Living Hope Christian Fellowship celebrated the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monday with a frank community discussion on race relations in Renton.

A diverse audience of close to 50 people turned out to hear a panel of city government and local leaders address the theme of “Building Healthy Bridges Across Racial Divides.”

The panel included Renton representatives City Council President Ed Prince, Chief Administrator Jay Covington, Chief of Police Kevin Milosevich and Deputy Public Affairs Administrator Preeti Shridhar. Author and college professor Marcia Tate Arunga was also on the panel as was Troy Landrum, youth pastor at the church and a YMCA outreach worker.

Associate Pastor George Houston and Lead Pastor Jess Champers moderated the talk that asked the panel what racial conflicts or challenges have they experienced in their positions and how did they resolve them.

Shridhar kicked off the discussion sharing the city’s first big wake-up call that officials couldn’t do things as before when dealing with Renton’s diverse community: It was the windstorm of 2006 and local residents were dying of carbon monoxide poisoning because they didn’t understand the warnings about bringing outdoor barbecues inside.

“In a sense, that unfortunate incident was around the time the city really stepped up and said, ‘We cannot do business as usual,’” said Shridhar. “’We need to see how we can expand our outreach and our efforts with the community.’”

It was then that the city began looking at its communication efforts and the makeup of different city departments and officials began reaching out to community members. Renton’s minority population grew by 169.9 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the city. Seattle’s minority population grew by just 13.4 percent during the same time period.

Shridhar touted the city’s network of community liaisons and the city’s mission statement, which is “building an inclusive city with opportunities for all.”

Covington recognized that Renton City Hall has a majority white workforce that doesn’t reflect the community it serves. He sees that fact as a barrier to all of Renton’s residents feeling the inclusiveness that the city is trying to adopt.

“I think probably the biggest challenge that I see is that there still are people in the community who don’t yet feel that,” he said. “So trusting is a huge issue that comes from everything from a routine traffic stop to contact with a municipal worker in the street to somebody on the phone or at the counter.”

Last year the City of Renton really started to look at its policies, systems and trainings and delved into topics such as institutional racism and white privilege, he said.

Troy Landrum, who works with youth at the church and the YMCA, spoke to black youth’s fears of the police and their questions as to whether or not they will even get to graduate and have a future.

Marcia Tate Arunga’s take on what it means to be inclusive really resonated with the audience. She compared the idea to having a room with all your furniture and pictures in place and then inviting someone in to live there but not allowing them to contribute their own home decor or collaborate on anything.

“I would say as an educator that I have noticed over the years that our biggest issue, our challenge in front of us, has been the omission of facts and sets of knowledge that includes everyone in the picture,” she said.

Councilmember Prince spoke to a similar kind of occurrence he’s observed in Olympia as head of Washington’s Commission on African American Affairs.

“In my work in Olympia, I don’t really see racial conflict, but I do occasionally see legislation that has not racial bias, but blinders to what should be done,” Prince said. “I don’t know if that is out of ignorance or just not knowing.”

Chief Milosevich spoke to what he said is the biggest issue facing police departments across the country and that is agencies’ relationships with the African American community. He said that Renton has been aware of that issue even before the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We’ve got to resolve this; it’s been bubbling under the surface for way too long,” Milosevich said of tensions. “We’ve got to figure out how to fix it. While its easy to kind of wait to see what happens in D.C. at the Department of Justice or in the Attorney General’s Office, see how it floats down through the region, locally we really don’t have time.”

Milosevich said that he’s been meeting with other police chiefs from across the region and Prince, in his role as executive director of Washington’s Commission on African American Affairs, to see how they can make a difference locally on racial issues.

“We’re in crisis mode in law enforcement,” Milosevich said. “This is a huge issue and we’ve got to get our arms around it.”

Reaction to the panel discussion was positive, although moderators and audience members alike said there was only so much time and to address so many issues.

“To me there was so much more that each of the speakers could say and the time format just really wouldn’t allow it,” said Houston. “But I thought it was enough what was said to make other people want to engage in the process, to draw someone back out.”

Some immigrants in the audience expressed an interest in having their concerns heard too, which some say presenters didn’t address.

“We are immigrants,” said Pastor Joel Mboya of Fireflow International church. “We have issues that weren’t addressed over there, whereby we need such a kind of forum to be often, not only once like Martin Luther King time, but make more time.”

Pastor Champers hopes to do more work with the City of Renton and his church and said that there were some Russian community members in the audience and had hoped to get to cultural differences too. Living Hope Christian Fellowship has five different congregations that meet in its building: Kenyan, Russian, Cambodian, Canadian and Hispanic.

“I think this is just scratching the surface underneath all of the things that were said there’s a lot more that we can understand from one another to  kind of continue to help Renton be maybe even a pioneer with racial reconciliation and cultural stuff,” Champers said.

Church member Barbara Warner really liked the event because it at least started a dialogue.

“We need to start talking about these things even if its uncomfortable just to learn other people’s experiences, so we can better understand where they’re coming from, building those bridges,” she said.