M-Term: Interning for Council Member Abbie Kamin

 Thursday- “All Politics are Local Politics”      Today is my last day of the internship, which is definitely bitter-sweet. I started the day with working of the letter of support spreadsheet that I worked on yesterday, I did not format it correctly, so I spent the first part of the morning working on that. I then re-took my notes from yesterday’s council. My original notes were way too messy, so I retook them onto a legal pad for whoever needed them. I then worked on writing a biography paragraph for CM Kamin because Aliyah asked me to. The last bio was severely outdated, so I tried to write a more up to date one. I used previous bios and the annual reports to write about all her successes. After that, everyone took me out to lunch, which was so sweet of them. We went to Shake Shack, which was my first time going there. We had conversation about local politics where Kate said “all politics are local politics”, and that felt like a fitting title for the last blog. Af...

 Wednesday- HEC is Scary     Today started with me being really confused again, because I was the only person in the office again, but Council was happening and I was not sure if I was supposed to go or not so I just waited to see what was happening when Kate texted me saying that they were at council and I should join them. I was assigned to take notes on Centerpoint’s speech and what Council had to say about it, and to take notes on everything that CM Kamin commented on. I ended up taking 4 pages of notes on Council, which is good because I felt accomplished and it helped me pay attention. The Centerpoint thing was that Centerpoint wants to consolidate four areas into 1, including Houston, for natural gas. The issue with this is Houston will see a massive increase in their rate, while the other areas will see major decreases, so Council was talking about why would we agree to this when it will just end up being way more expensive for basically no reason, other than it m...

 Tuesday- Whereas, I went to public session     My day started with me deciding I am too punctual with times. I got here at 8:45am, and was the only person in the office, again. Everyone else got here at like 9:15. It ends up being a good thing because it gives me some quiet time to write my blog from the previous day! Once Aliyah got in, I had a meeting with her about what she does. She is in charge of scheduling for CM Kamin, special projects, odd jobs, and social media. She also writes all the proclamations for District C. She showed me all of the websites she uses for organization, and said something about how most people do not realize how important organization is in order to be productive, luckily I was brought up on a Montessori education, so I do know the importance of time management and organization, I did not tell her that though, I kind of just nodded politely. She assigned me to write a proclamation for GlowUp Houston, which is a beauty boutique that just op...

 Monday- Matching Skirts    “You missed maxi skirt, tight shirt day!”- Anna to Yucari in the staff meeting. Apparently Mondays are for maxi skirts and tight shirts, since Anna, Aliyah, and I were all matching. Anna and I were kind of scarily matching, with the same exact skirt in different colors from Target, and a sweater with a small turtle neck. This was the least important event of the day, but maybe the most entertaining. The day started with finishing my research on Planned Parenthood, finding more statistics from Harris County and specific council districts for maternal mortality rates. After finishing my Planned Parenthood research, I worked on and finished the research I was doing on BARC, today was just reading through it one more time and fixing any spelling/grammatical mistakes. I then had a meeting with Kate and Anna where we went over the Agenda. Anna is taking over from Kate to work on the Agenda, so this week is for her to figure out how to do it. In that ...

 Friday- Transportation Policy Council      Friday was an online day, since for staff they usually do half days, and in the morning there was only one meeting and it was online. The meeting was the Transportation Policy Council for the Houston-Galveston Area Council. It was a very very very long meeting about transportation proposals and updates. The most interesting part was at the very end when they discussed bylaws. The meeting was live-streamed on the website HGAC, which stands for Houston-Galveston Area Council. After the meeting, which lasted all morning, I worked more on the Planned Parenthood brief, and on the BARC assignment that I talked about in the last blog. I was not able to completely finish either because my family has been dealing with a minor family emergency this week, my dad got hurt and has been unable to move without severe pain, so the rest of Friday was spent taking care of him. For the Planned Parenthood brief, I worked on finding the distric...

 Thursday- The Worst Cupcake I’ve Ever Had      Today was much more focused on office work than the past days have, which is actually kind of nice since it feels like I am helping. I got to the office way too early, before anyone else, which was kind of confusing and I overthought if I had missed a memo saying that people were not coming to the office today, but it ended up being fine and everyone eventually showed up. It was raining really heavy, which was the reason they were not there at the time they usually are. A little bit later, I met Jenna, the other UofH intern, who was shocked that I am still in high school and think that this internship is amazing. Kate came in shortly after to assign me some work. I was assigned to do research on Planned Parenthood and write a brief on my findings. This is because I attended the meeting with CM Kamin and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast earlier this week, and they are predicting people asking questions about planned parenth...

  Wednesday- Council and PTOs      Starting off the day strong, I went straight to the “chambers” and watched Council. The Council Members voted on different items in the agenda, and there were a few presentations as well. The thing that surprised me the most about council is how much of the stuff they work on is purely financial. Most of the things they voted on and the presentations that happened talked about getting funding for their project. I would have thought it would be more policy. During Council I was accidentally on TV, a group of people came into Council about half way through, and sat a few rows in front of me. As soon as they sat down, all the cameras turned towards them. A little later they went up to talk to the Mayor and all the Council Members, so I am pretty sure they were important. Every time they panned to them sitting in the audience, I would be in the background.  Screenshot of HTV Live News, with me in the background     A...

 Tuesday- Planned Parenthood and Public Session     Today was packed with super important meetings and witnessing the first hour and a half of Public Session. The day started by meeting with Yucari Ramirez, who is the director of constituent services. We met for around a half hour, where she told me all about what she does, and what she is in charge of. She also taught me about 311 which is an organization that deals with problems in the city, anyone can report things to 311, from street issues to neighbor issues. Yucari gets tons of emails about problems citizens are having, and she explained to me that lots of these people have to report them to 311, but instead reach out to her, so there is a constant back and forth between her and citizens. After meeting with her, I read the annual report of 2022. The annual report goes over all the funding that District C did in 2022, there was a big focus on safety, which makes sense considering CM Kamin is also chair of Public Safe...

Monday- Meeting Everyone!     My first day interning for Council member Abbie Kamin was surprisingly fun, and educational all at the same time. My day started with getting lost trying to find the public parking for City Hall Annex. I am getting a city employee badge hopefully tomorrow, which will give me access to employee parking, but for now I am parking in the public parking lot, which is on the on-ramp to I45, which got increasingly confusing as I missed the turn into the parking lot and ended up on the highway. Eventually I found my way back to the parking lot and I was still early! I walked into City Hall Annex where I went through security and became friends with the security guards, I think because they could tell I was nervous. I was then instructed to go to the first floor, where all the City Council offices are. I got in the elevator and mistakenly pressed the wrong button, getting lost in the building again. I ran into a very sweet man who works for City Council an...