The Priorities that matter for Bellingham
I am actively engaging about the topics that matter to you. My leadership style is to:
1) Listen to learn
2) Make a smart plan
3) Act decisively
Housing
We need a diverse portfolio of housing solutions for homeowners and renters alike. Lack of access to supply along the entire housing continuum is holding back economic growth, driving homelessness and housing insecurity, especially for renters. High housing costs and rents keep us from being the thriving community we all deserve.
As mayor, I want to drive solutions that expand access to (and help people keep on to) housing for all — while removing friction in the existing system. I will have a focus on workforce housing. I want the people who work here to be able to live here.
There is no one single answer to fixing affordable housing, but working toward this goal is of great public benefit. Streamlining the permitting process and empowering our planning department is one of my top priorities.
Community Health & Safety
Downtowns run on people. As Mayor, I would work with urgency to create actionable implementation plans to stabilize business and property owners seeing increased disruption and crime, as well as for the people who are suffering unhoused and overdosing on our streets.
In parallel, we must challenge ourselves to be better by addressing head-on the structural impediments to advancing a vibrant downtown and building the Bellingham we all want to live in. As mayor, I will fast-track a collaborative, community-centered Activation Plan that places downtown as the heart of our city to deliver downtown into a new future.
There is a community campaign being organized by the Downtown Bellingham Partnership and the Bellingham Chamber of Commerce to encourage additional public safety investments in downtown. You can learn more about the Bellingham Downtown Partnership here.
Climate
Bellingham must lead with urgent and inspired solutions to execute our climate goals and create a better shared future. To do this, we must prioritize decarbonizing our municipal, commercial and residential energy sources while seeking reductions in overall energy demand and efficiency upgrades. We can all play an important role by taking fewer fossil-fuel based trips, reducing waste, and making efficiency upgrades at home.
Bellingham can take practical action to create a more hopeful, healthy future including planting and protecting trees in our most vulnerable neighborhoods, strengthening our urban forestry plan, accelerating plans of action to protect our drinking water, and catalyzing progress on our city’s stalled Climate Action Plan goals.
Community-Powered Connection
Imagine walking with your family through a bustling and inviting downtown space. There is a Bellingham feel to it. Our Farmers Market feels this way as does the Downtown Sounds event and the Trackside Beer Garden along with so many others.
Bellingham can be intentional about designing public shared spaces that foster community-powered connections. “Placemaking” is the word planners use to create public spaces that improve urban vitality and promote people’s health, happiness, and well-being – places where a community is knit together.
I will bring IDEO design-thinking concepts that generate creative ideas and bring them to life to the mayor’s office and will lean on local expertise and case studies from across the country to enable our city planners to create great public spaces for us to make new friends, have shared experiences, and promote vibrant neighborhood dialogue.
Rich friendships and engaged neighbors are a better Bellingham.
We need this transformation more than ever. Americans are lonelier and more divided while child and adolescent mental health worsens. Our shared spaces and public policies play an essential role in this work. Together, let’s advance community-minded and human-centered approaches to create great spaces and experiences in Bellingham.
Broadband Infrastructure
Reliable and equitable internet communication access is a foundation for a flourishing economy – and one milestone towards the goal of all citizens having access to digital services at the lowest cost possible. The City of Bellingham Public Works department commissioned a Broadband Working Group in 2020 which issued its final report in 2022. This report defined a City Council draft resolution and recommendations by the City of Bellingham for a broadband strategy. The City has hired a manager to scope the implementation which includes expanding the fiber infrastructure when underground utilities are serviced.
A municipal broadband strategy has many layers, but at its core is a comprehensive infrastructure of conduit and dark fiber cable which canvases the entire city. I have first-hand experience working with families and students who struggled to navigate the challenges of poor internet connectivity and bandwidth constraints during the remote learning period of the pandemic.
I support a plan where we consolidate our legacy telecommunication infrastructure (cable, DSL, POTS) into a modern fiber-based backbone that will serve our entire community for decades.