22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY MAY 1-7, 2025 www.montereycountynow.com ernment, Williamson got appointed to the Architectural Review Committee, where he learned how local government is organized and the rules of public meetings. Even more importantly, he says, he developed relationships with Monterey city staff and community leaders. “This isn’t saying you have to be their best friend, but how folks can be successful creating influence— it’s very much a relational space,” he says. “It’s not just elected officials, it’s people that surround them. Relationships are so important.” Relationships go all the way up and down the chain of leadership. At 7am on Wednesday, April 9, a group of local elected officials boarded a bus in Salinas to head to Sacramento for the day to get face time with Robert Rivas. Rivas was not only elected to represent District 29 in the California Assembly, advocating for the needs of his constituents in the Capitol, but he was then elected by his colleagues to become the powerful Speaker of the Assembly in 2023. That has meant spending more time traveling throughout the entire state—he has an office in Los Angeles, for example, in addition to his Salinas district office—and expanded responsibilities. That led elected leaders in his district to feel like he is increasingly hard to reach, and to his staff coordinating the day-long field trip for 18 local mayors, city councilmembers and county supervisors. “I have seen firsthand when we work together we are not only stronger, but we are much more effective,” Rivas told the group. “The ability to build relationships here in Sacramento makes all the difference. “My goal is to bring you all together, to build relationships. Your voice absolutely matters.” Church thinks a lot about whose voice is heard. “I bristle when I hear the word ‘stakeholder’ now,” he says. “Stakeholders aren’t bad, they represent a constituency. But government has gotten so complicated that you have professionals [participating]. That is really one of the integral threats to a democracy—we’ve got tens of thousands of people who are the real stakeholders.” Increasingly, local government itself is working to simplify that. “Local government has historically been very much posting a meeting, holding a meeting and asking people to come to you,” says José Arreola, assistant city manager in Salinas. “Where we elevated community engagement has been really pushing ourselves to go to where people are at.” One example of that is Salinas’ annual budgeting process. While the budget is usually not approved until May, outreach to the public begins months earlier, in December. City staff host dozens of pop-ups—at laundromats, grocery stores, La Plaza Bakery locations, youth basketball games— encouraging people to weigh in. This effort has engaged as many as 6,000 people in one budget cycle since it began in 2019. Starting in 2012, the City has hosted a community leadership academy, an intensive seven-week course educating over 1,000 people about how local government works and what it does. A big focus is on the relationship piece: How to contact your city councilmember for your district, and ideas for how to constructively engage them on issues they have jurisdiction over. (“There is a lot of misinformation about what their taxes go to,” Arreola notes. “A lot of people think we have influence over public education or hospitals, but that’s not something we do.”) Salinas also hosts a youth internship, and there are other opportunities for young people to learn the ropes and to have a direct impact. Beyond Salinas only, the Monterey County Elections Department is now inviting incoming high school juniors and seniors to apply for a one-week internship (from June 23-27), in which students will be invited to design and launch projects increasing civic engagement. County Supervisor Luis Alejo is now accepting applications for his four-week-long young supervisor program (open to high school and first-year college students), originally founded in 2011 as a young assemblymember program when he served in the State Assembly, to mentor rising leaders in civic participation. Local cities including Gonzales and Soledad appoint youth councils with real decisionmaking authority. For transportation improvement projects under the umbrella of Safe Routes to School, the Transportation Agency for Monterey County has collaborated with the County Health Department and the nonprofit Ecology Action to invite local people, including students and parents, to guide the process. The idea is that while engineers with technical knowledge are needed— somebody needs to know what a curb bulb-out is to develop a budget and design a project—it’s the regular people who walk to and from school every day who know what will truly make them feel safer in their neighborhoods. For the past eight months, for example, the North Monterey County Safe Routes to School Steering Committee has been meeting at various elementary schools in North County, with some 25-30 community members weighing in on different intersections and ideas to improve them. “These are folks without formal transportation knowledge,” says Gino Garcia, assistant planner at Ecology Action, who facilitates community engagement. “They get to decide how to allocate that funding so it aligns with their vision. What we say is, ‘We have a toolbox; now, community, tell us how you want to use that toolbox, and we’ll make it happen.’” Garcia’s work begins months before the steering committee is even convened, hosting informal chats over coffee to explain the process and recruit prospective members—who need no other qualifications besides caring. The steering committee has selected 16 finalist projects, and a survey opened on April 27 (online in English and Spanish at bit.ly/NorthCountyPB). The committee will then review the survey results and make a final project recommendation—which combination of digital speed signs, curb extensions, new sidewalk or flashing beacons will best serve themselves and their neighborhoods within their $1 million budget. The committee’s recommendations will then go to the County Board of Supervisors for consideration before a final proposal goes to the TAMC board of directors for approval. Of course, no matter what government does to encourage the public to participate, it’s ultimately up to the public whether they do. Building Healthy Communities launched in 2010 as a 10-year, $1 billion initiative by the California Endowment to transform 14 communities throughout California that were experiencing health inequities, including East Salinas. The idea was to empower the people themselves who face disproportionately poor health outcomes to propose solutions and advocate for those solutions—a bottom-up approach, instead of a top-down approach. “The California Endowment learned that building voice and power via longterm investment is the best and only way to advance health and racial equity in a sustainable fashion,” according to a 10-year report published in 2021. Building Healthy Communities Monterey Mayor Tyller Williamson (center) celebrates his reelection to a second term in November 2024. He first got interested in politics by volunteering for a presidential campaign, before turning his attention to local issues. He built local relationships before considering a run for office through founding the nonprofit Monterey Peninsula Pride. DANIEL DREIFUSS
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