PRIORITIES
I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE IN DISTRICT ONE WHO IS READY TO LEAD ON DAY ONE.
I’ve been working in public policy for 14 years, including five years working for US Senator Jeff Merkley and then another five years as Senior Policy Director for former Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish. I’ve learned how to get real results out of Portland’s complicated system of government.
We can’t afford to have the next Portland City Council learn on the job. I have years of experience building coalitions and collaboration across governments on complicated issues. In City Hall, my job was to bring everyone to consensus on extremely complex issues. We focused on passing laws that brought real solutions instead of just bandaids designed to make things feel better temporarily. I refuse to accept the usual response of how it’s “someone else’s job”. As a city councilor it will be my job to get results and make our city a place once again where we dream big and then follow the solutions all the way through.
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The situation on our streets is unacceptable. It is inhumane to allow our neighbors to live unhoused on the streets. And it is unacceptable to allow bad behavior to make neighbors feel unsafe. None of this is ok. My old boss Nick Fish used to say if the President called and said that 4,000 Haitian refugees were coming to Portland, we’d find a way to get them a safe place to stay, but we don’t have that same urgency for our own neighbors. Nothing feels urgent in our City Council’s response to the crises happening on our streets or to bring deeply affordable housing to the rent-burdened families of East Portland.
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Lately, Portland has lost some of what makes her special. Neighbors don’t feel safe to send their kids to the park. The police don’t come when they are called while incidents of gun violence increase. The number of residents struggling with addiction and housing insecurity has skyrocketed. Crossing the street can be a life or death situation. For too many in our community, it feels like nothing is working. Creating a safe and livable city is going to take all of us pitching in and fighting for this place, and for each other.
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Portland is a small business city. The stores, restaurants, coffee shops, music venues, and breweries are the backbone of our neighborhoods. But running your own business in the City of Portland is a nightmare. I know this not only because of my five years in Portland City Hall as liaison to the small business community, but also as a former small business owner myself. Small businesses are why Portland is special, so as a city councilor I will bend over backwards to fix these policies and create the investments, the jobs, and the sense of place that our community needs.
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Despite almost sixty years of activism, advocacy, awareness and action, the world has produced more garbage, plastic or carbon emissions this year than ever before. We’re already experiencing crazier and more extreme weather events in Portland, including flooding, ice, the Heat Dome, and the forest fires in the Gorge, all of which affected East Portland more than any other part of the city. And yet instead of doing something serious about it, the Portland City Council has put bandaids on these issues like banning plastic straws and grocery bags. Let’s focus on real solutions, not performative politics. -
Folks across Portland have been talking to me about how expensive it is to live here and yet it feels like nothing is getting better. Portlanders are willing to increase their own property taxes to help others in our community, to protect wildlife, support schools, and the arts, and to upgrade vital infrastructure. But we gotta know what we're getting for our money, and we've gotta see things getting better. Public dollars are sacred and a public budget is a moral document. We use public dollars to build the community we deserve. In some cases we pay a premium to ensure our dollars reflect our standards. We have a responsibility to lead with our values with every dollar we spend, and to demand accountability and transparency along the way.
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Portland is a major music city. But we’re the only music city in America where the government and business community have completely ignored that identity. For decades, business and government leaders in our community have viewed the music industry as part of the arts. At the same time, the arts have viewed music as a business, and excluded musicians from any form of public art dollars. A State of Oregon economic impact study showed that the music industry in Portland is worth over $3billion annually and provides jobs for more people and contributes more in taxes than salmon, timber, or cannabis.