The Riverside City Council last week voted 6-1 to reject a recommendation from the Governmental Processes Committee to discontinue in-person Spanish interpretation services at council and committee meetings unless requested at least 72 hours in advance, with Councilman Chuck Conder voting against.
“I think it’s really important that we’re treating everyone in our community the same, and that was one of the discussions we had at the committee level,” Councilmember Philip Falcone, who is the chair of that committee, said in defense of the committee’s recommendations at the Nov. 5 meeting. “[We] spoke about it twice, at length, and [the] community had an opportunity to weigh in at that time.”
The committee, which meets the first Wednesday of the month at 9 a.m., had also recommended that the city stop automatically providing Spanish translations for committee agendas unless a request was submitted that it be translated at least 72 hours prior to the meeting. This recommendation would not have impacted the translation of the city council meeting agendas.
“Everyone needs to be treated the same across the board, no matter which language you speak,” Falcone said. “Whether you speak or whether you sign, whatever it may be, there needs to be consistency across the board.”
Falcone said that by requiring Spanish speakers to request these services at least 72 hours prior to the meetings, it made the process more equitable because those who speak languages other than Spanish are currently required to make their requests for accommodation 72 hours ahead of a meeting.
Both Councilmember Sean Mill and Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes pushed back on the notion that a move like this would increase equity, pointing out that more than half of the city’s residents are Hispanic.
“So the [argument] that … if we’re going to have Spanish translation services, then we should have, you know, Tagalog, and we should have Korean, because it’s equitable, they’re not 55% of our population, so I would disagree with that,” Mill said. “When 55% of your community [is] Hispanic, I think that we should be offering that, and you shouldn’t have to call in to get those services.”
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Another issue brought up during the presentation was the price of offering Spanish-language translation services, which is estimated to cost the city roughly $95,000 during the current fiscal year — $60,000 for city council meetings and $35,000 for committee meetings.
But Cervantes said that price was a fraction of what the city spends on other things, such as supporting the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa’s Festival of Lights event.
“We just approved allocating and moving $201,300 from the general fund to the 2024 Festival of Lights traffic control services,” she said. “Are you telling me that is more important than our Spanish translation services and our community being able to participate and know what we are discussing as their elected leaders on items that they are having to live through and experience every day?”
Cervantes added that the city has no problem with translating other materials such as bills from Riverside Public Utilities or fliers for community events and, instead of looking at decreasing Spanish-language translation services, should be looking at how it can expand translation services to better serve more residents.
“If we really want to talk [about] equity, that’s what equity looks like,” she said. “That’s what inclusivity looks like.”
For the first six months of the year, English-language city council and committee meetings received 1,810 views while their Spanish-language counterparts received 404 views, according to city data.
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