www.montereycountyweekly.com november 16-22, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 23 In 2013, the City of Gonzales and Gonzales Unified School District organized a youth forum at Gonzales High School. Students of all ages presented ideas for projects and changes they wanted their city or school to implement. They pitched ideas to the public about reducing graffiti, tackling bullying and increasing recreational activities. “That was the first time that I really saw our community come together,” says Jeffrey Alvarez, one of the participants. Former mayor Maria Orozco and former city manager René Mendez attended the forum. The student presentations, along with the data and the research they cited to back them up, impressed Orozco. “I looked at my city manager and I said, ‘These kids have so much talent. How can we continue to get them more involved?’” The interest of city officials led to the appointment of two students— Alvarez and Yesenia Camacho—as youth commissioners, with the charge of growing youth participation in the city. The two took part in the first summer youth leadership program in Gonzales. They completed a community service learning action project. This research project included different ways the city could grow youth community engagement, and the two commissioners recommended to Gonzales City Council the creation of a youth council. Their proposal included creating an appointed body that would work with and advise city officials and the Gonzales Unified School District. The City Council unanimously supported the commissioners’ recommendation. “That’s how the youth council was formed,” says Michelle Slade, chief strategist at C4 Consulting and GYC’s leadership development adviser. The council—an idea pitched by and for students—was formally established in 2015. Eight years later, it is still active, with a new generation of young commissioners, and has concrete successes to point to. And at a time of hand-wringing nationally over shortcomings in civics education, the Gonzales Youth Council is serving as a template for other local cities aiming to create and formalize ways to get young people involved in government. By 2017, the Gonzales Youth Commission was looking to suggest changes to policies that mattered to them. Fabiola Moreno, a former commissioner, says underage drinking was common at parties and that parents were aware of it. She remembers there was an uptick in car crashes in Gonzales involving teens, and she and others wanted to bring awareness to this issue. For Moreno, it was personal. “My family has always struggled with addiction to alcohol,” she says. “And they started drinking alcohol when they were teenagers.” In 2017, the Gonzales Youth Council worked closely with City Attorney Michael Rodriguez, nonprofit Sun Street Centers and the Gonzales Police Department to address underage drinking. Slade says members of the Youth Council looked at the issue beyond the punitive side and included an educational framework for a policy. The GYC voted unanimously to recommend a social host ordinance, targeting adults who allow underage drinking with fines of up to $350 for the first violation, more for repeated offenses. On the education front, instead of paying a fine for the first infraction, residents can opt to take an online course from the North American Learning Institute called Minor in Possession. City Council adopted the ordinance in 2017. “It became the first formal policy driven by youth,” Slade says. For years, GYC advocated for a teen innovation center. In 2021, Gonzales received $5 million from the state for this purpose. It will be part of a larger, $35 million project, the community center complex. The 23,000-squarefoot project at Gavilan Court and Fifth Street will start construction next year. Members of the GYC met with architects, visited other teen centers and were part of the decision-making process. The GYC has weighed in on other matters, including the local cannabis ordinance and mental health issues among their peers. The Mental Health Action Project, which started before the pandemic hit, brought awareness to challenges students were facing, including anxiety, depression and low academic performance. Later on, the youth council partnered with Jennifer Lovell, an associate professor of clinical psychology at CSU Monterey Bay, and developed a survey to find out about the impact of isolation on teens during the Covid-19 pandemic and the resources they had available to them. They received 374 responses, which showed more than half of students were having issues staying motivated at school; 30 percent of respondents said their grades dropped or their post-high school plans had changed. GYC presented the findings to the City Council, the school board and the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. In response to ongoing research on mental health, in 2020 the city and school district agreed to collaborate to fund an additional licensed clinical social worker position for up to $69,000 per year for the 2021-2022 school year. The Youth Council’s mental health project research, which is currently in its third year, has been published in the peer-reviewed School Psychology Review of the National Association of School Psychologists. Youth councils meet every other week to work on the projects selected as points of emphasis for the year. The 2023-2024 Gonzales Youth Council has established its priorities for the year. The council will work with the city on such issues as drug abuse prevention, housing insecurity, tenant rights and community beautification. Daniel Dreifuss Daniel Dreifuss
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