Campaign Phone
2074283855
Finance Type
Clean Elections
Campaign Endorsements
Currently endorsed by the Maine Education Association, Maine AFL-CIO, SEIU Local 1989, and Maine Conservation Voters Action Fund
Healthcare affordability, housing affordability, and the changing climate. Everything is downstream from those issues. Whether it's small businesses, struggling families, big business investment, municipal governments, or any other constituency here in Maine, all of them are struggling with the same basic issues. If healthcare and housing bills eat up all of your paycheck, you can't afford to go out to restaurants and buy things from retail stores. If your healthcare bill goes up 10% every year, you can't keep property taxes down. And if a violent storm comes through and destroys your town, just about everyone suffers. We have to make ourselves more resilient and participate in helping to stem the release of greenhouse gases.
Here in Gray-New Gloucester, we're struggling with the disparity between how our land is valued by the state and expected local incomes. Our "ability to pay" for our schools is predicated on our rapidly increasing land value, but we don't necessarily have the access to jobs and income commensurate with that land value, which is mostly based on Cumberland and Yarmouth not having any housing to spare.
I also think we have a unique situation where everyone is coming through and causing us traffic, etc., but we're not really able to manage because it's all state roads. How do we avoid being a flow-through town where the locals can't get around because people are just getting from A to B?
After stints on the Ordinance Review Board, Little League Board, Day One Services Board, and MSAD 15 School Board over the last 25 years, I feel like I have a good handle on "how things work" and can tap into that to benefit Gray and New Gloucester. I've spend years and years reading policies, laws, process documents, and grant applications and I feel like I know how to get things across the line and turn them into reality. Plus, I have the on-the-ground experience to be able to effectively argue for local conditions when bills are introduced at the state house that sound good but maybe are missing a crucial piece of on-the-ground reality that would make them less effective or, worse, counter-productive.
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