By Josh Resnek
Everett’s work force at city hall is not reflective of the vastly changed place that Everett has become in the past ten years, according to a review of demographic statistics provided by the US Census bureau.
Despite the mayor’s promise to make Everett a better place, excluding minorities from positions of importance in percentiles representing the new Everett growing up all around us, is not considered fair or reasonable public policy.
Despite huge numbers and growing percentiles of residents who are Hispanic and Black or African American, city hall’s workforce is largely absent of Black, African American or Hispanic department heads and even lags way behind neighboring cities in percentages of rank and file city employees of color and ethnicity from those racial groups.
Brazilians in city service are almost non-existent, despite a huge population of Brazilians living in the city.
Residents from the Haitian community are also largely absent from positions at city hall despite a large and growing Haitian community existing here for quite some time.
Census figures indicate that Black and African American residents comprise 19.7% of the city’s population while Hispanic and Latino population stands at 21.9%.
In 2017, when these figures were compiled and released, the percentage of Everett’s population who was not born in the United States stood at 40.8%.
Out of nine major departments at city hall, only one is believed to be headed by a person of color.
Presently, there are no employees of color or ethnicity working inside the mayor’s office.
While the city will not provide the Leader Herald with a breakdown of city employees and would not identify how many racial groups are represented and in what numbers, it is obvious that the city hall employee roster does not reasonably match the multi-cultural make-up of the city.
The city’s employee roster remains largely white, which is inconsistent with the city’s highly mixed and rapidly changing demographic reality.
Since 2017, the percentages of non-whites in the city has gone up while the white population has declined.
It is expected the 2020 census will reveal the dramatic changes in the city’s demographic make-up.
There is a smattering of people of color and ethnicity running for public office in the upcoming municipal election.
The possible change in the make-up of the city council and the school committee could mark a turning point in forcing the administration to hire more minorities into leadership positions at city hall.