Issues (in no particular order)

Affordable Housing

Many people can't afford to buy a home, or sometimes even rent. And new housing that is being built is too expensive more many. We need to build more housing that the average person can afford, as well as building more low-income housing to replace the gentrification that has happened in downtown Elkhart. I would also support a program in bringing abandoned/comdemned housing back up to code, and allowing potential homeowners to invest their time and labor to decrease the cost of the house once repaired/remodeled.

Foster Care (Department of Child Services)

The ombudsman (accountability for the Department of Child Services) does not have the power to actually make changes. The law says that the ombudsman can tell DCS that they did something wrong and all DCS has to do is to verbally respond to the ombudsman. They don't necessarily have to change or fix anything. That leads to a lot of repeated bad choices or poor decisions being made, that can hurt kids.

Also, some of the power that DCS has, needs to be taken away. They need to be forced to work as equal partners with foster parents, therapists, service providers, etc. because we all need to put the child's well-being first. Judges need to be able to decide when kids need moved/removed/sent home/adopted without waiting on DCS for paperwork. They also need more training to keep up-to-date with legislation and make the best decisions.

Utility Costs and Solar Power

Our utility bills keep going up, and utility company have a stranglehold over how other alternatives can be used. There are exciting things happening in solar technology right now, and we should be taking advantage of this, regardless of how President Trump feels about them. I think that we should be able to form solar "communities" where each house that wants to participate puts as many solar panels on their roof as will fit, and they all feed into a battery hub. Every house will be generating power during the day and the batteries will store it. These batteries would provide the majority of the power for each household, which would drastically decrease utility costs.

I would also support school career centers training students to install these. It teaches the student a usefel trade school, while lowering the cost of installation, and serving as an additional source of funding for the school.

This page is still in progress. More issues will be added soon. If you want to know my stance on something specific, please use the Contact Me tab to ask me to add a specific issue...