Minneapolis officials tasked with improving racial equity in the city told council members they are making steady progress — but aren't yet able to offer up many tangible results.

Deputy city coordinator Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde told council members Wednesday that she and other city employees hired to take on the equity issue have been meeting with the heads of each department, trying to sort out what efforts are already happening and which should be linked. She assembled a 14-page presentation, with dozens of "equitable action steps" being taken across city government.

But while council members praised the work, some said they are still not quite clear what's actually happening. Nearly a year and a half after the council settled on an official definition for equity and began hiring new staff members with "equity" in their titles, few real results have been documented.

Council Member Blong Yang said navigating the long list of programs the city has launched is often "confusing as heck."

"We're talking about a racial equity tool kit, we're talking about an action plan, we're talking about all of these things," he said. "And I thought I had a handle on this but it seems very unclear, and murky. … Are we getting to the point where we have something everyone can follow? Because I'm not getting that here."

Eliminating gaps between white and minority residents has been identified repeatedly as a top goal of the mayor and council. To that end, the council last year approved $250,000 in new spending to create two equity positions in the City Coordinator's Office. The mayor, meanwhile, has hired two employees to oversee work on her Cradle to K program and My Brother's Keeper project, two initiatives with equity as a main focus.

The city also landed a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant of up to $2.7 million, which put six grant-funded staff members in the City Coordinator's Office, all focused on equity in the distribution of city services.

Rivera-Vandermyde told the council that her office is trying to ensure all of those efforts are operating in sync. Over the next month, she plans to wrap up the meetings with individual departments. She said she would bring a more thorough report to the council later this year.

"One of those 'aha moments' is that everyone seems to be doing a lot of work, and it's all over the place," she said.

Council President Barb Johnson, who has in the past been critical of the way the city approaches equity concerns, said city leaders should make sure it doesn't focus on expanding diversity in a single area.

Instead of recruiting more people into civil rights-related committees, she said Minneapolis should look for more diverse talent on all of its influential citizen groups.

Johnson said many of those groups currently have little racial or geographic diversity within their ranks.

"We have to attract people of color to the [Capital Long Range Improvement Committee], to the Planning Commission, to the Board of Adjustment, to the Heritage Preservation Commission," she said. "If one would look at the geographic makeup of those groups … it's an embarrassment."

Johnson suggested the city bring back a practice it dropped during tighter budget times: providing a stipend for child care for people who serve on city committees. She said many working people want to participate but can't because schedules and budgets are stretched too thin.

Erin Golden • 612-673-4790