Improving our neighborhoods and our local economy depends on ensuring everyone can participate and prosper – no matter their background. That’s why I will work to address the gaps in our social services that keep people in poverty:

• Partner with the county government or independently establish a public bank which lessens the reliance on payday lenders, helps the unbanked population, has a duty to help and support the community, and directly reinvests any profits back in the community.
• Offer permanent, affordable housing as quickly as possible to individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Research study after research study have shown this to be an evidence-based approach to reducing homelessness and saves money in the long-run by lifting people from reducing the need for social services.
• Establish a new City fund for acquiring, refurbishing, and managing rental properties to grow our supply of deed-restricted affordable housing.
• Expand public housing stock while also requiring that new developments set aside at least 25% of units for low income rentals.

‘Defund the police’ is a term used to describe a wide range of policies and changes – and that is needed. I believe we need to ‘re-imagine’ the role of police officers and officer-resident relations:

• Community input is essential for police reform. My plan is to ensure that an independent board with subpoena power is established to investigate alleged police misconduct. This “Citizen Review Board” will be filled with Dayton residents with no personal or professional connections to the DPD and they will report directly to the City Commission. The CRB will be adequately funded and have the power to subpoena records, evidence, and testimony to thoroughly investigate incidents.
• I will also push for more diversity and the recruitment of Dayton residents in the Dayton Police Department. My plan is to increase the incentives provided to Dayton residents to become officers. To encourage law enforcement as a profession, recruits will receive:
  1. Competitive wages
  2. Paid training
  3. College tuition
  4. Incentives for living in the city

The Dayton Police Department is only one part of our community team. Teams are more productive when every player is at their best. We currently use the police to respond to things such as wellness checks, auto accidents, school discipline, the mentally ill, and the unhoused. None of these situations are a crime.

• My plan is to connect Police officers with social workers and mental health professionals to respond to lower threat levels calls. The goal is to ensure the safety of our residents and officers in every interaction.
• It’s time to re-imagine public safety and create programs where individuals trained to deal with each of these things respond and offer help and solutions.

We must also protect the civil rights of those who come into contact with police. For this reason, there must be some limits on the powers and tools available to our police:

• Ban the Dayton police and any outside law enforcement from the use of chemical weapons, kinetic impact projectiles, acoustic weapons, directed energy weapons, water cannons, disorientation devices, or ultrasonic cannons.
• Ban DPD’s participation in Pentagon’s 1033 program which allows military equipment to be on our streets and require the liquidation of the materials obtained through the program by the end of 2022.

• I will fight for a moratorium on eviction, mortgages, and utility payments for working-class renters, homeowners, and struggling small businesses while we continue to recover from the pandemic. (More info on similar proposals in other communities can be found here)
• Less than 3% of renters facing eviction have legal representation and this contributes to tenants losing 99% of cases. I will fight for legislation guaranteeing tenants the right to legal representation when facing eviction. Similar programs already exist in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Newark, and Baltimore. Researchers in Baltimore found that the cost of the program was more than paid for by savings to the city and state on homeless shelters, Medicaid spending, school funding and foster care costs. Further reading on these programs and studies can be found here, here, and here.

Clean air and water in Dayton must be a top priority. Ohio is well above the national average in rates of asthma and Dayton is one of the largest hotspots in the state.  In 2019, Dayton was graded an “F” by the American Lung Association for its weighted average number of high ozone days. These issues will only get worse as the climate emergency progresses. Now is the time to address our infrastructure and make the improvements before it is too late.

• PFAS has potentially contaminated the aquifer below Dayton, and this supplies much of Montgomery County with water. This is a significant issue. The City of Dayton should follow the lead of WPAFB and create a water filtration system. The City must also commit to finally cleaning up the future PFAS contamination (more info). This investment in infrastructure will also be a great time to update the crumbling system that has repeatedly caused water shortages in recent years.
• The City must proactively address environmental concerns instead of paying a higher price later when the problems have spun out of control, like when the state threatened lawsuits over $8 million in river pollution abatement.
• Expand urban tree canopy. Science has repeatedly shown that greenspaces can not only protect from some of the negative impacts of pollution, but also supports mental health.
• The current commission’s practice of just giving out tax cuts like candy to every corporation and out of town developer hurts our schools and gets us nothing in return. Instead, I would advocate for the city to adopt a measure providing an automatic 100% real property tax abatement of the assessed property value for newly constructed or rehabilitated commercial or residential properties that earn a minimum of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. This proposal is similar to the successful program implemented in Cincinnati.
• Amend the City Building Code to streamline the permitting and approval processes for the installation of solar panels on residential, multi-family dwellings and commercial rooftops.
• Offer no-cost energy audits to low income residents performed by a city contractor, and fund grants for the program so the home improvements can be made.
• Require all new multi-unit residential and commercial buildings be built with green features such as upgraded insulation, efficient appliances, and alternative energy technology (e.g., solar, geothermal, etc.).
• Mandate that new commercial construction should satisfy the requirements for, but not compel building owners to obtain, certification from third party organizations such as Energy Star, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or similar organizations.
• Require companies over a certain size report their energy, water, and waste usage to the city and that data will be publicly available. This can help the City assess infrastructure needs and assist companies in reducing their footprint, similar to the Energy Star benchmarking policy.
• Impose a ban on commercial plastic bags and paper bags that are not 100 percent recyclable or made from at least 40 percent of recycled material. This ban will likely exempt restaurant leftovers or carry-out orders, bags consumers bring with them, or bags for newspapers, dry-cleaning, meat, pet waste, prescriptions, or partially-consumed bottles of wine.

• Invest in public transport by creating protected bike and bus lanes throughout the City.
• Expand the fare-free coverage areas of the Regional Transit Authority to more parts of the City to encourage ridership on popular routes.
• Be a strong and outspoken advocate for the proposed construction of a regional rail line that connects Dayton, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus to other Midwestern cities. I would also advocate for links to surrounding rural areas (as advocated by Reimagine Appalachia).
• Expand the local electric vehicle infrastructure in partnership with new public and private developments.