COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • MARCH 6, 2019 •
5A
Students learn system of government through YAC program
By Damien Sherwood
dsherwood@cgsentinel.com
Around the turn of the mil-
lennium, Cottage Grove City
Manager Richard Meyers sent
his children to school to dis-
tribute a survey among their
high school peers. The survey
asked civic questions on topics
like who the governor was, what
kinds of services local govern-
ment provides and how certain
officials were selected.
“The results were astound-
ing,” Meyers said. “They didn’t
have a clue how the mayor was
selected or that the post office
was one of the things the city
ran.”
Sitting on a state committee
which was trying to figure out
ways to engender civic educa-
tion in youths at the time, Mey-
ers was compelled by the survey
results to create a local opportu-
nity.
In 2004, the Cottage Grove
Youth Advisory Council (YAC)
was formed. Open to high
school and middle school stu-
dents, the council serves as a
communication link between
City Council and youth in the
community, offering members a
seat at City Council meetings as
a “youth representative.”
YAC Co-chair MJ Raade,
a high school sophomore, has
been a member since seventh
grade.
“YAC has given me the op-
portunity to learn about local
government, how it works, and
then also state government,
which I think is really important
for youths to know,” she said.
“I think a lot of people my age
want to know — they just don’t
have the resources.”
Beyond the walls of the
chamber hall, YAC also teaches
students life skills. Through reg-
ular meetings, youths must learn
to make cases to a group and de-
velop negotiation skills.
Meyers emphasized that
encouraging the youths to be
proactive problem-solvers is an
important take-away from the
program.
“Giving them a voice, and
then they don’t do anything,
that’s just whining,” he said. “If
you’re going to have a voice,
then you need to do something.”
Meyers recalled past coun-
cils that butted heads.
“One year we had a group
that was really divisive,” he
said. The group held sessions
and learned to find common
COURTESY PHOTO
State Rep. Cedric Hayden (left) meets with YAC members (from back left) MJ Raade, Kourtney Owens, Abby DeGarlais, Natalie Milli-
gan and Payton Bickford (front) during the Cottage Grove students’ Feb. 18 field trip to Salem.
ground, fostering the ability to
listen and mediate when dis-
agreements arise.
“We work with the kids,
but they take it home and they
share it with others,” Meyers
said, extolling the benefits of
having a deeper perspective of a
functioning community. “They
learn that there’s a big process
to treat water, or that it takes
a lot of work to treat sewer, or
we teach them how to get along
when they don’t agree with
other people. That’s one of the
things that’s been most exciting
about working with the YAC —
we’ve got kids that have different
opinions.”
Also, every spring, the city
hosts the YAC Academy, a one-
day event in which YAC mem-
bers get a full city government
experience through a city tour,
conducting a mock planning
commission meeting, role-play-
ing an emergency preparedness
tabletop exercise with dispatch
equipment and witnessing a
simulated felony traffic stop
with police officers.
“They’re seeing all of the
day-to-day stuff,” said Meyers.
“It’s a full day of activities. Usu-
ally we run out of time rather
than activities.”
Meyers hopes that this peek
behind the curtain gives young
people a better understanding
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of how and why a city works the
way it does.
Besides the acquisition of
these skills and knowledge,
graduating seniors may also be
awarded with the Pat Patterson
Scholarship. The city puts aside
$500 of financial aid that is di-
vided among seniors for their
next level of education, though
no seniors are on this year’s
council.
The program also awards
YAC members community
service hours, which are a re-
quired element of high school
graduation. Some of those ser-
vice hours come from events
like Bohemia Mining Days, in
which the students volunteer to
assist parade staff.
The group has also occasion-
ally hosted free movie nights in
various venues, arranged an an-
nual Battle of the Bands and or-
ganized youth fairs which held
events, games and opportunities
for young people to sign up for
summer programs.
While the group contributes
much to its own community,
YAC has also focused on broad-
er legislative missions. Once per
year, YAC students are taken to
Salem to visit the state legisla-
ture. Support for the students
there is strong.
Raade
appreciates
the
amount of weight youths’ voices
carry on trips to the state cap-
ital. “They always really listen
and pay attention to what we
have to say,” she said. “That’s re-
ally important to us.”
Even when the group was
unable to make the trip last
year, area representatives Sen.
Floyd Prozanski and Rep. Ced-
ric Hayden came to the city to
meet with the students.
The group’s relationship with
state legislators has grown over
the years.
A decade ago, YAC hosted a
joint House-Senate committee
meeting in City Hall to address
methamphetamine use and
drug addiction.
Then-Governor Ted Kulon-
goski and other legislators from
around the state attended and
listened to presentations by state
police and rehabilitation service
providers. During the session,
one of the YAC members testi-
fied, recounting her experience
living in a home with someone
addicted to methamphetamines.
“That was more forceful than
anything else,” said Meyers.
Future YAC iterations con-
tinued the theme of raising drug
awareness. In 2017, they held an
assembly at the middle school to
talk about tobacco use, sharing
the assembly with the American
Cancer Society’s fundraising
event Relay for Life. There, YAC
came up with the idea to distrib-
ute differently colored bracelets
to audience members, illustrat-
ing the percentages of Ameri-
cans affected by tobacco-related
illnesses or death.
The
group’s
crowning
achievement, though, began in
2016 when a youth represen-
tative attending a City Council
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meeting listened to a parent give
testimony about her son’s use of
nitrous oxide and how readily
the drug was available in the
community.
Nitrous oxide, sometimes
called “laughing gas,” is a seda-
tive agent that is also used as an
aerosol spray propellant, com-
monly found in whipped cream
dispensers. Recreationally, it is
inhaled to cause a euphoric diz-
ziness. In the testimony, the par-
ent described how close her son
came to death by driving under
the drug’s influence.
Because the sale and dis-
tribution of nitrous oxide fell
under state and federal law, the
Cottage Grove City Council said
it was unable to act in response
to the testimonial. Sensing an
opportunity, the attending YAC
member reported this back to
the group, which prompted
members to discuss, research
and investigate the drug’s prev-
alence, impacts on people’s lives
and how other states dealt with
the issue.
A few weeks later, during
the group’s legislative field trip
to Salem, YAC discussed the
problem with Rep. Hayden, who
works as a dentist and adminis-
ters nitrous oxide. The legislator
was surprised to hear how easily
obtainable the drug was among
youths.
After some months, Rep.
Hayden helped YAC draft a con-
cept and soon a bill was created
which sought to limit the sale of
canisters containing nitrous ox-
ide to people 21 and over. YAC
members traveled to the Or-
egon Legislative Assembly to
testify to the House Committee
on Health Care and push for
the bill’s introduction to the
Senate floor.
The process provided some
insightful learning moments
for the group. One moment
came when the bill was as-
signed to the Judiciary Com-
mittee.
Meyers remembers at the
time, “I asked them, ‘Why?
This was in the Health Care
Committee in the House. Why
did it get assigned to Judicia-
ry?’”
After some deliberation,
one of the students realized that
it was because Sen. Prozanski
was on that committee.
“And we go, ‘Yeah! That is
exactly why it got assigned to
that committee,’” Meyers said.
“The President of the Senate,
Peter Courtney, assigned it to
Prozanski because Prozanski’s
constituents were wanting the
bill, it was a good bill, it had the
support of the two parties and
so they sent it to Judiciary.”
Knowing that their senator
had their back, the group was
excited to move forward.
Another senator on the
Judiciary Committee, James
Manning from the Eugene area,
visited with the YAC students
and talked with them about the
bill as well as their fight against
tobacco. The students made an
impression.
With two senators on their
side, the group traveled again
to Salem to testify to the Judi-
ciary Committee. As the group
entered the Senate committee
meeting, Manning waved to
the group with a hand sporting
a tobacco-free wrist bracelet in
support of their cause.
“It was amazing,” Meyers
said. “They did spectacular in
testifying. They prepared. They
knew how to address the com-
mittee. … They followed all of
the protocols. They did better
than some of the staff from state
agencies.”
The bill then moved on to
the Senate where there was de-
bate about the age limit. Though
YAC members had been push-
ing for 21, they settled for a
Senate amendment to lower it
to 18, partly as a strategic move.
A simultaneous debate at the
time about raising the tobacco
purchasing age to 21 was a key
element in accepting the lower
age limit, effectively avoiding
an embroilment of their bill in a
lateral debate.
“They were thinking ahead
on that one,” said Meyers.
In its final draft, HB 3030 re-
stricted the sale of nitrous oxide
canisters to individuals aged 18
or older, making it a Class A vi-
olation for first-time offenders.
This version of the bill passed
both Senate and House with-
out a single “No” vote and was
signed into law in June 2017,
eventually being carried into ef-
fect Jan. 1 of the next year.
Riding on the bill’s momen-
tum, this year’s YAC group has
considered taking their bill to
the national level, even posing
this question to Oregon’s se-
nior senator Ron Wyden during
his recent town hall in Cottage
Grove. Wyden recommended
researching how nitrous oxide
moves throughout the states
and how that might apply to the
nation’s Commerce Clause.
The amount of time and
effort, however, might be too
much for the small group of stu-
dents.
“I’m not sure if we’ll take it
that direction,” said Raade.
More locally, YAC is cur-
rently planning a Youth Town
Hall for Cottage Grove.
“It would be just youth and
we’d just have a brainstorm
session about problems in our
area or problems that are youth-
based,” Raade said. “And then
we could bring in different adult
representatives that could ad-
dress those problems and an-
swer questions.”
One of YAC’s prime moti-
vations is to encourage youth
interest in their community and
government. While the group
only takes applications at the
beginning of each school year,
they welcome anybody to join
their meetings, which are held
every other Monday in the City
Council chamber.
It’s Raade’s hope that the im-
pact of YAC will extend not just
broadly through the state, but
also into the future.
“I think I’m going to carry on
this knowledge I have because I
want to do something involved
with public service,” she said.
Raade expressed her interest
in helping to continue the YAC
program for future generations,
inspired by YAC summits where
she sees other youths from
around the state taking an inter-
est in government.
“It’d be nice to see that grow,”
she said.