Hard work, civility, and cooperation built our amazing city of safe neighborhoods, great schools, and prosperous businesses. It wasn’t an accident.
I have been involved in our schools and community as an elected official and as an engaged member, being involved with local and regional boards and committees.
I am no stranger to making tough decisions during challenging times. I am a good listener and a very quick learner. I am very familiar with governance and how to work as a team for the best outcomes. Our community has been dealing with one crisis after another for years: fires, floods, a pandemic, school closures, business closures, mass power outages, etc. I am a problem solver by nature, and I enjoy working with people and hearing their ideas on how to make things work even better.
Santa Rosa has been devastated by wildfires in 2017 and in 2020. My family and I nearly lost our home in 2020 when the Glass Fire came to our backdoor and caused nearly $150,000 in damage to my home. I too have been part of the stressful evacuation that took place in 2020 and the panic and stress of leaving our home that night not knowing what we would return to. This is one reason that support for our Fire Department is a top priority for me. Ensuring our firefighters have the tools they need to do the job, including the most up-to-date equipment and use of technology is a critical component to keeping us all safe. After attending their one day community leadership training, I am even more committed to supporting all of our First Responders and investing in services and infrastructure to support safety. The Santa Rosa Fire Department has been working with our community to help prevent and prepare for the threat of future wildfires. We must all work together to ensure we are creating a more defensible and resilient community.
To see how you can better prepare for fire season please take a look at this resource.
https://srcity.org/3558/Wildfire-Ready
In addition, working with the Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD) on staffing and other community concerns for safety has been a top priority of my first term. I am chairing the Violence Prevention Partnership committee, and advocating for additional resources for the support of the youth in our community. I work closely with SRPD and am continuing to listen to the voices of our local business owners and residents to ensure we have proper response and presence throughout the city.
For information about SRPD
Homelessness has been a major issue for the City of Santa Rosa for years. It impacts our quality of life, our businesses, and the health and safety of our community members. We need to focus on support for mental health and substance abuse and support services for those who are faced with these circumstances. We need to ensure that we are modeling programs and reaching out to other cities that have tackled this issue well. As an example, the City is using the InResponse Mental Health Support Team, which is proving to be a wonderful example of prioritizing our budget to meet the needs of our community members who are struggling with homelessness. Through this program, we have reduced the reliance on our police force to handle mental health calls and have sent a more appropriate, skilled mental health professional to help deal with many non-violent mental health calls. I will support our continuance of these efforts.
Additionally, I want to ensure that the City works with local partners to increase housing, particularly for community members who have suffered domestic abuse and have small children to care for. We have folks on the streets living in unimaginable circumstances, including Veterans and families who have housing insecurity or are one paycheck away from losing their homes. This is not just about cleaning up the streets so we don’t have to see what is happening. This is about transforming and addressing the root causes of homelessness and then backing programs that are researched based on our dollars. My goal is to continue to connect unhoused residents & our most vulnerable citizens to important services they need.
To find out what the City of Santa Rosa is doing now about our unhoused community please go here: https://srcity.org/691/Homelessness-Solutions
To find the list of encampments the city of monitoring please go here: https://ws.srcity.org/Encampments/pages/public/Encampments.aspx
Santa Rosa is now experiencing the effects of a climate crisis: hotter summers with record-breaking temperatures, even more devastating fire seasons, and more extreme droughts. Greenhouse gasses released by human activities, like landfilling food and yard waste, cause climate change. To respond to this climate crisis, California is implementing statewide organic waste recycling and surplus food recovery. As Santa Rosa implements this program my goal is to ensure our community understands and supports our efforts to eliminate organic waste in our landfills.
As a sitting Councilmember of Climate Action Committee we meet monthly to work with partners to implement the City’s Climate Action Plan found here: https://srcity.org/DocumentCenter/View/10762/Climate-Action-Plan-PDF?bidId=
This document is what is guiding the work I do as a member of this committee.
I have continued to focus on supporting our workforce as well as pushing to have contracted services brought back into all of Santa Rosa City departments. I am engaged and support our local businesses. I meet with members of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber and will continue to do so because partnership and open communication are critical to the success of all of our businesses. When businesses fail, the city and community are impacted. Over 33% of the city’s budget is based on our sales taxes, and our retail and service businesses bring those resources into the community for us to support all of Santa Rosa’s community members. I will work hard to support and remove obstacles for businesses to be able to gain zoning, permits and licensing easier and quicker in our city.
For information about the City of Santa Rosa Economic Development Department and how to launch your business please check our website here-
https://www.srcity.org/35/Business
We have been focused on many initiatives for the City Of Santa Rosa for a complete list of all of our initiatives click here –
The lack of affordable and mid-range housing in Santa Rosa has made it even more difficult for the next generation of families and our seniors who are living on a fixed income to live here. At our first goal-setting meeting this budget year, I heard from many community members from our manufactured home parks about the need to reduce our Customer Price Index (CPI) of what we are charging to those living in our mobile home parks. I am proud that with the continued advocacy of these community members and support from me and other council members, we successfully passed an ordinance capping the rise of our manufactured home parks to ensure that our senior housing remains affordable.
I have first-hand experience with the impact that housing has created in my own family. As beginning teachers my oldest son and his wife had to move out of the area so they could afford to buy their first home because they could not find an affordable place to rent and certainly, they would not qualify to buy a home. My middle son and his wife had to buy a home in Cloverdale because the cost of a home in Santa Rosa was too high. We are losing and have continued to lose our next generation of workforce because our county and city are in dire need of creating additional housing. I along with the Santa Rosa City Council are focusing on infill housing and transit-oriented projects near public transit. The downtown core is a prime area for development and we have started the process of working with developers on some of our city properties in the downtown area. The city’s new housing plan will also continue to look at plans throughout Santa Rosa that have housing developments near local shops and grocery stores so that you can eat and shop at your neighborhood stores without needing to drive across town. This model will further our work on reducing our carbon footprint when communities can walk, ride their bikes, or drive short distances to get the services they need.
The city has a new theme; core services and getting back to basics. This includes the need for the city to support the core services we are responsible for such as public safety and neighborhood vitality. This also includes maintaining our assets and investing in our roads and infrastructure. We must continue to invest in roads or the cost of the repairs that are needed will continue to rise and the cost to taxpayers will be astronomical. We must continue to make investments in proper bike lanes and pedestrian walkways to encourage other modes of transportation, as well as safety.
I am committed to investing in and maintaining our parks and our surrounding areas and open space. Having open spaces for our community to be able to enjoy is a critical part of living a healthy lifestyle. Our parks and where we live are unique with all that we have to offer: rivers, mountains, redwoods, and an incredible scenic background that supports agriculture, wineries, dairies, and more. In addition, I have been advocating for our parks to be evacuation-ready sites so that in the event they are needed for an emergency they are ready for our community members. The adoption of the Southeast Greenway land was an incredible accomplishment this past year. Maintaining and supporting our parks is a priority for me. It is what makes Santa Rosa a beautiful place to live, to travel to, and to have memorable events. I am committed to maintaining our beautiful area and supporting our assets.
The vast majority of my policy and background is with schools and supporting and engaging parents to be advocates for their children. As the California State PTA President and CEO, I was responsible for the largest and oldest child advocacy association in the United States. As the leaders of this association, we drafted and had legislation sponsored and signed by then-CA Governor Jerry Brown to put into the Education Code what it means to have authentic family engagement in schools.
My goal as a current and future City Council member is to continue to grow our relationships with the eleven Santa Rosa School Districts. As a local legislator, my goal is to bring our teams together to be able to work on the problems and concerns we have in our community impacting our youngest community members. We have seen the need for this more than ever over the past year. In education, many factors lead to positive outcomes for the success of children. To name a few, housing and food security, access to mental health services, dental screenings, and school culture/climate are all areas in which the city can partner with our local schools to make sure we are working together cohesively. We can also partner together on Safe Routes to School, ensuring that the city is aware and working to promote and help schools have safe walking and bike riding access to schools. Building relationships with our local Trustees for the best outcomes for children and our youth is one of the greatest investments we can make as a community.
During the last few years, we have seen hundreds of our early care providers leave the industry. This has made a massive impact on our families being able to work and has impacted our local economy. Our littlest learners in our community need to have high-quality early care and access to quality care providers. When children have access to quality preschool and early learning experiences they can start school ready to learn. Many children who do not have access start 2.5 years behind their peers who do have access to high-quality early learning. Santa Rosa needs to ensure that we are supporting all efforts to increase access to Early Childhood Education (ECE) and that we support facilities and businesses to house these programs. Sonoma County’s children have limited access to quality, affordable ECE and child care, and nearly 50% are not kindergarten-ready when entering school. As a city Councilmember, I will work with all areas of this industry to support workforce development, higher wages for those entering the industry as providers, and building homes that have access to childcare families within subdivisions as we have seen done in other communities.