MORE ELECTION NEWS
| What in your background makes you qualified for office? | |
| I started my public service in the military and continue it through my work in non-profits and their boards. The primary job of being a City Council member is making, enacting, and reforming policy, and I have decades of experience in policy governance. As a union leader, I understand how to best work with companies while ensuring the working class can have a safe and financially stable life. I have extensive experiences in working with municipalities on a wide range of issues to benefit citizens such as climate preparedness, wildfire response, protections for domestic violence survivors, racial equity in education, immigration reform, language justice, voter protection, and more. Representing citizens is more than overseeing development projects – it’s ensuring public safety and supporting your police force; communicating with citizens so they can make informed choices and trust their government is transparent; guiding the city to diversify its income streams; keeping up with infrastructure improvements and finding sources of funding without raising taxes or fees; thinking long range about the city’s future. For example, our schools are closing due to low enrollment. At the same time, seniors can’t afford to move locally into homes that they feel safe in. One solution is to build a 55+ active community to move existing housing supply. Yet Arvada keeps adding unaffordable luxury apartments and million dollar single family homes. It exceeds our city’s capacity, making infrastructure problems worse. We need leaders that can see these problems and actually deliver solutions. | |
| What elements would you like to see included in the Olde Town Arvada Reimagined 20-Year Plan? Would you like to see the street closures changed/altered? | |
| Overall, I am in favor of the street closures. We must increase public safety in the RTD parking garage and g-line station, provide closer parking for people who work in Olde Town, and increase accessibility for people who use mobility aids to get around or generally do not walk long distances. I would like to see the Business Improvement District expand into a Downtown Development District to connect Olde Town with other high-traffic shopping areas and create more spaces with a mixed use of shopping from local and mid-sized businesses and unique living spaces. | |
| What areas of Arvada’s infrastructure do you believe need the most immediate attention? | |
| The roads are 20-30% worse than the surrounding municipalities, and 10% worse than the national standard. I’ve talked to delivery drivers who say they can hear when you are leaving and entering Arvada – our streets make a lot of noise and put a lot of stress on our cars. The next area is water, with our treatment plant aging out and a 7-9 year plan to replace it through rising water fees. However, at a recent city council meeting, the city employees were told that to keep on track, and due to inflation, that they were advised to raise water fees by 25%, but are only going to raise fees by 12%. On City Council, I will be an active member that will exhaust all sources of funding to combat inflation, like accessing funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has funds for cities to update their existing infrastructure to make them climate resilient, or accessing funds from the state that has $4 million dollars available yearly for municipalities to change over their turf to use less water. We got to this place where Arvada’s infrastructure is $191 million dollars behind in deferred maintenance and capital improvement projects because of overdevelopment. City Council must be active in only allowing development to match our infrastructure capacity and focus on all Arvadans rather than new housing. | |
| What role do you believe the City of Arvada should fill in providing resources for individuals experiencing homelessness? | |
| Everyone is impacted by homelessness, not just the homeless themselves. To say that it isn’t the city’s job to help residents is a failure of leadership. The majority of homeless folks in Arvada are Arvadans. 25% of any homeless population are military veterans, and as a veteran myself, I will not turn my back on my brothers and sisters who served in uniform. City council must be the lead facilitator and make space for solutions. Arvada is moving in the right direction by hiring a full time staff person to organize resources. The city doesn’t have to provide the resources, but it should have a systemic approach for our residents experiencing homelessness. The city should navigate the county, state, federal, and non-profit resources to offer full services to Arvadans. We should also ensure that our inter-municipal agreements with other cities are coordinated. The new Family Tree development will be a great asset to Arvada in navigating services and is accessible to transportation on Sheridan. People in Arvada also deserve to be safe, so a program that has social workers in the community is very important. This could be a constant presence in Olde Town Arvada like what the Business Improvement District is considering with an ambassador program. We can partner with community colleges in and near Arvada to provide opportunities for social work graduates to earn experience by working with Arvada’s population. Expanding our police co-responders program to be 24/7 will also ensure that all residents are safe. | |
| How would you like to see the last stages of Candelas’ development proceed? What needs do you believe still need to be filled in the West side of town? | |
| Arvada needs a 55+ living community that is active and safe for folks who want to stay in our community. This is a development that will help our existing housing supply, because as seniors move into homes they feel safe in, single family homes will be available to families with dual incomes which could increase our student population to reopen our schools. We also need to attract more mid-size businesses that sell goods to the public in Arvada to diversify sources of revenue for the city from sales tax. Candelas is almost finished, but there is more to be done: working on the drainage ponds and ensuring that there are enough safe routes to evacuate Candelas in the event of a fire. There also needs to be work done on the west side of town in shoring up retaining walls so that heavy rains do not cause mudslides. |