Issue & Policy Focus

As a Biologist and Biology Educator with a 30 year career in science and education, the PUBLIC HEALTH of our community is my number 1 concern, and I believe it is central to some of the largest issues facing our city.

• COVID response

  • For the past few years and to some extent the near-term future, nothing has dominated our lives quite so much as the world-wide SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

  • As part of my work at the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, I was actively working with epidemiologists, stakeholders, and governmental leadership to help guide policy.

  • At the start of the pandemic, myself and other members of ShieldDenton, a group of civic-minded tech-enthusiasts spear-headed by former Councilor Paul Meltzer, 3D-printed hundreds of face-shields for first-responders, nursing homes, animal facilities, and educators.

  • I was honestly taken-aback that so many political candidates and incumbents in city leadership chose not to follow scientific, data-driven, best-practices in implementing policies aimed at protecting the public health. While it is important to address the business impacts, it is impossible to maintain a prosperous economy if we are suffering from deaths and health impacts on our people and critical infrastructure.

    • While on council, I pushed for adhering to the best-practice guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), both in terms of masking and vaccinations. As CDC status of Denton updated, we in-turn updated our position, but at all times we followed science and data.

  • I continue to support the City’s piloting and eventual adoption of waste-water vector testing, but I strongly believe we should have a PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIAL position on staff to coordinate efforts with other county, state, and federal stakeholders, both with respect to COVID but also ALL the issues below.

• Weather-related POWER failures

  • The ERCOT power failures during Winter Storm Uri impacted most of Texas and prompted health-emergencies in heating, food preparation, water-quality, and waste-water management.

  • Our community truly rose to the occasion with large-scale efforts to provide shelter, food, and water, but this was absolutely a public-health crisis.

  • Both the ERCOT grid and the local the organizational efforts should be supported, upgraded, and stabilized so that future weather events are less catastrophic.

  • While Denton is unique in its 100% renewable power portfolio, I’d like us to expand resiliency by implementing Demand Response, Virtual Power Plants, and more battery storage.

• Homeless/Un-housed issues

  • In large part, the weather-crisis highlighted what is essentially a continuous crisis for the un-housed.

  • I support efforts like the new ODB Shelter facility on Loop 288 near Audra.

  • I also support Tiny Home Village projects, Homeless-Out-Reach officer and general training in the police force, increased funding to county mental health programs, and increased available of public drinking water and toilet facilities.

• Environmental quality: Water and Land Preservation

  • Occasional boil-water orders highlight the importance of water quality in maintaining our infrastructure. Under-managed development threatens the viability of our greenspaces, water-ways, and ground-water, not only due to disruption of important environmental corridors leading to flooding/silting, but also directly from adjacent hazardous impacts from fossil fuel production.

  • I support efforts to enhance setbacks and monitoring of ground-water and water-ways, particularly near gas-wells.

  • I support protection of green-corridors and wildlife corridors like the Green-belt and local watersheds that help protect and filter our water-ways and ground-water.

  • Along with councilor Paul Meltzer, I pushed for the addition of the Preferred Pattern of Preservation (PPP) maps to be added to Denton’s 2040 Comprehensive plan.

  • As part of the PPP efforts, I lead on making Denton the first city in Texas to incorporate Wildlife Corridors in its Comprehensive Plans.

• Environmental Quality: Air

  • Very little is more fundamental to a healthy life-style than the ability to breathe air free from viruses, VOCs, and particulates.

  • Reductions in green-corridors and old-growth-tree-canopies, massive increases in gas-wells, construction particulates, and spread of pollution from the metroplex has reduced the air-quality in Denton.

  • I support efforts like the PPP to maintain and increase green-corridors that help filter air contaminants.

  • I support enhanced air-monitoring, both by the city and industry, but also support crowd-sourced community monitoring and education efforts through residential monitoring stations. I pushed for the air monitors that were recommended by the Sustainability Framework Advisory Commission (SFAC) as part of funding for the first time ever the Sustainability Fund.

• Mobility Plans/Traffic Safety

  • It is not out of place to include Mobility planning under Public Health.

  • Not only does road development impact water and air quality, but how we design our roadways and zoning can either promote walkable, cyclable, and accessible transit in our community, or it can lead to greater and more unhealthy reliance on driving from islands of residential regions to islands of retail, culminating in food-deserts and other undesirable situations.

  • I support mobility, zoning, and comprehensive planning that provides walkable/cyclable infrastructure in mixed-use and mixed-density live-work-play environments.

  • I support municipal mass transit that leverages a healthy bus system as part of a portfolio of transit options.

• Mental Health

  • All the above physical impacts along with our modern stresses contribute to a strained mental health in our community.

  • I supported and passed a Non-Discrimination Ordinance (NDO) that provides for the addition of equity and anti-discrimination requirements for protected classes for all city activities or operations, including those on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status.

  • I support improving and, where needed, reorganizing and reprioritizing our social and mental health programs, particularly with regards to the unhomed as well as in law-enforcement. It is far better to proactively avoid or mitigate a crisis than reactively respond to it later.

Much like exercise and proper nutrition are good for our bodies, managed development and growth of live-work-play opportunities is vital to the societal health of a strong community. Unfortunately, it seems like lately our community has been binge-eating development junk-food in a quantity-over-quality approach. These types of approaches prolong health crises, hurt future economic growth, and in turn lead to BOTH uncontrolled "cancer-like" cookie-cutter developments OR  vast islands of unwalkable, unsustainable , single-use mono-development that promotes car-centric mobility plans, inflexible live-work-play opportunities, and food deserts. Growth for growth’s sake isn’t healthy, nor is it sustainable fiscally.

While we should promote streamlined, efficient, and nimble development codes so as to be good financial stewards and not waste resources, we often neglect to include full, long-term, hidden costs, hidden benefits, and other externalities in our development, mobility, and comprehensive plans, particularly in the costs of infrastructure not being adequately reflected in development and impact fees and taxes, as well as neglecting the value of environmental resources. This lack of accountability means the citizens of Denton end up inefficiently and unfairly having to compensate fiscally, often in an emergency context through unplanned bonds or through improperly balanced residential property taxes that make it challenging to maintain a household. This was dramatically brought home to us during the recent weather emergencies.

I support :

• Growth incentives focused more on local small-capital business rather than large corporate interests or promoting gargantuan cookie cutter residential developments. Local businesses keep a much larger ratio of their value in the local economy, thus further leveraging any incentives.

• Residential development not focused on how many roof-tops can be added to the periphery of Denton, but rather on expanded opportunities for thoughtful mixed-use, mixed-density redevelopment closer to our central districts, public transit hubs, and sidepaths/trails. I support the use of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and accessory commercial units (ACU).

• Fees and tax structures that more responsibly apportion the infrastructure cost load to the sources of demand & problems and also as a function of revenue and value rather than simply as function of inflated property taxes. I support expanding Homestead Exemptions to make home-ownership more affordable as well as expanding tax-credits for work-foce and affordable multi-family approaches, particularly horizontal multi-family and cluster development.