“Is our city council fully representative of the people in our city?” asked Appleton Common Council member Vaya Lauren Jones. “I don’t think so.”
Jones was elected to the council on April 6, 2022, defeating incumbent Michael Smith. Jones commended Smith for his service but was inspired to run against him because she didn’t feel he was proactive enough in the community and got too comfortable in his seat. When someone suggested Jones run for council, she initially laughed it off, expecting her husband to do the same. However, according to Jones, her husband was immediately supportive of the idea. Now that she’s in office, in contrast to Smith, Jones said that she doesn’t feel that she’s doing her job if she spends a day being comfortable and not thinking about the needs of her constituents.
“Mike did his job of answering, but I need to be proactive,” said Jones. “I need to listen to who’s coming to me but I need to go out to people.”
Jones reflected on how she won the election, noting that she realized quickly that door-to-door conversations were way more impactful than traditional markers of campaign success, such as yard signs. Jones and her husband put together a map of the district, and when there were areas that weren’t being canvassed, they would go knock on those doors.
On election night, Jones said she was more excited to see council member Denise Fenton and council member Nate Wolff win their elections than she was about her own election, which she didn’t expect to win. When she did, she felt redeemed after decades of being told to wait her turn. She also felt relieved, because she knew there were people who were counting on her to win.
“If I lose this, it’s on me, but if I lose this, there’s a lot of people that I’m letting down,” Jones said.
However, Jones was not always the service-oriented person she is today. She recalls growing up in a suburb of Green Bay, desperately wanting to get out of the “lame cheese state” and become a corporate PR person. Jones is the first to admit that “she wasn’t a great person” when she had that mindset.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a double major in Communications and Spanish, Jones moved to London to complete an internship doing data entry for a multinational corporation. While doing this job, she realized that she was doing data entry for a company that was, in her words, “making rich people richer,” and felt that something was off, so she talked to her mentor, who suggested she look into doing data entry for the British Lung Foundation. She cites the realization that it felt so much better to save people from smoking-related illnesses than working for corporations.
“That was the kick in the mouth I needed to understand that I am not the center of the universe,” Jones said. “There are people that need help, and I am here to help them.”
As an elected official, Jones is most passionate about affordable housing, and she already has ideas about how to make Appleton a more affordable place to live. Jones believes that we should not only build affordable housing but pursue projects that mix affordable housing with more high-end housing. Jones believes that projects like these will build communities that transcend socioeconomic status and remove some of the stigma around housing affordability. She stressed the importance of balancing the types of housing we build.
Beyond building housing, Jones wants to work on Appleton’s neighborhoods, believing that helping low-income homeowners maintain their houses will help raise property values and build communities. She lamented the fact that landlords are often detached from the neighborhoods they rent in and don’t want to invest money in low-income neighborhoods, leading to renters putting up with subpar living conditions.
Jones talked about Appleton’s homelessness crisis as well, noting that people experiencing homelessness aren’t always a visible population in Appleton, with many choosing to sleep under bridges, in storage units, in their cars or other places not suitable for human habitation.
She connected homelessness to domestic violence, citing the fact that women experiencing domestic violence who are behind on rent risk being evicted if they report the abuse to the police, similarly to how many undocumented immigrants do not report abuse — either sexual or workplace — for fear of deportation. She added that she would support education on how to be a good renter in order to build positive relationships between renters and landlords.
In office, Jones has been able to live up to her campaign promise to be proactive in the community. According to her, residents who have never felt comfortable reaching out to their council member have come to her with concerns. She feels that this will help to rectify the main problem she identified in Appleton, that the city government is not fully representative of the people.
Policy-wise, Jones worked on a draft design for Linwood Avenue that would reduce speeding and dangerous truck driving. She has also helped connect Hmong community members who don’t speak English fluently with home repair opportunities they may have missed out on because of language barriers. Jones has also worked outside of city hall, contributing to free food and resource pantries, putting on a Back-to-School carnival at Linwood Park and connecting homeless residents to services rather than incarcerating them. She noted that being on the Appleton Common Council gives her the opportunity to vote to support local projects and nonprofits which help vulnerable Appleton residents and then go out in the community and work with those same groups she’s voted to support.
Jones added that she enjoys her new job and the opportunities it gives her to help people.
“I’m a problem-solver,” said Jones. “To be able to not only solve a problem but make someone’s day to day life better because of it is an incredible feeling.”