Because I know our community and its priorities, I pledge to focus my campaign on families, jobs, recovery and opportunities.
For all families and residents to have a high quality of life, the City of Vancouver needs to have affordable housing throughout the city, better transportation, living wages, and opportunities for growth. We must chart a course for clean air, water, and land to ensure our most vulnerable communities are protected from whatever might come.
Quality of Life
“A great quality of life means affordable homes, easy transportation for all, a healthy environment, living wages, and a strong sense of community.” – Diana Perez
Vancouver’s rapid growth creates opportunities and challenges. Not the least of these is maintaining the quality of life and natural beauty that drew or kept us here. A high quality of life cannot be achieved without livable wage jobs, a good economy and access to parks and green spaces in neighborhoods. In order to achieve this, we must:
- Develop easy to use, multimodal transportation systems.
- Work for affordable housing so that our community’s most pressing need is met. We can do this by incentivizing mixed-income communities (with access to public transportation) by strategically removing zoning barriers for developers who agree to affordability restrictions; utilizing public investments to affordable housing developments that serve populations that are being left out of the housing market; and strengthening our homeless crisis response system to be able to get people into wrap-around supportive services needed to ensure success, while also increasing our emergency response to ensure people’s basic needs are met.
- Ensure our climate action plan is proactive, has measurable benchmarks, and protects our most vulnerable communities.
Economic Recovery and Opportunity
Economic Recovery
We cannot have a just recovery without talking about climate change. The decisions we make today will shape our city, economy, health and climate. It is time to be decisive and bold in creating a path to a genuinely healthier and more equitable future for everyone. No one should be left behind. We must create resiliency through livable wage jobs that help transition workers and communities into the future we reimagine.
- Look at how our City is run and our citizens are engaged so we can better tackle challenges together as we reimagine, rebuild and reopen our local economy and city life.
- Uplift those who were hardest hit by the pandemic, such as our small business owners and employees, people of color, and people without homes and/or jobs. Strive to eliminate obstacles that have created inequities.
- Create a strong climate action plan that ensures a transition from the jobs of today to jobs for tomorrow, including the opportunities for everyone to have access to training that will be required for those new jobs.
- Ensure we have systems that will make us less vulnerable in the future - one of the most important facets of a strong recovery. This means investing in transportation systems, sewage/water/electrical systems, small businesses, and low-income neighborhoods in order to weather the next disaster.
- Maintain and strengthen relationships, such as Clark County, Port of Vancouver, CREDC, WSU, Clark College, business and workforce stakeholders, as well as reaching out to develop new alliances. These can help create the jobs and skills training needed to transition to a healthier and cleaner future for everyone.
- Monitor and act on the evolving crisis that will come from lifting the eviction moratorium.
Economic Opportunity
Vancouver has been blessed with a location in close proximity to the mighty Columbia River, parks and trails along with easy access to the airport. This makes it appealing to a whole new generation of businesses that are looking to move here. To support that, we must:
- Work with the economic development sector to attract community-minded businesses that care about people’s quality of life. Recruit and grow businesses that will bring jobs and pay living wages in order to attract, create and retain local talent in our beautiful area.
- Work with Clark College and WSU Vancouver to promote skills that equip students and folks searching for employment to enter the workforce.
- Improve access to programs that assist business growth and stability through new and creative partnerships, especially for micro businesses, in newer and greener sustainable approaches. Small businesses are the economic backbone in our area.
Embracing All People
Vancouver’s demographics demonstrate that we are a city of multiple cultures, voices, and abilities. Unfortunately, we don’t often see this reflected in our local government. Everyone in our city should feel part of the community. That is why we must:
- Create opportunities for our youth by re-establishing a city-wide Youth Council to develop strong future community leaders with buy-in for the decisions we make as a city council.
- Create community centers and invest in neighborhood parks in all parts of the city that draw people together to foster community culture and arts, with a particular focus on east Vancouver where sprawl dominates.
- Seek feedback from every corner of the community; from planning and zoning to grassroots efforts.
- Promote a culture of equity and inclusivity in all areas of governance by looking at systems change and improving the City of Vancouver’s hiring practices, contract awards, partnerships, and improving accessibility and navigation of City services.
- The city should be applauded for initiating the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and establishing a task force to implement the recommendations of that report. The challenge now is to ensure that the work continues at a pace that matches the scale of the problem.
