M-Term: Interning for Council Member Abbie Kamin - Wednesday - HEC is Scary

 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 might be slightly more efficient, but not worth the rate changes. Later in Council CM Kamin was asking questions about an item that talked about funding for a project, and she kept asking questions I think to get the boundaries clearer, and after they passed the item she told everyone that in August 2021 they had passed an item with almost identical wording. I thought this was pretty cool because all the questions were basically setting them up for this, and she just remembered this one council meeting from 2021 that talked about the same thing, it was so interesting. At the end of council CM Kamin surprised me and shouted me out. She asked me to stand up and told everyone about me and that I’m great, I felt very honored and slightly embarrassed haha. A small class from Heights High School was sitting behind me and they introduced themselves after that since their class was seniors and I am a senior as well. After council I met with Yucari and we did a 311 report about a broken street. I then met with Aliyah and she taught me about letters of support and assigned me a job to sort all the letters that they have given out. That was what I did after the meeting. I made an excel document where I sorted all the letters by topic, who it was to, who requested it, and their congressional district. After that Aliyah asked me to make a canva social media post about Easter, so I spent the rest of the afternoon doing that, until my meeting at Houston Emergency Center. On Monday I was in a meeting with Yukari, Kate, and Abbie, where we talked about the silent room for 911 dispatchers, and in that meeting we talked about doing a site visit of the silent rooms, today was that day. Yukari and I drove to the Houston Emergency Center, which is a little north of the heights. We had some trouble getting in the building since it has such intense security. The person at the gate did not understand that we were from the council member’s office and not looking for a council member, so Yukari called the lady we were meeting so that she could help us get in. We finally got in and parked, where we met the lady we were meeting (I completely forgot her name), and Darian who works with the general construction departments for the government. We went into HEC and went up to the room where all the dispatchers are. It was crazy. It was a huge room, like basically the size of a city block, with desks lined up next to each other in rows going all the way back, and at the front of the room there were a bunch of massive TV screens playing a bunch of different news stations. The room also had no lights aside from the computer and TV lights. In the very back were two tiny rooms that were the silent rooms. They were tiny, with florescent lights, brown walls, and a chair graveyard. It was pretty depressing and I am glad that we are doing something to help! By the time we got back it was already 4, so I went home. I am excited for tomorrow but also kind of sad since it is my last day, and I have absolutely loved this experience and the people that work here. 

The Easter Social Media Thing that I did