Youth want more influence
Students and youth activists on Tuesday called for the creation of a permanent Youth Commission at City Hall to better represent the views of Santa Monica’s young people.
About 50 community members, youth counselors, school district representatives and city staff members met Tuesday at the Ken Edwards Center to discuss strategies for creating a Youth Commission and how it could benefit the entire city.
“There is a process starting to create a Santa Monica Youth Commission,” said Jerry Rubin, a local activist coordinating the effort. “And the more we get the word out about it, the better.”
The idea is to create a sitting commission consisting of representatives of students from local public and private middle schools, high schools and possibly a representative from Santa Monica College that would meet regularly to discuss issues affecting Santa Monica’s youth.
The group would give young people in the community a voice on civic issues, organizers say, and provide a viewpoint that is otherwise absent from City Hall.
“The biggest advantage to me is an overarching perspective,” said Matt Chapa, with the Los Angeles City Youth Services Department. “The youth have a different viewpoint, and they aren’t inhibited about giving it. The whole political correctness isn’t inhibiting them, to their benefit.”
Los Angeles, Malibu and Huntington Beach, among other municipalities, have created similar commissions to advocate on the behalf of youth, and to design programs and services for younger residents. The commissions also involve students in the governmental process, officials said.
Already, the Santa Monica Unified School District has student representatives from its two high schools — Santa Monica and Malibu — serving as alternate school board members. And with the exception of voting on personnel and student expulsion decisions, the students are given full voting rights.
And the Santa Monica Police Department has created a Youth Services Division that helps officers and young people work together.
The idea of creating some form of a local youth commission has been endorsed by the Board of Trustees of the Santa Monica Community College, SMMUSD Superintendent John Deasy, Councilman Mike Feinstein and the officers of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified PTO, among others.
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school board will discuss the implications of creating a Youth Commission — and possibly endorsing the concept of creating one locally — at its Thursday meeting.
Some people have said young adults should have played a larger role in designing the $120-million civic center redevelopment plan to include athletic fields, and they should have been more involved when city officials designed a new skate facility at Olympic Park.
“This is about empowering people who feel cast aside by adults that have shafted them,” said Kristina Lizama, a 17-year-old Santa Monica High School senior. “It would give kids the support and backing we need to at least give us the feeling that we are actually empowered enough to make change.”
“This is about empowering people who feel cast aside by adults that have shafted them.” — — KRISTINA LIZAMA Santa Monica High School senior
While City Council members have been expressing support individually for a youth commission, the city manager’s office has not been instructed to begin the process of creating one, said Santa Monica spokeswoman Judy Rambeau.
Barbara Stinchfield, the city’s Health and Human Services Department, wanted to make sure youth at Tuesday’s meeting understood how daunting working in a commission can be for everyone — both youth and adults.
“It can be frustrating for youth because they sometime have ideas that the city can’t deliver on,” she said. “Sometimes things you would like to take a year can take six years, and I just want to make sure everybody here understands that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 8, 2003. Read the original PDF.