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I live on the North Side with my fiancée, Sarah, and our rescue dog, Mokey. I work for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where I am a proud member of Local 9562 of the United Steelworkers. My focus in my beloved neighborhood of Fineview, as Vice President of the Fineview Citizens Council, is on encouraging more, better, and fairer housing, organizing my neighbors, keeping them informed, cleaning up litter, and planting greenery.
I also seek better housing policies, more urgent responses to the climate crisis, more serious efforts to alleviate poverty, and a deeper appreciation of our neighborhoods’ histories as an active member of organizations including the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, the Pittsburgh Housing Justice Table, the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America, and the Allegheny City Society.
I grew up with two public school teachers as parents, both of whom were active in their unions’ leadership. After graduating from Lawrence University with a degree in piano performance, I worked as a producer for public radio’s On The Media. It was then that I cultivated my keen interest in cities and neighborhoods by producing programs on transit, eviction, and the history of Pittsburgh’s working class, to name just a few examples.
Now I am running for County Council to focus on what residents have consistently told me are our top priorities: housing and homelessness, pollution and climate change, good government, expanded public transit, fighting alongside workers, contending with our local healthcare giants, resisting authoritarianism, and ensuring that our county government is responsive to all of us.
I also seek better housing policies, more urgent responses to the climate crisis, more serious efforts to alleviate poverty, and a deeper appreciation of our neighborhoods’ histories as an active member of organizations including the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, the Pittsburgh Housing Justice Table, the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America, and the Allegheny City Society.
I grew up with two public school teachers as parents, both of whom were active in their unions’ leadership. After graduating from Lawrence University with a degree in piano performance, I worked as a producer for public radio’s On The Media. It was then that I cultivated my keen interest in cities and neighborhoods by producing programs on transit, eviction, and the history of Pittsburgh’s working class, to name just a few examples.
Now I am running for County Council to focus on what residents have consistently told me are our top priorities: housing and homelessness, pollution and climate change, good government, expanded public transit, fighting alongside workers, contending with our local healthcare giants, resisting authoritarianism, and ensuring that our county government is responsive to all of us.
MY PRIORITIES
We need to keep our neighbors housed, and get our housing costs under control.
- Support and expand the County Executive's "500 in 500" initiative, which has successfully housed hundreds of our chronically-homeless neighbors
- Maintain oversight over the county's homelessness programs and budget adequate funding for these critical services
- Advocate fiercely for the affordable housing developers applying for public and private subsidies to build in our district
- Push the Allegheny County Housing Authority toward a more ambitious approach to development and acquisition
- Reform the real estate transfer tax to ease the process of untangling heirs' property and tangled title
- Provide free legal assistance to tenants facing eviction in all magisterial court districts
The county gets to spend billions of our tax dollars every year. It should do so wisely.
- With the Trump regime degrading the federal government's long-standing investments in local government, County Council's top challenge in the years ahead will be to preserve vital services as it adopts the county's annual budgets
- Monitor and support the steady, core functions of county government: public health and public safety
- Provide oversight and encourage transparency through regular dialogues with the County Manager and County Executive
- Push the County Controller to more regularly examine property tax exemptions for non-profits — and, when appropriate, to challenge them in court
- Continue the positive momentum under the new Allegheny County Jail warden, and advocate for the safety and dignity of all incarcerated people and workers at ACJ
- Implement regular, fair reassessments
- Create a position of “County Archivist” to resolve dire, long-standing issues with our county government’s storage of historic records
- Adopt a policy for AI use by county employees — ideally, one that forbids the use of generative AI to produce written, visual, or aural media
We want more bang for our buck in public transit.
- Say no to cuts, no to slowdowns, no to the death spiral
- Collaborate with state legislators and our County Treasurer to adopt and implement new, dedicated funding streams to sustainably fund the expansion of our transit service
- Ensure that our annual budgets provide adequate support from county coffers for Pittsburgh Regional Transit
- Encourage the Department of Public Works to work with PRT to improve and expand bus infrastructure on county roads
- Support municipalities in their efforts to upzone along their transit routes
Our families deserve to be healthy, no matter the size of our paycheck or the zip code we live in.
- Organize with climate organizations, public health advocates, and county residents to resist fracking in Allegheny County
- Pass the proposed amendments, long-since approved by the Board of Health, to the Air Quality Program’s permit fees, which would keep the fees that polluting businesses pay in line with the cost of regulating those companies
- Work with employers to create new jobs in green industries like battery production, nuclear power, insulation, and heat pump installation, and collaborate with CCAC to prepare our workforce for those emerging opportunities
DISTRICT 13
Allegheny County Council District 13 is home to about 98,000 residents. The district is comprised of wards 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 30. Check out this detailed map if you are unsure whether you live in the district!
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