A woman rose to speak at Monday’s Waukegan City Council meeting seeking help with a home improvement permit. Shortly after she began, she asked for a Spanish interpreter.
Since the city does not provide interpreters at its public meetings during audience time, Mayor Ann Taylor asked if there was anyone in the audience who spoke Spanish and English. A member of the crowd of more than 75 people offered to help and provided the needed assistance.
“We usually do have someone in the room who speaks Spanish,” Taylor said. “This was an exception. We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Though all governmental bodies in Waukegan, which has a large Latinx population, do not have professional interpreters at public meetings, they have provisions in place to assist people not comfortable speaking English at such gatherings or otherwise availing themselves of services.
Taylor said in the future there will always be a person in the room who is fluent in Spanish, There are sufficient members of the city staff who can fill the role, including an interpreter employed by the Waukegan police department.
“Preferably it will be someone who has Spanish as their first language,” she said.
Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 has had interpreters at its public meetings since 2012. Nicholas Alatzakis, the district’s communications director, said the district employs full-time translators not only for meetings, but for a variety of other school events.
“We’ve had translators and interpreters for a number of years because we have such a high percentage of Spanish-speaking families,” Alatzakis said. “We have headphones people can use so they can listen to the Spanish translation of the entire meeting.”
District 60 Board of Education Brandon Ewing said having interpreters available to provide translation is necessary to enable everyone to participate in the democratic process. The service is there not only for the school community, but anyone else who wants to attend public meetings.
“This is what we do to so citizens can engage in our democracy,” he said. “We have to ensure everyone has access. We have a vibrant and large Latinx community in Waukegan. We want everyone to feel welcome and (to) participate in our public meetings.”
While neither the Waukegan Park District nor Waukegan Township have interpreters, elected officials sit on their boards who are native Spanish speakers. Park District Board of Commissioners President Jacqueline Herrera Giron came to the United States from El Salvador as a young girl.
An attorney, Giron said any governmental entity which receives federal funds is required by law to provide necessary accommodations to people who lack English proficiency.
“There should be meeting access to everyone,” she said. “People have to know what’s transpiring. If they are not comfortable speaking, we need to make sure they are comfortable.”
Jay Lerner, the Park District’s executive director, said as far as he can remember, there has always been a commissioner who could provide translation service to someone who needed it at a meeting.
Waukegan Township Supervisor Marc Jones said Trustee Dulce Ortiz, a native Spanish speaker and also the executive director of the Mano a Mano Family Resource Center, provides translation services at meetings when necessary.
Jones said of the eight members of the township staff regularly in the office, two are bilingual creating a situation where any translation needed to assist residents is always available.
Julie Contreras, a humanitarian activist and president of United Giving Hope who has advocated for the rights of immigrants on an international level and a Waukegan resident, said providing interpreters at public meetings is essential.
“Absolutely, it’s 100% important,” Contreras said. “More than 50% of Waukegan is Spanish-speaking. You need professional translators. The translation needs to be verbatim.”
Aside from public meetings, city, Park District, township and school district officials all said materials describing services and activities are available in Spanish and English. Lerner said there is a bilingual staff member working at all major facilities.
As for the woman who needed an interpreter during the City Council meeting Monday, Taylor said she had her permit Tuesday morning. David Motley, the city’s public relations director who is a fluent Spanish-speaker, spoke to the woman shortly after she returned to her seat.
Motley took the woman to see the responsible person in the building department who was in the office at the time. Acting as her interpreter, he helped her understand the situation in resolving the matter.
