City of Southlake
More than 500 respondents participated in the most recent survey released by the Mayor’s Alliance for Unity and Culture last month. It gave the organization exactly what they needed to begin planning their 2020 action plan.
The alliance sought feedback from the community in July after they launched an online survey with a mission to get more comprehension of the city's diversity and inclusion efforts. The alliance met during a public meeting Monday evening at Southlake Town Hall to discuss the survey, its 526 respondents and some of the concerns voiced that needed to be addressed.
Lauren LaNeave, assistant to the city manager, says that 85 percent of respondents generally agreed that there is a strong sense of community in Southlake, according to the survey results. However, she says respondents were more split on how diverse and welcoming the city was to people of all beliefs, races and sexual orientations. Out of those respondents, 133 elaborated further on their personal experiences in a fill-in-the-blank portion of the survey.
“It showed kind of a wide variety of experiences,” LaNeave explains to the organization. “People shared experiences of discrimination, harassment or bullying in the community.”
The alliance started planning community building and event initiatives after going through the results together question-by-question. Members were supplied with a list of events and holidays by month to show what was already going on outside of community initiatives, and they were encouraged to branch off and brainstorm other ideas from it.
“Any idea you have is a great idea,” Mayor Laura Hill iterates. “We’ll take these ideas back to staff, and they will bring an email to you of what things we feel we can get on the calendar.”
Thel ideas that were discussed included cultural nights with Carroll ISD, performance nights with the Apex Art League and community spoken word events. Alliance member Mark Flores mused that they could hold local events related to bigger heritage months, saying that Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month are great occasions to learn more about different communities.
“It would be easy to do some sort of presentation on local artists or a concert for some mariachi or Latin rock band,” Flores remarks. “I think there are plenty of opportunities to choose from.”
Alliance member Mona Chavez says they could do something as simple as multicultural dinner nights, which is something she’s started doing in her own neighborhood.
“We just need to educate the community to where they could learn more about diversity,” Chavez says. “That’ll help bring them in, understand we’re learning more about different cultures. It’s little things like that that could make a big impact.”
All of the member’s ideas were logged and will be submitted to staff for review before being assembled into a formal recommendation for their 2020 action plan at a later time. If you would like to reach the Mayor’s Alliance for Unity and Culture, email the assistant to the city manager at llaneave@ci.southlake.tx.us