Report Highlights

The City of Asheville has created Equity Core Teams, which are temporary teams assembled with representatives from most City departments, to serve as ambassadors for equity in their departments. The Equity Core Teams have been instrumental in creating guidelines in embedding equity and inclusion throughout the City through their development of the Equity Action Plan and Equity Budget Tool (page 3).

The City has adopted a Business Inclusion Policy, effective January 1, 2021. This Policy moves the City from race- and gender-neutral to race- and gender-conscious for making contracting and procurement decisions (page 13).

The City uses the Racial Equity Toolkit, created by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, to incorporate equity into decision making. Employees who have used the Racial Equity Toolkit have noted its demonstrable influence in shaping policies and decisions for the City to embrace what is most impactful for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities in Asheville (page 21).

The Office of Equity and Inclusion has developed a robust offering of training programs for City employees. These trainings serve to educate employees on racial equity and provide guidance on how to incorporate equity into work responsibilities. Employees learn how to follow the framework of normalizing, organizing, operationalizing, and visualizing equity (page 14).