Santa Maria City Council is at it again!
Giving the have-nots nothing and ensuring that they know nothing. It’s the Patino-Waterfield special! The ol’ one-two sucker punch.
City Councilmember Carlos Escobedo, who often sides with Mayor Alice Patino and Councilmember Etta Waterfield, was visibly miffed at the end of a June 21 budget discussion in which he requested that the city provide live Spanish language translation of government meetings. His elders were not into it. The closest he got to his request was the council majority opting to pay YouTube to translate the meetings via captions for those who want it.
Escobedo, a native Spanish-speaker who speaks English as a second language, argued that the way the city currently offers translation services is a barrier to accessing government meetings. He added that even he has trouble with complex issues: “It’s still sometimes hard to understand and more when you’re not familiarized with the topics.”
He said live translation services would be a good incentive to get those who want to participate into the door.
“From my perspective, let’s try for one year, and then we can decide if there’s no participation, go back and do other strategies,” he said.
Waterfield’s response to Escobedo’s plea based on his own experiences? She laughed at him.
“I have no idea what you said,” Waterfield said.
Wow. Wow. Wow. She’s not running again, right? Good riddance.
“If nobody shows up, we still have to pay [the translator], and I don’t want to get into that,” she said, alluding to the city’s reasoning for whittling down the translation services it’s offered in the past.
Um. Minor point of contention. The point is that the translation should always be available to the public, just like it is in Waterfield’s native language, American. Oops. I mean, English.
Do we stop keeping public meetings open to the public if nobody shows up? No. Because it’s about maintaining a historic record of policy proceedings and discussions about decisions that impact the public, which pays taxes to keep the goddamn city operating and pays your City Council member stipend—I might add. If 76 percent of the population that shops in a city, pays rent, utilities, taxes, and more in a city is Latino—and a large percentage of that population speaks Spanish as a first language—then offering live translation services seems to be the least a city can do to ensure that its citizens are informed.
“I think we’ve been gracious,” Waterfield said, alluding to fact that residents can make an advanced request to have one agenda item discussion translated into Spanish (if they can navigate the city website, figure out where the agenda is, translate that agenda, and get ahold of the City Clerk’s Office). “We do not put barriers up, people put barriers up for themselves.”
I forgot that the United States offers a free pair of bootstraps to each of its residents. Barrier averted! Get to pulling!
Tell us how you really feel about “barriers.”
“That’s just a weakness and choice of words to be used to try and make someone do something they don’t want to do,” she added.
Haha! I don’t even know what you just said.
The canary chewed up all the bootstraps. Send a pair to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 21-28, 2022.
