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Washington County tables ordinance to expand multilingual emergency text alerts
Summary
Justice Rivera Lopez moved to table an ordinance intended to fund multilingual emergency text alerts and related "right to prepare" measures; the motion was seconded and tabled indefinitely. Committee members discussed the 10,000-speaker threshold and Census Bureau language data during the exchange.
The Washington County County Services Committee voted to table indefinitely an ordinance proposed by Justice Rivera Lopez that would have supported emergency text alerts and related "right to prepare" measures, including funding for translated notifications.
Justice Rivera Lopez moved to table the ordinance, saying the county's third-party vendor currently lacks capacity to implement the program and she did not want "to put the county in a position to do something that it can't do." Justice Rickard seconded the motion; the chair called for ayes, and the motion was tabled with affirmative voices recorded and no opposition voiced on the record.
During discussion before the motion, Rivera Lopez described the proposed measure as targeting text-message alerts already referenced in the county's emergency-preparedness plan and said the goal was to allow people who receive notifications on their phones to opt in to receive them in another language. "The hope here is that we could get those alerts translated," Rivera Lopez said, adding she had spoken with Kyle Curry at the emergency operations center about the initiative.
Committee members pressed on two specific points. Justice Massengill asked whether the alerts would be cellular text messages or radio broadcasts; Rivera Lopez replied the proposal was aimed at text-message alerts. Justice Massengill also questioned how the county would determine when a language met the proposed 10,000-speaker threshold.
Rivera Lopez said she selected 10,000 because, in her view, that is the threshold at which voting materials must be printed in another language under Arkansas law. Justice Rio Stafford told the committee that Census Bureau data (data.census.gov) include tables on language spoken at home and confirmed that, based on Census data as of February 2023, English and Spanish are the two languages that would pass a 10,000-speaker threshold in Washington County.
Justice Hires raised a procedural point asking why the item was being discussed after it had been moved to table; the chair acknowledged the point and closed discussion after the motion. The ordinance was not adopted and no date was set to revisit it.
