About a year after firing their last diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, the City of Arvada is moving forward with a new one: MGT Consulting, a national firm headquartered in Florida with consultants based in Colorado.
The city signed a contract with MGT in December 2022. Over the course of the next year, the consulting firm will work with the Arvada city team to review best practices, complete an organizational assessment, engage in a community landscape analysis, present a summary report and finally lay out a DEI action plan.
MGT’s work will focus on internal work with the Arvada city team, but will also include engagement with community members and the creation of a community DEI taskforce.
Arvada began considering DEI work in 2020. A firm — We The People — was hired to complete work similar to what MGT is tasked with, but was fired after a Jan. 10, 2022 city council meeting in which the consultants were chided by city councilmembers for mispronouncing “Arvada.”
In addition to working with municipalities across the country to help them become more inclusive, MGT is currently the client of Arapahoe and Pitkin Counties in Colorado.
“We focus on DEI in general, but also really with a focus on organizational improvement,” MGT Vice President Lamont Brown said. “And so, improving culture, improving the work experience for staff members and having a sense of what is working for the communities that our clients serve.”
City Councilmember Lauren Simpson said she was happy MGT would be proposing concrete steps the city should take, rather than just completing analysis.
“I really appreciate the use of the term action plan,” Simpson said. “One of the things that drives me the most nuts is when and this happens a lot in academic circles, we identify an issue and then we talk it to death. But and we and we come up with grand visions about where we want to go, but we don't come up with the little ladder rungs that it takes to get there."
Amy Travin, the founder of local grassroots organization Arvadans for Social Justice said that while she was happy the city was moving forward with a new DEI consultant, she hopes that history — both recent and from long ago — not be forgotten.
“I’m hesitant that while reviewing the data, the history of both long ago and more recent Arvada is going to be lost,” Travin said. “There is a history of Arvada before any of us were here and before our grandparents and great-grandparents were here."
She went on to stress that there is a history that cannot be ignored when working with and in Arvada.
"There are Native Americans in our own community living and breathing right now that have voices to be listened to for this work," she said.
Travin urged the consultant not miss to not miss out on those particular voices when engaging with the community and also pointed out that more recent history, such as when the first consultant, We the People, was hired, should be just important as the history from long ago.
“ urge the consultants to ask around everyone here what they remember and also urge the consultants to watch that meeting from a year ago to gauge for themselves how open the city is to this work and what may be required to move forward in it," she said.
