Our Platform

Our platform is not exhaustive: it includes both quick solutions and deeply complicated work that takes persistence over time.

Click each link to find more information about that policy area.

Collaborative Leadership

Public service is about fighting for the common good and working together to get stuff done, and my experience, education, approach, and perspective are particularly needed in Portland today. 

In my 15 years in public service, I have fought for governments to give people more power in policymaking, budgeting, program and project structure, and administrative process-making. In this way, we get more equitable outcomes, more diverse thinking, a more efficient and effective government, and results that better meet the needs of more Portlanders.

We have also been told many times that politics and policymaking is zero-sum and can never be anything other than toxic.

We reject that.

Instead, our campaign - and our office, if elected - will bring people together to make lives better for Portlanders, with an explicit focus on empowering community leaders and organizations and rank-and-file City staff to have more autonomy and power over the work they understand best. 

Portland has immense, pressing challenges. They cannot be solved unless we join forces, and doing that is exactly where both my heart and experience align.

Housing for All

Portland doesn’t have enough housing, what housing we have is too expensive for too many people, and those without homes need support. Homelessness and housing affordability are not easy fixes, and they will require a blend of solutions that are both administrative and legislative, public and private. 

To do that, we can:

  • Support upzoning and rezoning policies like Inner East Side for All that would allow four-story mixed units by right in Portland's inner east side, bringing more density and neighborhood amenities to neighborhoods like ours that are already well-served by transit and should have grown up decades ago.

  • Build on Portland’s 2016 Housing Bond with a new housing bond with more aggressive targets for deep affordability and expand other funding for affordable housing. 

  • Streamline affordable housing incentives and push harder to reform creaky bureaucratic systems to get more and better housing built faster. 

  • Have Portland invest in social housing to provide housing options with rent not controlled by market forces, but rather managed publicly and kept affordable. 

  • Clarify the City’s and County’s respective responsibilities around homelessness, shelters, and mental health support to get better results for people whose lives depend on them.

  • Revive the rental services office to empower housing providers and tenants. Providing housing and knowing your rights as a tenant shouldn’t be hard, and our current system hurts both providers and tenants. 

Reimagining our Streets 

When she’s old enough, I want my daughter to walk to school without worrying that she’ll be hit by a car. My own experience riding my bike and being struck by a car that ran a red light this Spring drove that point home in a very real way.

Some ways we can do that:

  • Identify sustainable funding for our streets, sidewalks, and public transit, which may include road user fees, congestion pricing, ending subsidization of car parking, a retail delivery fee for companies whose revenue is over $10M, or other options.

  • Learn from peer cities who are giving people power to change streets to meet their needs, like the City of Nashville’s tactical urbanism program that funds community ideas to design and implement tactical urbanism projects to make streets safer.

  • Change land use to support close-knit neighborhoods so as Portland grows, services and amenities are close to where people live, encouraging all forms of transportation and not just cars.

  • Support Universal Basic Mobility. Everyone deserves choice in how to get around, and transportation emissions are the largest contributor to greenhouse gases.

  • Incentivize landowners to convert under-utilized surface parking lots for new development.

  • Make it easier for businesses to create outdoor dining and for neighbors to plan and organize street events.

Growing Small Businesses

As the manager of the City of Portland’s Cannabis Program, I worked with emerging small businesses to navigate a brand new, ever-changing business regulatory landscape. 94% of all businesses in Multnomah County employ fewer than 50 staff, and Portland has more small businesses as a proportion of its business community than any similar-sized city in the country.

To keep small businesses in Portland and grow them, we should:

  • Better-incentivize micro and small businesses by making it easier for them to register with the City, reducing the paperwork and fees it takes to get started, and taking a hard look at how our local taxes impact business decisions.

  • Expand the scope of eligible uses of Prosper Portland’s Local Small Business Repair Grants beyond just in response to graffiti and vandalism and expand it to include no-interest loans for eligible capital improvements. 

  • Encourage outdoor dining and activate our streets. Portland’s food culture is internationally-renowned, and Portland should do everything it can to support our restaurants. 

  • Make permitting easier for everyone by cutting the number of permitting requirements and improving administration of those processes.

  • Lower cannabis license fees and provide legal, regulated spaces for adults to consume cannabis. While with the City of Portland, we lowered fees and supported social consumption regulation. Nearly a decade later, the fees have gone back up, and we still don’t provide adults safe, legal, regulated places to consume cannabis in public. We can do better on both.

  • Work on specific, targeted tax exemptions for very small businesses with less than 10 staff.

  • Better-regulate triple net leases so businesses can see and better understand the specific taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs that contribute to rising commercial rent.

Climate Justice

Climate change is an existential threat, especially to vulnerable people, and conserving natural areas with and without public access is critical. We must:

  • Protect the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) from becoming a slush fund. PCEF is a unique and powerful tool that deserves thoughtful and strategic investment, even and especially during the budget crisis Portland finds itself in.

  • Support Universal Basic Mobility. Everyone deserves choice in how to get around, and transportation emissions are the largest contributor to greenhouse gases.

  • Divest from fossil fuels in residential homes by incentivizing solar panels, rain capturing, and removal of natural gas.

  • Ensure Forest Park stays a forest and a park: no clearcutting for a private utility company.

  • Expand Portland’s urban canopy, particularly in East Portland where extreme heat events are up to 20 degrees hotter in neighborhoods without tree canopy cover (only 5% of Portland’s heritage trees are east of I-205).

  • Enable single-car and no-car households with long-term investment in electric vehicle car share, then expand Portland’s Transportation Wallet to include that car share.

Supporting Unions and Working Families

Working people are the majority. If elected, I will have a full-time labor liaison on staff because we need to do everything we can to make Portland more affordable and improve the quality of life for families and working people.

To do this, we ought to: 

  • End the practice of the City contracting out work wherever possible and instead invest in our own workforce. The City needs to build its own capacity in partnering to solve community problems.

  • Make Portland’s minimum wage a livable wage ($27 / hr), working with Portland's Office of Government Relations to lobby the State for this change.

  • Raise a tenant’s “Right to Repair” from $300 to $1000.

  • Do what we can to protect Multnomah County’s Preschool for All program - and ensure it gets implemented quickly and effectively - to help families.

  • Encourage rank and file staff to communicate directly with City Councilors. Leadership is an important part of any organization, but I firmly believe that the people doing the work understand that work best.

Parks and Community Spaces

I love Portland for its access to nature and outdoor spaces, and I’m not alone: nearly 80% of Portlanders in 2024 said parks were either “very” or “extremely” important. For too many Portlanders there are too few of these spaces, they are too far from home, or they haven’t been maintained. 

We need to:

  • Invest in capital improvements and regular maintenance for outdoor sports and activities for all ages. 

  • Create more spaces to safely engage in more activities and sports, such as skateboarding, pickleball, tennis, disc golf, and basketball, among others.

  • Open public access to more City-owned natural areas. Providing more spaces for more people to spend time outside builds community, increases physical activity, reduces crime, and allows us all to feel invested in our public outdoor spaces.

  • Amp up public-private partnerships, such as with the Portland Trail Blazers and Nike to resurface basketball courts, celebrate recreation, and hold events.

Responding to Federal Violence

What Portlanders and people across the country are experiencing from federal immigration enforcement - especially immigrants, refugees, and many Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color - is harassment, intimidation, and in many cases, violence.

Portland can control how our city responds and how we protect the people who live here, and should:

  • Direct our Police Bureau to note Federal agent behaviors, log any munitions that are used, and other tasks that can be used by the City to hold the Federal government accountable.

  • Enact the Right to Know Who’s Policing You legislation to build trust with our police force and hold Federal law enforcement accountable.

  • Support and amplify community organizations that are fighting to protect community members from Federal violence. 

  • Create and facilitate training for all City staff on how to respond to Federal agents in alignment with the City’s policies and values.

  • Refuse to sign grants or other Federal agreements if a requirement of that agreement is allowing or permitting coordination between Federal immigration agents and local law enforcement.

Public Safety and Security

We need to make sure Portland’s sidewalks, neighborhoods, and business storefronts are clean, safe, and navigable for all people. This means addressing not just symptoms, but root causes.

We must:

  • Acknowledge that addressing livability and public safety means increasing opportunity with more deeply affordable housing, streets that work better for everyone, helping small businesses, supporting working families, and functional and well-maintained outdoor public spaces.

  • Fully fund and expand Portland Street Response into a co-equal branch of Portland’s public safety response departments with the Fire and Police bureaus.

  • Ensure overnight shelters are a doorway to housing, including a housing navigator, access to the Multnomah Services and Screening Tool (MSST), and information and guidance around where folks can go to seek care and resources at every overnight shelter.

  • Ensure Portland Police are documenting crashes between cars and “vulnerable users” such as walkers and bikers, because without accurate crash data, we can’t make informed budget, policy, and infrastructure decisions to keep people safe.

Keeping the Trail Blazers in Portland and Supporting Pro Sports

I’ve been a Portland Trail Blazers fan since I was four years old. The Blazers need to stay in Portland. The City also needs to support our other pro franchises (including the Portland Fire) and get a fair deal from using public dollars. 

To do that, we should:

  • Encourage Blazers ownership to step to the financial plate in meaningful, binding ways. 

  • Support Albina Vision Trust (and their partnership with the Blazers, the Albina Rose Alliance) to help center Black Portlanders and those whose homes were bulldozed during urban renewal in redeveloping Lower Albina. 

  • Work with TriMet and the Trail Blazers to allow a Blazers ticket to serve as valid fare for Max line and bus service in the hours before and after home games.

  • Support other pro sports in and around Portland, including our new WNBA team the Portland Fire, our soccer teams in the Thorns and Timbers, our hockey team the Portland Winterhawks, and our baseball team the Portland Pickles, to name a few.

Saying No to Artificial Intelligence (AI)

No artificial intelligence (AI) will be used in our campaign. Full stop. 

Everything you hear me say, everything I write, and all of my opinions will be created, developed, and executed by humans.

If elected, I will refrain from using AI until effective guardrails and policies are created - at the very least at the local level - that assure us that union represented jobs are protected and it can be used in a way to increase trust in government, not erode it.

The benefits of AI need to be shared with all people, including working class folks and those who don’t have many resources: not just the wealthy and large corporations.

What’s Missing?

My years of education and experience have taught me that we can do hard things if we stay optimistic and disciplined about making them happen. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. 

We have and will continue to learn from the people, business, and community organizations in District 3 and across Portland about what matters most, and I pledge to be resolute about my morals, but flexible about what specific projects and policies we work on first.