As a young person who hopes to raise my family in Issaquah, I know first-hand the challenges of the high cost of living in Issaquah. As your city councilmember, I will:

• Support streamlining of permitting for ADUs and other “missing middle” housing types to provide more housing options.

• Leverage Issaquah’s Inclusive Housing Investment Pool (IHIP) to quickly get affordable housing built.

• Work with builders and lenders to understand challenges to building affordable housing and explore innovative solutions from the city.

• Leverage regional, state, and federal funding sources to build affordable housing.

Like many of you, I moved to Issaquah to be close to the amazing trails and green spaces of the Issaquah Alps. My career in clean energy and my advocacy for conservation gives me a unique perspective on the environmental issues facing the City. As your city councilmember, I will:

• Ensure Issaquah’s Climate Action Plan prioritizes the highest-impact actions.

• Work with regional and state partners to support smart forest management practices for resilient ecosystems.

• Apply a climate lens to all city actions, policies, and decisions.

• Support our city staff in pursuing grant funding to support environmental priorities like salmon habitat restoration and community solar projects on city buildings.

• Push PSE to accelerate buildout of clean electricity infrastructure to support EV charging, heat pumps, and more.

Living in Talus, I am all too familiar with the challenges of traffic in Issaquah. The most effective way to reduce traffic is to make it easy for people to get out of their cars and onto other modes of transportation, including walking, biking, and transit. However, there are other improvements that can help get traffic moving. I’ve advocated for multimodal transit options both as the board chair of the Leafline Trails Coalition and as one of Issaquah’s representatives on the Eastside Transportation Partnership. As your city councilmember, I will:

• Advocate for Issaquah’s transit service to Seattle to be maintained after light rail opens over I-90. (See East Link Connections for the current proposal).

• Advocate for safe walking and biking lanes in Issaquah.

• Ensure Issaquah plans for the arrival of light rail in a way that maximizes community benefit.

• Work with regional partners, such as WSDOT, on key traffic hotspots, such as SR 900. Solutions could include adding a lane for local traffic or adding a left turn lane at 164th Ave SE in Renton to increase throughput along SR 900.

• Advocate for increased amenities (e.g. corner stores and neighborhood businesses) closer to where people live, so residents can walk or bike to get what they need, instead of getting stuck in traffic.

Issaquah has made great strides over the last few years in fully staffing both our police department and our mental health co-responders. This has reduced property crime in Issaquah - let’s keep up the great work! As your city councilmember, I will:

• Work with our police department and city staff to ensure they have the resources and facilities they need to be effective.

• Advocate for fully funding our mental health professionals and homeless outreach team to help address the root causes of crime.

• Bolster emergency preparedness programs, especially volunteer programs such as CERT.

As we’re facing uncertainty around federal funding and the economy more generally, it’s more important than ever to ensure we’re stewarding our public dollars wisely. As a city councilmember, I will:

• Continue to advocate for maintenance to ensure we’re taking care of the infrastructure we have.

• Maximize the use of grant funding for projects, where possible.

• Develop public-private partnerships to fund programs such as Issaquah’s Urban Forest Management Plan.

• Minimize the use of debt financing for infrastructure, where possible, to ensure we have the fiscal capacity for additional needs that may arise.

In speaking with the business community, one of the biggest challenges facing our small businesses is the availability of commercial space. As a city councilmember, I will support our small business community by:

• Ensure that new developments in Central Issaquah include ground-floor retail spaces for our small businesses.

• Explore innovative solutions like a small business incubator to make it easier for developers to create retail spaces, and also providing small businesses with affordable rents. (This is something other regional cities, like Tacoma, are exploring!)

• Explore options to streamline permitting to make it easier for small businesses to open.

• Work with local nonprofits and business associations, such as the Downtown Issaquah Association, to develop events and festivals to drive foot traffic to local businesses.