 Hi I'm Lisa Savage. Welcome to Pathways to Progress. I'm here at the Portland Media Center tonight with newest Portland City Counselors, Victoria Pelleteer Roberto Rodriguez. We're going to talk about their experience being, learning to be, city counselors and the progressive issues and policies that they'd like to see happen in Portland and how you can help that happen. So thanks for watching. Victoria, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit? Yes, thank you. Hi I'm Victoria Pelleteer. I am the new City Counselor for District 2. So District 2 is essentially the West End Parkside Valley Street in Oakdale neighborhood so yeah. Congratulations by the way. Thank you. And I'm Roberto Rodriguez. I'm the new at-large counselor on the City Counselor in Portland. So you have how many city council meetings under your belt at this point? Seems like hundreds. I was telling them I would watch the recording of Wednesdays and at the top of the screen it said that it started at 5 p.m. and it was going to end at 2 a.m. Oh my god but that it didn't really go that long. We haven't gotten that close yet but the all of the meetings I think have gone into like 9 30 10 so they've all been like four or five hours and you know I actually thought at the last minute would be a shorter one because we had a short agenda and that was foolish of me because it's still under the round 9 30 so. And that's after you've worked all day? Yep. Tell us a little bit about what do you do for work? Yeah so I work at Portland and Powered so I work with kids and parents mainly immigrant kids and parents who are navigating the Portland school system and it's really helping them advance policy it's helping them get involved and and really being part of the conversation in terms of what curriculum is being taught and how to make sure that we are teaching an anti-racist inclusive curriculum so that is what I do most of the time and then I'm also a community facilitator with integrative inquiries and so I go into businesses and have conversations with them around collaborative efforts and power dynamics and again equity and anti-racist practices and really helping workers feel like their their their words and their opinions are valid and matter and and really helping them kind of navigate conversations with their bosses around feeling included and feeling like their voices are being amplified. So you're gonna be a real asset on the Portland City Council? I hope so. Yeah definitely yeah definitely. Roberto you have an interesting your self-employed I think you have your own business right? Yep I have a small business but right now the majority of my time I took a job back in September to be an interim co-director for cultivating community which is a local known profit whose mission is centered on access to food or food justice so we have a couple of programs I love hearing Tori talk about her work and how it really is related to public service and what we do in the city I'm so happy and cultivating community our programs are related to the schools and we're also trying to involve curriculum that involves nutrition and garden education and was really cool this week I was meeting with the new outdoor learning coordinator to figure out how does that curriculum then tie into the Wabanaki study how does that tie into the Africana studies and make sure that we have this holistic approach to it so part of the decolonizing the curriculum and part of like just being like bringing in those marginalized voices to the center of the curriculum so that's a big part of the work that we do in cultivating community and then the other aspects of it are we manage some of the community not some of them we manage all of the community gardens in Portland and also we have a farm over in Falmouth where we have a new American training or farmer trainer program and so that's been taking up the majority of my time super exciting work and like I said ties into a lot of the work that we're doing in public service on my small business this time of the year is when I'm starting to get ready for the season so I'm just reaching out to clients making sure that I have their garden plans ready and getting things lined up but like I said it's you know the council work it's still on top of everything that you live we're talking before before we got into the room about balancing you know our life and our families our health and the time that that it about the that we put into the council so I'm still trying to figure that out you know where that balance lives that's a tricky one you probably know I was a teacher for many years and my granddaughter now goes to Reiki school and the first time that I was at Reiki like playing on the playground with them in the summertime I realized they had such a great garden there extensive I mean Reiki's basically a community center as well as a school I think that's such a strength of programs and yeah about the self-care I remember I was a career change teacher and so I was already a mom with kids at home and I was doing my student teaching and there was a teacher that would stay at the school until like two in the morning and you'd come in in the morning and she was just like frantic and I can remember saying to myself I can't be that I could see that I have the potential to be that teacher and wanting to do everything and get it all done and realizing wow you really have to set some boundaries and say if I'm not centered and take care of my health like how am I going to do this very demanding job well I hate to change to a possibly touchy subject but let's talk about emails for a second do you guys get a lot of emails from city counselors yeah yeah I think it will ebb and flow but for the most part we do get a ton of emails of course because I think that's that's the quickest way people can feel like they can access us all of our emails obviously are public and I think for those of us like I'm a big social media person but I definitely get more communication just via email before the meetings absolutely especially if we're talking about you know everything that we talk about is intense and emotional for different reasons but definitely the before the meeting during the meetings and afterwards and then it's it's I think it will ebb and flow but for the majority of time because we're talking about such intense things and you know the state of the world and the state of Portland I think the emails will just continue to come in pretty happy yeah absolutely I think the volume of emails is something but I think the the other part that I take away from it is even though our vote ultimately you have two choices right you're either gonna vote something for it or against it but in the emails you really see how complicated the issues get how many different aspects to how many different points of views there are how our decisions impact people and it really is not as easy as yes I'm for it no I'm not it does you have to weigh in you know how things are impacting people in a really unique way so the emails are super valuable and and to that point when it's so many of them and it's so many points of views you're like you honestly you're you're conflicted at times sometimes it's super clear and oftentimes it's just not so the emails are again part of that learning curve yeah I'm yeah I think in some for some things a lot of it is I'm not not easy but familiar to me I mean and I think that comes from equity work that comes from community facilitation work where all I have to do is have conversations and I have to have conversations with people that maybe have very different and opposing views and I have to make my point effectively I have to make sure that I'm making my point with information to back up what I'm saying and also kind of keep my composure first thing things that are emotional and challenging to talk about so that part of it of just the dialogue and again like this is on zoom I think in the chamber is when we go back that will be interesting so have like the microphone and it will feel a lot more intense but the conversational part of it and the research part of it is familiar but it's just a lot of additional work and time especially prior to the meetings making sure we have like everything in a row making sure we are I understand the agenda the issue I have my talking points but it's also like things will happen in the meeting public comment will happen or someone will raise a point that is maybe something I didn't think about so I'm kind of like okay I want to make sure before I speak I have you know everything clear so that I can still make my points effectively but it's certainly a learning curve I think in just managing a wide range of different opinions that are all talking to you and they're talking to all of us in the council but the emails will be directed to us personally at times and that can be challenging because you always want to do the right thing and you're ultimately going to disappoint people every meeting and not intentionally but someone will walk away from every vote very disappointed in you and that feels not great you know even though we're doing kind of the best that we can so yeah so you were chair of the Portland School Board for two years two years so there have to be some similarities yeah it's um it's interesting that I was in I was intrigued to find out how much of that learning curve was gonna be either shortened or impacted by having been on the board and and certainly having been chair I I do find like Lake Tory was saying there's a lot of these transferable skills right there's a lot of these things that that I was able to accomplish while being chair that have prepped me for this there's a unique thing about the council and and the type of issues that we're talking about and like I said those emails you know again the the the pressures are from so many different directions in the school board things were you know I know the school community I I know more or less you know who's engaged and not necessarily know what their positions are going to be but you I had a you know after some time you have a better sense so the learning curve I think has been helped by by the school board but still I consider this to be a whole new monster yeah um can I bring up a thing about procedures so you know one thing about learning to be on such boards or councils is that you have to learn the process of how the business gets done and I know that in your first meeting Victoria you told me and I and I you know heard from other sources too that you wanted to bring a hazard pay and and bring it from the floor we're gonna I'm the I'm a counselor I can propose I can make a motion right here right now about something and so in all good faith I believe you did so but then people said oh well you know the reason we really don't do that is because we want the public to be able to comment and if we bring something up from the floor and then rush through a vote then the public understandably feels like hey we didn't get to weigh in on that and send these guys a whole bunch of emails that's an important part of this process yeah yeah yeah it was so it was the discussion around the mask mandate and it was I I was wondering why we would not enact a mask mandate immediately there was a lot of back and forth it did not make the agenda in time for I think it was our second meeting and so in my head I was like we will just bring it up let's bring it up from the meeting from the floor and it will be fine because like COVID cases are rising and we need a mask mandate and I was in the middle of kind of doing it it was it was like I was asking a lot of these questions essentially of like what would happen if I did this how would this work and we were walking through it together which I actually think was interesting for the public as well because I always want to be really transparent and so I was just trying to figure it out of my own and people got to see that in real time so it's not like she's a counselor she knows how to do everything I was like well what does it mean if I bring it up from the floor what's gonna happen and you know there were some comments about saying if you do this it's not the most transparent way to do things because it's not on the agenda which means individuals didn't have a chance to read it absorb a prepare for it and that was definitely an interesting moment of me retracting what I was originally going to do which I'm glad that I did because I can certainly see a way that it would not be well received by individuals who didn't get time whether they like a mask mandate or not everybody needs a fair amount of time to understand what we're talking about and what's coming up at the meeting but it was an interesting moment for me as a new person and as somebody I think that all my background is in activism so I was like this is a thing I want and we'll bring it up now and it's kind of like that's not a great idea and it was it was a it was an interesting moment for a new counselor to have because I was very much saying like okay this is differently this is going differently than I thought but now when I think about issues that I'm passionate about because I have heard like oh they can be brought from the floor sometimes I'm like I'm not doing that I'm just not gonna do I just think it it does present some issues with being transparent in a big platform I ran on was being transparent and being accessible and so regardless if I never want to be acting in my own personal best interest and I think if I had done the mask mandate from the floor it would have been my own personal interest of something and not being fair to the individuals that really need the agenda ahead of time so I really admire that you're willing to learn right out loud in front of the council and all the spectators that that's brave and it's certainly really good for younger people watching going oh my gosh you know we don't have to pretend you know there's always this sense of like to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain right right now I was speaking and people are tired of that yeah they try I think it raises the level of trust in a public institution when people are more human and you know able to not try to always have this facade that's gonna going to be perfect yeah and I know and that absolutely won't be the first or last time that that happens where I'm like well what happens if I do this why can't I do that now ask it live in the meeting I mean that's why we have you know the corporation council there and that's that's that's part of it and I actually I appreciated that moment even though I was definitely like breaking the rules without trying to I think it was a good moment that humanized me as a new person of saying like well I'm always gonna ask these questions even if people are like why doesn't she know this it's kind of like we're all we're all learning you know what is the best course of action together let's get a little more serious what do you see as being you know one thing this year this session of the council that you would just love to see accomplished I'm not even asking you to tell me whether you think it can be but in your dreams what is one thing you would really like to see happen this year I don't think I have like any like one specific one that I would highlight as like the top one and even like this without really like thinking ahead of it I think I have like some personal growth ones but as far as like policy stuff I've been I keep going back to the record process like happening and it being a huge opportunity everyone that I talked to through the campaign talked about how valuable the recall processes to talk about rezoning and reusing part support and to maximize you know appealing to developers to get housing built to get affordable housing to get housing for all income levels so I really I want to be aggressive and I've talked to other counselors and I've talked to the mayor about this I want to make sure that we address the recall process that we have access to the recall process so that we can have public input counselor input and when we have opportunities to look at entire zones not just like in this like little parcels one at a time the way we get them from the planning board but when we look at an entire areas of the city we can talk about okay what's the future what's this gonna look like in the next 5 10 15 20 years and not you know have we had a discussion this week about one parcel one small you know code change request that to me I was like no I don't want to like just you know micromanage this city this way I want to look at the big process and it's happening right now you know mostly led by city staff so to me that's like I keep feeling pressured to like get that out there and and how I don't know what that looks like it might be a committee that we put in place that updates us more often than what the council is getting right now it might be in the past there was an ad hoc committee that was put in place for short term so I'm exploring different ways but that to me as far as a long term you know affordability of the city and everything that we talked about us the biggest issues coming into the campaign that to me is it's a key way to get in there so you're kind of a big picture guy like I can't understand what this little piece means unless I know kind of what the big picture and and and we can influence that process I mean the public getting in there and when we started talking about aligning to the comprehensive plan equitable access to the waterfront equitable green spaces you know my organization I was talking about cultivating community you know when we talk about climate justice and environmental racism we're talking about the lack of access to green spaces from marginalized communities people of color black people immigrants and so we're in a city that's looking at how do we develop for the future what if what is our door space is going to look like and if we don't consider things like that you know what are how are we going to maintain access to green spaces to me that says okay huge huge issue and the recall process can open the doors for us to maximize that and if it's happening without public input or without us in in the room to help influence it I see us as just being again a missed opportunity I love all of that I agree with all of that and I'm excited too because we're both on sustainability and transportation and so that committee will be I'm just thinking there's a lot of work to be done and I'm really excited to work both on it because I think you know leading with equity there there is a lot of conversations that we can have about what the future of climate looks like in Portland with the future of transportation looks like in Portland so like these are super exciting conversations and I'm excited to dive into we've only had one meeting but I'm already like okay here are some really exciting initiatives that we could put in place to really make sure that climate is also seeing and representing all of us because I still think it's a really white-centered issue and I think about you know people of color people of invulnerable communities disenfranchised communities who are going to be the most affected by climate impact but had the least amount of resources and so I really want to make sure that when we have these conversations that we're bringing everybody to the table to be part of it so I I love you know everything that was just said and I think like some personal goals of mine are participatory budgeting I would love to to see get off the ground I know that that's that's gonna be a lengthy one yeah I mean I think just the process of city budgeting and it being a really democratic democratic process and being kind of a city-wide process where we can all be part of that conversation and it's not just like this kind of high-level dialogue that doesn't involve a lot of the people in Portland especially the people that it's really going to affect the most and so I think when I talk about because my line I think I always say is like we can shape the city that we want and I really mean that especially right now because we're still a large town and this is still a space where we haven't you know gotten to a level where we don't know our neighbors yet I mean it's happening but we're still in the time where we can have individuals especially young people especially people of color really get involved in conversations around city budgeting and getting involved in saying we want to shape it so that we can put down roots we can have kids we can invest in our schools and we can make sure that Portland continues to be a community based area so again I think it's gonna take some time probably like the entirety of my my council term but I think being able to start the study with what that looks like in other cities and whether or not it could be possible here to implement I'm really excited about I'm also excited personally about you know having I guess just having conversations around how we can ensure that we are investing more in young people that are that want to put down roots in Portland and that want to start families in Portland and making sure that we're investing in them in a way where they feel like okay this is a place for me I have opportunities here I have I have job opportunities here I can make a living wage here and I'm not being priced out by Arabian bees or developments and I'm not feeling like I'm no longer you know getting to call this place home and so again I think that that's gonna tie into every conversation that we have is around housing around climate but I'm excited to make sure that we're bringing more young people and more people of color to all of these conversations and getting them excited to be part of the movement of Portland and then my own small personal one that I have is we have we're starting to become a little bit of like a marijuana hub which is like very interesting and definitely exciting but I also think there's a missed conversation around talking about marijuana and how it disproportionately affects black individuals and really sends them to jail I think black men are our we have majority of black men in jail serving sentences for weed and then we have weed stores opening up in Portland that are looking like small versions of Google so I'm trying to figure out how we can make sure that if people want to do that how are they giving back how are they investing in trying to get you know black individuals out of jail who have very small amounts of weed in our serving sentences that are you know 10 to 15 years and I think that that when I want to point to a level of blatant systemic racism I always talk about that because like you can't you you can't really work your way around why that why that happens and so you know I don't know what that would look like but I would love for it to be a multi-municipal approach with Westbrook and with South Portland and with Bideford and saying how do we make sure that as we continue to be cool and as we continue to have these places open that we're not forgetting the fact that there's a lot of privilege that goes into being able to open up a dispensary and not give back to individuals that are serving 10-year sentences in prison who are black who are doing the same exact thing so and such an effect on children when their parents are incarcerated for any reason especially like a victimless crime and their children really suffer and that seems to be an overlooked aspect of our incarceration nation many times as well the source of the law well you know all of us break the laws lots of times and the question is who gets locked up who gets taken away from the family the income is gone you know people often lose their housing because one of the parents is in jail really kind of a cascade of bad I'm almost sure and I don't know if this is still the case but up recently Maine had the largest percentage of children with at least one point one parent who had been incarcerated so as as a nation Maine is probably one of the case one of the states that deals with it at the most severe severe level well let me ask you a kind of an off-the-wall question is there anything that has brought you joy about being on the city council so far it's okay to say no no I think well honestly today I had a joyful moment because we did back in October during the campaign one of my favorite forums that we did was through live in more middle school so the sixth graders how the student-led forum for the counselors that were campaigning and those questions were hard like they really did not say that those were the best questions it was I just was not first of all just so impressed with the levels of questions they did deep dives at all of our websites they had been following along with the campaign so like things that we had said they brought up again and I was just absolutely amazing I loved it but they sent us all like their own personal endorsements because they were having a mock election and I had seen that Roberto had gotten his and I was so jealous and I was like wait am I getting one and I finally came in the mail and it was it was just great it was lots of drawings of me and lots of here's why I'm voting for Victoria here's why I think she's great and that felt really good because it really brought me back to saying like oh yeah this is like very exciting work and you know it's it's challenging but when I think about young people I hope that there was one student that was really inspired by by me and is like I want to be a city counselor and that alone really you know is a feeling of saying okay I feel like I'm in the right spot here so that brought that brought me some joy I think just young people who are really excited about us and saying like I want to be like that is really cool and feeling like you are a role model to to kids because that's that's gonna be the next wave in the next generation and so that was that was nice yeah so surprisingly it was actually one email that I received that completely like brightened my day and since then it's just really percolated so someone read an article that the Western news wrote where I talked about being a therapist and they recognized me and so they said I didn't know who you were and then I read the article you treated my mother you were my mother was your patient and that this is a woman that was over a hundred years old she lived in a sister living facility I worked with her for years sweetest person in the world and she and I just had a great relationship so I heard hearing from her dog from her daughter and then she's since passed away so that was kind of sad but just to hear her daughter say like oh you were one of her favorite therapists and it's so good to see you on the council and I wish you all the best so that was like just a really like you know of all the emails that have come in like that one completely unrelated to the work but a really positive kind of like side or I like well it's not it because now there you are yeah and then the other the other part that I think has been just generally like a positive or like a real good thing like I I hope you I don't know if you relate to this but Paisa Lee was a big part of me running for the school board initially and one of the things that I always quote-unquote like envied about him or thought that it was really neat about him is that his day-to-day work is so related to the public service and so one thing that has brought me a lot of joy like I said is that now my work is so related to it like I'm working you know like I was said I was in a meeting with the school department this week talking about like the same issues that I'm advocating for you know as a public servant so being in that position and realizing that the council is like just hand-in-hand with the work that I'm doing every day that's also joyful and that that makes me kind of like you know put up with you know yes people are flocking your inbox and there's a lot of like different directions but you've aligned yourself at least I've aligned myself both in my day-to-day job and in the my public service job that it's you know that's joyful that's been a huge surprise to see it just kind of yeah fine and so on let's keep talking about it what a great ending thanks so much for being with us pathways to progress Roberto Rodriguez and Victoria Pellentier great conversation thank you let's do that again absolutely thanks for watching