June 2021 – This year’s Nondiscrimination Plan update is almost complete. As of March 2021, staff finished a public engagement phase with Hillsborough County residents to identify the challenges they face accessing community elements, such as transportation options, quality housing, public engagement meetings, and to other important places in the County. The goal of this engagement was to learn about the needs in under-served communities.
The Federally mandated Nondiscrimination Plan is Plan Hillsborough’s opportunity to not only demonstrate that it can treat constituents equally, but to show that it acknowledges that inequities have existed in planning and policy throughout the County’s history. The plan provides the opportunity to check on performance measures related to under-served communities in the county, and it explores how we can do better. Public engagement for the plan included a countywide survey, a storytelling forum, seven weeks of field outreach, and five focus groups.
“Since the conclusion of these engagement activities, we have been performing data analysis on 456 survey responses and 150 pages of narrative data and have identified some trends and themes in the challenges and ideas that were shared,” project planner Dayna Lazurus said. “Those themes, combined with staff feedback and best practices research, are being used to create a list of preliminary recommendations designed to help the agency grapple with the area’s history of discriminatory planning and move towards a County where there are no longer under-served or underrepresented neighborhoods or demographics.”
At an upcoming virtual meeting with the public set for June 29 from 6–8 p.m., staff will present the findings from engagement as well as the proposed recommendations for the final plan. We will be seeking the community’s feedback on these recommendations. Aside from TPO and committee meetings, which are open to the public for public comment, this will be the last opportunity for the community to provide recommendations and feedback for the plan.
To register for the community feedback session please visit zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqf-yvqzkvHdKlJFTaZCN1AI0FWYY8RrCf. For more information, view the project page at planhillsborough.org/title-vi-and-nondiscrimination-plan/ or contact Dayna Lazarus at lazarusd@plancom.org or 813/82-7383.
