City’s new equity director, Andrés Portela III, will help guide policy, community inclusion

Published 8:15 am Monday, July 10, 2023

The city of Bend has hired a new diversity, equity and inclusion director, Andrés Portela III, who wants to be a conduit for partnering with communities that are often left out of government conversations.

Before coming to Bend, Portela, 29, worked in Arizona for the city of Tucson and Pima County, Arizona, where he created their respective equity offices. He also attempted a run for Tucson City Council in 2021.

In Arizona, he specialized in equitable housing efforts including enforcing fair housing practices, bringing together conflicting groups of people to find common ground and identifying how socioeconomic disparities can affect people’s health.

There are many ways to increase community members’ access to local government, Portela said, and the role of an equity director can sometimes be amorphous.

“It’s collaborating with the department of transportation, the department of housing, wastewater management and say: there are ways to operationalize equity,” he said.

Portela starts at the city on Monday. His annual salary will range from $117,000 to $152,000 according to the city’s job listing.

Bend’s new approach to equity

The city utilized a Portland-based recruitment agency, Workplace Change, to conduct the majority of the hiring process up until in-depth interviews with local officials and community members, Bend City Manager Eric King said. Many peer cities like Hillsboro, Gresham and Eugene, among others, have used the same system, King said.

Read more: Bend’s first equity director

Bend’s first equity and inclusion director seeks to turn words into action

Portela’s position is relatively new, with only one predecessor. The city’s former and first equity director, Anna Allen, was hired in 2021. She left just a year later to be closer to family, she told The Bulletin at the time. However, she stayed on a contract through the end of 2022. Since then, Mickie Derting with the city manager’s office has been serving as interim director.

Retention is one of the the equity and inclusion field’s most significant challenges, Portela said.

“It’s labor of love work,” Portela said. “A lot of the folks who are in this space, they come into it for a deep love and passion for the work, and systems don’t know how to respond yet.”

One way to address that, according to King, is to slow down. What’s required when implementing equity practices is building relationships, King said.

And that takes time.

“I think that’s the challenge for us in Bend. We’re such a fast-growing city. What we do is so timeline based,” he said.

King said the city doesn’t see the work of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility as a checkbox.

“It should be a part of our blood stream and our operations,” King said.

Bend’s equity goals

Portela will begin the director role by coordinating Welcoming Week, which is when the city invites immigrants, refugees and longtime residents to participate in inclusive events during a week in September.

Portela will also aid the city’s Human Rights and Equity Commission, a group of Bend residents that offer diverse perspectives on city policies and advise the City Council on how to encourage access to local government. The commission, under Allen’s leadership, underwent some turmoil in 2022 that led to half of commissioners resigning.

Read more: Human rights commission falters

Bend human rights commission loses half its membership in first year

However, the goals of the commission are hyper-focused with the City Council’s newly identified priorities. And they’ll require Portela’s expertise.

Manoj Alipuria, the chair of the commission, said he is excited for Portela to bring in his experience with creating collaborative governments and community engagement.

“That’s exactly what we need, is a genuine love for our city,” Alipuria said.

The commission’s goals include developing a process to assist community members who have experienced discrimination, ensuring people who aren’t traditionally able to participate in local government have access to do so and creating an equity framework to aid the city’s decision-making and policymaking.

An equity framework is a mindset, Alipuria said, which could manifest as protocols, a checklist or engaging certain people.

“It’s a lens for any action a city employee is taking big or small,” he said.

The city is serious about creating equitable policies and practices and making them stick.

King said: “It’s not a project.”