My Voting Record - Clearing Up Misinformation

As too often happens in political campaign advertisements, the context and details (and in some cases basic facts) are missing. Such is the case with the ad my opponent has been circulating regarding my voting record in comparison to hers. There are a couple of different versions floating around, so I’ll address the issues from the different ads here.

City Hall Bond: I didn't run on this issue, but after joining Council, learning more about the very real risk of earthquake to our staff and the public in our City Hall building, and reading the engineers' report, I'm convinced that we need to fix that building. The option put before the community was fiscally responsible and properly scaled. The ad calls it a “$8.2 million City Hall Bond,” which is misleading. The proposal for the bond put before voters was $8.2 million, but it included $1 million for fixing Pioneer Hall and the Community Center. $7.2 million was the cost of the City Hall component. My blog post about city hall is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/12/26/city-hall-december-26-2019

Jail Service District: First, the vote for the Jail Service District isn’t a Jail Service District and Bond - it was simply to allow the people of Ashland to vote on whether a Jail Service District was created at the county level. There was no bond element because service districts are able to assess taxes. This is a particularly difficult one because so much reform is needed in our criminal justice system. I voted against the jail in the spring, participated in Sheriff Sickler's Advisory Committee process over the summer, and had several meetings with the County and local mental health advocates before coming to my decision to allow the people of Ashland to vote on the proposal to create a jail service district. My jail blog post from the spring is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/8/12/jackson-county-jail-special-district-may-7-2019 and the blog post after the second vote is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2020/4/19/jail-service-district-proposal-by-jackson-county

Uber and Lyft: The ad indicated that I voted against Uber and Lyft coming to Ashland, which isn’t true. Council never had a vote to allow Uber and Lyft. We had a vote to remove two key elements of an existing ordinance (wheelchair access and maintenance) so that Uber and Lyft would agree to come to Ashland. One of those elements was the requirement to transport people in wheelchairs. The Council removed that requirement without any information about the impact that it would have on wheelchair users. I voted against doing so because of the potential impact to people in wheelchairs. What I wanted to do was to give them the maintenance requirement and see if either of them would come to Ashland with the wheelchair requirement still in place. My blog post is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/7/31/transportation-network-companies-uber-and-lyft-spring-2019

Budget: We made some good progress in the budget process in 2019 over what happened in 2017 and made some difficult cuts, including six staffing positions. Other proposals for cost cutting were not viable given that the strategic planning process that needs to underpin decisions like that hadn’t happened. More community-driven program prioritization needs to happen before our next budget process in the spring of 2021 and we have started to lay the groundwork for that by having staff identify what in our city system is mandatory vs. optional. The next step will be to survey the whole community to gather feedback on what is most important for us to fund from our budget. The Council got started with strategic planning in the spring of 2019 and was set to continue the process early this year when COVID-19 arrived. My blog post about the planning process is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/7/20/strategic-planning-kicks-off-in-2019 And, my blog post about the budget process is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/7/31/biennial-budget-process-spring-2019

Affordable Housing Trust Fund: The ad claims that I voted to “raid the affordable housing trust fund.” Nonsense. There was never a vote to change the amount of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (which is set at $100,000/year from marijuana tax revenues), nor was there a vote to eliminate it. There was, however, a vote during the Budget Committee process about whether we should lock in the allocation to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund in the budget before discussing what we were cutting. I voted against it only because we didn’t know what we were trading off - we hadn't answered the question about whether it was more important than, say, a communications staff position, a firefighter, or the court position that was cut. We need to address affordability in Ashland and housing is a critical element of that. My thoughts on affordability are here: Affordability

Raising Taxes to the State Limit: In the 2019 budget process, we did capture the remaining 4.5 cents per $1,000 in assessed value to help close the budget gap. Given the structural issues (PERS unfunded liabilities and health care premiums) we are facing, this was necessary to balance the budget. Budget processes require difficult decisions and this was one of those times. The budget process blog above addresses this on some level.

Garbage and Utility Rates: No one likes to vote for utility rate increases, but we need to maintain infrastructure in these systems, and that costs a specific amount of money that we need to collect from ratepayers. Otherwise, we end up with failing infrastructure, which creates serious strain for future generations. Think Flint, MI. We address the issue of people who are struggling financially not by refusing to pay the full cost of our utilities and putting these costs on our children and grandchildren, but by making sure we have assistance programs in place that help people pay their utility bills. My blog post about utility rates is here: https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/8/12/utility-rate-increases-june-4-2019

Ordinance 3176 - Failure to Provide Name and Date of Birth to a Peace Officer: In spite of the fact that this characterization is simply not true, my opponent has consistently termed Ordinance 3176 as "stop and identify." It does not allow law enforcement officers to stop anyone they couldn't stop before, nor does it require anyone to provide ID. It requires them to say their name and birthdate so an officer can write them a ticket for a violation outside of a car. It’s that simple. If it was a Stop and ID law, I’d be laying down in the street to stop it. The ordinance is here: Ordinance 3176, but it’s a very short ordinance, so I’m including the language below as well. This is all it is.

A. It shall be unlawful for a person to knowingly fail to provide the person’s name and date of birth to a peace officer when the peace officer is issuing the person a citation for a violation. As used in this chapter, “violation” means an offense described in ORS 153.008.

B. A person who violates subsection A of this section commits a Class C misdemeanor.

C. This chapter is repealed on August 16, 2020, unless the City Council takes further action. (Ord. 3176 § 1, added, 08/06/2019)

My blog post about Ordinance 3176 is here: www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog/2019/8/17/ordinance-3176-august-6-2019

On The Issues: In terms of the larger issues facing Ashland, you might take a look at the "On the Issues" tab of my website (www.TonyaForAshland.com). That's the list of challenges we are facing from my perspective and what I think we need to be doing about them.

My Blog: I write blog posts when we cast votes and there is a lot of interest in the community about the topic. There are direct links to some of the blog posts above, but there are other posts you might be interested in reading. https://www.tonyaforashland.com/tonyas-council-blog.

Thank you for all you are doing to inform yourself prior to voting. If you would like to ask me any specific questions, feel free to reach out through my website: www.TonyaForAshland.com/contact