We need get back to the basics. City Council is where the rubber meets the road— literally. It’s about getting potholes filled and roads maintained, ensuring that streets and alleys are plowed, ensuring streets are cleaned, and that our infrastructure is properly funded. We need more funding for public works to improve our roads, bridges & tunnels. We need to increase funding for the Park Board to simply maintain services. Water mains are currently cleaned and relined on a 107-year cycle. I will focus on the basic services that we need to run smoothly to make our city function.

A community can only truly thrive when all of its residents feel safe. I believe that implementing an effective and fair public safety system is among the most pressing issues our city faces. I am running to serve as a community-informed advocate in addressing our city’s approach to public safety. A community-informed approach to Public Safety is critical to ensure that everyone in our community feels safe and fairly treated. I believe that we need police and that policing must change. I will advocate for a professional police force that is responsive to the community it serves, and more importantly, accountable to the community through strong oversight and greater transparency. I support a holistic approach to public safety, which means advocating for all professional first responders who help ensure our safety. Our firefighters, paramedics, crisis mental health counselors and violence interrupters are on the front lines of emergency response in our city. I will work to provide the resources needed to fully staff the department, creating capacity for timely and appropriately tailored emergency responses. We must work on developing alternative responses to armed policing for nonviolent crimes. We need to find, fund and scale alternatives to police response whenever possible.

Ward 12 residents, and residents of the 3rd police precinct geography (25% of the city's population), are not receiving the same level of public safety services for our tax dollars as the other 75% of Minneapolis residents.

The time for delay is over. We must have a 3rd Police Precinct Building in the 3rd Police Precinct Geography. We need a public safety presence near or in Ward 12 because:

1. City staff require a permanent place of work that is adequate. The current building temporarily housing the 3rd precinct is inadequate, cramped, and only has one shower stall for all officers.

2. MPD desperately needs to rebuild trust with us and our neighbors. In order to do that, we need opportunities to engage with MPD officers when they are not responding to critical situations. Ward 12 residents cannot engage with MPD when they have to go downtown to report a crime and are met by an empty desk.

I support the piloting of Community Public Safety Hubs, smaller substations for police and non-police functions, that will allow us to have access to public safety services directly in our community. These hubs would ideally be located in commercial spaces rented or owned by the City, and would allow residents to readily access police, crime reporting, EMS, 311, Behavioral Crisis Response, addiction response, social workers, violence prevention organizations, and other workers that make up a truly comprehensive public safety system.

MPD is 300 officers down from its pre-Covid number (~900) and roughly 150 down from the charter required number of 731 sworn officers (a court mandated number as affirmed by the MN Supreme Court). This has a negative effect on response times, particularly to the Southern part of Ward 12, which can be as long as 20 minutes from the temporary Third Precinct building downtown.

Trust is established through personal relationships. How can we rebuild trust in our public safety system if city employees are not present in our communities? Residents must have the opportunity to engage with both on- and off-duty employees in order to rebuild trust in our public safety system to help create a holistic, accountable and transparent public safety system. As the Labor market remains robust, the city is competing with other jurisdictions to hire a limited number of qualified candidates. We should provide additional financial incentivizes to new MPD hires who live in the City of Minneapolis. We need members of our Minneapolis community in the ranks of MPD.

We must ensure that every resident of Minneapolis can afford to provide shelter for themselves and their family. We need to look within and outside of Minneapolis to identify innovative ways to develop and construct housing that is affordable. At the same time, we need to ensure that the finances of housing development remain sound in order to preserve the incentive for housing developers to invest in Ward 12 and Minneapolis. We should incentivize new rental co-ops and seek additional funds from the state and federal government to put towards rent payments for low-income residents. We must urgently identify new solutions that work in other cities to generate affordable housing development. I will bring together a broad coalition of voices on housing including renters, home owners, landlords, housing-focused nonprofits, developers, city agencies, Council Members and others to identify creative ways to ensure that every resident of Ward 12 and Minneapolis can afford to put a roof over their head.

We need City Hall to deliver results that improve quality of life for all residents of Minneapolis. I will work to ensure that we have fully-staffed 911 call center and better MPD response times, stronger enforcement of sidewalk shoveling violations, better clearing of snow banks from transit stops and driveways, increased traffic enforcement by non-armed MPD officers whenever possible. I will focus on creating positive outcomes through policy, collaborating and compromising to achieve what is possible on the council. I will respond promptly and meet with constituents at regular office hours at local businesses in Ward 12 to ensure that I'm serving the needs of all Ward 12 residents as best as possible. My focus will be on delivering good policy over scoring political points.

The Parks system is one of the best parts of Minneapolis. We enjoy an award-winning parks system that is one of the best in the country. The Park Board needs a funding increase just to maintain basic services. We are also neglecting maintenance for our Parkways, which will become a severe infrastructure issue if it is not dealt with urgently. I will advocate for more funding for the Park Board, whose assets we all enjoy, and for the Parkways & storm water runoff systems in particular. We must care for and adequately fund our public infrastructure.

We need to identify additional ways to support our Senior citizens, our children and residents with disabilities to provide economic security and safety for our most vulnerable populations. I support expanding the Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot Program beyond the current 200 households to ensure that the basic needs of more families and Seniors are being met. We should ensure that Seniors can age in place in their homes if they choose. Every family should have access to affordable child care, and I will work with our partners at the state level to advocate for additional funding to childcare programs in Minneapolis. Traffic and pedestrian safety is also a key issue for these groups in particular. I will advocate for expanding traffic calming projects funding, which currently funds only 7-10 projects per year out of 700 total requests (2022). I will meet with members of the disability community regularly to understand how city policy decisions impact their daily lives.

Support for small businesses and the nonprofits that serve Ward 12 is a key focus area of mine. I believe that a vibrant community includes thriving small businesses at all stages from startups to established small businesses that have been the backbone of our ward for years. I will advocate for lowering barriers of entry and longevity for small businesses to ensure their success and help put policy in place to ensure their long-term viability. I will actively and consistently solicit feedback from business owners on proposed city ordinances. A career in the nonprofit sector drives my passion for investing in and growing nonprofit organizations that serve this community, and I will leverage my decades of work experience and connections to invest in and help nonprofits in our ward thrive.

We can't continue to criminalize poverty. We have unhoused neighbors who need additional support from our city. I support identifying city-sanctioned spaces in Minneapolis where the unhoused can gather safely and securely, where city officials and nonprofit partners can assist, monitor and provide support for the unhoused by providing basic human services. We must conduct this in a way that enhances public safety for all residents of our city, including the unhoused.

We have reached the point of no return on climate change, and individual action can only achieve so much. We have a great opportunity to make significant strides on climate change at the municipal level. We must ensure that every city agency is appropriately factoring climate change into its decisions. As individuals we can have some impact on climate change, but together as Ward 12 and as Minneapolis, we can increase our positive impact many times over. I support the People’s Climate Equity Plan, a bold vision for a green future for Minneapolis.

I will work to ensure that the city council continues to be a body that is representative of the population of Minneapolis. I am committed to making the city council one that makes decisions with all residents’ interests in mind, with a particular focus on the needs of historically marginalized communities, especially our BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color), LGBTQ+ and immigrant populations. I will approach all policy decisions through the lens of DEIJ. I will listen to those with different lived experiences than my own in seeking to make decisions that work for all residents of Ward 12 and Minneapolis.

I support expanding public transit service in Minneapolis to ensure that getting around our city without a car is an attractive option. For Metro Transit to provide the best service it possibly can, our buses, trains and stations need to be safe spaces for all. I will work with the city's partners at the Met Council to create a Transit Ambassadors program to hire non-police employees to address the antisocial behaviors and crimes that we are seeing on our buses and trains. Our public transit must be safe in order for ridership to increase.