One of Oak Park’s oldest village government institutions has some new work ahead of it.
The Community Relations Commission, a citizen commission established in 1963 to promote good neighbor relations as the village began racially integrating, had its enabling ordinance updated earlier this month to bring its work in line with village staff’s broader DEI goals. The next week, the village board approved a work plan for the group that tasks the commission with helping Oak Park’s new DEI chief make progress on several early priorities.
The update to the commission’s enabling ordinance follows a series of workshops with village leaders and CRC members.
“It was a great experience to get aligned with leadership in the village to make sure the CRC has the space and support to be able to support the board goals,” Yoko Terretta, the commission chair, told the village board.
The new work plan for the commission gives it a budget of $10,000 and directs its efforts towards a variety of projects. One project will be helping the village’s new DEI chief make progress on updates to the village’s human rights ordinance and racial equity action plan. The CRC has five vacancies, according to the most recent citizen commission staffing report.
The village has budgeted $8,000 for 8 commissioners to receive special training on community building methods this year.
“The purpose of these workshops was to create role clarity, update duties and functions in line with current needs of the community, and inform the commissioner recruitment process,” village documents said. “Since 2020, commission membership has fluctuated, at least in part due to a lack of alignment between commission expectations, staff expectations, board expectations and the enabling village code language that outlines the commission’s duties. These workshops aided all stakeholders by not only creating intentional and mutually agreed upon ordinance revisions, subject to the board’s approval, but by identifying and clarifying CRC commissioner responsibilities in relation to Community Relations and DEI staff responsibilities.”
Village Manager Kevin Jackson said the village board will see work from the CRC commissioners soon that reflects its newly ratified alignment with village staff.
“I want to just say from the outset that these contemplated code changes reflect our interest in trying to find a modern alignment with the current operations of community relations activities out of the DEI office, but also alignment with the vision for future operations of the office,” Jackson said. “This is really important because as you will see with the code changes, you will start to see operational activities that you review in the near future that may be new and different, but yet, still in alignment with the updated code changes.”
“I just think this is a really important item to pay attention to because there’s a lot that comes after this.”
The updated enabling ordinance clarifies the roles of commissioners, updates key definitions, and emphasizes the importance of experience with “community engagement, mediation, facilitation, project management, and cultural competence,” for commissioners, according to Assistant Village Manager Kira Tchang.
The commission will move forward on these goals after several years in flux, and with several open seats still available on the commission.
In July 2020, six of the CRC’s commissioners resigned all at once saying that the village board had “made their position clear by dismissing the work of the CRC and failing to demonstrate reasonable, measurable progress on racial equity,” according to their joint resignation letter. Several of the commissioners who resigned at that time are back serving on the CRC, including Terretta.
Kellye Keyes’ first official day as DEI chief was June 23. She comes to the village with decades of legal experience and a stint as head of Illinois’ statewide Commission on Equity and Inclusion.