The purpose of government is to collectively meet challenges in our community and take advantage of every opportunity to ensure we all thrive. It is a critical way in which we, the people, decide to work together to make life better for ourselves and our neighbors. And yet, we find ourselves at a moment in which people are losing faith in the idea that government can solve the most pressing challenges we face. We need local leaders who will stand up and show everybody in our city that our local government can be responsive to the needs of people in our community and ensure everyone thrives. I want to work for a Saint Paul that:

• Provides high-quality core services and is responsive to residents’ needs;

• Adds housing options for people across all income levels;

• Promotes safe streets and abundant pedestrian, biking, and transit options;

• Supports the workers who make our community thrive;

• Prioritizes proactive, community-focused public safety;

• Spurs new investment and development across our city.

Provides high-quality core services

The job of a Saint Paul City Council Member is two-fold. First, council members need to support residents in ensuring their day-to-day needs are met through core city services. Every day, people rely on their council office to help them navigate government systems and quickly find the resources and support they need. Maybe someone’s trash didn’t get picked up. Maybe an off-street path didn’t get plowed. Maybe a light rail train needs to be cleaned up. Even when it’s not technically the city’s responsibility to handle a given issue, your city council office should be able to help get you the answer you need. And the best way for me to do that is to build strong, trusting relationships, not just with the staff in our city departments, but with partners in the neighborhood and at the county, state, and federal levels. Our city services rely on hundreds and hundreds of dedicated workers across dozens of departments and teams. I’m committed to ensuring each and every one of those workers knows that every request, suggestion, or critique is delivered with respect and trust. That is the best way to ensure that your feedback and concerns are truly heard by the people who have the ability to address them.

The second job of a council member is to work with their colleagues on the City Council and the Mayor’s office to build policies that serve as larger solutions to ongoing challenges. Council members are key leaders in this work, but they can only do their job well if they ensure residents’ voices are heard and reflected in the policymaking work of the city. As a council member, I’m committed to engaging with all members of our community in order to understand what people need from the city. Through regular forums, office hours, community meetings, two-way constituent communication and more, I intend to be a council member who truly represents the people of Ward Four.

Adds housing options for people across all income levels

Our city can only thrive when all of our residents have a safe, affordable place to make their home. We need to ensure that our neighbors are able to find and stay in a home for as long as they choose, without fear of dramatically rising rents, bad landlords, or being priced out. The obstacles we face to reaching this goal are longstanding and well-known. We know we need to dramatically increase the number of homes in Saint Paul—not only to meet the needs of our current residents, but also to welcome new neighbors. At the most basic level, that means further improving our zoning code to allow more types of homes in more places; continuing to invest in programs that close the homeownership gap; and considering bold new investments in social housing that allows us to create more values-aligned housing for people of all income levels. For our current residents, I intend to champion tenant and consumer protections to ensure our renters, seniors, and vulnerable community members can all have safe and stable housing.

Promotes safe streets and abundant pedestrian, biking, and transit options

Our ability to move throughout our community is what connects us to our neighbors and the incredible opportunities throughout the city of Saint Paul and the larger metropolitan area. We need to continue to invest in multimodal transportation that meets the needs of all of our residents while also moving us towards a more sustainable, planet-friendly future. Public transportation, off-street biking paths, and pedestrian-friendly corridors make our neighborhoods more accessible, reduce air pollution and emissions, and drive necessary revenue and foot traffic for our small businesses and institutions. Right now, it’s simply not realistic for enough of our families, workers, students, and residents to get where they need to go without a car. As your council member, I’ll champion the buildout of proposed transit routes, a buildout of the urgently needed off-street bike path network, and pedestrian-friendly street design that makes moving throughout our neighborhoods more realistic, safe, and enjoyable. Additionally, I’m committed to effectively partnering with Metro Transit, Ramsey County, the Saint Paul Police Department, and others to ensure light rail and other transportation options continue to be as safe and efficient as possible.

Supports workers and small businesses

The most durable, resilient economy we can build for Saint Paul starts with its workers. As your council member, I will fight for good-paying, high-quality jobs for all. This means ensuring our Earned Sick and Safe Time ordinance is enforced, pushing to better flex our public-contracting muscle to help reduce the risk of wage theft and other worker abuses, and exploring even more ambitious policies like just-cause protections for workers. When investing city dollars through our economic development programs, I will prioritize the local businesses our neighborhoods rely on. I also strongly support continued investment in existing workforce-training and other programs like College Bound and the Downpayment Assistance Program that help address racial inequalities by investing directly in our residents. In recent years, cities have increasingly been leading the way when it comes to building economies that work for the people—workers and small business owners alike. I am committed to ensuring that Saint Paul is the best city in the country when it comes to building an economy in which people can thrive.

Prioritizes proactive, community-focused public safety

True public safety starts by investing in our core services, like libraries, parks, and housing, so every family has an ability to live a safe and secure life. It relies on us building out a full suite of proactive strategies by partnering with community-based organizations like Community Ambassadors, Love First, and others who are doing the work of engaging our young people. It requires us to continue refining our non-police response tools like mental health, substance use, and culturally responsive emergency units. And it means we continue to improve our coordination between our own Saint Paul Police Department and other law enforcement agencies like Ramsey County and Met Transit Police to ensure our reactive response resources are being effectively utilized. Community safety is something we work towards every day through the investments we make, the support services we build, and the bonds we develop across our community. As a council member, I will ensure that true, long-lasting community safety is at the forefront of every decision we make.

Spurs new investment and development across our city

The single biggest tool we have as a city to minimize property taxes for our residents and small businesses is to welcome new development and discourage empty buildings and lots. As your council member, I will advocate to significantly increase zoning and density citywide, changing state law to allow for a land value tax and other tools that can spur development on vacant lots, and using our new administrative citations tool to penalize absentee land and building owners who fail to maintain or invest in their properties. When we build in Saint Paul, we create new opportunities for housing, entertainment, small businesses, and more. At the same time, we directly increase the tax base, meaning our current residents and businesses are left with a more sustainable share of the cost of making our city run. Supporting development throughout the city is a critical way for us to build a stronger, more inclusive economy for everyone.

What Neighbors are Asking Me About

Kimball Court: The neighbors I’m talking to care about providing supportive housing and transitional housing for those in need. At the same time, they are concerned about how to manage the day-to-day reality of drug use and other behavior near a heavily utilized intersection that is home to small businesses, renters, and homeowners. While there may not be easy answers to be found at this point, it is clear that more accountability and coordination is needed from everybody involved: Beacon Interfaith, the non-profit that runs Kimball Court; the city, including the Department of Safety and Inspections and the Saint Paul Police Department; and the county, which has an array of service teams and resources that could be directed to the site to help residents connect to services more efficiently. I’m committed to providing supportive housing to people with low incomes in Saint Paul and proud to live in a neighborhood that is willing to work together to solve hard challenges. At the same time, we need a demonstrated and lasting commitment from all parties involved—the landlord, the county, and our own city services—in order for projects like this to be successful.

Climate: Our neighbors are clear that there is no time to waste—we need Saint Paul to take even bolder steps to lead on climate action. That starts with thinking about how people move around the city. We need to build out the updated bike plan network, find funding for interim treatments for routes that aren’t immediately on the current construction schedule, and support a dramatic increase in density that can help place people and the things they need closer together and reduce the need and distance of trips. It’s also critical that we support more ambitious use of franchise fee funds to increase weatherization, energy efficiency, and clean energy build out throughout the city, including identifying opportunities to invest in geothermal district energy systems. Additionally, we need to do even more as a city to decarbonize our own fleet, buildings, and services. As climate change increasingly threatens the health and well-being of our neighbors, it’s critical that we remain innovative and nimble as we identify opportunities to protect our planet for generations to come.

Libraries, Parks, & Rec Centers: I’m thrilled to have a new, accessible, state-of-the-art library being built within walking distance from my house. We need to continue to invest in our libraries, parks, and rec centers—core places where neighbors can come together, access needed green space, services and programs, take advantage of educational opportunities, participate in youth sports (without paying participation fees!), and so much more. As a council member, I’m committed to prioritizing these critical spaces that anchor our community, and ensuring that they remain truly accessible to all.

Rent Stabilization: Unfortunately, our current housing system is at the whims of large-scale capital markets. That means no matter what we do at the local level, dramatic swings in interest rates and institutional investment will continue to play an outsized role in how homes are developed, owned, and operated in our community. Rent stabilization was passed by Saint Paul voters because our neighbors want their fellow residents to be protected in their homes but also because there are only so many ways for a single community to attempt to influence those global, financial forces. Ward Four residents are telling me they support the foundational goal of rent stabilization—protecting the majority of our community that rents their homes—but they are also telling me the current system needs fixing.

I want our city to consider a shift toward a dramatically different housing strategy that includes building out publicly-financed social housing that more directly meets the needs of our residents. In the meantime, I am open to adjustments to the current rent stabilization policy that make it easier for staff to administer, more simple and predictable for both tenants and landlords, and more likely to encourage new housing and development. And critically, we need to continue to fight for tenant protections that go beyond rent stabilization to ensure that every single person and family is able to stay in their home. There is no one solution to our housing crisis, but by working collaboratively and creatively, we can ensure that every single member of our community has the stability and safety they need to thrive.

United Village: It has been nearly a decade since our community broke ground on Allianz Field, with the expectation that this milestone would be accompanied by meaningful investment across United Village. Our neighbors are telling me they want a fully-developed site that includes affordable housing, local businesses, and community benefits. As someone who lives just blocks from the site, I can also say we simply want the site to finally be built out. No one benefits from acres of empty space and parking lots near one of the most transit accessible sites in the entire state. It’s clear that the current proposal is to develop the site in phases, with a hotel, some office space, and some commercial space in phase one and more affordable and market-rate housing included in later phases. The city has already invested millions of dollars to fund the public infrastructure into the site and it’s possible more public investment may be necessary to realize the full vision—but those public funds should only be deployed if public benefits such as affordable housing and space for local businesses are included.

Trump: Living through this Donald Trump presidency has already proven stressful, chaotic, and detrimental for our country in both the short- and long-term. Our neighbors, particularly those most vulnerable to the threats of the Trump administration, are telling me they are angry, scared, and exhausted by the chaos and unconstitutional actions of the administration—and we are only weeks into this four-year term.

Before running for City Council, I spent nearly a decade building and running a national nonprofit focused on building a legal system that truly works for working people, organizing other lawyers and law students to be champions for economic justice and democracy. I know that our public systems weren’t working for most people well before Donald Trump took the oath of office in January—and I also know that his presidency will exacerbate our existing crises and create far too many new ones. This moment will test our values, and it will test our resolve. As local leaders, we need to stand up for those who are being targeted by these unconstitutional actions. To all the immigrants, queer and trans folks, those who rely on our public services, and everyone being targeted by the administration: know that Minnesota values you. Saint Paul values you. And we will fight to support you with every shred of our being.