Volunteers sought to serve on expanded Mt. Lebanon Community Relations Board
Mt. Lebanon seeks to fill six positions on the municipal Community Relations Board.
Currently, membership on the board is set at seven residents, with five selected by ward and two serving at large.
A proposed ordinance would expand the board to 11 members, with the additional four selected from the municipality as a whole. A public hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for the Feb. 8 meeting of the Mt. Lebanon Commission, to be followed by a vote on approval.
The change in the Community Relations Board’s composition is accompanied by language that specifies diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as being among the group’s purposes.
Along with a new board member from Ward 3, five at-large members are sought. Applications can be made through Feb. 28 at mtlebanon.org/64/Apply-for-a-Board.
Appointments by the commission are scheduled for March 22, and the board’s three-year terms begin April 1.
In January 2021, the commission approved the establishment of an ad hoc Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee within the Community Relations Board. Commissioners Leeann Foster and Mindy Ranney had been working on drafting guidelines for the committee since the national unrest spurred by the May 2020 death of George Floyd.
The committee’s working groups have been addressing topics including community awareness and community building, diversity in boards and hiring, police engagement, and event planning and incident response.
“We have such good ideas that came from last year’s DEI working groups. And ideally, we would have a hundred volunteers we engage with in an organized structure,” Ranney reported last month during a commission discussion session. “But that’s a whole new entity and a whole new hierarchy that we’d have to kind of create to manage that many additional volunteers.”
She, Foster, solicitor Philip Weis and others formulating the ordinance decided on the four-member board expansion.
“That’s a big jump,” Ranney said. “Let those people get acclimated, and then let that group tell us what they need to move forward successfully, and how they can best engage with all the residents in Mt. Lebanon and get their input.”
Foster said that members of the Community Relations Board, for which Mt. Lebanon Public Library director Robyn Vittek serves as staff liaison, are receptive to considerations involving diversity, equity and inclusion.
“They really embrace this focus, as well,” Foster said. “They do a lot of other great things for the community, too, and this will be another aspect of that.”
Among the board’s stated activities are coordinating an annual senior citizen health and wellness fair, initiating and facilitating community dialogue through forums, establishing liaisons with local diversity organizations, and mediating neighborhood disputes.