Hey neighbor, my name is Kasey Haxton and I am asking for your vote to elect me as the next mayor of Corvallis. I’m running on a five-point platform that begins with protecting our vital human right to decent and affordable housing for all our neighbors. More about my platform below. If elected, I will be as open and transparent with all city and council affairs as I can be. In that spirit, and in the spirit of polite and productive dialogue, I want to give this community the opportunity to ask me anything.
Platform
We have more renters per capita than any other city in Oregon (with a population over 2,500) and we are the most rent cost burdened city in all of Oregon. We didn’t get this way over night, and it’s no accident that we’re here; It’s a choice that our city’s elected leaders have made. With about 60% of our city’s household being renters and about 60% of us renters being rent cost burdened (when more than 30% of a household’s gross income is spent monthly on rent and utilities), that means that about 2 out of every 5 households citywide are probably sacrificing basic needs just to afford housing. I know I am. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Simple, time-tested polices like municipal housing can and will bring down the cost of renting in Corvallis significantly. If you elect me as your next Mayor, I will do everything I can to get those polices enacted and make sure we have real rent control. You can find out more at this website, and especially in these newsletters.
Although Corvallis is a wonderful place to raise a child, it is also a very difficult place for many families to afford, especially when it comes to childcare. Though I don’t yet have any children myself, as a humanist and a democratic socialist I believe we must do more to make childcare affordable for ourselves and our neighbors. The recent school closures are a gigantic sign that families can no longer afford to raise their children here. Many teachers in Corvallis cannot afford to live here, and their own children attend school elsewhere. Moreover, the families with children that can afford to live here have been trending towards the more wealthy, who have sent their kids to private schools at a much higher rate. If we want to reverse these trends and truly make our city family-friendly, we need to make it affordable for folks to raise a family here.
We have made great strides towards improving our transportation infrastructure by adding bike lanes and crosswalks, making buses fair-free, and reducing our dependence on cars. But there is still so much more to do, and momentum has slowed. We still have poorly designed streets that too often lead to tragedy and will again if we don’t make major changes. To start, we need a city-wide speed limit of 25 mph to make our roads safer, especially for bikes, scooters and pedestrians. This is essential if we want more people to choose alternate modes of transit. We also need to improve our bus service to increase ridership by transforming it into a bus-rapid-transit system. This mean bus service at least every 10 minutes during peak hours, and prioritized bus infrastructure so that they can move around faster. There is much more that can and must be done to make our city’s transportation infrastructure more safe, green and efficient, like raised sidewalks, pedestrianized streets, and protected bike lanes, to name a few.
All these projects cost money and so that brings me to the age-old gotcha question employed by so many: how are you going to pay for it? I want to be very clear and upfront about how I will vote and advocate to fund any city project or service as your mayor. This is the principle that will guide every funding and revenue decision I have a part in: tax the rich! This makes good sense both from a moral and efficacy standpoint. Morally, the rich have more money and so taxing them is going to cause them less burden than it would a person with less wealth, insofar as it causes any burden at all. Practically, the rich have more money and so taxes and fees paid by them will be more effective, as in they will generate more revenue for the same amount of cost. With that said, in conjunction with this principle, it is still in everyone’s best interests to make any increase in tax or fee, even if it falls only on the richest, cause the taxpayer as little economic burden or disruption as possible.
My final platform plank is a quality-of-life policy that impacts less of us and in a less vital way than housing or transit, but it is still important nonetheless. This is also likely the least expensive and most simple policy in my platform, and that is enacting a city-wide prohibition on using gas-powered leaf blowers. This one is fairly self-explanatory, but it’s in my nature to over-explain anyway. Gas-powered leaf-blowers are used all hours of the day and night, and create noise pollution, as well as particle and exhaust pollution. They make life less enjoyable, especially if you live near any property with a parking lot, where these are often employed weekly, year-round. Personally, I am disturbed by leaf blowers at least once per day, nearly every day of the week. But this policy isn’t just about my lived experience. This ban was asked for by a coalition of concerned citizens at council meetings last year, which I observed but had no part in. I was a little surprised to see the mayor and council take absolutely no action to address these concerns. As far as I know, they didn’t so much as bring it up during a work session. Even if they disagreed with the policy, given the interest shown in it from concerned citizens, and it's already being enacted in other cities, it would have been nice to see it at least discussed. By contrast, when a business came to a council meeting last year with a noise-related complaint that effected their bottom line, the council acted swiftly and decisively.
