I want all visitors to parks to feel safe at all times. Last year Metro Parks Tacoma successfully passed Proposition 1, which includes funding for a new park ranger program. With this program in place, unarmed park rangers would be on hand across the Metro Parks system to de-escalate situations that would otherwise lead to police involvement. As a father who believes parks can leave such a positive impact on people’s lives, I fully support initiatives like the park ranger program that ensure all folks feel safe when they visit Tacoma’s beautiful parks.

One of the many things that Metro Parks Tacoma does so well is partnering with other organizations to create programs that do good for the community. For example, Metro Parks partnered with Tacoma Public Schools, Greentrike, the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound, the YMCA, and early learning providers to start the Beyond the Bell program of 2021.This program provides all elementary and middle school students with access to fun developmental opportunities from 3:30-6 pm. This gives parents a safe and enriching environment for their kids to be after school.

I envision Metro Parks being able to leverage its ability to partner with organizations effectively to solve other issues as well. In particular, I want to work on partnering with low income housing organizations to increase park space and housing availability. We can do this by using government land to develop low income housing and use some of the proceeds from that to increase park space. This will help close the gap on the ten minute walkshed to parks for all families in Tacoma along with addressing the housing crisis.

Last year, Washington state had the largest amount of traffic fatalities in 30 years. Unfortunately this means streets are becoming more dangerous for bikes and pedestrians. We have a transportation system that is built for the free movement of cars but not for the safety of those who chose other modes of transportation. On its face, this is a city issue. However, there are parks in the Metro Parks system that have an accessibility issue where the roads leading to these parks do not have clearly defined crosswalks or bike lanes. To fix this, I would support a partnership between Metro Parks and the City of Tacoma. The goal of this partnership would be to utilize the Vision Zero program to build and fund infrastructure for roads that are unsafe and close to parks. Increasing accessibility in this way will help keep bicyclists and pedestrians who are accessing the parks safe.