Freedom of speech

Sunnyside introduces interpretation services at public meetings to make local government more inclusive and welcoming for the city’s Spanish-speaking community.

By Jennifer Krazit

City council meetings in Sunnyside look—and, more importantly, sound—a little different these days. That’s because since May, the city of 16,375 has been offering Spanish interpretation services at council meetings to better engage with the majority-minority Hispanic/Latino community. Given the demographics of this central Washington agricultural hub, where Spanish is the primary language spoken in more than 60 percent of all homes, some say diversifying the language spoken in council chambers, and among the council itself, was long overdue.

“Even though we have a makeup of 86 percent Latinos, most of whom speak only Spanish, our leadership didn’t reflect that, in council or the school board, in commissions or committees,” says Vicky Frausto, one of three Latino candidates who ran for and won seats on Sunnyside’s council in 2023 and vowed to make language translation services one of their top priorities if elected.

City council meetings still take place in English, but now they’re being augmented by a live interpreter. Spanish-speaking residents seated in council chambers or tuning in remotely from home use cellphones or computers to join via Zoom, select their language preference, and listen. If a Spanish speaker in the audience wishes to say something during a public comment period, the interpreter translates their comments back to councilmembers in English.

Frausto says she hopes this service will help ensure that Sunnyside’s Latino community is better informed about, and can comment on, important council decisions, such as a six-year transportation improvement plan released in July. She also hopes it will allow members of the city’s majority-minority population to ask the council to prioritize their particular concerns, which include everything from streamlining small business permitting to addressing building vacancies, homelessness, and nuisance animals/stray dogs.

“When you aren’t engaging the community and asking them what they need, you don’t really understand how to formulate policy or create resources that will truly benefit and impact our community for the better,” says Frausto, a Sunnyside native whose parents moved from Mexico in the 1980s and worked as migrant farmworkers for more than 20 years. Now that the city’s Spanish interpreter service has become a routine element of public meetings, Frausto is focused both on making sure Spanish speakers use it and that conducting business in both languages becomes the norm for all aspects of the city’s operations.

“We’ve begun translating everything. All of our marketing now is being done in both English and Spanish,” says Frausto, who has also begun to push to create Spanish-language community forums and listening sessions. “When you do that, you debunk a lot of misconceptions of what is going on in the community. You build understanding. And when you do that, you build trust.”

For more information: ci.sunnyside.wa.us