My name is Mary Wilson, and I am running for Clearlake City Council.

I am an adult education navigator and outreach specialist at the Lake County Campus of Woodland Community College.

I help people finish their high school diploma or equivalency. Then I help them make educational and career plans towards family sustaining employment.

In this position, I do outreach at many community events and coordinate events on campus. For some of these events, I work in collaboration with community agencies.

Two recent examples are Resilient Reentry with Lake County Probation and Suicide Prevention with Behavioral Health.

Additionally, I also help connect English language learners to ESOL coursework and to college coursework as they improve their language skills.

In addition to my employment, I am active with several community agencies. I am currently the president of the Middletown Art Center Board. I also acted as a cross-cultural liaison and helped write the grant that resulted in the murals on the water towers on Rabbit Hill.

I have been a member of the Lake County Continuum of Care, the agency that coordinates housing and services funding for homeless families, since 2020. I have been a member of its Point in Time, or PIT, count committee since 2021, I also serve on their performance and grant selection committees. Over the past two years, we have significantly improved our review of funded programs and the grant selection process, which has the potential to increase funding to the community and the effectiveness of programs we oversee.

I have been a member of the Lake County Subcommittee of the Workforce Alliance of North Bay, the agency responsible for workforce development programs, since 2018. I was instrumental in making sure CareerPoint Lake has a continued presence in Clearlake and they will be in Clearlake full-time soon.

I also assist community agencies with grant writing and the grant selection process, including Kno’Qoti Native Wellness and Lake County Probation.

My job and my volunteer position make me well connected to the community and I am well aware of the issues impacting Clearlake.

My vision for Clearlake is that it is a safe place for people to raise their families and to live happy, fulfilling lives. That vision includes more housing choices for every economic status and a growing economy with family sustaining employment.

In my vision every citizen has access to the education they need to participate in that economy, and we continue to expand the places that people celebrate our rural, small town outdoor lifestyle, like what the city created at Austin Park.

I care about safety in our city. If elected, I want to develop a wildfire risk assessment plan using Firewise protocol, increase the number of egresses in neighborhoods that are landlocked, and research ways to utilize responsive architectural methods to address wildfire risk and climate change as we improve our infrastructure.

I want to install traffic calming devices to slow down traffic on our newly paved streets. And I want to improve safety at the Burns Valley Mall, where some of our citizens have expressed to me their apprehension about shopping.

Together we can develop a long-term vision for Clearlake that is connected to community values and aspirations.

To develop that vision, we need to have participatory conversations about the future of Clearlake that will contribute to the county, our country, the planet and the well-being of our citizens.

Let’s build a vibrant city together. Vote for Mary Wilson for Clearlake City Council on Nov. 5.

Mary Wilson lives in Clearlake, California.