Our community is in a housing crisis. We have to build more housing, but we have to do so with care for our current communities and growing, not paving over, these communities.

For this reason, I support comprehensive AirBnB regulation, a residency requirement on ADUs, and an incentive program to encourage homeowners to build and rent ADUs.

Additionally, I believe we have to encourage reasonable housing development across the whole Ithaca community.

Finally, giving tax breaks to developers to incentivize them to build student housing is a failed policy. It is damaging the financial stability of the City to pay developers to do what one Ithaca developer has described as “print money.” I will oppose tax abatements on new developments that are likely to be student housing.

Our roads, sidewalks, sewers, water mains, and other forms of physical infrastructure are in need of repair and support.

Additionally, I believe we need to take a more active role as a city in managing traffic routing. Many drivers rely on GPS apps to direct them. We could direct more traffic away from, for example, schools, by lowering the speed limit on those streets comparative to other streets, making other routes prioritized for the apps.

The entire Ithaca region is facing serious challenges. No individual government can successfully and fully address them.

The City of Ithaca and the Town of Ithaca should explore closer collaboration and ties. The City of Ithaca and Tomkins County should coordinate efforts more.

This coordination could lead to monetary savings, more effective large scale problem solving, and a healthier greater Ithacan community.

Cornell is a valued part of our community. However, for a community to function, everyone has to contribute to the greater health of that community. Cornell has been failing to pull its weight in that regard in recent years. While Cornell is a major economic driver for the city, it also fails to fully capture its externalities. From road use to pressure on our housing market, Cornell ought to help us mitigate the impacts of its actions. Cornell needs to contribute more to the City, and to the Ithaca community.

We cannot ignore the impacts of climate change on our infrastructure needs, weather patterns, and disaster preparedness.

We must address the flooding risks in Downtown. We must create modern, green buildings and infrastructure. And we must plan our infrastructure for changing rainfall and stormwater patterns.

Our communities are more divided and siloed than they once were. I believe the city should create spaces and opportunities for community building.

For example, taking a patch of land and turning it into a community flower garden both saves the city resources for other priorities and allows the local community to define the direction and feel of their neighborhood, as well as work together towards a common goal.

Our public transportation system is undergoing constant challenges and triage.

In the short term, TCAT needs better staffing. Without sufficient drivers and other staff, TCAT cannot provide what it seeks to.

In the longer term, local governments and Cornell should create a joint working group to fully overhaul our public transit system, separate from the TCAT Board. Even if the result of their analysis is that the current TCAT model is the best we can do for our community, that would be useful information.