Peoria Standard

Peoria County Racial Justice and Equity - Economic Development and Jobs Subcommittee met June 12.

Here are the minutes provided by the subcommittee:

In Attendance

• Subcommittee: Tom Pelger, Eric Burns, Erik Christian, Paula Nachtreib, Janice Zagardo, Patresse Moore, Jackie Watkins

• City/County/Steering Committee Liaisons: Kimberly Richardson, Brittany Graves Excused

• Subcommittee: Chris Setti, Mike Seghetti

• City/County/Steering Committee Liaisons: Uriah Kilgallin, Pam Orear

Absent: none

1. Call to Order: Meeting was called to order by Tom Pelger at 4:33 PM

2. Approval of Minutes: Janice Zagardo moved to approve the minutes from the previous meeting on May 8, 2023, seconded by Eric Burns. Minutes were approved by consensus.

3. Informational Items and Reports

• Eric Burns and Brittany Graves reported on the May 30 meeting of the Subcommittee and Steering Committee Co-Chairs. The Commission’s website has been enhanced. It is found at: https://www.peoriacounty.gov/1089/Joint-Commission-on-Racial-Justice-and-E Subcommittee liaisons from the Steering Committee have been appointed. Pam Orear will be our liaison and should start joining our meetings next month. Plans are still being formulated for community forums. NAACP has offered to help. Subcommittees are still looking for more clarity on the scope and any boundaries for strategy and action develop (e.g. city / county policies, advocacy, collaborative structures with community based organizations, investment or ongoing funding…). The Steering Committee is looking for additional cities of our size which could be benchmarked for what they have done.

• Tom Pelger reported on his May 10 interview with the Executive Director of City Link Center (Cincinnati OH) Changing Gears program. A copy of the notes from their discussion is attached. Their website is: https://changing-gears.org/

• City of Peoria survey of minority businesses – topic was deferred until our July meeting, when Uriah Kilgallin from the City of Peoria has returned from family leave. We will discuss next steps, and committee member involvement in the surveys at the July meeting.

4. Discussion

• The Changing Gears approach is very attractive due to its flexibility, but requires upfront investment by a lead organization, and may not be fully effective without the accompanying organization and infrastructure of CityLink Cincinnati. For more information on it: https://www.citylinkcenter.org/ CityLink Center’s structure could be a potential model for integrating all the Commission’s subcommittee strategies into an implementation framework, but this would need the Steering Committee to get behind the idea. A first step would be appointing a working group to conduct further investigation. We can discuss this next month with our liaison, Pam Orear.

• We discussed next steps for following up on the survey conducted by Heart of Illinois Chapter of the Society for Human Resources Management which confirmed that transportation barriers are a significant issue in our area. Some members of the HR Managers chapter are interested in working on potential solutions, but we first need to come up with a clearer request that they can get behind. From our previous workgroup discussion, partnering with ICC’s Workforce Equity Initiative with focus on manufacturing and healthcare grads could be the framework. Manufacturing jobs in Tazewell have a transportation barrier. Alternatives to affordable cars may be shuttle services. Nursing jobs, which typically start on 2nd and 3rd shift, have a major childcare barrier. We will reach out to the Transportation Subcommittee to learn more about their potential strategies to see if we can collaborate.

5. Recommendations to the Steering Committee

• Consideration of forming a working group to do more investigation into the CityLink Center model. 

6. New Business

7. Adjournment

• Meeting was adjourned at 5:39 pm. Next meeting is July 10.

https://www.peoriacounty.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_07102023-1454