In an effort to help voters prepare for the Nov. 7 elections, Atlanta Loop sent questions to candidates running for Atlanta City Council, Atlanta Mayor and Atlanta School Board. Early voting begins Oct. 16. To see district maps, click here. 

1) Why are you running for office in the city of Atlanta?

My wife and I moved into the Mechanicsville community several years ago searching for affordable housing opportunities close to the heart of Atlanta. While we succeeded, we also found neighbors, businesses, and community institutions that had existed in the community for decades but were at risk of being displaced due to market forces driving up the cost of living across the city. This was compounded by the announcement that Turner Field would be sold to a development team which included Georgia State University and Carter USA.

I loved my neighbors and my community, and I was committed to fighting to ensure that these families could stay in the decades to come. I volunteered to serve my neighborhood, my Neighborhood Planning Unit, and the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition. Eventually, I went on to serve as spokesperson for TFCBC, fighting to make sure that our communities had a voice when decisions were made at City Hall. Our organization fought to ensure that approval of any sale agreement be conditioned upon or require a Community Benefits Agreement between the affected neighborhood and the development team.

In our struggle to ensure our communities had a seat at the table, I quickly recognized that Atlanta City Council was a significant, continuous roadblock that threatened our ability to guide the future of our neighborhoods. The city was aggressively pushing for legislation that allowed developers to sidestep the community input process established by the Neighborhood Planning Unit system. As per city rules, NPUs enable citizens to express ideas and comment on city plans and proposals while assisting the city in developing priorities that best meet the needs of their communities. However, the ordinances being pushed by Council effectively curtailed that community input by circumventing the zoning review and zoning adjustment processes which traditionally provided the mechanism for citizen engagement.

We believed that submitting and voting on legislation without community input—legislation which ultimately closes the door to other legally-mandated opportunities for community engagement—was unsatisfactory, and that it ultimately failed to adequately balance the obligations of the public and private interests involved in the sale with the needs of the community.

Unfortunately, we failed in that endeavor because our elected officials failed us, and that’s why I’m running for Atlanta City Council.

I’m running to build a vision for Atlanta that recognizes the importance of our communities in our city’s decision-making process. Valuing our communities encourages Atlanta to aggressively champion our neighborhoods, our historic institutions, and our working families. We must preserve Atlanta’s position as a center of culture, heritage, and history, and that preservation can only happen when our city’s residents and institutions can afford to remain in the city. An aggressive community-based agenda would work to preserve this legacy.

2) What makes you a better candidate than your opponents?

As an Atlanta native, public school graduate, community activist, daily bicycle, bus, and train commuter, and as a director at a 7M/year national nonprofit organization, I believe that I am uniquely qualified to take Atlanta’s challenges head-on. My educational background supports my professional experience–I hold a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Georgia and a Master of Science in Real Estate from Georgia State University. Because of these experiences, I believe that I have a strong grasp of the competing public- and private-sector interests that define our city.

3) What do you think is Atlanta’s greatest strength?

I believe Atlanta’s greatest strength is its people. Our neighborhoods and communities existed long before the Olympics, billion-dollar sports arenas, and even the interstate system. That cultural legacy is what’s made our city so attractive to the outside world, and decisions made in Atlanta have ramifications in places as far as New York and Hollywood. I believe that is reflected in our city’s history and culture, and we should work to protect that. Historic preservation goes hand-in-hand conversations around affordable housing which go hand-in-hand with support for the arts. Our cultural legacy is reflective of our diversity, and I am committed to preserving that.

4) What do you think is Atlanta’s biggest challenge?

Affordable housing is the number one issue facing the City of Atlanta. Rising housing costs have displaced many families from the city. In light of this, we’re fighting to ensure that the families that have been the organizational backbone of our communities for decades can continue to shape our city’s cultural legacy as we gain new residents. We must act with urgency as Atlanta is expected to grow by another 1 million people over the next 35 years.

District 4 serves as a microcosm of this issue. With a median household income of only $24,533 (the second lowest in the city), District 4 is home to some of the most economically vulnerable residents in the city. Furthermore, 42.7% of homeowners spend more than 30% of their monthly income on housing (the national standard for housing affordability). Again, this is the second highest in the city, making District 4’s residents among the city’s most vulnerable.

5) How would you address what you feel is Atlanta’s biggest challenge?

To ensure that all Atlantans have an opportunity to live, work, and thrive in our city, I am fighting to:

• Employ market-driven solutions, such as ending minimum parking requirements for new construction and removing traditional zoning requirements which would expand housing choices.

• Aggressively target blight and code enforcement violators, which would increase the supply of available housing and open more opportunities to families across the city.

• Expand Invest Atlanta’s home down payment assistance programs, strengthening the pipelines available for residents to become homeowners.

• Work with county-level partners to develop new property tax exemptions for cost-burdened property owners

• Expand funding for land banks or community land trusts, which would stabilize land costs and promote economic diversity in neighborhoods by ensuring community stewardship of land.

• Adopt mandatory inclusionary zoning practices for transactions involving the sale or transfer of publicly-owned property.

6) What are the top two or three things you plan to focus on during your term as an elected official?

• Preserving access to quality affordable housing. I believe we should update our land use policies to allow for a diversity of uses which would meet the needs of families looking for housing options beyond large-scale, multi-family and low-density, single-family units. This market-oriented approach would enable developers to build additional units of housing in land-constrained communities. Ensuring a diversity of options and choices means that fewer residents are competing for the same limited housing stock, reducing the cost of housing for everyone. Inclusionary zoning would ensure developers allocate a portion of new construction to residents with low or moderate incomes. Density bonuses and tax abatements could allow developers to recapture a portion of construction costs as well.

• Ensuring that we have safer neighborhoods supported through community-oriented policing. The best way to make our communities safe is to ensure that police officers are active and seen in the streets, interacting with local citizens. Officers need to focus their time and energy by walking through communities, not sitting behind the wheel of a police cruiser. Our citizens must know our police officers if we are to trust them and respect their judgement. However, Atlanta has one of the worst police attrition rates in the country, and we can’t know our police officers if they continue to leave the city at such a high rate. In my first six months, I will work to increase the pay and benefits for our officers while also working with APD leadership to shift the policing culture towards foot patrols and community engagement. I believe that we ought to invest more in our officers, but we we should also expect more from them as well.

• Committing to open, honest, and responsive government that values citizen input and community engagement. I support implementing new regulations, policies, and procedures to stop the abuses of corruption, nepotism, and unaccountable decision-making. Auditing procurement procedures through an independent, external body would be a great way to ensure that these abuses are limited. I would also explore potentially passing legislation that would prohibit government contracts (valued at specific amounts) with companies that donate to elected officials. Finally, I’d work to get all checkbook-level spending for the city posted online so that residents know where their tax dollars are being spent in real time.

7) What is your opinion of the Atlanta Beltline? Is there anything about the project that you think should be handled differently?

I believe the Atlanta Beltline needs to focus more on serving as an asset to the vulnerable communities in its path by working to counteract the forces that use it as a tool of displacement. It has to be more than just a transportation corridor–it must also be a place where communities can grow in a sustainable and equitable way. As a public project, I support programs which aim to ensure that developers building within the Beltline TAD and using public monies adhere to inclusionary zoning practices and contribute to affordable housing trust funds. As a public project, we need to build the Beltline needs to all Atlantans, and I am committed to ensuring that future development remains inclusive of the communities that are affected by the project.

That includes committing to build rail transit along the Beltline corridor. The Beltline must be more than just a pedestrian and bicycle path. A route that is only accessible to the physically-abled in good weather is not inclusive. Rail is critical for getting people to destinations efficiently and effectively and at volume, especially as our city is expected to grow by 1 million people over the next 30 years.

8) What is your opinion of the Atlanta Streetcar?  Is there anything about the project that you think should be handled differently?

I was an early advocate of the Atlanta Streetcar because MARTA’s growth opportunities were stagnant in 2012, and I saw it as a significant next step towards building an effective citywide transportation system that prioritized local needs. But that was also before last year’s MARTA expansion referendum, which paved the way for better transit access across Atlanta. In light of this, I now look forward to MARTA’s acquisition of the Atlanta Streetcar. This transition will hopefully reduce overhead costs and streamline the management of our transportation priorities.

I will add that I support light rail expansion across the city, though I understand and agree with concerns about how the Atlanta Streetcar has been managed.  Light rail and streetcar technologies are similar and could be integrated with one another, but I believe that we should prioritize routes with dedicated rights-of-way rather than expand the mixed-traffic solution as it exists today. However, an expansive light rail network could take years, even decades, to fully build out. We should expand bus capacity before rail projects are finalized to determine route viability before any tracks are laid.

I also recognize that buses do little to enhance the pedestrian experience. While both buses and streetcars offer last-mile service, streetcars are unique in that they are intended to function as economic development tools. They uniquely attract the kind of investments that can help make communities more transit-oriented–in this case, transit essentially becomes a placemaking tool, transforming the ground-level experience into something that’s scaled appropriately for human beings. However, this is can only succeed when we support infrastructure with land use and zoning policies that enhance the urban fabric. What use is a streetcar when new residential and commercial developments continue to build swaths of parking, much of it mandated by public decree? The City of Atlanta needs to support transportation priorities through complementary land use and zoning policies. Transportation planning can’t happen in a vacuum.

9) What should the city of Atlanta do to reduce traffic congestion in the city?

I firmly believe induced-demand is a real phenomenon. No amount of road construction provides a permanent solution to traffic congestion, and even the best-connected global cities experience these issues. Rather than widen roads and incentivize automobile-centric development, Atlanta must invest in alternatives which provide residents with cost-effective transportation options. Even more, prioritizing connectivity and accessibility for all Atlanta residents would strengthen our existing public transit systems. Ridership suffers when last-mile connectivity doesn’t exist in many places.

This issue is starker in our most vulnerable communities. Nearly 40% of households in southwest Atlanta don’t own or have access to a car as their primary means of transportation and have to rely on alternative forms of transportation to get to work, school, daycare, and everything in between. Atlanta’s job centers are clustered in the northern reaches of the city while many of our working families must spend hours commuting via bus and train in the early hours of each day. There is an imbalance, especially since the communities that need alternative transportation amenities the most have the least amount of access to those amenities. Myriad sidewalks and bicycle lanes adorn northeast Atlanta, while in the southwestern reaches of our city, children must walk in the middle of the street dodging unfettered vehicle traffic, only to arrive at whichever pole in the ground denotes their local bus stop. Equitable investment in safe transportation infrastructure is key to bringing all Atlantans together.

To ensure that all Atlantans have access to our city’s rich assets and amenities, I am fighting to:

• Treat sidewalks as shared resources and commit the city to invest in fixing the backlog of sidewalk repairs while investing in new pedestrian infrastructure.

• Expand Atlanta’s bicycle infrastructure to ensure that access and connectivity is safe and equitable.

• Partner with MARTA to identify opportunities to enhance existing bus stops with benches and shelters to make multi-modal transportation seamless and to make bus ridership a much more dignified experience.

10) What should the city do to increase affordable housing options for its residents?

As mentioned earlier, affordable housing is the number one issue I seek to address if elected to Atlanta City Council. Strategies to address this include the following:

• Employ market-driven solutions, such as ending minimum parking requirements for new construction and removing traditional zoning requirements which would expand housing choices for more Atlantans.

• Aggressively target blight and code enforcement violators, which would increase the supply of available housing and open more opportunities to families across the city.

• Expand Invest Atlanta’s home down payment assistance programs, strengthening the pipelines available for residents to become homeowners.

• Work with county-level partners to develop new property tax exemptions for cost-burdened property owners.

• Expand funding for land banks or community land trusts, which would stabilize land costs and promote economic diversity in neighborhoods by ensuring community stewardship of land.

• Adopt mandatory inclusionary zoning practices for transactions involving the sale or transfer of publicly-owned property.

11) If elected, do you promise to conduct yourself in an ethical and transparent manner?

Absolutely. Government transparency has been a major cornerstone of my campaign, and I believe it is a necessary component of an equitable and just society. For too long, planning in Atlanta has been influenced by backroom deals where those with the right access are prioritized over the people that our officials have sworn to serve. I served as an Army officer across two overseas tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, so I have seen firsthand how money can corrupt local governments, and when left unchecked, how that corruption can bring undue suffering to the people that need help the most.

To ensure that our city’s government remains transparent and accountable, I will:

• Champion an open, honest, and responsive government that values citizen input and community engagement.

• Fight to maintain an independent ethics board which defends values like integrity and accountability through an active and robust oversight process.

• Post checkbook-level spending for my District office online so that constituents can see how their needs have been prioritized, and fight to ensure that Atlanta adopts these same transparent practices citywide.

• Commit to routine, predictable, and well-advertised town hall meetings with neighborhoods across District 4.

• Support implementing new regulations to stop ethics abuses by commissioning an independent, external body to audit procurement procedures.

• Update public comment rules and build a framework which allows for the submission of questions and remarks outside of the public commentary period.

• Continue to invest in our city employees by working to provide additional training, resources, and professional development opportunities tied to a uniform code of ethics which would make it less likely that city workers would break the public trust in the first place.

If elected to represent District 4 as our next City Councilmember, I will continue to fight for justice, equity, and transparency standards in our government. I will work every day while I am in office to bring greater transparency to the City of Atlanta. I believe that no issue is too large or too small for public scrutiny. Whether it’s sanctioning a street closing for a film shoot or voting to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to build a sports arena, the public has a right to know how our elected officials are conducting themselves at City Hall.