Government and Civic · Community
Maria Navarrete addressed the council in Spanish, and the room followed along on two screens
Maria Navarrete, Jackie Rogers, Wilson Ramos, Rebecca Gipson, Isaac Barron, Pamela Goynes-Brown · North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
North Las Vegas used to send for whichever city employee could translate. In 2023 it put a laptop on the speakers' podium instead, and by 2026 the city clerk says there is almost no language you cannot bring to City Hall.
The person and the place
In North Las Vegas, the most recent census had 42 percent of residents identifying as Hispanic and almost 38 percent speaking a language other than English at home. Maria Navarrete lives there and belongs to Make The Road Nevada.
The problem North Las Vegas cared about
Public comment is the plainest tool a resident has, and it only works if the room can understand you. The city used to handle that by sending for whichever city employee could translate when the need arose. Rebecca Gipson, the assistant city manager, said the city wanted something more efficient that could also serve the residents watching from home. Gipson put the ceiling on the old arrangement: "We'd have to have 30 interpreters in the council chambers … it would be a little bit impossible to do that in an in-person format."
The agency moment
The city bought Wordly, and in August 2023 it debuted real-time AI translation at its public meetings, the first jurisdiction in Nevada to do it, and set it up for the room rather than for a press photo. A laptop went on the speakers' podium so that anyone at the microphone could watch the translation while talking. Council members got it on their own screens. Two televisions in the chamber carried the transcript, one in English and one in Spanish. Anyone in the audience, or at home with the agenda open, could scan a QR code and read the translation on a phone, or listen to it on earphones instead of reading it. It started with Spanish and English.
What changed, with evidence
At one of the first meetings, Navarrete walked to the microphone and thanked the council in Spanish while Wordly put the words on the screens in English. Councilman Isaac Barron told the room: "As a teacher and member of the community, I'm overjoyed." Wilson Ramos, who runs community services and engagement for the city, named the part that actually moves: "Many of our community members have never been to a council meeting before." Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, in the same meeting, gave the honest version of how new it felt: "What I like about this is it's translating English to Spanish and Spanish to English and it's not missing a beat at all. We just have to get used to reading the screen over here." The translation is not flawless either. Accuracy depends on how fast and how clearly a person speaks, and the audience can watch the software reach back and clean up a sentence mid-thought. It was still running in March 2026, by which point Government Technology reported Spanish as the default with other languages reachable by QR code, and City Clerk Jackie Rogers put the range this way: "There's almost no language that you can't come to City Hall and speak." Tagalog, which officials said in 2023 they expected by the end of that year for the city's growing Filipino population, was pending a software update from the company.
The move worth copying
The equipment was a laptop, a QR code, and the two televisions in the council chamber. Dozens of cities have put similar systems in place, particularly in California and Nevada. If you know a city clerk, a school board member, or anyone who runs a public meeting where part of the room is not following what is said, this is the one to put in front of them.
"La tecnología de traducción es algo más que una comodidad, es una herramienta vital para gente como yo. (Translation technology is more than just a convenience, it's a vital tool for people like me.)" — Maria Navarrete, to the North Las Vegas City Council, in The Nevada Independent
Sources
Here is where this story came from. Go read the originals.
Curated by Good in Progress from the public record.
Sources last verified .
- The Nevada Independent, Jannelle Calderon, 2023 ↗
- KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas, 2023 ↗
- Government Technology, Carl Smith ↗
- Government Technology, Jule Pattison-Gordon ↗
- FOX5 Las Vegas / KVVU ↗
AI-generated illustration inspired by this story.
