Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren and Monroe County Executive Adam Bello are creating a joint city-county Commission on Racial & Structural Equity.
They say the goal is to look at how the two governments deliver services so that everyone can be lifted out of poverty.
Bello says for too long there has been a chasm dividing the city and the county, and he says it is time for that to end.
Warren says the purpose is to change the course of history for people who have been deliberately left behind.
The commission co-chairs are former Mayor William Johnson and Muhammad Shafiq -- the head of the Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue at Nazareth College.
Warren wants recommendations from the panel in four months.