February 5th, 2009
Equal Rights Proposals
At February 9’s council meeting, there will be an initial discussion on equal rights proposals I am bringing to council. There will be a public hearing and anyone is welcome to come and speak on these issues. The meeting starts at 7:30pm in city hall (220 Elkton Road)
The four motions include:
1. Adding “gender identity and expression” to the city’s personnel policy regarding nondiscrimination.
2. Within city limits, making discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression illegal in housing, employment, and public accommodations (asking staff to research and report back).
3. Creating a life partner registry (asking staff to research and report back).
4. Offering domestic partner benefits to city employees (asking staff to research and report back).
Attached to this post are the text of these motions and three supporting documents with more background information.
Click here for the full text of these motions:
Click here for more information regarding nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression:
NonDiscrimination Background Information
Click here for more information on life partner registries:
Click here for more information regarding domestic partner benefits:
5 comments ↓
Great job, Ezra! Your documentation and proposals are thorough, explicit and it’s about time we had this kind of freedom in Newark.
Great Job! Ezra I will be there for mondays meeting and I will speak about what I have gone through in my past work struggles! Keep up the good work!
Dear Ezra
I am a Newark resident and agree and support the proposals regarding equal rights, family and partner beneifts. We need to make our government more inclusive and supportive of us all.
Thanks to Ezra for brining these important human rights matters to the city of Newark.
Sincerely,
Jen Hill
8 Casho Mill Rd.
Newark DE 19711
The city’s report on domestic partner benefits can be found at http://cityofnewarkde.us/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1155
For the city to adopt domestic partner benefits, the labor management committee will need to vote on this in June. Therefore I plan to request at our next meeting that a resolution be placed on the agenda for our Tuesday, May 26 meeting. This way the committee will have a sense of council on this issue. This will include a public hearing.
The reports on the life partner registry and nondiscrimination ordinance were given to council as a confidential attorney-client report, so I cannot comment on them. I will request a new report that is made public. However, based on my reading of the report, the level of research that has been done is insufficient for these measures to be ordinance-ready so the full public discussion on these matters will likely be later than May when we have the details we need about the two items.
Thanks,
Ezra
At the last council meeting, council requested a definition of domestic partner benefits from the city manager and asked that domestic partner benefits be put on the agenda for the labor-management committee meeting.
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