Program Planning Priorities – Your Opportunity to Vote

Suzan Requa, LWVDV Co-President

Our LWVDV held its annual Program Planning meeting on Saturday, February 23, but we are not quite done – we need your help!

As we selected the policy priorities for the year, we also were aware that we want to find opportunities to:

• generate and deliver ongoing information through multiple sources like our website, Facebook and twitter and alerts:
• provide, perhaps co-sponsor, voter and community information presentations;
• actively track legislative activity to advocate successfully for our approved positions;
• and coordinate volunteer time and effort focused on our chosen local priorities.

Three new commitments for volunteer time other than Program Priorities

We have a few ongoing local, state and national advocacy and celebratory activities important to our League message and member growth.  Two of those efforts are important for 2020 only, so we will not need as much time for them in 2019. 

One of these important advocacy activities is our state League-sponsored “Schools and Communities First” state ballot initiative for November 2020, which will change the way that Proposition 13 taxes are assessed for very wealthy commercial property owners that have avoided them, raising money for public schools (40%) and other community services. 

The second is the 100 year anniversary of the League of Women Voters and the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote.  We definitely want to plan informative and celebratory events for that critically important and hard fought success - getting the right to vote.

Finally, we have initiated a new effort, our new Schools Voter Education Team for regular contact at central and east county high schools, community and state colleges for voter registration and Voter's Edge and voter education activities.  This commitment will need your support and volunteer time to be successful.  Those members joining the team this year will be designing and setting the course for the regular delivery of voter services at schools. Lead Members of the Schools Voter Ed Team have met several times over the past month to develop a strategic plan for expanding the LWVDV outreach to county schools. The goal is to develop a consistent partnership with the CCC Elections Office that aligns with the state’s efforts to promote more civic engagement in schools. Since the county is large and volunteers are few, the team is focusing initially on the more underserved communities where voter turnout is low.

Program Priorities for your consideration

So you see how difficult it has been for us to select program priorities without broader membership response, here is the lengthy list of suggestions for our local LWVDV program priorities that came from our initial discussion at the meeting on Saturday. All of these are issues where we agreed there was potential for meaningful activity.

• Health Care Reform
• Affordable Housing
• Immigration
• Local Government Redistricting
• Civil Discourse
• Money in Politics

To allow as many members as possible to participate in choosing the priorities that will be recommended by the Board for decision at Annual Meeting, we are offering a SurveyMonkey online survey – just two quick questions! Watch for your email announcing the survey with the link!

Please pick four areas that are of interest to you to participate in.  This does not mean that you would participate in all four. What it does mean is that you would like to volunteer your time to participate in the program priority of most interest to you that is selected by you and by the full membership as one of the priority programs.