Community Organizations Help Shape Enhanced Access to Board Meetings and Budget Process
San Diego County supervisors voted this week to invite a wider and more diverse audience to participate in Board of Supervisors meetings and weigh in on County business.
County officials said the changes will align the County with California’s Senate Bill 707 — improvements to California’s Ralph M. Brown Act open meeting laws that began taking effect in January and expand July 1. Senate Bill 707’s intent was to modernize public meeting laws in California, expand public access and participation, support equitable engagement, and address new norms in technology and civic participation.
Board members voted to take several actions, some of which included:
- Beginning next month, translate County Board of Supervisors’ meeting agendas into Spanish.
- Move to combine County Board agendas — which are currently split into separate special district agendas — into one, simpler document for each session. It would contain the title of each agenda item; the actions the Board of Supervisors could consider; and hyperlinks to additional, supporting information.
- Develop guidelines for County staff to create “plain language” titles for agenda items that are easier for people to understand, unless there are legal requirements to do otherwise.
- Use new technology to offer increased live interpretation of Board meetings into “threshold languages” — non-English languages that are widely used in the county.
- Allow seven County advisory committees to conduct their meetings by teleconference.
- Work with community-based organizations to conduct workshops — to widen the County’s engagement with non-English speaking residents.
How Community Based Organizations Informed Recommendations
The County launched a one-year pilot program in summer 2025 to work with seven contracted community-based organizations who engage with Spanish, Arabic, Somali, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Persian and Vietnamese – speaking communities to expand accessibility of County community engagement activities and language services.
The changes the Board adopted on Tuesday were created in part by working with those seven community-based organizations.
The community-based organizations conducted focus groups between Feb. 10, and Feb. 26, 2026, with non-English speaking communities representing the counties threshold languages to talk about barriers they experience that make it difficult to participate in Board of Supervisors meetings and recommendations for how the County can address them.
Expanding Engagement on County Budget Through Community Based Organizations
The County is also using the pilot program to expand engagement on its budget process to non-English speaking communities.
From Feb. 25 through March 29, the County conducted an online survey and budget priorities ranking tool on its Engage San Diego County Budget page. The community-based organizations participating in the program are also working to gather input on communication and engagement preferences and budget priorities to by facilitating focus groups in their contract languages in the communities they serve.
Recommended Budget Coming May 18, More Ways to Get Involved
County Chief Administrative Officer Ebony Shelton will release the County’s
Recommended Budget for the public and County Board of Supervisors to review and consider on May 18. Once available, the public can:
- Review the recommended budget online.
- Submit comments through 5 p.m. June 11 on Engage San Diego County.
- Attend a virtual community meeting from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday, May 27.
- Visit an in-person open house from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday, May 28 at the County Administration Center.
- Participate in a public budget hearing on June 1, before the Board considers and adopts the final budget June 23.