Campaign Phone
2564794919
I have been in leadership roles my entire adult life, from starting my own business, to leading and managing online communities, and most recently, forming Strong Towns Huntsville, a group organized around improving the urban design of cities.
Running a business and leading multiple groups over the past 12+ years has given me the skills in managing finances, analyzing data, creating deals with 3rd party companies, working with others to solve problems, and organizing large groups of people.
Through Strong Towns, I have completed credited courses involving leadership and urban design.
I already currently work with city staff on bike and pedestrian safety projects. I'll be able to start working on day one.
Our biggest challenge will be shifting from small town thinking to big city thinking. So many people move to Huntsville from large cities across the world expecting Huntsville to have at least some of the amenities that their home cities had, but Huntsville lacks a lot of what other big cities have. Our public transit is slow, our nightlife is lacking, walkability is poor, and we have little variety in housing stock (few condos, townhouses, and high-rises).
Huntsville is improving in most of these areas, but at a very slow rate. I will improve our transit system to be the best in the state, reform zoning to allow more housing variety, and improve street designs to be safer to encourage people to experience more of our city.
Areas like downtown, midcity, and stovehouse bring in significant revenue for the city, while our sprawling suburbs often cost us more money than they generate. Dense, mix-use, walkable neighborhoods are the most positive tax revenue areas of cities, while low density sprawling neighborhoods bring in little tax revenue while costing millions of dollars to build and maintain miles of new roads, utilities, and services. The best thing we as a city can do to improve our growth and development is to rezone more land to create more dense, mix-use, walkable neighborhoods and halt annexing land to build sprawling suburbs. We need bus transit to be our first thought with new developments, not an afterthought.
Huntsville already has strong control over industry within the city limits. A restriction I would like to add though is to ban gas turbines. Being both noisy and major pollutants, we shouldn't allow them in our city when there are much more sustainable solutions, such as solar and wind.
I'm again signing non-disclosure agreements for data centers.
I would like to see the budget be more detailed. The current data released provides a good overview of the city's budget, but lacks a lot of detail that I think could be important for the public to fully understand where funds go.
District 4 has the largest immigrant population in Huntsville, but I'm the only candidate who has the experience of actually going through the immigration system with my family. I've been to cities not just across the country, but across the world. I know what great cities look like.
I'm the only candidate who actively supports our lgbt community and posts about it on his website.
I regularly bike all around Huntsville, particularly district 4. I see first hand where bike and pedestrian improvement can and need to be made.
Campaign Phone
256-337-3045
I served previously as a member of the Huntsville City School Board, and have been a public radio news reporter who did live radio broadcasts City Council meetings. Additionally, I have experience serving previous terms as a member of the City Council, and have twice been elected president.
The biggest challenges facing the city are roads and traffic flow. I have consistently worked to increase the annual amount spent on road resurfacing.
Additionally, we are working on the hundred million dollar Memorial Parkway at I-565 interchange capacity expansion project.
And, we are working on the Ring Road around the core portion of the city. Currently we go from the Arsenal along Alabama Highway 255 north onto North Parkway. Future segments will be to Highway 72 E., and onto Hampton Cove, and come around the south Arsenal corridor entrance, and attach at Rideout road.
We have good job growth, our jobs are diversified, and they do not pollute. Housing is overall affordable, although this is an area that I would like to see more done in the future. We are recognized nationally for quality of life, a good place to raise a family, high-tech business startups, and overall affordability.
We are in inclusive community.
Having a masters degree in Planning, I understand that we need to be careful not to fall behind on our future infrastructure and traffic capacity. And yes, we need to catch up on traffic capacity. We are being proactive and planning with the School Board for new schools in outlying areas.
Again, we have had a good growth cycle, but we need to slow it down a bit.
Our tax $ continues to grow.
From my perspective, I do not see any benefit from future data centers. TVA has almost borrowed its full limit, and is restricted from future new power producing. To deal with this situation, we have already teamed up with Scottsboro, Decatur,and Athens to create a natural gas pipeline. Additionally, we are working with Huntsville Utilities for a 200 acre plus solar energy farm to produce extra energy. It makes no sense for us to protect our future energy needs, if we have a new data center come along and suck it all up.
Having these challenges plus the heat and noise, I do not see the benefit of future data centers.(as far as non-disclosure agreements, I’m not going to be a part of anything, so I won’t have anything to disclose.)
I try to do my part to be open and transparent. I voted to ensure that our City Council meetings are broadcast live. I voted to ensure that they are live streamed. I have a monthly Town meeting at which anyone can come. It is held at the library, away from City Hall by design.
Future idea: when people come to CITY COUNCIL meetings to comment, they have a right to receive some type of response instead of just the chair moving the gravel to the next speaker. We have staff people and we have Dept heads that deal with diversity. We should have these well paid people at our COUNCIL meetings, so that we can pair them up with citizens whom are asking questions or need assistance.
I would like to think that I’m a good person. I really care about the city. And I really, really care about helping people who need the help the most.
I regularly walk the neighborhoods of the district, calling in potholes, loose cable TV wire, streets that need to be swept, clogged sewer inlets, etc. Day and day out, all of the small improvements help to make the NEIGHBORHOODS a little bit nicer. As a result, three formally very challenged neighborhoods are now much nicer, and are listed on the national registry of historic places.: Merrimack, Lowe Mill, and McThoormore Acres. Over the last 12 months, I have walked over 750 miles within the neighborhood boundaries!
Not running to build up my résumé. I am running in order to go to work!
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