Age: 36
\nOccupation: Author and Motivational Speaker<\/p>\n
How long have you lived in Raleigh?<\/em><\/strong> Why have you decided to run for office?<\/em><\/strong> What do you think are the three biggest is\u00adsues facing the city, and in 30 seconds or less, how would you address those?<\/em><\/strong> What do you think are the best and worst de\u00adcisions the current city council has made?<\/em><\/strong> I\u2019m really not happy with the way the public hears about these studies, like the Capital Boulevard studies and New Bern cor\u00adridor study, the UDO. I find things out with an e-mail, and I\u2019m like \u201cOh my god, that\u2019s like now,\u201d and I\u2019m running off and chang\u00ading everything in my plan. And I really just wish that more people were able to weigh in, and I just wish that they would find an\u00adother way to disseminate that kind of information longer.<\/p>\n What do you think is the most important issue facing your district and how would you address it?<\/em><\/strong> What do you think the city should do to house its public safety functions?<\/em><\/strong> How do you feel about impact fees?<\/em><\/strong> What ideas do you have for public transportation in Raleigh?<\/em><\/strong> How do you think the city should plan to meet its future water needs?<\/em><\/strong> The city has been given a million dollars to do whatever it wishes. What do you think the money should go to?<\/em><\/strong> I would definitely look into a small business loan program for small business support.<\/p>\n I would definitely in\u00advest in setting up the infra\u00adstructure for an affordable rental program, not nec\u00adessarily just housing. We need more single family housing as well, but we\u2019ve only got a million dollars.<\/p>\n I would use the money also to upgrade the com\u00admunity centers to include technology, so that when there\u2019s CAC meetings, they have an infrastruc\u00adture that will support tele\u00adconferencing, Skype or any kind of video, webinar interface.<\/p>\n I know they just recent\u00adly gave the city staff a bo\u00adnus, but I would definitely probably say some kind of a city employee appreciation something because they\u2019re working really hard with a lot less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Age: 36 Occupation: Author and Motivational Speaker How long have you lived in Raleigh? Since 2007. Why have you decided to run for office? I feel like I\u2019m called to this area called govern\u00adment. I\u2019ve been studying for the last 13 years. I al\u00adways wanted to run for office. I want to do, you know, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24038,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[378],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24038"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSince 2007.<\/p>\n
\nI feel like I\u2019m called to this area called govern\u00adment. I\u2019ve been studying for the last 13 years. I al\u00adways wanted to run for office. I want to do, you know, Congress and may\u00ador. And I thought, you know what? Why not start in your city where you live? We have some major issues in my city, in my district and I\u2019ve always had this very strong voice for the underrepresented.<\/p>\n
\nThe three biggest issues, definitely, are economic development, crime and public safety, and the third issue, managing growth for the city. Making sure we have the light right, the speed rail and the bus lines, and just making sure that in the city, we\u2019re able to get to and from other places in a quick fashion. That\u2019s big to me. And I think the other two feed into other stuff, so if you take care of economics, you\u2019ll take care of gangs and crime and homelessness.<\/p>\n
\nOne of the best decisions they could have made was to fund the Raleigh Busi\u00adness and Technology Cen\u00adter, which I am a recipient of\u2014the Pacesetters pro\u00adgram, and it really is a small business hub. That mission is to grow small businesses. It\u2019s a nine-month course free; I didn\u2019t pay anything. And I learned a lot.<\/p>\n
\nThe most important is\u00adsue is economic develop\u00adment. It\u2019s education and economics, and how they go hand-in-hand. So, how I plan to address it is basical\u00adly, I know that you need a skilled labor force in order to attract businesses. My goal is to attract educa\u00adtional programs. I\u2019m sure Wake Tech has a program for it, or State. I have a dif\u00adferent kind of element in my community. So I will be looking for something that would be just like a lit\u00adtle step, a level to help them prepare for Wake Tech, prepare for State.<\/p>\n
\nI do agree with the pub\u00adlic safety center that they\u2019re doing. I\u2019m in agreement that everything should be in one place. How could the city best use emergency management, fire, police. You know, how could they best use these? Well, if they were in one place, yes, we would get services faster.<\/p>\n
\nI probably need to re\u00adsearch the impact fees a lit\u00adtle bit more.<\/p>\n
\nWell, I love the speed rail idea. I\u2019ve rode the bus once or twice before, and it could be faster. I definite\u00adly know we have to have some trains, so you know, the light rail, speed rail \u2026 definitely, we\u2019ve got to have that in any inner city, ab\u00adsolutely \u2026 that can get me from here to Charlotte or here to Washington, here to Virginia. I think it would definitely increase, I don\u2019t know if you want to say tourism or visitation or just increase traffic to the downtown area.<\/p>\n
\nThere needs to be plan\u00adning and infrastructure of the water system, but how that\u2019s done, I would need more information. I would need more knowl\u00adedge as to how to do that because that\u2019s just not an area that I\u2019ve really have a full understanding of how they do that, but of course whatever I would have to do to provide safe drinking water to the city as a whole is a priority.<\/p>\n
\nI would definitely put some money aside. I know they did this thing with Project Lift where it helped non-profits increase sustainability, build capac\u00adity, so I would definitely put some money in there. I would definitely look into more arts programs\u2014cre\u00adative arts programs that provide vouchers or sti\u00adpends for parents who might have gifted children but can\u2019t afford to pay for arts programs for their kids.<\/p>\n