Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney mentioned the committee in his letter of support for the 2026 FIFA World Cup to take place in North Texas.
“Frisco is proud of the human rights programs we have in place to protect the rights and freedoms of our citizens in the workplace, in their homes, and in our public venues,” Cheney said in the letter. “Our Frisco Inclusion Committee works closely with city staff, including our police department, to understand, respect and provide services to the many diverse cultures of our residents and visitors.”
The problem is, Pride Frisco says, an official inclusion committee was never established. By all appearances on social media and city documents, there appears to be an organization, at least in an unofficial capacity, called the Frisco Inclusion Committee that has been active to some degree for a few years.
But Justin Culpepper, co-founder and president of Pride Frisco, says this committee has been loosely organized and probably isn't technically an official city effort. Culpepper thinks that having the city focus specific attention on its diverse population in an official manner will make Frisco safer for the LGBTQ population, among others. Now, he's hoping to both make the committee official, and to ensure it's here to stay.
“The emphasis here is on human rights,” Culpepper, said of the committee. He submitted records requests to find out more about it. He turned up a record titled “Proclamation Establishing Frisco Inclusion Committee,” but it was dated 2022 (not 2019 or before, when it was allegedly already in operation) and was marked as a draft. In a May letter to the Frisco City Council, Culpepper said he made multiple requests for a formal list of members of the committee but never got one. Despite this, a list of city committees and their members can be found on the city’s website.
While the committee can’t be found on the city’s website, the Observer was able to find one agenda for a 2021 roundtable between the inclusion committee and representatives from the local Asian community. We also found an active Facebook page for the committee, which the city tagged in a 2020 post celebrating Juneteenth. The Facebook page includes posts about events the committee helped put on. It also listed an email address for the committee. We reached out but didn’t get a response. The city of Frisco did not respond to requests for comment about the committee.“The emphasis here is on human rights.” – Justin Culpepper, Pride Frisco
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In August, Frisco's governance committee moved to update individual boards and commissions, requesting a list of all official and nonofficial committees. Later that month, Culpepper reached back out to the city to get the status on the inclusion committee. That’s when he received a response from City Council member Bill Woodard that said council members were “working towards formalizing in writing … the purpose, composition and functions … of the inclusion committee.”
There are some similarities between the actions of Frisco's governance committee and what the city of Rowlett did recently when it scrapped its diversity, equity and inclusion commission.
Woodard added: “That work has not been completed. Once that work is completed it will be submitted to [the entire] council for approval.” He also said that the inclusion committee was created before the city’s most recent procedures for creating such committees was adopted. So, there was no resolution or formal procedure when the inclusion committee was created, Woodard said.
Woodard did not respond to a request for comment.
At a March 5 meeting of the governance committee, City Council member Tammy Meinershagen said that members of the inclusion committee wanted the committee to become official. Meinershagen also said the members wanted the committee to be changed to the multicultural advisory board.
In April, Culpepper learned that the governance committee was still reviewing all boards, commissions and committees. Creation of a "multicultural committee" will be taken up by the Frisco City Council at its meeting this evening.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the city of Frisco said the Frisco Inclusion Committee was established by the mayor in 2018 and later worked to promote cultural awareness by educating, celebrating and advocating for different cultures throughout the city. However, the spokesperson said the committee was undergoing a name change to the Frisco Multicultural Committee. "While the committee has a new name, its primary purposes remain – educate, celebrate and advocate for the different cultures in our community,” the statement said.
Because Pride Frisco says the an inclusion committee has never existed in an official capacity, it is requesting that the city adopt one. The organization started an online petition to support the effort, which has gathered about 133 signatures as of Monday afternoon.
“Their commitment to this issue is paltry, it is weak, and they backtrack at the first sign of resistance,” Culpepper said. “It is incumbent on them to do this in order to protect the safety of citizens.”
