Nearly three months after the city’s diversity coordinator resigned for undisclosed reasons, Portland is looking to replace the executive-level position with a lower-level administrator in the human resources office.

The new equal employment opportunity officer/human resources generalist position will focus more on internal employment issues at City Hall while the previous position, which was called the multicultural affairs director, was more focused on community relations. The individual hired will be responsible for investigating staff complaints about discrimination, writing and monitoring the city’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity policies, and training city staff on diversity issues, among other duties.

The position still entails conducting community outreach to help diversify the ranks of city employees.

City Manager Jon Jennings said the new position is “very important” and needed to be in the city’s Human Resources Department because that’s where hiring and recruitment decisions are being made. He also sees the new position as critical to ensuring that the city fully complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“I do not want anyone to think because we have expanded the job responsibilities for this position that means we are less committed to engagement with our diverse communities,” Jennings said.

“I do believe the city continues to need to have all of us focused on outreach to the community and not just one position. I spend a lot of time meeting with and listening to members of our diverse communities.”

The new officer’s job is to ensure that the city does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability, while also ensuring that all groups are aware of municipal job openings. City Human Resources Director Gina Tapp said complaints about discrimination are rare in Portland.

The new job description and posting come nearly three months after Rachel Talbot Ross resigned for undisclosed reasons after being placed on paid administrative leave.

Talbot Ross, whose family has long ties to public service and Maine’s civil rights movement, is the president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP, and was the city’s multicultural affairs officer for 21 years.

She worked in the city manager’s office, rather than the HR office, and her primary role was conducting outreach to different groups in Portland. EEO compliance was handled by the human resources director.

The Rev. Kenneth Lewis, pastor of Green Memorial AME Zion Church in Portland, said he is taking a “wait-and-see” approach to the new position.

He’s encouraged that one of the job duties is focusing internally at City Hall to remove real and perceived barriers to diversifying the city’s workforce. However, he is concerned that whoever is hired will not have a seat at the table with city leadership the way Talbot Ross did.

“I’m not sure I like it buried in the human resources office,” Lewis said. “There’s a need to have the community’s perspective at the table amongst the department heads. I don’t know who brings that perspective to the department heads when you bury it down a few levels. That gives me pause.”

The city “has a long ways to go” toward creating a diverse workforce that is reflective of its population, Lewis said.

According to the U.S. Census, about 15 percent of the city’s 66,000 residents are people of color, including 7 percent identifying as black or African-American. Nearly 51 percent are females.

As of June 30, 2015, 94 percent of the city’s 1,250 full-time workforce were white and 63 percent were males, according to data provided by Tapp, the human resources director. The city employed 41 black/African-American people, 19 Asian/Pacific Islanders, 10 Hispanics and five American Indian/Alaskan Natives.

The position of multicultural affairs officer was first established in the 1990s under City Manager Bob Ganley, around the time that Portland began getting an influx of immigrants and refugees. Ganley believed the city needed a high-level liaison in the manager’s office to ensure that the needs of new Mainers were being met.

Over the years, the position has faced budgetary scrutiny. The city looked at scaling it back in 2010, around the same time Portland eliminated more than 100 positions in response to the recession. The position was spared after former City Manager Joe Gray partially paid for it with economic development money and rewriting the job description to add minority business development responsibilities.

The old position paid $59,700 in 2010, but had increased to $72,033 when Talbot Ross resigned in December.

The pay range for the new position is $50,524 to $67,743.

Reached by phone on Tuesday afternoon, Talbot Ross indicated she was discouraged by changes to the job when it was described to her by a reporter. She said she would offer more thoughts after having a chance to read the new job description, but did not provide any more feedback in time for this story.

Jennings, the city manager, said he is passionate about having a diverse workforce at City Hall. He also said he is concerned that the city has not been doing enough to make sure city buildings, sidewalks and streets are accessible to those with mobility issues.

“I have a laser focus on making sure the city’s workforce reflects the changing nature of our city,” Jennings said.

 

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