The Platform

My family rents, and I know how hard it is to find an affordable house to call home. The solution is reform. The code decides what gets built and what it costs, and right now it blocks the starter homes and apartments Moscow needs most. We need to let builders build, so the people who work in Moscow can afford to live in Moscow.

Moscow adds housing, but permit data shows recent construction skews toward higher-value projects. Entry-level homes and workforce rentals are in short supply. The assessed valuation trend shows land costs climb faster than incomes, so first-time buyers and renters get priced out.

Too many of my neighbors work hard and still come up short at the end of the month. Good jobs fix that. I will push for lower fees and faster permits, so a local business can open, grow, and hire without a year of paperwork, and so new employers pick Moscow over the towns that make it easy.

High development fees and permit costs pass straight through to the price of new commercial and residential space. That cost lands on startups and established businesses alike. State revenue gives Moscow a baseline, but local economic activity funds every city service.

There is no other place I would want to raise a family. Moscow is safe, it is clean, and the parks are good. I want to keep that character while we open the town for building and business, because the way to keep young families here is to make it affordable to stay. A young family should be able to buy a home, find good work, and put down roots, and their kids should have the choice to do the same. The American dream still works in small-town America. Let it grow here.

Public safety and parks are the budget lines families use most. The dashboard tracks 20 years of both, so residents can see what the City funds and what it defers.

I want responsible city spending. Every tax dollar should go farther and work harder: essential services that get better, and a tax bill that goes down because the City spends well. The current budget shows the reverse. The stage got $796,000 while the street surface projects in the same capital program got less. I read every line of the budget and publish it in plain language, so residents can see which dollars work and which do not, and I will push the council to fund essentials first and cut the spending it cannot justify.

The council adopted the $149.9 million FY2027 budget 5-1 on August 17, 2026, and took the full property tax increase state law allows. Every line behind that vote is posted in plain language on the money page and in the FY2027 tracker.

The government of Moscow belongs to the people who pay for it, and its inner workings should be open to them. Residents should see how decisions get made: what staff recommends, what the council debates, and what an executive session covers, before the vote and not after. When the City leaves records unposted, I request them and publish every file it releases. Open the process, shed light on it, and trust residents with their own government.

The records library posts every file from every request, as released, with the City's redactions intact. The calendar and the alerts list flag each public decision before the vote, not after.