M-Term: Interning for Council Member Abbie Kamin- Monday-Meeting Everyone!

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 and showed me where to go. I then became friends with the receptionist for City Council as I waited for the Council member’s chief of staff, Kate, to come get me. Kate shortly showed up, where she gave me a small tour of the office, including the intern office. I am the only intern working on Mondays which means I have an office all to myself! We started the day by making copies of a presentation that the Council member was going to present in an hour. We made five copies of the slideshow for the people she was presenting to, and three copies of her notes, one for her, one for Kate, and one for me. We then left to the Harris County office to meet with City Commissioner Leslie Briones. We had an hour long meeting discussing different confidential items regarding the city. The meeting was necessary because Council Member Abbie Kamin is in charge of District C, and Commissioner Briones is in charge of Precinct 4, which has overlap with District C. This means they have to meet to make plans for those overlapped areas. We then went to Precinct 4’s office where I saw multiple people I know through my mom, and Council member Kamin and Commissioner Briones took photos. As we were leaving Commissioner Briones told me that if I am ever interested in interning for the County I should reach out to her, which I thought was very nice, and kind of an honor since she is such a powerful woman. 

    After the meeting, we went back to City Hall Annex where I got an official tour of the building. All of the City Council workers, which means the City Council members, and all their staff work on the same floor, which makes a great community and easy access to everyone. After the tour it was noon, so I was sent on a lunch break. When I got back I read the First Term Report from the District C website, I took notes on things I found interesting. The two that stood out to me were her Gun Buyback plan, where District C partners with the Houston Police Department to buy back guns that are in not safe hands. The other thing that stood out to me was the order of what she tackled after covid. She started with health of Houstonians, essential workers, building back up the economy, and then safety from the uprise in crime. I thought it was interesting that she found the economy more important than the safety from crime, only because I had not heard anyone else talk about how important it was to build back the economy, the only things I heard were related to the immediate safety of citizens, and barely talked about how the economy was doing very poorly. After reading that, Kate and I met to go over my schedule for the next few days, so I have an idea of what I will be doing and how to prepare for them. After that we went to an agenda briefing with all the Chief of Staffs or a senior employee, or the council member themself. There is a website called Novas Agenda Houston City Council, where you can see all the projects that are on the agenda for the councils. The meeting was to go over them, and gives the various districts an opportunity to ask questions about the project. I thought this meeting would be quite boring, but it ended up being a super fast meeting with a lot being discussed, so it ended up being pretty interesting. It also made me think about how some of these people knew exactly what to put on their proposed projects, and some had no idea. Kate asked multiple times about funding for these projects, and I thought it was interesting how some people did not think to put that on the proposal. After that meeting, I attended a general staff meeting. The entire staff consists of four women between the ages 23-25, so the overall environment is really open and accepting, yet super powerful at the same time which is such a cool work environment. At the staff meeting everyone introduced themselves again, and then we talked to Council Member Kamin about her schedule and all the staff members talked to her about the different things they are in charge of. We also talked a little bit about how I will be assigned projects soon, but for now I am spending a few minutes with every staff member to go over what they do, so I can get a better understanding of the different roles of being a staffer, and working in local government in general. Overall it was a really good day, and I am excited to continue for the next two weeks!