Mayor’s Report – August 11

On June 5, I stood before many of you to share commitments to the advancing racial equity following a week of protests. Now, I’d like to share an update about how the City administration is advancing these commitments.

It is important for me to acknowledge the peaceful demonstrators who have been on the streets this summer in the largest civil rights movement our country has ever seen. The pain, anger, fear and frustration following the murder of George Floyd continues to fuel a reckoning with ignorance and lethargy. This moment is demanding us to keep meeting our community, hearing concerns and working together toward continued trust building and public safety. I believe it is the responsibility of those of us with power to reflect on and continuously work to ensure appropriate use of that power. We can and must do better — as a nation, as a state, as a city.  As your Mayor, I feel this responsibility keenly.

Additionally, it is also important to acknowledge the members of the Community & Police Working Group, which was formed two years ago. They have devoted countless hours to crafting strategies around improving race relations, recruitment and hiring processes and community engagement. Later this month, the strategic plan this group finalized last Saturday (nearly!) will be shared on the Community & Police Working Group’s webpage where community members are encouraged to review the plan and offer feedback.

I also want to acknowledge the officers and employees of the City of Lancaster Bureau of Police. This is one of the most trying seasons of your lives and your profession. I know how many of you got into this work to protect and to serve. I am proud of the work that we’ve done together over the past two years to make our city stronger and safer including best practices in use of force, de-escalation training, and your idea to hire a Police Social Services Case Manager, to name but a few.

Councilors and the public, as you know this work requires balancing the needs/demands of many different stakeholders, and it’s not a linear equation. It’s also not a zero sum or either/or situation. For example – this summer I’ve heard calls for defunding the police AND requests for more policing. This is a city with diverse and far reaching perspectives that must be heard as we work to meet our residents’ needs related to safety.

I want to be sure to anchor this conversation tonight, and all of our future conversations, in three things: 

• Our Mission: Building a stronger and more equitable Lancaster, block by block. It is what drives me and the decisions I make. To accomplish this, we have to make sure that the City government is rooted in equity.  That we are using an equity lens to guide us in our decision making in every area.  We have to keep looking in the mirror for the ways that the city needs to change, creating plans, and — since it can’t all happen overnight — creating clear timeframes for accomplishing change. It also means supporting, challenging, and setting a bar for our community around what equity means and looks like in a city that is majority people of color. A city with a 26.5% poverty rate. A city where 38% of households are housing cost-burdened – that’s more than 8,000 households. This means setting more ambitious community-wide goals around things like affordable housing and good jobs, ensuring that our own tools and resources are directed toward those goals AND challenging and supporting our partners in the nonprofit and private sectors to do a lot of heavy lifting – it’s going to take all of us.

• To welcome new ideas, solutions and approaches to the challenges in front of us. This is not an either/or moment or an us vs. them moment. That is going to require the ongoing work of building trust and creating space for new ideas while keeping focused on the larger issues that we are seeking to address.

• Transparency & engagement. Local government is perhaps the most transparent and engaged unit of government. We’re neighbors. We see each other on the streets. At market. I’ll also acknowledge the challenge of communicating all our efforts while keeping all the balls in the air and the work moving. 

With all of that in mind, I want to make sure that City Council and the public are aware of A LOT of good work that has been happening since June 1. We have posted our commitments as of June 5 front and center on the city website – if you haven’t seen our first set of commitments, please review that list. All of those things still hold.

This is additional work that will be posted alongside it — consider this the next chapter in a book with more to be written.

Police Bureau

1. Providing a report regarding the use of force utilized during the week of May 31 specific to demonstrations. Chief Berkihiser is finalizing that report and it will be shared with you later this month. I will share these details as I have them.
2. Providing an exhaustive public report on use of force over the past 2 years and publishing that online.
3. Completing an analysis of service calls by type. A Fellow from Harvard Business School is completing this analysis and there is a lot we are learning about our community needs based on the 84,000 calls for service the bureau receives annually.
4. Further revising recruitment and hiring processes to increase opportunities for the hiring of more women and officers of color.
5. Performing a comprehensive policy review to prepare our police bureau for accreditation. 
6. Making other police policies publicly available, in addition to use of force.
7. Hiring for a second Police Social Services Case Manager is underway.

Administrative Services

1. Creating a new position within HR: Leadership Development and Diversity Manager.  This position is now held by Sharon Allen-Spann.
2. Commissioning an annual HR report examining internal complaints, turnover, investigations, evaluations, and patterns in promotions by department.
3. Investing in Information Systems to measure the impact of city programs, track progress, and make data-informed decisions.
4. Analysis of Civil Service Requirements to create equity in promotion and hiring.
5. Assigning Human Resource Business Partners to each department to align our objectives — including equity — to the work of that department. 

Department of Neighborhood Engagement

1. Holding City Government 101 trainings for residents which will be available live and recorded so that we have a shared understanding of local government and how it works.
2. Publishing a description of all units of government and their roles, responsibilities, and contact information. Much of this change we seek sits at other levels of government.

Community Planning & Economic Development

1. Allocated the majority of City CARES Act Community Development Block Grant & Emergency Service Grant discretionary funding to housing, eviction prevention, utility assistance, and homelessness supports – almost $1 million in the past few months. We will continue to work with individuals experiencing homelessness, Lanc Co MyHome (formerly the Coalition to End Homelessness), and other partners to discern the allocation of an additional almost $1 million in this area in the second round of funding coming up.
2. Prioritizing equity in City Loan Funds.
3. Changed the long-time Redevelopment Authority of the City of Lancaster’s deed restrictions on property sales to focus on affordability.
4. Commissioning an external report on affordable housing supply and demand.
5. Commissioning an internal report on landlord performance on housing quality and safety.
6. Supporting an Affordable Housing Summit.

External Partnerships

1. Supporting the realignment of the Coalition to Combat Poverty, Lancaster Equity, and Lancaster City Alliance to prioritize and elevate equitable economic development city-wide with a focus on affordable housing and workforce development.
2. Supporting an interdisciplinary effort involving Lanc Co MyHome, County Behavior Health & Developmental Services, County Drug & Alcohol, and others to ensure individuals experiencing homelessness in Lancaster City have increased access to safe day and night shelters and access to supportive social services.

I want to make sure to note that where we face limits to what can be done at this level of government, it doesn’t mean that the work stops, it means that we work together to elevate those issues to ensure that our colleagues at the County, In Harrisburg, and in Washington, D.C. are working toward equity with the same commitment that we are.

I’m honored to have the opportunity to serve as Mayor at this moment in our history, and to be on this journey with each of you.

Thank you.

Mayor Danene Sorace