Bill Schlegel turned up at the South Chula Vista library Tuesday evening to chat briefly with Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.
Schlegel, who spends a lot of his precious retirement time advocating for low income residents of mobile home parks, wanted to express his disappointment and frustration with the failure of AB-1269.
The bill, which was left unsigned by Gov. Jerry Brown, would have provided mobile home owners one more legal recourse during disputes with mobile home park owners who have a tendency to watch out for their bottom line rather than the quality of life of park residents.
In an email, Schlegel said he spoke with Gonzalez about the underhanded ways lobbyists got the governor to pass over 1269.
Gonzalez — who in 2013 was elected to represent South County in the State Assembly — he wrote, “has been an ardent supporter of our efforts” and he was hoping she would continue her advocacy.
Their congenial exchange, in an air-conditioned conference room providing merciful relief from suffocating heat outside, lasted about five minutes and ended with a hug and Schlegel excusing himself from taking up any more of her time.
Their meeting was one of more than a dozen encounters Gonzalez had that night during her Open Office hours, a public meeting that allows residents to meet face-to-face with people elected and paid to represent them in government.
Most politicians have them. The savvy ones, anyway. They know it’s an opportunity to reinforce their name recognition while at the same time hearing in person what their constituents believe is a priority.
The styles of the meetings, from those at the local council level to the congressional sort, vary as widely as the issues that are brought up.
In Gonzalez’s case, that night people wanted to talk to her about funding for more adult education, funding for more English classes, ways to bring more affordable housing to the area, ways for grass roots organizers to help support progressive legislation and ways to insulate California from another devastating drought.
If there was talk about immigration policy and the status of California as a sanctuary state, or crackdowns by ICE in local communities, or concerns over police harassment, or LGBTQ bathrooms in schools or marijuana dispensaries, or wage disparities based on gender or sexual assaults, or myriad other issues that can be and are addressed at the state level, they were absent from the snippets of conversation I overhead.
People wanted to talk about opportunities to learn. And ways to improve their communities. And, perhaps most of all, people just wanted to be listened to.
