Years in Concord: 20 years
Experience: Office Manager at IBEW Local 490 as well as an Operations Specialist for a software company
Three key issues and potential solutions
■Affordable housing is a top issue that also ties into the homelessness crisis as well as our economic development. The shortage of affordable housing is leading to a critical workforce shortage and causing our younger population to leave the area. We need to address land use regulations and ordinances and lessen the red tape in zoning and permitting. We need to require developers to provide mixed-income housing within their projects. We need a diverse housing stock to attract and keep people in our community – everyone from the grocery clerk to the engineers and from the young to the retired.
■The homelessness crisis is, in ways, tied to the housing crisis, but also has its own unique set of contributing issues. First and foremost, everyone wants the unhoused to leave their encampments and move into a home, yet we simply do not have enough homes for that many people. And we are at a point where many working class families are also one property sale or medical crisis from becoming homeless. Simply stated – we need enough homes for everyone to live in. While we have many amazing non-profits in our community that are working tirelessly on this issue day in and day out, I think the city needs to take a more active and proactive role in this crisis. I do not believe that having a Steering Committee to End Homelessness that only meets once every three months is adequate and I do not think relying on a Plan to End Homelessness that was written 10 or more years ago is reasonable. The city needs to work with the non-profits that are boots on the ground to rework this plan and then implement actionable goals as a city entity- not simply relying on the non-profits to do the work.
■The last big issue for me is economic development. I would like to see a resurrection of the Economic Development Advisory Council. We need people educated and versed in this area to work on attracting new businesses to the area. It’s obvious we would all like more businesses to hopefully offset the private property taxes. Personally, I would love to see more tradespeople and contractors come to our area. Part of my job is attracting electricians to work here. As a city councilor, I would like to expand that to all trades. If you have tried to hire a plumber or HVAC tech recently, you know the need for tradespeople. And many of our own contractors that the IBEW works with are out of state. With all of the building the city is hoping for (housing, mixed-use and commercial), wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had local contractors and tradespeople to do this work and could keep all this money in the community? We will also need this increased labor force as we are obligated to update our infrastructure to accommodate all of the proposed new projects- and this will include a lot of tradespeople.