City employees are employed an average of 16 years, which has meant staff over the past decade has been predominantly white males, receiving minimal and infrequent cultural training, according to the city’s draft Diversity Plan. In a staff survey, more than two-thirds believed they lacked resources and training to best serve the city’s diverse populations.
Under the plan, cultural competency will be part of city employees’ core curriculum, and diversity hiring will also increase.
“Are we communicating well? Probably not as well as we used to,” said Mayor Claudia Balducci, adding City Council at a recent retreat identified in a mission statement, “Bellevue welcomes the world; Our diversity is our strength.”
A critical first step to laying out the welcome mat will be hiring a cultural competence and equity staff member to oversee staff training and conduct performance measures, Balducci said.
The plan calls for all staff to receive such training over a five-year period. The mayor said how quickly the plan is put into action will come down to how much can be budgeted each year. The plan is slated for adoption in November.
The Diversity Plan also calls for identifying new locations for satellite city halls, much like the highly used Crossroads branch, which already provides information and services in eight languages. Kevin Henry, communications coordinator for the city’s diversity program, said he’d like to see a mini-City Hall in Factoria.
Diversity is not just defined by race or ethnicity under the plan, which also calls for addressing the city’s growing homeless population, which has limited access to Eastside shelters. The plan includes creating a permanent shelter in Bellevue, not just in the winter.
“The understanding is that the homeless population will be in Bellevue,” Parker said. “If we don’t do anything, it doesn’t necessarily mean that homeless won’t come to Bellevue.”
Balducci said the Diversity Plan not only will lay out how the city can improve communication and services with its diverse populations, but also will engage those populations in future planning to reflect the community seen today.
To read the draft Diversity Plan, go to this shortened link: http://bit.ly/1uAYDqZ
