Housing prices in Tompkins County are higher than most people can pay, driving gentrification and skyrocketing property taxes. Affordable projects like the Village Grove apartments, built with sustainable practices and amenities for residents, are an important step towards addressing this.

I also support programs to help residents keep the housing they have, living more comfortably and lowering their bills through energy efficiency upgrades and utility assistance projects.

Our future depends on building clean, sustainable energy infrastructure. Combinations of central and distributed production, built with sustainable systems like solar and wind energy, will increase our energy independence and decrease reliance on out of date, polluting fossil fuel systems.

Private providers have been raising rates year after year. A publicly owned energy grid will remove profiteering and price gouging from the systems that our communities rely on for heating, cooking, and other daily necessities.

Our community includes many acres of local farmland, managed by dedicated farmers, volunteers, and laborers. Those that grow our food face fresh challenges every year from the volatile effects of climate change.

While we can’t control the weather, we can find ways to give support and security to the people who provide the produce that keeps our community healthy, reducing burnout and discouragement and ensuring the stability of local food systems.

Far-right policies at the national level aim to divide us while stripping rights from the most vulnerable of our community — our friends, neighbors, and family.

I would support any protections we can enact in favor of sanctuary for immigrants and refugees, protections for LGBTQ+ people and their right to health care, guaranteed reproductive freedoms, and assistance to those who have been targeted by discriminatory and unjust policies.

I support workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain for power in their workplaces. The labor movement has historically been a core progressive demographic and a site of real fights for justice. We should support all organizing efforts locally.

Last year, advocacy by the Tompkins County Workers Center, along with the community and county legislature, resulted in a commitment to fund a study examining the possibility of raising the county minimum wage. We should see this study carried out and make decisions in good faith — and with the interests of the workers in our county — based on the result.

Strengthening the Tompkins County EMS System, supporting staff and volunteers, and providing better coordination between municipalities is critical for providing better health outcomes in areas outside Ithaca.

Our public safety systems also still need close examination and meaningful reform. We need agencies trained and enabled to respond to crises and emergencies that do not require a law enforcement response, building trust in institutions and reducing incidents that fall through the cracks due to fear.

We are seeing deep cuts to national health services and misinformation coming from the top levels of government about the efficacy of vaccines and importance of trust in established medical professionals.

With serious illnesses already spreading, I would do what I could to support our capable county health infrastructure.

Reckless and unpredictable federal policies are likely to cause a recession or worse, resulting in cuts to funding, loss of work, loss of housing, and more. The effects will be long-term. Our most significant local employer — already under pressure to provide more to the community — is already preparing for budget shortfalls of their own.

The county should prepare for deeply felt local needs and shore up processes to find, apply for, and distribute need, while the community invests in Mutual Aid projects and a generous sharing economy.

The most significant impact on everyday lives could be achieved by passing the New York Health Act, establishing a public health system paid for by cutting administrative waste and negotiating lower prices for medicine.

A state jobs program would provide the people power to build sustainable energy projects, benefit local economies, provide skilled training for workers across the state, and improve quality of life for communities.

And if I had everything I could ask for, New York would expand the child and dependent care credit and fund neighborhood childcare centers, reducing the exorbitant costs that local parents pay out of pocket for these services.