Olympia City Council approves the plan for a youth council. Here are the details
Olympia youth will soon be able to participate in local government in an entirely new way. The City Council has voted to create a youth council, and its members will begin their terms in 2025.
The youth council will consist of 20 members altogether, with seven voting positions. Susan Grisham, assistant to the City Manager, and two Olympia students discussed the proposal with the council.
Grisham said the city hasn’t had a mechanism to ensure youth voices are heard and contributing to city government decisions. The city passed a resolution in 2019 establishing an ongoing commitment to working with youth, but there wasn’t anything formal. Then students Christine Zhang and Tre Simons reached out to council member Yến Huỳnh last year.
Grisham said Zhang and Simons were inspired by other youth councils in neighboring cities such as Lacey and Tacoma. Their conversation with council members led to hiring a consultant to research models and best practices for a youth council.
The Dupont firm Truclusion was chosen for the task. The city had contracted with Truclusion in the past for a survey regarding discrimination in Olympia. The firm helped create the Salishan youth council and another in Tacoma.
Dane Wolfram, senior manager at Truclusion, noted that Olympians under 18 can’t vote and, in a way, are in a marginalized position when it comes to connecting with local government issues. With a youth council, they can participate in their own way. The power structure of the council will be up to its members, Wolfram said, as well as how they deliver recommendations to the official city council. He said he doesn’t want all the decision-making to come from adults.
“We want them to be able to define what the youth council looks like, how they will ideate and come up with proposals, and how they make recommendations to the council,” Wolfram said.
Wolfram said Ashley Gardner, researcher with Truclusion, worked with more than 70 different youth councils and did sit-down interviews with more than 30 of them to gauge best practices. More than 40 youth in the Olympia area were tapped to be youth representatives, and they came up with more than 100 different ideas of what the youth council could look like.
Why form a youth council?
Zhang and Simons are both youth representatives on the project. Zhang is a senior at Olympia High School, and Simons is a former OHS student and former resident of the city.
Simons said youth are an overlooked group in many communities, and that it’s important for the city to develop its own youth council.
“Now, we believe that also in a city as politically powerful as Olympia, the youth voice is to an extent lacking,” Simons said. “By bringing our suggestion of this forward to council member Huỳnh, we felt as though we were starting the necessary dialogue to help secure youth voice in Olympia.”
Zhang, who has served as a school board representative, said her experience has shed light on how influential the youth voice can be in a community. She said by bringing that voice to the city, she believes the city can move further toward its goal of equity.
Zhang said forming a youth council is important because they’re the next generation of leaders, and by participating in the government process, the youth are becoming informed citizens who can raise awareness of issues they feel strongly about.
“Most importantly, though, we are continuing Olympia’s mission towards creating an equitable environment for youth with irreplaceable lived experiences and perspectives, where they have a say in the policies that affect them and the people they know,” she said.
Youth make up a fifth of the Olympia community, she said.
Simons said the youth council can provide youth a greater sense of community, a say in policy adoption, opportunities for engagement with the job industry, community art and environmental work, and Simons’ favorite, youth town halls.
Gavin Cruz, a junior at Olympia High School, is one of the youth advisers that helped come up with recommendations for the youth council. He laid out the specifics of what would formally be known as the Olympia Youth Council.
Cruz said funding for the council will come from the city’s general fund, with access to grants, donations and other similar monetary resources.
The recommended duties of each council member consists of community service and civic engagement, with youth helping plan and run city-wide events. They’ll also work on service projects, have scholarships to apply for and additional youth center programs for people to attend.
Cruz said the council will also work with the school districts and nonprofits and other organizations in the Olympia area.
The council will consist of 20 members ranging in age from 14 to 20 years old. Each member’s term will last one year, but youth can be appointed up to four times. Members will receive an expense stipend and community service hours, to keep participating in the council accessible to all, Cruz said.
Cruz said applicants will be able to choose their application format to keep the process as equitable as possible. They can write one in, interview, do a video presentation or anything else creative.
Olympia’s Community Livability and Public Safety (CLPS) committee will appoint a selection panel of seven youth and two adults, Cruz said. That panel will nominate a slate of candidates, and then the CLPS committee will forward its recommendations onto the full city council.
Prior to their terms beginning in 2025, Cruz said the youth council members will have access to training and capacity building opportunities through workshops and seminars.
Simons said each council cohort will have the flexibility to set their meeting location and format, whether it be in person, on Zoom or a hybrid. The council will meet twice per month from 4-6 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday in April, May June, August, November and December.
The youth advisers will continue to work through the next several months to solidify an appointment process, plan recruiting events, determine leadership roles, the council’s mission and values, and more.
Grisham told the council the original budget request for the youth council was $100,000, which was adjusted to $40,000 in the 2024 budget. That would include staffing, along with the work that it would take to continue the youth council, she said. The idea is to have a staff person who’s dedicated to long-term funding and sustainability of the council.
This story was originally published November 10, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
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