Candidate for City Council At Large

1. Addressing Social Inequities

What economic, educational, or resource access disparities exist in the district(s) you seek to represent? How do these disparities affect residents’ daily lives, and what specific measures would you pursue to address them?

This is one of the most important and overlooked issues in our community. As a former social worker and current Medicaid analyst, I’ve seen how social determinants of health shape people’s lives. I don’t hear other candidates talking about this, but I believe it’s essential if we’re serious about improving quality of life in Frederick.

An overwhelming majority of health outcomes are influenced by social and environmental factors, not just access to medical care. In some neighborhoods, residents live over a decade longer than in others and that is not due to personal choices. They include substandard housing and proximity to major roadways contribute to higher rates of asthma; limited public transportation means residents miss medical appointments or have a barrier to employment; food deserts which contribute to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Six food deserts have been identified in Frederick. Racial discrimination and chronic stress elevate risks for hypertension, depression, and other serious conditions.

Constituents most affected are often the least represented in local government. As elected officials, it’s our job to see them, listen, and act.

To address these disparities, I’m advocating for:

    ● Support zoning and development policies that promote walkable neighborhoods, affordable housing, and mixed-use development near transit
    ● Advocate for expanded bus routes and schedules, especially for neighborhoods with low vehicle access
    ● Partner with public health experts to identify and prioritize neighborhood-level interventions
    ● Encourage service expansion of Family Connects, Frederick’s home visiting program, to include dyad well visits (baby well visits also include a check up for the postpartum person for the first year) to reduce infants and maternal mortality and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders
    ● Encourage the use of city-owned properties for childcare, health clinics, and fresh food access

Frederick’s future depends on whether we’re willing to see and address the gaps that exist between our neighborhoods. City council and the mayor should ensure that every decision applies a health equity lens.

2. Healthcare Access and Equity

How would you assess access to healthcare in your district(s)? Are there particular barriers that limit residents’ ability to obtain quality care? What policies or initiatives would you support to promote preventive care, expand health education, and improve health outcomes across all communities?

Frederick has tools to measure access to healthcare including the county’s Community Needs Assessment, monitoring of network adequacy to providers by type, and meeting with people and organizations in the community to learn of the barriers firsthand.

While most residents in Frederick have access to primary health care, there are still limited options for OB/GYN, mental health services, and specialty care. Barriers to health care include transportation, cultural competency, lack of basic needs met, and lack of care coordination.

I support the following actions to improve health access.

    ● Continue investing in home-repair programs that assist low-income homeowners
    ● Enact more pollution-reduction policies: air and soil testing before development, zoning buffers
    ● Expand summer nutrition access, combining it with community outreach
    ● Support school-based health centers offering preventive care and mental health services
    ● Launch food prescription programs through clinical partnerships and food banks to increase fresh produce access
    ● Multilingual outreach efforts
    ● Incentivize healthcare centers in underserved areas of the city

Please consider my response in question 1 to be included in this also.

3. Environmental Concerns

What environmental issues—such as pollution, climate impacts, or loss of green space—are most pressing for Frederick City? What strategies or policies would you advocate to promote environmental sustainability and protect public health?

Frederick faces growing environmental challenges including extreme heat, flooding, drought, and pollution exacerbated by climate change and unchecked development. The Climate Response and Resilience Report identified four key focus areas: reducing emissions from energy and transportation, protecting forests and green space, preparing for climate-driven health risks, and expanding public engagement. These concerns align closely with the city’s needs today.

To protect public health and promote sustainability, the city must prioritize routine maintenance of critical infrastructure to ensure it can withstand extreme weather. New development approvals should account for future climate impacts including increased risk of drought, flooding, and stormwater runoff. These factors must be part of our long-term resilience planning.

Frederick is fortunate to have many local subject matter experts and advocates already doing this work. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we should build on the strong foundation of community-led efforts—especially by adopting and tracking the 40 recommendations from the Climate Emergency
Mobilization Workgroup. The city should publicly report on its progress toward these goals, ensuring transparency and accountability as we plan for a healthier, more sustainable future.

4. Access to Child Care

Many families in Frederick City face challenges finding affordable, high-quality child care. What role should the City play in addressing these challenges? What steps would you take to improve access and affordability for working families?

I could go on forever on this one!

Child care is infrastructure and it should be treated that way. It is not a family matter. It is what keeps everything else running. When families can’t find or afford care, they miss work, businesses struggle to hire, and children lose out on critical early development. This affects our entire economy.

Saying it is a crisis nationally and not looking into solutions or ways to alleviate the issue is a response Frederick must stop using.

In Frederick, there are at least three children for every one licensed child care slot, and some estimates put the ratio even higher. Waitlists are often six months or nearly a year for infants. Families spend around 20% of their household income on childcare and over a quarter of them need to use their savings. That burden directly limits economic mobility, especially for women and lower-income families.

I purpose that the city council look into the following policy options - many have been enacted in other states.

    ● Identify underused city-owned buildings and lots—like the Yellow Springs Elementary School once the new school is complete—that could be repurposed as childcare facilities
    ● Incentivize childcare in new development by offering density bonuses or fee waivers for projects that include on-site care in residential or commercial construction
    ● Change zoning for childcare facilities to “by right” in more areas to remove restrictions on location
    ● Support partnerships and private investment through tax credits, matching grants, and employer-supported models
    ● Allow facilities to have satellite locations with one administrative office

People can’t work if they don’t have affordable and reliable care for their children. This is an infrastructure issue. It’s an economic justice issue. And it’s one we can, and must, address locally.

5. Public Education and the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future

What do you see as the most significant challenges currently facing Frederick City’s public schools? How would you address them as a local elected official? What is your perspective on the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and its impact so far?

Frederick’s public schools are facing a number of challenges, but the biggest one is funding—both how much we’re getting and how quickly it's keeping pace with growth. While the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future has increased per-student funding, Frederick is growing rapidly, and the current formula is based on last year’s enrollment. That lag means we’re always playing catch-up. Additionally, there’s a question of if the funds are being spent in a way that benefits students. Speaking with a fourth grade teacher who recently left the field, it was clear that the required curriculum perpetuated achievement gaps. The
curriculum is now more strict on how teachers educate their students and it is aimed at those who are the grade level of their class. In this teacher's classroom, each year over half of the students were one or two grade levels behind. The pace of the and complexity of the curriculum didn’t allow flexibility to meet the needs of those students.

Teacher salaries have seen small increases, but they’re still not competitive enough to match the rising cost of living. That makes it harder to recruit and retain high-quality educators. We’re still seeing graduation rate gaps for students of color and English language learners.

I support the Blueprint and its goals—it’s ambitious and thoughtful, especially when it comes to improving teacher pay, expanding access to pre-K, strengthening career and technical education, and holding systems accountable through the new Implementation Board. I especially appreciate its focus on workforce development.
That said, there are some unintended consequences we need to plan for. One concern I have is around the rollout of universal pre-K. It’s a great idea in theory, but if we don’t carefully manage it, we could end up putting more pressure on an already fragile childcare system. Infant care is expensive and often operates at a loss, while care for 3- and 4-year-olds helps keep those centers afloat. If public pre-K pulls those kids out of private centers without a plan, we could see more closures, on top of the 20% we already lost during COVID. That would only deepen the childcare crisis.

As a local elected official, I’d push for stronger collaboration between the city, county, and state to plan for these impacts—whether that means supporting new childcare facilities to open or offering incentives for providers, donors, and businesses. I’d also work to promote local philanthropy, tap into workforce development partnerships like Frederick Health and Frederick Community College, and advocate for fair, needs-based funding formulas that don’t leave fast-growing cities behind.
I will push for the council to review the metrics coming out of schools on priority areas to identify outcomes and barriers. City council needs to come to the table and work with the county and Board of Education to advocate at the state level for our students - Frederick City students are also residents of Frederick County.

6. Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Please share an example of a time you supported or led an effort to advance diversity, equity, or inclusion. What was your approach, what outcomes resulted, and what did you learn from the experience?

I was a Qualified Intellectual Disability Professional (QIPD), which is a case manager that serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), at Lambs Farm in Illinois. Lambs Farm was well known in the Chicagoland area because it gave an alternative to institutions for people with IDD in the 1960s. It is a residential campus where people could live, work, and participate in activities ranging from cooking class, art, theatre, sports, music, and more. The organization was designed for participants to age in place and move from independent living to group living with increasing amounts of support. I was the QIPD for the only intermediate care facility, which is one step below a nursing home, for the oldest and most medically complex. A few times a year the new schedule for activities for participants to sign up for classes. When my clients signed up we were often told there wasn’t a slot open. When I started to ask why it was difficult for them to get into classes the response was because someone with diabetes shouldn’t be in a cooking class, someone else was too loud in music class, another wasn’t good at memorizing lines for the annual play. I was able to move the needle in some instances by reallocating staff tasks to allow someone to provide additional assistance in classes. For others, I brought art and music to the house. A few evenings a week, something resembling music would be coming from the living room with one on the guitar, one on the harmonic, and me on the banjo (no, I don’t know how to play but I have two!)

At the same agency, the state required each participant to have an annual meeting to discuss their goals and review the outcomes of the goals from the previous year (Individualized Service Plan or ISP, the same as students in the school system). Every year the plans would stay the same even the “About Me” portion. When I started the About Me was written in third person and included details like the participant’s height and other impersonal information. The goals wouldn’t even fit the participant - some would have check writing goals when most stores didn’t take checks and the participant didn’t have a good grasp on money or counting. The “individualized” part of the service plan was missing. I took a person-centered approach instead.

Ahead of each ISP, I would work with the participant to plan for their meeting, “their day”! I made it a celebration for them. They invited whoever they wanted to come, chose what special food I would make for the meeting, and decided what they wanted to work on that year. Instead of learning to write a check, we had goals to call a friend once a week, go to the nature park every month, and front row tickets to a Cubs game. The “About Me” section was all about the participants - their favorites, fun memories they wanted to share and moments they were proud of.

My annual meetings and ISPs became a model for the agency. Staff old and new sat in on my meetings to learn how to incorporate this approach.

I am very proud of this time when I helped an organization that served adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities be treated as adults first.

Note: Residents of Lambs Farm voted to be referred to as “participants”. Also the current best practice to serve people with IDD is group homes in the community. While this is ideal, it is often more isolating and doesn’t result in integration into the community.

7. Housing Affordability and Neighborhood Change

How are Frederick City residents affected by the availability and cost of housing, including issues related to gentrification or displacement? What policies or programs would you support to expand housing affordability and stability? Do you support implementing a rent stabilization initiative to slow rising costs of rental units in Frederick City?

Frederick is one of the fastest-growing counties in Maryland but we are seeing people leave because they simply can’t afford to stay. Rents have increased by at least 7% over the past three years, and I’ve felt it personally: my rent has gone up by $200 a month in the timeframe and in three weeks I have to move for the third time since coming to Frederick. While I feel the pressure of raising rent, I hear from constituents at all ends of the income level, renters and homeowners, that housing costs in Frederick are too expensive.

Only about 8% of rental units in Frederick are below $1,500 a month. Property taxes for homeowners have gone up year after year—most dramatically in the last two. Families are working multiple jobs, commuting in from neighboring counties, or stuck in homes they can’t afford to leave. I met with a young family where both parents are working two jobs to try to buy a bigger house because their three kids are growing up and will soon no longer be able to share a room. It’s out of their reach if they stay in Frederick. This is not sustainable.

Residents can’t afford to live and work in Frederick. Those that live here, don’t work here because the salaries are too low. Those that do work in the city, can’t afford to live here. We are losing our residents and they are being replaced by newcomers who can afford the high prices

I support rent stabilization as one important tool to help address rising housing costs. It’s a critical starting point in a larger plan to make housing more stable, predictable, and accessible for Frederick residents. It would give renters some breathing room while we work on longer-term solutions. There’s still work to be done, but action has never been more urgent.

Rent stabilization is just one part of a much bigger plan. We need bold, innovative approaches to housing affordability that actually meet the needs of our community. That includes:

    ● Zoning reform to allow duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, and ADUs in neighborhoods that currently only allow single-family homes
    ● Incentives for mixed-income and affordable housing in new developments
    ● Eliminating outdated policies that sound good on paper but don’t actually produce housing people can afford (remove fee‑in‑lieus)
    ● Set predictable expectations for developers for eligibility, zoning requirements, timelines. These things add to the length of time and cost of a project.
    ● Strategic use of city, church, and nonprofit land, to partner with nonprofits or housing developers for deeply affordable units to control project terms and lower costs.
    ● Rental arrears payments to avoid evictions and incentivize landlords to rent to people with previous evictions
    ● Rapid rehousing and housing first programs

Developers are playing by the rules we’ve set—and those rules aren’t delivering the housing our community needs. We must update our zoning, rethink what affordability really means, and take seriously our responsibility to keep Frederick livable for everyone.