Values in Action

FAQ:

What's Ojai doing to get residents ready for the next wildfire?
Two tracks: funding and education. This year's budget added $1M in new fire-safety dollars, and I've pushed for CERT training in every neighborhood and supported Fire Adapted Communities education — hands-on sessions on wildfire-resistant construction and landscaping residents can actually use on their own property.

What's the "regenerative economic plan," and is it more than a slogan? This is my big idea! It's a specific plan: six local economies — restoration, agriculture, wellness, animal welfare, ecotourism, and the creative economy — connected into one funded loop, built with the Ojai Valley Green Coalition and the dozens of local organizations already doing this work. Download the "one-sheet" plan.

Where do you stand on rent stabilization and rental assistance?
I've supported keeping Ojai's rent stabilization protections in place and pushed the city to actually connect renters with the assistance programs that already exist. The same housing pressure that's pricing out teachers and service workers is a stability issue, not just an affordability one.

What do you do when someone feels the city hasn't treated them fairly?
I hear them out directly and follow up myself — whether it's a permit or code-enforcement decision that felt uneven, or a resident caught in something like the Cabin Village fight who felt unheard. It's the same principle behind the C.A.R.E. policy: people deserve a government that treats them fairly, and a real way to say so when it doesn't.

Do you have experience with infrastructure projects like broadband?
I was on the executive board of Wired West, a cooperative of 26 small Massachusetts towns that built their own municipal fiber-optic network when the big providers wouldn't serve them. It's the same instinct I bring to infrastructure fights here — when the market won't solve a problem, a well-organized local government and its neighbors often can.

What have you done about housing affordability?
It runs through most of my platform rather than living in one program: rent stabilization for people in their homes now, permanent supportive housing like Cabin Village for people with nowhere else to go, and making sure new development pays its way instead of displacing the people already here.

Why has your council record included animal-rights ordinances?
It surprises people, but it's some of the most concrete work I've done. Working with the Nonhuman Rights Project, I helped pass the nation's first ordinance recognizing an elephant's right to bodily liberty, Ojai's Rights of Nature ordinance, a ban on retail glue-trap sales, and a ban on breeding brachycephalic dog breeds.
 

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