The Portland City Council isn’t seeing enough progress on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to some councilors who criticized the pace of the long-standing effort.

The council held its first workshop on DEI efforts Monday – with no public participation and little representation from other city staff.

Masi Ngidi-Brown, the interim director of the city’s racial equity department, walked the council through a 30-minute presentation outlining a survey and listening sessions with staff to assess the workplace culture for city employees. He expects to have a report detailing those findings within the next two months.

He also said that the city has applied for a bond equity program, which would bring in outside financial advisers to help the city analyze its finances through an equity lens. And he said the city plans to start looking at capital improvement projects as a means of investing in equity. He said that all of this work would help the city hire and retain more diverse candidates.

This was the first time the department has offered public updates on its work. The workshop wasn’t attended by City Manager Danielle West or any city department heads besides Ngidi-Brown and Anne Torregrossa, the director of human resources.

While some councilors were happy with the presentation, lauding the work as a great first step, other councilors said they were frustrated by the progress of the work.

“I feel like crying listening to this,” Councilor Kate Sykes said. “I prepared for this meeting by reading a 65-page report from the racial equity steering committee, and I feel like I’ve stumbled into the wrong meeting.”

Sykes said she was disappointed that the presentation didn’t outline more ambitious goals or address specific actions recommended by the steering committee years ago.

“This presentation feels like it’s operational and it shouldn’t be directed to a legislative body,” she said.

She went on to say that the city website hasn’t been updated to reflect Umaru Balde’s departure from the department, emphasizing that, in her view, the work is lagging. Balde, the inaugural director of the department, resigned after just over a year on the job.

Councilor Regina Phillips said the city has had years to do this work.

“This report was given to the City Council in 2021 and then it sat on the desk. … I want to see changes and I want to see them fast,” she said.

She said she was disappointed that more city staff and department heads weren’t present for the meeting, especially the police chief.

“This city of Portland is still a system, and it’s still a racist system,” Phillips said. “I know everybody here works extremely hard. I was just looking for so much more.”

Ngidi-Brown emphasized after the meeting that meaningful cultural shifts don’t happen overnight.

“We are moving an organization of roughly 2,000 people, there’s not going to be a lot of change quickly, what has changed is the fact that we’re talking about it,” he said.

Other councilors were satisfied with the work.

“I always envisioned that this department would start by doing internal organizational work before we started doing external facing stuff, so I’m just really thrilled,” Councilor Roberto Rodriguez said.

Mayor Mark Dion said these changes take time.

“I firmly believe an overnight success takes about five years,” he said. “I can’t talk about equity if someone is making less than a certain amount of money working for the city.”

Councilor Anna Trevorrow asked if the department could provide equity reports on proposed policy before the council in the future, “so that we can make sure what we’re passing is in line with our goals.”

Ngidi-Brown said that the department is moving in that direction.

At the end of the meeting, Councilor April Fournier asked if the council could do anything more to support DEI work for city staff, which has consistently been a top priority for the council over the past several years. The question went unanswered.