Cobleskill is moving ahead with forming an anti-bias committee.
Coming in response to the controversy over racial slurs, the committee will eventually make recommendations to local government for policies to deal with and lessen bias.
Village board members discussed the committee at a special meeting Saturday. Deputy Mayor Mark Galasso said Trustee Linda Holmes will draft a resolution to support and help create the committee.
He said the resolution should be ready for the village’s August 17 meeting.
“Then we’d like government to step back,” Mr. Galasso said. “This is not a legal issue, but a moral one.
“Neither should it be a board-run process. This should be a community-run process.”
Susan Spivack will organize the new committee. Ms. Spivack is a founding member of ACCORD––A Community Committee On Respect and Diversity––that has had success dealing with similar issues during its 10-year history with Cobleskill-Richmondville Central School.
Though Ms. Spivack agreed with Mr. Galasso that the committee should be community-based, she also believes government should play a role.
To that end, the committee will have representatives from Cobleskill’s town and village boards, Ms. Spivack said.
Emphasizing that the committee is still in the planning stage––it hasn’t even met yet––Ms. Spivack sees the group recommending anti-bias policies, statements and diversity training to the town and village boards.
Then the boards should write their own policies, she said.
“We want to make sure these ideas are living organisms in the body of our community,” she said.
To broaden the base, village officials will take their resolution to a town board meeting to get support there, Mr. Galasso said.
Although the committee will have a specific charge of recommending policies and statements, Ms. Spivack said the committee should be long-term, as ACCORD has been.
ACCORD’s impact at C-R has grown over the years even though sometimes the going seemed slow, she added.
As ACCORD has done, the committee could deal with anti-bias issues quietly and without a splash in the press, Ms. Spivack said.
“ACCORD is the only model we have right now, and it’s worked,” she said. “Why re-invent the wheel?”
Ms. Spivack stressed that the policy-writing will take time, and people shouldn’t expect overnight results.
“It’s a work in progress,” she said. “These are good-hearted people doing their best to make a good thing happen.”
Four people have already expressed interest in being on the committee. Anyone interested can call village Clerk Sheila Gillespie at 234-3891.