Some members of a new St. Albans City committee meant to foster equity and inclusion are questioning why the City Council appointed a resident who opposed the group’s formation.
Keith Longmore — who also is running for a seat on the school board in the Maple Run Unified School District, which serves the city — is among the appointees to the city’s Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee.
In a letter to the editor that appeared in the Saint Albans Messenger last summer, Longmore contended the city was in the arms of a “wokeness brigade” and deemed the committee “unnecessary” a month before it was created. He said that as an African American, he had not experienced discrimation or felt unwelcome in the community.
“I beg the City of St. Albans to abandon this unnecessary committee effort,” Longmore said in the Aug. 20, 2021, letter, which he addressed to St. Albans Mayor Tim Smith.
The mayor presides over the City Council and votes in its deliberations. At its Jan. 10 meeting, the council voted unanimously to appoint Longmore, as well as seven other city residents, to the newly formed committee without any public discussion.
The council voted to form the committee in September. A document outlining the role of the committee says the committee’s charge includes organizing programs and events that highlight the city’s diversity; engaging people from diverse backgrounds in local government; and advising city staff and officials on ways to demonstrate belonging, equity and inclusion.
Before applications for the body went before the full council, the applicants were each interviewed for about 20 minutes by Smith, Ward 3 Alderperson Marie Bessette and Ward 4 Alderperson Mike McCarthy, city officials told VTDigger.
Dominic Cloud, the St. Albans city manager, said nine people applied for a seat on the committee. One person was rejected, he said, because they did not live in the city.
St. Albans resident Reese Kelly, one of the appointees to the Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee, said Longmore’s appointment concerns and confuses him.
Given the council’s description of the committee calls for seven members, he said he does not understand why councilors would appoint an extra member when that person has publicly stated they do not think the committee is necessary.
He compared Longmore’s appointment to the notion of councilors taking someone who has publicly said parks are not important and appointing them to the Parks Commission.
“I think in any other avenue, city councilors would have made a decision to say: This doesn’t make sense,” said Kelly, who is queer and transgender.
Smith did not respond to VTDigger’s requests for comment by phone and email.
In addition to appointing the eight Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee members, the City Council appointed residents to three other city bodies at its Jan. 10 meeting: the Development Review Board, the Downtown Board and the Planning Commission.
The City Council packet posted on the St. Albans website ahead of the meeting included residents’ applications for those three boards but not the applications for the Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Kelly said he felt city officials were not being as transparent as they should be when they failed to post those documents.
Cloud said the discrepancy was because councilors discussed the candidates for the Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee in an executive session before the meeting. Their applications were included in a private packet available to councilors but not in the public packet available online, he said.
Cloud provided the applications to VTDigger in response to the news outlet’s request.
In response to a question asking why they wanted to join the committee, applicants gave answers that included making the city more equitable and ensuring that residents from all backgrounds feel welcome.
In his application, Longmore wrote: “As a member of the African American community that live and work within the City of St. Albans, I would bring a fresh perspective to the this (sic) Commission from a business, length of residency and older demographic viewpoint.”
Longmore did not respond to VTDigger’s requests for comment by phone and email.
Bessette was one of the councilors who interviewed candidates for the Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee. When reached by phone on Friday, she said that she was not aware Longmore had written a letter opposing the creation of the committee.
She did not recall the letter coming up in Longmore’s interview and said she likely would bot have seen it since she does not subscribe to the Saint Albans Messenger.
“I was not flagged by anything in particular that he said (in the application interview),” Bessette said.
In response to a question, Cloud said the City Council was being inclusive by allowing as many different perspectives as possible onto the committee. He said diverging options are common on public bodies and that in their deliberations councilors were effectively asking, “Who are we to decide which voice matters? Which perspective matters?”
“Even with that letter,” Cloud said, “you still don’t get away from the fact that you’ve got an all-white City Council trying to chart the best course and not wanting to say that there’s a litmus test for people of color to participate.”
Cloud said he would encourage committee members to wait for the body’s work to get underway before “starting to draw lines in the sand.”
In his letter, Longmore wrote that “encouraging wokeness in a city like St. Albans to address ‘implicit bias’ is implicitly foolish.”
“Local activists claim that minorities and the LGBTQ are made to feel like 2nd class or even non-citizens,” he wrote. “As a member of one of these besieged communities, I vehemently denounce this lie.”
Eliana Castro, another member of the Belonging, Equity and Inclusion Committee, said she does not think Longmore’s appointment is inclusive because he has questioned, or flat-out denied, the experiences of members of minority groups in the community.
Castro is an assistant professor at the University of Vermont who researches race and racism. She said the committee’s work is important since longtime St. Albans residents might not always see the issues that recent residents, like herself, see.
“When someone like Keith says, ‘I’m African American and I’ve never thought these issues are a problem’ — that’s wonderful,” said Castro, who is Black and Latina. “But that doesn’t mean that every African American family, every Black family, every Latino family feels the same way.”
