Vote Luke - Believe in Community

Over the last few months, I have attended City Council meetings, knocked on doors, and met with constituents from all walks of life in order to build a platform that reflects your priorities.

Through those conversations, I heard three overarching areas of concerns:

• Celebrating the diversity of our neighborhood;

• Ensuring accountability in basic city governance; and

• Investing in sustainable community living.

From there, I put together the following list of items that I would commit to promoting and pursuing if elected. If this does not fit with your priorities, or if I have not had the luck of running into you, please reach out. I want this platform to reflect the concerns of all Ward 1 residents.

Diversity:

• Propose a series of community forums on race and equity.

• Promote the creation of an inclusive civic association that can connect our greatest resource - our people and their talents - to the many needs of the community.

• Organize monthly or quarterly meetings between representatives of the City Council, Mount Rainier Business Association, the Gateway CDC and, hopefully, a civic association. All of these groups have a shared interest in improving Mount Rainier. Through structured cooperation and coordination, we can effectively socialize the challenges each group faces, and complement one another through our varied resources and efforts.

• Support the continued efforts to make Mount Rainier a Welcoming City for all residents.

• Bring the community together around plans to build a civic center - containing a new library - where our children can play, our artists can express themselves, and our seniors can meet.

• Propose tax credits for older residents and rent controls for residents of our apartment buildings to make sure increases in property values - and the resulting increases to property taxes or rents - do not force anyone to leave.

• Organizing residents and non-profits to explore ways to retain low and middle-income housing, like the creation of a Community Land Trust.

Accountability:

• Promote economic development that sustains the diversity and character of our city by:

  • Moving forward with the development of mixed use space at the corner of Rhode Island Avenue and Eastern Avenue, while making sure residents, the Design Review Board, and the Green Team are provided time to review the proposed designs to ensure the public’s input is adequately considered.

  • Placing value on design - whether through sustainable design efforts, the use of artwork in public spaces, or careful consideration of how development impacts how we move around our city - to improve our urban landscape in a way that makes it more walkable, provides more opportunity for kids to play, and protects the environment around us.

  • Pushing for the annexation of land north of Queens Chapel Road to increase our revenue base and either invest it back into the city or lower residents’ tax burden.

  • Using increases in revenue through economic development to provide tax credits for our older residents on fixed income.

  • Promoting our businesses through marketing efforts to our residents and neighboring communities.

  • Investing in our artists and community non-profits (e.g., Joe's, the Toolshed and Bike Co-Op).

  • Engaging with our business leaders to better understand the roadblocks to running a business in town and removing those roadblocks whenever possible.

• Improve code enforcement by improving training for our current city staff so that they can:

  • Respond to complaints with respectful, thorough investigations.

  • Follow up with inspections of reported violators.

  • Move through all necessary procedures – from warnings, to ticketing, to court proceedings - with efficiency and due diligence so that property owners either fix the problem or the city receives tax revenue from tax liens ordered on the property.

• Invest in a study of our streets and sidewalks to determine how the city can implement a city-wide plan to install permanent speed bumps where necessary, improve some of our sidewalks and curbs that are overdue for fixing, and fix street signage to ensure slower traffic nearer our schools and more dangerous intersections.

• Explore improving the trash and recycling receptacles available to city residents and develop a rat abatement strategy to make our streets, homes, and businesses safer and healthier places to live and work.

• Partner with our police force to improve community policing efforts through more engagement with our community members, while pushing for a police presence along the 34th Street business corridor during at-risk hours for our storefronts and increased monitoring of homes where drug trafficking is suspected.

Sustainability:

• Continue to invest in the work of the Tree Commission and the Green Team, and seek new investments for planting native plants in city or county parks and easements to promote native habitats right here in Mount Rainier.

• Begin immediate engagement of the county (through its CIP process), state, federal, and private entities that offer grant money to:

  • Redevelop our alleys - turning them from underused resources into “Green Alleys” that help with water runoff, beautification, and recreation for our children. You can read more here.

  • Explore the possibility of “daylighting” buried creeks that run through our town.

  • Subsidize the bulk purchasing of solar panels for our community to help reimagine our electricity footprint.

  • Execute on the 2014 Mount Rainier Green Infrastructure Plan. 

I intend to use what I have learned from my day job - as a labor attorney negotiating collective bargaining agreements - to work hard and listen patiently to find shared interests with my fellow elected officials that help move the ball forward on each one of these fronts. Through it all, I will stay connected to you through monthly communications. And for those times in between, my door will be wide open. If I am elected, I will be accountable to you.