The City of Page has a new program to give the young a voice in the community. The Page Youth Advisory Commission held its first meeting Dec. 15. Page City Council appointed the seven members after reviewing their applications in November. 

At the meeting, Page Economic Development Director Gregg Martinez summarized basic meeting procedures, a few points from Robert’s Rules of Order and open meeting laws to help the eclectic group get started. 

The new board voted unanimously to appoint Trystan Conley as chair and Miriam Lassen as vice chair. At that point, Conley took over and led the meeting.

For first official action, they adopted bylaws for the Youth Advisory Commission. The bylaws were preapproved by the city attorney. There next step is to develop strategic plans to discuss and possibly take action on in their January 2024 meeting.

The pioneering members of the City of Page Youth Advisory Commission are Chair Trystan Conley (home school), Vice Chair Miriam Lassen (Page High School), Emma Mallavia (Page High School), Dominic Martinez (Page High School), Dante Thompson (Manson Mesa High School), Emily Hawker (Page High School) and Michaela Long (Manson Mesa High School). 

City youth commissions are not new to Arizona. The Scottsdale Mayor's Youth Council began in late 1980s. Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Apache Junction and many more have youth advisory commissions. The idea to create the youth board in Page took root during the last Arizona League of Arizona Cities and Towns conference in Tucson. Page City Council member Brian Carey attended the conferences. 

“When I first came on the council, we would go to the League of City meetings,” said Carey. “Many of the cities have this parade of city event to start the conference off, and they march their city’s flag down the aisle, and the city gets it named. I forget how many there are in Arizona, but 50 or 60. Many of the city delegations have members of their youth advisory commission parading the flag. That’s when I realized that these things existed.”

Carey said Martinez laid much of the groundwork to set up the commission. Martinez reached out to other cities to see how they handled things like structure and logistics, when to have meetings and to learn some of the projects the youth groups are working on.

“Like any of the city advisory boards, they’re going to get some training on the open records law and open meetings law and how to run a meeting,” said Carey. “Some basics about that, because they have to follow the same rules.”

At their first meeting, Martinez briefed the young board members about open meeting laws like not discussing commission business outside a meeting if four or more members are present. With a seven-member board, four makes a quorum. Martinez also told the board members they would receive further training from the city attorney and/or city clerk on meeting and record laws.

While Page boards and commissions specializes in specific areas such as economic development, substance abuse, planning and zoning or parks and recreation, the new commission has a broader focus.

“The ordinance that establishes the committee puts it pretty broadly that they’ll advise the council on matters pertinent to the young population in town,” said Carey.

“I think it specifically envisions them being most involved, say, in parks and recreation, perhaps revitalizing a teen center, or maybe there’s an underrepresented sport or underrepresented group or some of the cities get involved in particular cause, whether it’s, say, substance abuse prevention or missing indigenous women. And so they might champion a particular cause and have some things they think the city could get involved in that way. But everything of any substantive matter would come as a recommendation from the advisory committee to the council, just like any of the other boards.”

On Sept. 6, immediately after the 2023 Arizona Cities and Towns Annual Conference in Tucson, Martinez told the Chronicle that the City of Page was trying to start a youth advisory council with the city council. 

“We’re going to ask some of the youth to form a mock city council for themselves,” Martinez said at the time. “They can learn about Robert’s Rules. They can learn about the city’s happenings. And we don’t have any of that information. Because we’ve extended our network, I can call a town like Avondale, who has a good one, and say, ‘Hey, it’s Greg from the League. Do you happen to have anything with Youth Advisory Council that you can share with us?’ ‘Of course.’”

On Dec. 14, the day before the first Page Youth Advisory Commission meeting, Martinez told the Chronicle that youth advisory commissions have become very popular with many municipalities in Arizona. 

“When we go to our conference every end of August, there’s always all of these students who are part of youth advisory commissions, and they show the work that they've done,” Martinez said. 

“And I think we, as a city government, we’re thinking to ourselves, we have really excellent students. We don’t have a venue for them to do this. Let’s create it, and then let’s show them off. It also gives them opportunity to network with other students and other people and kind of get to understand what role does the city government play in everyone's day to day life. I think these youth will be actually quite surprised how integrated we are in quality-of-life or non-quality-of-life elements for the community.”

Martinez also spoke of the new board’s broad potential and influence.

“I think there’s really a multifaceted approach that we’re trying to do. Obviously, the big thing with the youth advisory commission is recreation and programming for youth,” he said.

“Then you also have the activism arm, which is things that matter to them. So there’s a lot of unity walks that people do all through the state of Arizona. There’s maybe like an anti-littering campaign. But realistically, I want each youth advisory commission to pick something that they’re interested in that they can do activism for, and then try to host a couple of things that show that we’re in touch with what’s going on in our country and our world.

“We want to bring our students down to the League of Cities. And again, this is a fantastic opportunity for networking for these youth. A lot of times, I want to say, we get inside the bubble of Page, and the first interaction you have with people outside the community is either through sports or when you leave the high school or through the tourists who are coming to Page. So I want them to get to know other council members and movers and shakers of the state of Arizona, because it's my goal to have students from Page intern for the senator of Arizona, intern for the governor. We have an important voice. And this, I think, is just a good step in that direction of getting our youth trained in government and then getting them the ability to have a voice.”