In 2016, I started occasionally attending City Council meetings. If you may recall, it was a very intense political year, and not the most productive one at that. I started to question what use it was to have dialogue when it seemed like everyone was very much entrenched in their own beliefs.
Going to those meetings reshaped that. I recall when one community member stood up and shared her story of being abused by a corrections officer how much it transformed the energy in the room. Everybody was troubled by what they heard. Everyone was motivated to do something.
My biggest lessons from showing up were these:
• Younger people are often underrepresented in shaping local-level decisions.
• That’s somewhat by design. So many votes and forums are held on weekdays during working hours. What do you suppose the demographic of people who are free at that time looks like?
• City Council is an important role. Take the time to know the interests of your Council.
• Public comments matter. Like the story I mentioned above, councilmembers are often more receptive to public pressure than other positions.
Over the past week, I saw literally hundreds of San Diegans, mostly younger people, call in to call on City Council to disapprove a budget that increased police spending and to instead allocate that funding to rent relief and community services.
There’s a second part to this story, where the Council still voted 8-1 to approve the budget. I couldn’t believe that such a clear message sent by constituents would be ignored by the council. I later learned that this was partially because San Diego has a “strong mayor” system, where if the budget was disapproved, the mayor would still be given a say over how the funds were used. It underscored the importance of showing up persistently, not just now, but always. A couple councilmembers who would’ve preferred to disapprove voted to approve to protect the hard-earned funding they won for other causes.
That episode was disappointing, but it was encouraging to see the turnout, and how many people in my town are now paying attention to this arena of decision making.