Making City Hall more accessible and user friendly

By Donald J "Don" Greene

As leaders of the city of Escondido, it is our job to reach out to all the residents of the city and make sure that city government is accessible to all.

While we have taken initial steps toward making our government accessible, we can do a better job. Our city website is translatable into many different languages + via Google's functionality. Many of our employees at City Hall, and in other departments across the city, are bilingual and are able to translate for a spanish-speaking resident. We need to extend this accessibility further. I would have agendas for the City Council meetings be available in both English (as it is now) and Spanish. Also, I would favor investigating a cost-effective method of providing translation services for council meetings, perhaps providing the SAP (Secondary Audio Programming) functionality during our broadcasts and providing spanish captioning on streaming broadcasts.

As a fluent Spanish speaker and as someone who works directly with the Spanish-speaking community of Escondido, I have experienced first hand the long way a small effort goes in bridging the gap with Spanish-speaking residents. As we reach out and make the experience of dealing with city government more welcoming, more Spanish-speaking residents will become more involved, and have less fear in dealing with government. These residents deserve to have a government, and council, that is accessible and beginning with making small changes will go a long way in improving their experience.