We asked each candidate to answer a few questions so that you can know a little more about their priorities. See responses from other candidates: Joe Benson, Emily Francis and Michelle Shoresman

Rank the issues in order of importance for our city:

If elected, what will you do to address the issue you identified above as most significant?

Make sure, first, we save affordable housing and rentals (I put my own dough up for The Establishment), because extant housing is always more affordable than new housing. Approve housing that benefits the lower economic levels of the community; the rich have enough stuff. Cut expensive bureaucracy for homeowners building and renting affordable ADUs.

What is your approach on traffic and parking issues? Are there any policies that you are committed to advocating for or against?

The Palm-Nipomo Parking Structure (the Garage Mahal) was a huge boondoggle at $25m and is twice as huge at $53m. You could build an apartment for the price of parking space and have a family live here instead of commuter commute here. Plus climate change? Plus we’ve got no clue on the future of driving and parking patterns. We could have 25–50% trips on bikes, but that would require a safe bike NETWORK, not flagship projects connected by miles of bike gutters whose magic lines of paint fool no one.

Which theme in the Chamber’s economic vision, Imagine SLO, do you think deserves the most focus in the next four years and why?

Well, that’s hard; they’re all super-bougie, and I’m not super-bougie. Even Love of Place, which I should be into as a biker and hiker and architectural historian and preservationist, seems to be about pleasing everyone all the time about everything. I’d say maybe Empowering Innovation if it meant innovating our community through economic and racial diversity and dissent, not upper-middle-class White people singing Kumbaya to each other all the time. Research shows Jane Jacobs was right, historic slums are actually very diverse and innovative because they’re cheap and you can afford to make mistakes. We need slum substitutes.

For more than ten years, buildings in the downtown core have been allowed to be up to 75 feet tall if they provide significant community benefits; do you support these current regulations? Why or why not?

In my five years serving on the CHC, I never found the “community benefits” on offer very significant. Not sure why we’re so desperate to alter the scale of our downtown, which tourists and locals like. City administrators keep saying, “We should be like State Street!” but State Street’s all one and two stories. I’ve lived in Manhattan, LA, London, Paris, Frisco, love ’em, but it’s a different vibe—and besides, most of the parts where people want to be in them are low-built.

For the first time in decades, the City is approaching our self-imposed 1% limit on new housing development. Would you support amending this 1% cap to address our housing crisis or do you believe that it is essential to maintain this limit?

The problem is not the amount of housing we build, it’s the type of housing we build. Because of land and construction costs, it is literally impossible to build affordable housing in California, unless we use subsidies—or dramatically change the type of housing. We don’t need to solve the great pied-à-terre crisis for Angelenos and San Franciscans by building more luxury condos.

What are you most proud of having contributed to our community in the past 10 years?

Probably researching, writing, and talking about our racial history—and getting the first Black-associated building landmarked (Frank and Alberta Bell’s Tiny Mart, now High Street Deli), after literally more than nine hundred White-associated landmarks in San Luis.

What is the biggest opportunity for our City in the next four years?

A city council that doesn’t know how to analyze budgets longitudinally or in comparison to like cities (or maybe can’t be bothered), challenge senior city staff, listen to citizens or junior city staff, or express or process dissent.

Is there something the city is not currently focused on that you would bring to the forefront if elected?

Cut cumbersome, unaffordable bureaucracy for homeowners—though (as an architectural historian) I’d lose my bread and butter navigating it for ’em. Our preservation system’s been bust for 40 years; fix it and attract the culture vultures, like Palm Springs.