A letter to City Commissioners concerning a proposed fairness ordinance and Green Dot were both discussed by the Maysville Commission on Human Rights Thursday, May 17.
The Human Rights Commission has been trying to draft a fairness ordinance in recent months to present to the city commission. A fairness ordinance would augment current anti-discrimination laws by also preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
According to City Attorney Sue Brammer, a few changes were made to the proposed ordinance by her and the Human Rights Commission. One change was involving hearings related to fairness ordinance violations.
“It says you all can appoint a hearing officer which you would do with the city manager,” Brammer said. “I think at that point you’d also appoint a local attorney to act as kind of a judge for the hearing.”
As for an investigator, according to Brammer, an investigator into possible violations would probably have to be found at the time of the investigation.
“Some places staff from the city,” Brammer said. “We don’t have as large a group to pull from and I don’t think we have anyone trained in this area.”
Brammer said that it could be viable to reach out to Morehead, which has passed a fairness ordinance, to see if they have anyone who could help investigate.
“I think the city commission may want to adopt the ordinance as is now knowing we will have to find someone when we get a complaint,” Brammer said.
Brammer also said that an outside attorney could be hired to investigate complaints.
The city commission will be receiving a letter regarding the fairness ordinance at their June meeting.
According to Human Rights commissioner Ellen Cartmell, the Maysville Young Professionals is wanting to partner with the Human Rights Commission to sponsor a Green Dot training.
According to Cartmell, the training would probably take place in July at the earliest.
According to its website, Green Dot is a nationally recognized strategy focused on preventing power-based personal violence – sexual violence, partner violence, child abuse, elder abuse, bullying, and stalking.
The Green Dot strategy draws its name from the image of a map covered in red dots representing a terrible epidemic. In this image, a red dot represents any act of power-based personal violence. Green dots are just small, individual, manageable actions people can make to make it less likely that red dots show up on community maps.
The Human Rights Commission will meet again on June 21 at 5:15 p.m.
