Hello Kansas Citians!

Our nation’s politics these days is filled with too much unnecessary drama and too many clashing egos. It’s no surprise that a lot of us want to tune it all out. But we can’t. We simply can’t. Our health and safety and quality of life are at stake if we cannot work together to solve the many and real problems we have right here in our back yard – like crime and homelessness, threats to schools, and trashy, crumbling streets.

Everyone deserves to feel safe in their neighborhood - Our citizens deserve to feel safe in every corner of our city. I understand the public safety challenges facing a city as large and diverse as ours. I’ll fight every day for common sense solutions that increase the safety of all Kansas Citians.

Hard-working people need and deserve good paying jobs - I was the Publisher of the Labor Beacon newspaper for 30 years and have dedicated my life to talking and writing about fairness for workers. I translated those words into action as your Councilman by requiring the City’s incentive agencies to pay prevailing wage and creating an enforcement mechanism to ensure that meaningful change happens on the ground at job sites – so that workers are not abused or underpaid.

My Job #1 is Protecting Your Tax Dollars - Our city runs on our tax dollars. I have been, and will continue to be, an advocate for efficiency at City Hall. You can count on me to continue being a consensus builder who finds a way to get things done.

What is your purpose and primary objective for running for public office?

To help create safer neighborhoods, better paying jobs for working people, and to be a good steward of tax dollars.

Surveys show that most Kansas Citians’ #1 concern is the rising tide of violence and the extraordinary murder rate in our city. As a city councilperson, what’s your plan to curb the violence?

We have to have a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. In the short-term, let’s leverage the opportunity to work with this new Police Chief who has signaled a willingness to be communicative, efficient, and creative. She deserves the time to orient the department towards her vision.

We also have to be creative about ways that keep our neighborhoods safer. For example, I helped the domestic violence court take away guns from repeat offenders who had terrorized their victims. Now, courts can get those guns away from the offenders while they await sentencing. I’ve also been working diligently with Jackson County to build a jail that efficiently uses tax dollars to put away folks who have no business walking the streets with your family.

In the long-term, we have to recognize that a good-paying job is a great crime prevention strategy. That’s why I put so much focus on creating and protecting good-paying jobs for Kansas Citians.

Do you favor cutting the police department’s budget and shifting more funds to mental health services and community policing, or do you favor adding more police officers and salaries to increase coverage and response time?

Pitting mental services against cops on the ground is a false choice. Here’s the truth: I support both and our community needs both. Here is another harsh truth: we actually have money in the budget to add cops on the ground. The problem is we can’t find men and women who want those jobs. That’s not something you hear much about in the news, but it impacts our citizens’ safety. We should also consider deployment strategies that help us use existing funds more efficiently. For example, we should look at how many sworn officers are doing administrative work.

Do you favor local control of the police department?

The fact that no other city in the country runs its police department the way we do should tell us something. If it worked so well then cities would be clamoring to change their system to ours! That’s going to be a hard thing to change, so in the meantime, let’s leverage the opportunity to work with this new Police Chief who has signaled a willingness to be communicative, efficient, and creative. She deserves the time to orient the department towards her vision.

What is your plan to curb homelessness and provide more affordable housing throughout the city?

Three types of homelessness: 1) Criminal Homelessness 2) Addiction-related homelessness 3) Underemployed. I was on the Special Committee on Housing Policy that created the Zero KC plan to end homelessness. This includes short-term and long-term strategies to help people.

One long-term way to curb homelessness is to ensure that good jobs are available to all Kansas Citians. That’s why I worked so hard on the prevailing wage ordinance and enforcement mechanism.

What are your priorities for funding in the next city’s next fiscal budget?

1) Compliance/enforcement of existing ordinances
2) Infrastructure (fund sidewalks, potholes, street paving)
3) Public Safety
4) Tourism

Kansas City has the land mass of eight San Franciscos and not nearly the population density of San Francisco. That creates some real challenges when it comes to paying for all the infrastructure our city has/needs. We need to focus on strategies, like tourism and placemaking (placemaking means building amenities, like arts and culture assets, that make people want to visit/move to a particular city), that build our density.