I decided to run for Salem City Council in the fall of 2019 with a team of volunteers and a shoestring budget. It was a time of firsts, first debate, first time canvassing, first time doing house parties to raise money. But through all those firsts was an excitement about the possibilities, I had little understanding (yet) of the heartache and challenges of governing.

My campaign finished after COVID had hit so my time late in the campaign was spent on the phones talking with neighbors and voters. It was a serial time to be alive. I was sworn in online and didn’t go to an in person meeting for the first two years of my term. 

Although times were challenging that did not stop us from facing the hard work of governing while experiencing a massive increase in our unhoused population. When I took office we had hundreds of people living on our streets, surrounding whole city blocks in downtown Salem. We moved quickly to use federal dollars to set up low barrier shelters around the city, including our Navigation Center. Since that time we’ve seen hundreds moved off our streets and into stable housing.

We worked hard to pass a $300 million dollar infrastructure bond that made a generational investment in our city, from emergency preparedness to streets and roads, future library locations and our first ever investment in our parks. It felt amazing to be a part of that work. 

During that time we also looked at our housing needs analysis and moved to change our zoning laws to make building housing easier and more affordable. We changed parking requirements and cut through red tape. We focused our efforts along transit routes and worked to include our goals included in the Climate Action Plan. Over those four years in office I voted to approve over four thousand housing units!

One of my focuses on Council was on lowering and eventually ending deaths in our transportation system. I worked hard to pass Vision Zero and Twenty Is Plenty, I made a motion to implement Pedistrain Lead Intervals in our downtown core and started our intersection art program. All of these programs work together to create a safer experience for anyone on our roads and although we have a lot of work to do to continue this work, I know we’re on the right path to get it done. 

It was during this same time that I started to collaborate with Ian Davidson and Dylan McDowell to create Salem Bike Vision. Through our efforts there we’ve secured millions of investment to protect vulnerable road users and open up transportation options for many. You can see more about my work at www.salembikevision.org.

Ever since I started to run for City Council I started getting questions about the city’s budget. I quickly learned more than I’d ever known about measures 5 and 50, state-wide measures passed in the 90’s that changed how Oregonians paid for public services. It resulted in cuts at the local level across the entire state. Local governments have never recovered and the needs in our communities have changed and increased dramatically. By the time we began to work on this issue, I was serving as Council President and was asked to lead this effort. We had to do everything we could to protect existing services like police, Fire and EMS; our parks and local library as well as our services for our unhoused neighbors - an issue we had just recently made so much progress in. A city committee made up of community members put forward several ideas and we got consensus around the payroll tax. This immediately got pushback from the Chamber of Commerce and some community members. We worked hard to try and communicate the need to the community, but the idea ultimately failed. You can hear more about this topic on my podcast, Demobrats. With the failure of the proposal we were back to square one and set to make $16 million in cuts.

Through this whole process I learned how fundamentally broken our tax structure is and that you can only do so much at the city level. If I wanted to create lasting change, I’d need to run for State office.