What the blog?

To start, a fair question: why have a blog?

The answer: this space will be mostly for lobbing out some ideas and thoughts about Portland and its city government!

Hopefully it’s one useful, low-pressure way for you all to critique my ideas and get to know me better as you consider supporting my run for Portland City Council District 3.

That said, I wanted to make quick mention of a feeling many of you having: leaving a place to go back home.

For the first 30 years of my life, I lived in the central Willamette Valley. The diversity of my perspective was shaped by my community, my friends, what I learned at work and school, travel, and of course the Internet. I never knew how constrained my thinking was until I had the chance to travel a little more, then move out of Oregon to a new country.

New Zealand is AMAZING. All of it. If you have the chance to go, you should. Being there, if only for a year, helped me see very clearly how our state and country was unique, where it excelled, and where it could be better. I feel the same way about New Haven, Connecticut. Another year living there too - America’s oldest planned street grid in a much more connected urban fabric than on the west coast - and living and working there helped pull my thinking and assumptions apart in healthy ways that will always stick with me.

That said… we are excited - maybe even relieved - to be home in Portland. Anyone who hung out or worked with me outside of here can attest I sung Portland’s praises, encouraged people to visit, and tried to implement some of what I learned here in those places.

I will do the same here now at home, incorporating the different thinking of different people and places into how we can think about or approach things here that might work really well for us.