PLATFORM
My family has been here for generations. I know this community. I have lived here, worked and raised my family here. As a council member, I will use my 56 years of experience and knowledge from living here to ensure issues, goals, and priorities are understood and answers address root causes. We need solutions that work for our community.
LIST OF ISSUES
Housing
Our economy depends on affordable or "work force" housing. Right now, there are few rental options and even fewer purchasing options for medium to low income families. Without workforce housing, we lose families that support our economy and access to local healthcare.
The Sequim Health and Housing Collaborative is an organization that helps our most vulnerable citizens. Continued support of the Collaborative is vital, but we need to look at solutions that expand affordable housing to more community members who are struggling with the cost of housing. Developments with mixed use housing, including apartments and duplexes need to become part of our comprehensive plan. We need to encouraging building on underdeveloped properties within the city limits through an infill policy recently passed by council.
With multi use housing and any growth in large businesses, we also need to be thoughtful of impacts on water usage and the environment. It is a delicate balance.
Local Economy
The recent pandemic exposed the fragility of our economy that is fairly dependent on tourism, retail and restaurants. We were lucky to have a city manager who worked to get emergency funding and to community partnership through the Economic Development Council and local banking institutes to support the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans that kept many businesses going.
Our city staff are knowledgeable and professional. They can help city council develop a plan for growth management to strike a balance between building houses for retirees and services to support those retirees as well as new business to stimulate a year round economy.
City government needs to support staff so they can going after state and other funding sources to support these efforts along with managing funds brought in locally.
Healthcare
With the retirement population living in and around the City of Sequim, access to primary care is important. Many people move here not knowing that they will end up on a waiting list to establish with a primary care provider locally. The ability to attract a strong healthcare workforce is related to having affordable housing and good schools. City government needs to work in partnership with our healthcare community and local school to make sure we are attracting and retaining healthcare workforce.
The City also needs to be a good partner in our community to address healthcare needs. This includes working with partners like the Olympic Medical Center, Jamestown Family Health Clinic and the many skilled nursing facilities to understand issues in access to care and working to support solutions to access issues. I want to help focus on these collaborations to understand our community health needs and work with the experts to address them.
Diversity
I have been involved in the Community Conversations on Equity and Inclusion. We have a diverse community here in Sequim and we should be celebrating this. We learned from the community conversations how our community wants to move forward with this work. Working with other institutions within our community, we could provided many events to support equity and inclusion. From educational sessions on structural racism to festivals celebrating different cultures. I want to see this work become an established part of our institutions so all citizens can enjoy living, working and playing here in Sequim.
