During my time working for Council Member Kallos, The Constituent Services Department was the largest of the three departments and was run by Intern Coordinator and Community Liaison Joseph Strong. Working in Constituent Services entails taking calls from constituents, checking the Council Member’s email, or talking directly with constituents who come into the office about problems they are having or issues they want the Council Member to either support or oppose. For each constituent that contacts us, we fill out an intake sheet with their contact information, the issue that they contacted us about, and our plan to resolve it.

Another big part of working in constituent services is writing letters. After a few weeks in the office, this became my job. Every intern had the opportunity to meet one on one with the Council Member twice during the internship and, during my first one on one with Council Member Kallos, he explained to me why writing letters is so important when you’re a Council Member. He asked me, “What do you think the most important part of being an elected official is?” I replied, “Helping people.” He said, “Well, yes. But in order to do that you must get reelected. That’s the most important part. We write letters so that constituents have physical proof of what we’ve done for them. Even if we can’t do anything for them, a letter lets them know that they’re still important to us and we have them in mind.” So, about half of my time in the office was spent drafting letters to different agencies or constituents from Council Member Kallos.

Although it sounds simple, the process of getting a letter approved to go out took, on average, four hours. This is because each letter had to be approved by Debbie Lightbody, which is how she came to be my mentor. Debbie was incredibly supportive during my time in the office and we became close over the course of the two months that I was there. She was constantly encouraging me and praising my work and brought me along to meetings she thought I would be interested in. One meeting she took me to was at the Department Of Transportation headquarters in downtown Manhattan where the Borough Commissioner gave a PowerPoint presentation on how to report problems to the DOT more efficiently. This meeting taught me how detailed and fascinating local government can be in that the presentation outlined things like the difference between a pothole and a sinkhole and that they might seem similar but they’re dealt with my separate departments.

This internship taught me to take initiative and to fill a void where I saw one. I’m proud to have worked for Council Member Kallos because he takes women’s rights very seriously (in fact he insists on being called Council Member rather than Councilman), he is very aware of the income inequality that exists in his own district and is taking measures to try and correct this, and he gives constituents the opportunity to speak with him directly, holding open forums twice a month. I would like to sincerely thank Scripps College for providing the funds that allowed me to partake in this internship. Working for Council Member Kallos has solidified my interest in going into local politics and I hope it is one of many stops on my political career.