KBOO_Forum_Silkie

Eleven candidates are given one minute each to explain how they can help revitalize Portland and bring about real change. Sarah Silkey, an environmental engineer and working mom, emphasizes the need for political leadership and a focus on community safety, government accountability, transparency, and fighting global warming. In response to questions, Sarah suggests canceling funding to the Joint Office of Homelessness and converting office space into temporary transitional housing. She also supports enhancing access to mental health services and integrating all services for a comprehensive plan. To stimulate economic recovery and development, Sarah proposes re-envisioning downtown to accommodate remote work and creating a green bank. A caller raises the issue of unlivable apartment buildings in the summer, to which Sarah suggests using funds for heat pumps and implementing energy-efficient building codes. Good evening, Portland. Thank you for listening to us tonight. My name is Sherry. If you are listening live, it's May 22nd, the fourth Wednesday of the month. We have 11 candidates with us tonight, and I am going to give each of them one minute to give us their elevator speech and why they believe that they can help Portland, revitalize Portland, and bring some real change to the city. Sarah Silkey? Yes, thank you. Hi, thanks for having me on. I'm so excited to be here. So I, again, my name is Sarah Silkey. I grew up in Portland, the oldest of six kids. When I was little, I spent a lot of time with my parents selling stained glass jewelry boxes at the Portland Saturday Market, the New Brunswick Bridge. I learned the meaning of responsibility at a young age. It was a little safer back then, but like Chad, I still experienced the instability of poverty. Now I'm in a much more stable place and able to give back to my community. I'm a working mom raising three kids, an environmental engineer protecting our drinking water, and a union steward supporting our workers. I'm running for city council because while I enjoy engineering, I have learned that it's not the technical fix that's missing most of the time. It's the political leadership, the courage to stand up and admit that what we're doing isn't working. We've got to do better. I've worked for the city for 12 years now and see firsthand how the proclamations and policies are implemented or not, depending on the budget that goes with them. So I want to bring my engineering perspective and systems thinking to address community safety, government accountability and transparency, and fighting global warming. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. So the way this will work is I have three questions that I'll be asking you. Each of you will have 30 seconds to answer this question, and it will be much like what we did just now with your introductions. So on homelessness, homelessness is the first question that I wanted to address because it's the most significant crisis everybody sees every day. Portland has been grappling with a significant homeless crisis. What specific policy initiatives would you propose or support to provide immediate relief for those experiencing homelessness? Sarah? Yeah, so I think we need to look really hard at canceling the funding to the Joint Office of Homelessness and not sign on to the new HRAP or this Homelessness Response Action Plan until the county comes up with a truly actionable plan with specific deliverables that will address the approximately 10,000 unhoused people that we have in the area. The proposed HRAP isn't going to do that. In the meantime, the city can help out with this list of people so that people can be treated as individuals on a case-by-case basis. And I also think the city can pilot immediate conversion of office space to temporary transitional single-room occupancy housing. Like Chad said, you need a door in order to have privacy for humane housing. Thank you, Sarah. The next question we are going to tackle is about mental health. Access to mental health services remains a critical issue in Portland, particularly among the homeless population, as many of you have alluded to. How do you plan to enhance the availability and quality of mental health services in Portland? Sarah Silkey, you're up. Thank you. You know, this is another thing where there's different parts of the government that are supposed to do different things, and mental health is very clearly the county's responsibility. It's not even a gray area. The Oregon state statutes designate the counties as the local mental health authorities. That said, when you see people in crisis, you're going to help them. The city has already started to compensate with Portland Street Response, and I support funding it to operate 24-7 so that people can get care or be addressed whenever. Like with housing, you've got to integrate all of the services. You need a comprehensive plan, you need that list of people, and you need the plan that identifies existing resources and needs, and then there's a gap analysis and BILFA. Thank you. I appreciate your thorough answer. Okay, we have one last question for you this evening. Revitalizing Portland. As I make my rounds during the day, I need to be talking to you guys about the potholes and the street conditions, but for this we are doing revitalizing Portland's economy and urban environment. It's essential to the city's future. What measures would you implement to stimulate economic recovery and development, support small businesses, and attract new investments while ensuring that these efforts are equitable and inclusive for all residents? That's a huge one. Do your best. Sarah, you're up. Yeah, this is my favorite one. I think we need to focus on what Portland does well, being a fun place to live that prioritizes the environment and our beautiful green spaces. You know, remote work and the decline of office space is a new reality, and we need to get ahead of that curve and make it work for us. So I think we need to re-envision downtown, taking into account the new realities of remote work and people's desire to not have to commute and do this in a holistic way with as many people so we get buy-in. And then I think we can start a green bank to leverage private capital and make that new vision a reality. Thank you, Sarah. So, KABU community, if you would like to call in and ask our District 4 candidates questions, I would love to have you do that at 503-231-8187. Hello, caller. Hi, can you hear me? I can hear you. We're getting a lot of calls. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, my question is I recently discovered that the energy, particularly fossil fuel industry, has been 100% in bed with the real estate and construction industry for probably 100 years or more. And I think that explains why I've been seeing and hearing from people in apartment buildings that they are unlivable in the summer without air conditioning. So I think we can do a lot better in terms of insulation. So I want to hear some of the candidates' takes on that and if they're aware of this as being an issue. Let's do Sarah, and then we are going to close out. Yeah, well, thank you for that question. So, you know, global climate change obviously is making temperatures hotter in the summer, and it used to be that in Portland you didn't need to have air conditioning. It was a rarity. Now it is something when you've got 116 degrees, there's not too many places around here that are built to accommodate that. So I think using PSAP funds for heat pumps and then putting into city code and hopefully the state code buildings that are designed to deal with heat and cold extremes in an energy-efficient way is what we need to do.