The recently reorganized American Fork Youth City Council is being called a success.

Adviser Randy Lish said he was pleased with the quality of the participants.

"You have got some really top-notch kids," he said. "They are not in trouble all the time. These kids are interested in making themselves better and helping the community out. I am very impressed with the quality of kids."

He got involved when his daughter Kirsten Lish came home from her first meeting with the group and said they needed an adult to serve as an adviser.

After a several year hiatus, the Youth City Council was restarted for the 2007-2008 school year. Most of the current members joined in January of 2008.

Seven students serve on the council. One is the youth mayor and others have positions on committees. Many of the positions parallel the American Fork City Council.

The Youth Council members each oversee particular areas. One works with public safety and courts, another with parks and recreation and planning and zoning. Another assignment is public works and engineering; another works with beautification and youth involvement. One serves as youth city recorder.

"I like the difference and the influence I can make on the city -- the service projects and other things we do," Camille Payne said.

Service also was high on Jasmine Fiero's list.

"I like how this gives us an opportunity to do service," she said. "Kids want to do service but they don't know how or where."

Brittany Stevenson said she enjoyed those projects and the help it has given her.

"I really like the opportunity to gain experience from it," she said. "I have had to work on the Web site and be in contact with people in the community. It has helped me grow in organizational skills."

Payne said she also has grown from the experience.

"I like how we have to contact people a lot," she said. "I never was one to talk to people. This has made me branch out. I want to be a nurse. This will help me with people skills that I will need."

She said seeing the way various subcommittees work together helps her learn organizational skills.

"It is good to see how organizations function," she said. "Every committee has to deal with others to understand the structure of how things work."

Kaitlyn Livingston, one of the committee members who assists the council, said she enjoyed working with the group.

"I like it because I think it is really good to learn to get involved now," she said. "We are the ones that need to be running the world in the future. We can have an influence on the community. This prepares us for bigger things when we get older."

The group tries to do at least one service project a month. They prepared Art Dye Park for the Steel Days events happening this month. Other projects have been cleaning graffiti from a freeway overpass and helping with the downtown Halloween celebration.

"I think I liked cleaning up under the underpass best even though it was gross," Fiero said. "It felt like we were doing something that made a difference. People were driving by and saw us working."

Stevenson couldn't choose a favorite.

"I have liked all of the service projects," she said. "They gave us a chance to do something good. I especially liked Halloween. We saw a lot of kids in their costumes. They had different stations that we helped with."

Those stations included creativity and hard work.

"We had them make spiders out of Oreos," Fiero said. "We also worked with the cleanup after it."

Their efforts don't start on the day of the project, but instead require advance preparation.

"These meetings are planning meetings," Fiero said of their twice a month routine. "We propose ideas like cleaning up a park. They are things we have noticed in the community that we can help with. Then we choose a project and get everything ready to do it."

Many of the council members are musical, and sometimes they choose projects that focus on those talents.

"We went to American Fork Hospital to play for some of the people in the hospital," Fiero said.

"We got to both play and sing," Stevenson said.

Lish said he has seen the council members grow during the time they have been involved.

"Most kids in high school can't take a project and run with it," he said. "They are finding out that it doesn't always work out for adults, either. It has been a good learning experience for all of them."

Youth City Council

The council meets on the first and third Tuesday of every month at 5:30 p.m. in the historic City Hall (31 N. Church). They discuss issues in the community, and plan ways they can fix them. They also participate in monthly service projects in the community. The main goal of the council is to encourage youth to get involved in their community to help make it great.

The City Council appointed Youth City Council members Kaitlyn Stone, Bethany Richards, Jasmine Fiero, Cameron Hodges, Camille Payne, Brittany Stevenson and Steven Noyce.

To become a member of the council, youth need to fill out an application and give it to one of the board members listed above, or send it to Shirl LeBaron at Shirl@AFCity.net.

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