Line-Marie Einhorst reported this story on assignment from Shelburne News. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
During the late April meeting of the Shelburne Equity and Diversity Committee on Zoom, members discussed a Bilingual Book Walk for the town’s children. With its focus on inclusivity, the committee zeroed in on the language for the event.
Should it incorporate the word “walk” or find an alternative that “doesn’t imply the use of legs”? wondered committee member Faith Yacubian.
The Shelburne Selectboard established the Equity and Diversity Committee in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. The town gave the committee a clear purpose: to suggest ways to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in all town government activities and help generate community and financial support for those improvements. The goal was derived from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns’ equity statement and efforts to encourage state municipalities to adopt a commitment to equity.
Since its founding, the committee has helped with Shelburne’s internal equity and diversity trainings, organized community potlucks, hosted equity-related movie nights at the library — the animated Disney film “Encanto,” about a Columbian family, was a recent showing — and engaged with the community at the Shelburne Farmers Market.
“We see ourselves as a way to magnify the voice of the community into government,” said Cate Cross, a committee member. “We are there to make people feel welcome and act as a way to engage with government that isn’t just about paying taxes or coming to a selectboard meeting.”
Cross also works with the Vermont Leauge of Cities and Towns on equity across the state as part of a subgroup developing a toolkit for towns to make their policies more welcoming and equitable.
Cross emphasized in an interview that she and other members speak only about their perspectives as individuals, not on behalf of the entire Equity and Diversity Committee. The committee doesn’t have a chairperson. Instead, the leaders of each meeting rotate. It’s part of the intention to remain inclusive and democratic.
Since its founding, the committee has focused on recruiting new members to boost its own diversity. Cross said that has to do with more than the racial makeup of the committee, which she declined to specify.
“Diversity work and welcoming work goes beyond working to break the perception of race,” she wrote in an email. “It has to do with socio-economic status, access to decision-making opportunity (for example in local government), transportation and housing access, able-ism, sexual orientation and much more.”
The committee has used various methods to encourage participation, including advertisements and membership applications in multiple forms, such as video submissions. Recently, the committee organized a retreat focused on creating a plan to interact more with the Shelburne community.
“We know that typically, in town governments around the state, the way you get onto a board or committee is to know someone,” Cross said. “We want to change that. We want to ensure a broader representation of viewpoints and lived experiences in our government.”
The committee meets every second and fourth Monday of the month at 6 p.m. Town Manager Matthew Lawless attends some of the meetings, hearing members’ advice and recommendations.
Lawless moved to Shelburne from Virginia with 12 years of local government experience and was elected town manager in 2023. He said the town’s commitment to equity was one of the reasons he joined the Shelburne community.
“Shelburne has undergone some population growth, and the visible diversity of our community is different,” he said. “There are more residents in Shelburne who aren’t originally from Vermont or aren’t originally from the United States, and so they bring new ideas and expectations. It’s very important that we listen to our whole community and understand how the needs of town government are changing.”
For Lawless, equity doesn’t stop at human resources, with the town’s hiring of employees from diverse backgrounds. Police, utilities, finance and planning departments all benefit from a consideration of who benefits from the government’s work and how it can be as fair as possible, he said.
Along with the Diversity and Equity Committee, Shelburne has other volunteer committees made up of about 130 volunteers. Cross said she is excited about the committee’s work and its efforts to make Shelburne more inclusive. At the farmers market, she said, anyone can stop by and “let us know how we can best help.”
The committee positions itself as a bridge between the community and government, Cross said, “so that we can ensure more voices are heard.”