County could adopt goals to ensure justice

The Orange County Board of Commissioners will consider becoming one of the first in the nation to adopt a set of guidelines ensuring fairness consideration in decisions.

The board will review the final draft of a proposed social justice goal at its meeting tonight.

The five page report written by the Orange County Human Relations Commission" is intended to formalize the principles that the board aims to uphold.

""These principles need to be highlighted and celebrated"" Chairman Barry Jacobs said.

The document divides social justice into six categories that the board should consider: elimination of oppression, economic self-sufficiency, safe communities, environmental justice, civic participation and other.

It also includes specific recommendations for promoting social justice, including extending county civil rights ordinances to protect people against discrimination based on sexual orientation and expanding public transportation.

Currently there are no articulated standards for ensuring justice in board decisions. The guidelines will serve as a measuring stick to which the public can hold commissioners accountable.

If the social justice goal is adopted, Orange County would be one of few in the nation with a set of fixed social justice guidelines.

We would certainly be the first county in North Carolina to have social justice goals"" Commissioner Mike Nelson said.

The board first asked the Human Relations Commission to formulate the goal in 2004. A first draft was presented to the board at a February work session.

The county manager recommended that the goal be adopted in spring of 2009, said Shoshannah Smith, director of Human Rights and Relations for the county.

Aspects of the goal have already been considered by the board as part of the process for locating a proposed waste transfer station in Orange County.

In March 2007, the board decided to place the transfer station at the location of the current landfill, at Eubanks Road.

After opposition from residents of the mostly black community, where the landfill has been located since 1972, the commissioners reopened the search in Nov. 2007.

In September of this year, the board adopted environmental justice as one of its criteria in the search for the waste transfer site.

Stan Cheren, communications chair of the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism, said a set of social justice guidelines would have done little to benefit the community residents.

I don't think it would have had a major difference" he said.

But others said fixed social justice criteria would have saved residents great amounts of trouble.

I think that that's an excellent thing" said Yonni Chapman, of the coalition and local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It changes the culture in that social justice is recognized as a community concern.

""If they had been in place"" it would have meant the original decision to site the waste transfer station would never have happened.""



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