This interview was conducted and transcribed by Cole Jackson

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I grew up in Spokane and am a sixth-generation Spokanite. I was elected to serve on City Council in 2021 and began my term in 2022. I went to college in Washington D.C. then taught abroad before getting a master’s degree with a certificate in urban studies. City Councilors are part-time, so I am also a teacher teaching 7th-grade social studies.

Growing up in Spokane I did not question car dependency but I went to D.C. for college and did not need a car to get around. As I started traveling to different places, I was able to have an alternative way of life I didn’t have growing up. This gave me exposure to transit, land use, and how the built environment really prioritizes vehicles.

It’s not a coincidence that we are so car-dependent because our policies prioritize vehicles over other modes of transportation. As I was studying urban studies, I was able to learn about different policies around the world. When I was running for office creating a more vibrant community that’s less car-dependent was a frequent topic. The students in my classroom today are less likely to graduate with a driver’s license so we’re seeing a generational shift in transportation.

What issue makes you passionate about parking reform?

Prioritizing people over parking changes the landscape, the built environment, and how we interact with the world. Parking is tied into so many other aspects of life including events, available housing, park space, and green space. After the pandemic, we began to look at social determinants of health and how parking can change how we access many aspects of life so these reforms can also help create options for people that are healthier, active and, community driven.

What advice would you give to others working on parking reform?

It’s important to look at things incrementally and build broad partnerships. There’s a lot of fear if we just address parking reform and no other aspects of transportation.

In Spokane, we didn’t eliminate parking mandates all at once but incrementally over different policy proposals over a couple of years. We wanted to address a major issue in Spokane which is housing. We had research on the relationship between parking mandates and higher housing costs, so our first proposal was to eliminate mandates for housing within ½ mile of any transit stop. Because this addressed community concerns on housing costs there was very little opposition. After that policy change was in a place for a year there was no earth-shattering change but we did see some developments that were not possible before. This made the policy change to eliminate parking mandates city-wide much easier.

During the pandemic, we had a shortage of school bus drivers and access to state funding for transit ridership so we built a strong partnership with the school district where all middle and high schoolers could ride the city bus to school for free. This addressed the transportation problems due to the lack of bus drivers and created a generation of bus riders. Youth riders are driving transit ridership growth as they stay active transit riders after they graduate. When people express fear about parking reform we could point to these changing habits.

We also really went about this in a bipartisan way by building a coalition around common goals such as reducing the price of housing. Our efforts included a diverse range of housing interest groups including housing builders and low-income housing groups who are often pitted against each other but were able to find common ground on this policy change. We were able to work with these groups to build a broad coalition across the political spectrum.

What’s a parking question you wish there was a study or research paper about?

Myth busting around parking reform would be helpful including how much parking is still built after parking mandates are eliminated. A lot of people believe that eliminating parking mandates bans parking altogether so being able to show it is still built would be helpful. It is also helpful to have studies showing how many housing units are created because of parking reforms that could not have been constructed before those reforms.