Cities Wise to Seek Youthful Perspective : * Fresh Ideas Bring Vitality to a World of Adult Order

The future belongs to the young, and two Orange County cities are showing how it is wise not to defer participation in planning for those who can be included today.

Through city committees, Irvine and Tustin are touching base with young people before making some decisions affecting youth. These are tough budgetary times for many, but where possible, it’s worth the effort to consult with young people.

Irvine, for example, is a city whose youthful energy breathes vitality into a world of adult order and predictability. The youngsters living in the cul-de-sacs and subdivisions are in many ways the raison d’etre for a planned residential community. They are the ones, after all the jockeying over housing values and talk of being locked into mortgage payments, around whom many community decisions are made.

Irvine’s Youth Action Team is made up of students from four high schools who advise the City Council on issues of importance to young residents, for example, conflicts between them and police. According to Luke Fenchel, a team member, “Teens in Irvine sometimes don’t feel like they’re heard.” In neighboring Tustin, high school and middle school students give policy advice to the city’s leaders.

This sense of not feeling part of the process, described by Fenchel, can be a common experience for youngsters. Suburban communities would ignore the counsel of these young folks at their own peril. It is good to see that these communities shrewdly recognize high school students as an important constituency, and are bringing them into the process of decision-making.

This is a way of turning some of the anomie that’s out there into something positive. Regular readers of “OC HIGH, Student News & Views,” which appears on Thursdays in The Times Orange County Edition, will recognize some of these sentiments, as youngsters endeavor to come to terms with their sense of personal identity and to find meaning in an unpredictable and increasingly dangerous world.

A Feb. 17 article on students Mazen Faysal and Ruba Kharuf, sophomores at Santa Margarita High School, described students’ interest in going beyond themselves to help victims of civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The youngsters helped their world history teacher gather more than 400 hospital bedsheets and gowns, which were packaged with hundreds of letters, and sent through the humanitarian organization Operation Second Chance.

Faysal’s advice to his fellow students also was instructive for communities seeking to mobilize the support and help of young people: “Try to get involved with something; as long as you’re involved, it matters. You don’t have to be powerful or have a lot of money to make a difference.”

It is terrific to see that kind of idealism in young people. So why not harness it for the good of local communities? Moreover, as David Mars, professor emeritus of public administration at USC, observes, participating in local government gives young adults “a taste of what local governments face. Even if they don’t go into politics, it would make them better-informed citizens.”

Some cities in the county, such as Garden Grove and Anaheim, had such student commissions as of a few years ago, but they were lost in budget cuts. Others, such as Fountain Valley, had considered them but have been awaiting more money. Irvine pays its youngsters on the commission $5.98 an hour. Can’t others somehow find some money for this important work? It seems a small price to pay as an investment in the community’s future.