platform

The challenges facing District 4 are interconnected.

They include protecting green spaces and riverfronts, revitalizing downtown and Chinatown, supporting small businesses, and ensuring that growth benefits both longtime residents and newcomers.

Strong, thoughtful leadership is needed to meet this moment and build a more resilient Portland for everyone.

the issues

Fight Rising Costs

Moratorium on Data Centers

AI data centers use enormous amounts of electricity and Portlanders should not be stuck paying the price.

In just five years, regional data center growth added the demand equivalent of 400,000 new people on PGE’s system. In that same time, our electricity rates climbed by roughly 50%. It’s clear that expansion is happening too quickly and Portland can’t absorb these massive new demands.

Oregon’s POWER Act, which attempts to make large energy users pay their fair share, is an important step in the right direction. However, AI data centers come with hidden energy costs and those will be passed directly on to residents.

The POWER Act also doesn’t address the full impact these facilities have on the city. This includes increased water usage, air and noise pollution in residential areas, and a less reliable power grid, which is vulnerable to extreme weather events.

This is why I support a four-year moratorium on new data center development. Selling our land and resources to out-of-state tech companies is a bad deal for our city’s future. We survived many years without data centers, we will be fine without them, at least until we can ensure Portland’s resources serve Portlanders first.

Read more about the negative impacts of data centers and more details on Oregon’s POWER Act.

Bring Our Power Grid Under Public Control

Private utility companies are beholden to shareholders and will always prioritize profit over service. The solution is public ownership of our power grid.

I support a publicly owned electrical utility governed by and accountable to the people it serves. Public ownership would give residents greater control over rates, grid investments, and infrastructure decisions. Most importantly, it would lower energy costs. A recent feasibility study in Tucson found that a city buyout of a private utility could save the average household $241 in the first five years. The energy savings would completely offset the cost of the buyout, and more.

Public power already works in many Oregon municipalities such as Ashland and McMinnville, as well as in bigger cities like Seattle and Austin. It’s time for our city to take this next step too.

Infrastructure for All

Getting around Portland shouldn’t require owning a car. With fuel prices rising and the cost of living crisis the nation is facing, we look to alternate forms of transportation to get us where we need to go.

Recent public transit cuts have left many people in the city feeling stranded, especially those who work non-standard hours who were most affected by the changes. I want to reverse these cuts, and make public transit a better option by working to make the lines run faster and more reliably.

I also support Portland moving toward a fareless transit system. Only a fraction of TriMet’s revenue comes from transit fares, and fare collection infrastructure is costly to maintain. Fareless transit would remove barriers and make travel within our city more accessible to all.

Portlanders deserve safe and reliable ways to get where they need to go, whether they are walking, biking, taking transit, or driving. We must prioritize improving our public transportation infrastructure, including expanding protected bike and pedestrian pathways, filling potholes, and creating more neighborhood greenways. Making it easier to walk, bike, and take transit gives Portlanders more alternatives to driving and helps reduce our carbon emissions.

Safety For All

Expand Portland Street Response

Not every crisis needs a cop.

Portland Street Response (PSR) is a widely successful program that sends trained, unarmed crisis responders to behavioral health and substance use calls. This does two things at once:

Prevents vulnerable members of our community from being met with armed response unnecessarily, and
Frees up police, firefighters, and other first responders for the situations that actually need them.

But PSR does more than just respond to immediate crises. It meets people where they are and connects folks on the street to housing, substance use treatment, medical care, and other resources they may need. It’s a foundational service that has become a model of its kind for other cities, and we can’t let funding cuts threaten it.

I support expanding Portland Street Response to 24/7 citywide coverage, as well as increasing its staffing and transportation capacity so it can reach more people in need.

Fix Police Response Times

Portland has done great work getting 911 calls answered. The average 911 operator response time is down to 18 seconds, compared to 77 seconds in 2022. Focused hiring and training worked, and we should keep building on that progress.

So why are police response times going in the other direction?

Even as the volume of calls has decreased and the budget has grown, the police department’s response times for high-priority calls has skyrocketed 182% in the last six years. The reasons for that are not clear, but the answer cannot be to continue throwing money at PPB without understanding the problem.

I’m calling for a City Auditor review of police response times, including a detailed look at staffing, deployment, overtime and time spent on calls. The city’s budget is tight right now, so it’s more important than ever to make sure our resources are being used effectively to keep Portlanders safe.

CEI Hub

Did you know that more than 90% of all liquid fuel in Oregon is stored on the shores of the Willamette in NW Portland?

This six-mile stretch of tanks, called the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) hub, sits in a highly unstable earthquake liquefaction zone. The tanks are old, with the average one having been built in 1954, long before modern safety standards were in place.

Multnomah County’s own analysis put the chance of a major seismic event happening in the next 50 years at 26%. A single earthquake could release over 350 million gallons of fuel and other hazardous materials into the surrounding environment. The risk is too great, particularly to the residents of Linnton and North Portland, who have historically borne the brunt of the city’s industrial pollution. We can’t just keep kicking the can down the road and hoping we get lucky.

I will push to immediately stop further expansion of the CEI Hub, develop a full draw down plan of the tanks, and work to reduce the state’s reliance on this one vulnerable area for fuel storage as we complete a Just Transition to a Renewable Energy Economy.

When the “Big One” hits, Portland needs to be prepared.

Housing For All

Pass a Renters’ Bill of Rights

Housing should be for people, not profit.

My long-term housing plan will help bring costs down, expand our housing supply, get people housed, and keep people housed.

But Portland renters need relief now, and that’s why I support the Renters’ Bill of Rights:

Require 6 months notice before all rent increases
Mandate relocation assistance when rent increases more than 5%
Protect children and education workers from evictions for late rent during the school year
Protect renters from evictions for late rent during extreme weather events
Cap fees such as ‘pet rent’, late fees, laundry fees, and other excessive charges and deposits
Require that code violations be resolved before rent can be increased
Establish a right to counsel in eviction court
Demand that local rent control be allowed throughout Oregon
Link rent to the minimum wage such that all full-time workers can afford a 1-bedroom apartment with no more than 30% of their income

Expedite Building Permits

Portland cannot build the housing, businesses, and community spaces we need if projects spend months waiting on City approval. We will streamline permitting, reduce unnecessary delays, improve coordination between bureaus, and prioritize faster review for housing and other projects that serve our communities. Building in Portland should be safe and accountable without being needlessly slow or expensive.

Invest in Social Housing

Rents are rising faster than wages for many Portlanders. Often it is out-of-state landlords and large-scale property management companies profiting off these rising rents while regular folks struggle to make ends meet. At the same time, housing quality and maintenance standards have suffered, with little incentive to improve.

The Renter’s Bill of Rights can help address these problems in the near term, but we need a long-term plan. Cities across the country like New York, Burlington, and Seattle have found success keeping costs down with a social housing model. I support exploring a dual approach to social housing that includes both building new units and taking advantage of opportunities to acquire existing housing stock. This way we can create high-quality housing that is locally controlled and permanently affordable.

A social housing program in Portland would offer a housing option that competes with the private rental market, lowering costs and raising standards across the board.

Fight Back Against Trump

Defend Our Immigrant Community

Portland must remain a sanctuary for our immigrant neighbors, regardless of immigration status. We will fully enforce our Sanctuary City protections, protect personal information held by the City, keep federal immigration enforcement out of City services and nonpublic facilities, and make sure Portlanders know their rights when confronted by ICE. We will strengthen rapid-response networks, legal support, and multilingual resources for families facing detention or deportation. When the federal government targets our neighbors, we will use every lawful tool available to protect our communities and keep Portland a sanctuary city.

Protect Our Trans Neighbors

Trans people deserve safety, dignity, and protection from discrimination. As a city, Portland must reject the anti-trans agenda pushed by the Trump Administration and right wing media.

Our public spaces, programs, facilities, and shelters must be safe, inclusive, and accessible for trans Portlanders. I will fight to make sure all Portlanders have equal access to city services regardless of gender identity, and that personal information held by the city remains private and safe from federal overreach.

Federal protections may be under siege, but Portland can use every tool available to make the city a place where trans people are welcome and free to live openly.

Oppose The Genocide in Gaza

From Portland to Palestine, we must oppose human rights violations carried out or supported by the Trump Administration. While billions of our tax dollars fund war, deportation, and violence, our communities are told there is not enough money for housing, healthcare, schools, and infrastructure.

As a city, we have the power to push back. We can immediately end our sister city relationship with Ashkelon, Israel. We can also examine city investments, contracts, and procurement practices to identify and divest from financial relationships that support military violence or human rights abuses.

We may not control federal policy from City Hall, but we can decide what Portland participates in, what we fund, and what we normalize– or refuse to.

Green New Deal for PDX

A Cleaner Willamette

Every summer, the Ross Island Lagoon develops toxic algae blooms that make parts of the Willamette River unsafe for swimming and dangerous for wildlife and pets. These blooms threaten Sellwood docks, beaches downstream, and public access to one of Portland’s most important natural resources. These conditions are preventable.

By placing the Ross Islands into the care of Portland Parks & Recreation as a protected ecological reserve — similar to the management model used at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge — Portland can address two crises at once: restoring river health and preventing the spread of toxic algae blooms throughout the river corridor.

This proposal would establish the Ross Island Ecological Park as a world-class public ecological reserve in the center of the city while preventing private industrial interests from continuing to use the lagoon as a dumping site for contaminated material connected to the Portland Harbor Superfund area. The plan calls for transitioning ownership of Ross Island from Ross Island Sand & Gravel into public stewardship in order to prioritize ecological restoration, habitat protection, and safe public river access over industrial dumping practices. This effort could also become part of a broader public land strategy that reinvests in underutilized land and expands access to parks, riverfronts, and ecological spaces for Portland residents.

Read about Oregon State University’s channel study and proposed interventions to reduce annual toxic algae blooms below.

Net Zero by 2050

Multnomah County has committed to 100% renewable energy by 2050. Portland wants to go further: net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

I have a background in sustainable engineering, so I know there are a number of things Portland can do to make this commitment a reality. Some practical options include:

making buildings more energy efficient
electrifying transportation
expanding the urban tree canopy
using cleaner building materials and reducing construction emissions
investing in renewable energy
modernizing our energy infrastructure

But we also have the opportunity to produce more clean energy right here in Portland. Oregon recently passed legislation that opens the door for the development of community microgrids: small, local energy systems that can generate and store power closer to where it is used. Developing microgrids in Portland will make it easier to power local projects with renewable energy while protecting communities from outages during heat waves and other extreme weather events.

As your councilor, I will advocate to make community-owned, clean-energy microgrids a priority for PCEF investment.

The shift to renewable energy is already underway, but who benefits from that transition also matters. Climate change does not affect every community equally, and I believe the people facing the greatest impacts should help shape the solutions. This is why I support a Just Transition to a Renewable Energy Economy, which centers those voices and makes sure nobody is left behind as we reshape the energy landscape.

Defend Forest Park

Forest Park is one of Portland’s greatest treasures and we must protect it from external threats. This issue is personal to me: when PGE proposed cutting through Forest Park to install new transmission lines I helped organize the Defend Forest Park campaign to protest against it.

PGE’s proposal required clearcutting hundreds of mature trees, as well as filling in wetlands and disrupting an important wildlife corridor. Not only would this cause ecological harm and increase wildfire risk, it would also set a dangerous precedent that our environmental protections can be pushed aside whenever they stand in the way of corporate interests.

Working alongside environmental groups and community organizers, I was part of the coalition that rallied over 300 people to City Hall to speak out against this proposal. Our message was clear: Forest Park is not for sale.

Our outreach efforts, digital campaigns, and hours of testimony paid off when City Council unanimously voted down PGE’s proposal, protecting 4.7 acres of forest and wildlife habitats.

I’m proud of what the campaign accomplished, but the work is not done. There will always be powerful actors trying to exploit our natural resources for short-term profit. We need leaders who are willing to defend them.

As an environmentalist, protecting Forest Park from development and degradation is a top priority. Additionally, the city needs to invest in wildfire resilience and ecological restoration to preserve the park’s forests, trails, and wildlife, so the park remains healthy and accessible to all.

A Thriving Economy

Build a Local Economy

I believe Portland should be a place where anyone with a good idea and a strong work ethic can afford to start a business. Too often, the hurdles to economic advancement are highest for the people who already live here, while the city gives preferential treatment to out-of-state corporations.

I want to challenge the notion that a thriving economy requires a race to the bottom on tax incentives for corporations that are not committed to Portland and won’t stick around when they’re asked to pay their fair share.

I want to invest in Portlanders and our ideas instead. The city can and should do more to help support local businesses, create jobs, fill vacant storefronts, and revitalize our economy with stable industry. I’m especially interested in exploring more grants and zero-interest loan programs for young people and working class entrepreneurs to give the next generation a chance to start something of their own.

We need to prioritize a strong local economy that creates good jobs and keeps more wealth in Portland. We can support homegrown businesses and young founders while expecting large corporations that benefit from our customers and infrastructure to contribute their fair share.

Strengthen Worker Power

Workers built Portland, and workers keep it running. Our public policy must empower workers, not get in their way.

Oregon has made strides in workers’ rights, but as a city, Portland can do so much more. We lag behind peer cities in areas like wage theft enforcement, overtime laws, and gig worker protections. I will fight for all workers to have safe conditions and fair pay.

Additionally, Oregon law currently prevents the city from setting its own minimum wage. As a city councilor, I would use every tool to raise wages now while working with representatives in Salem to restore local control over wage laws. Oregon shouldn’t prevent Portland from adopting stronger worker protections when Portland voters want them.

Individual worker protections matter, and unions are how workers have historically won and defended those protections. Unions are the backbone of labor power in our city, and I believe every worker should have the right to join or organize a union without fear of retaliation. Unfortunately, unions are under threat by hostile employers who refuse to negotiate in good faith and suppress organizing efforts.

I proudly stand with unions fighting for better wages, working conditions, and dignity at the workplace. Whenever possible, Portland should contract with union labor, and the city should never do business with employers that underpay workers or punish union organizing efforts. And as your councilor, I’ll make sure your tax dollars never cross a picket line.

Participatory Budgeting

Portland is made up of diverse neighborhoods with different needs and priorities. Not every issue is big enough to make the ballot or docket at City Hall, but that doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.

Participatory budgeting gives residents a direct say in how part of the city’s budget is spent. Residents submit ideas, work with the city to turn them into proposals, and then vote on which projects receive funding. For people who feel there is a disconnect between City Hall and everyday Portlanders, participatory budgeting is an opportunity to have a real say in the decisions that affect their community.

Whether it’s park renovations, sidewalk repairs, filling potholes, or funding youth mentorship programs, every idea is on the table. Whatever the community feels is important should have a path forward.

I believe Portland’s best days are ahead of us, and folks deserve to feel they have a real stake in the city’s future. I support participatory budgeting as a way to accomplish this.

Let's build the future of Portland together.

I am a husband, a parent, and a Project Manager at Portland State University. I believe city government should prepare Portland for 2050 by investing in a strong social safety net while being a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars.