Economic Develpment

Surrounded by the beautiful mountain ranges of Southwest Virginia, downtown Roanoke is a one-of-a-kind city 

My wife and I love raising our sons in a place where so much natural beauty exists.  From our interdependent neighborhoods with ample sidewalks to our historic downtown, Roanoke holds the uniquely small-town city feel that makes so much of what is Roanoke, Roanoke.  But the high real estate property tax rate, the personal property assessment procedure, crime, homelessness, and the lack of road repairs are problems that have stalled our growth.

Reduce the real estate tax and revisit the personal property assessment procedures.  Families are already dealing with a 40-year high inflation and ever-increasing cost of consumer goods.  Our solution to city problems should not be to burden families with more taxes.

Establish a schedule to repair our roads and share it with the public.  Competitively contract the work and hold those we entrust with our tax dollars accountable. Your city council should care about getting things done for you quickly, transparently, and at the best price. Not just worry about their own personal expenses.

Create a more welcoming environment for investment.  Roanokers have invested so much in revitalizing the downtown area.  My initiatives will build on that success by tackling the issues the current council has left unaddressed. We need to create an inviting tax environment.  More businesses and employees, even paying lower taxes, means more jobs and more tax revenue over time to invest back into our infrastructure, first responders, and schools. It’s a beneficial cycle that leads to sustainable growth over time for us and for our kids. City council needs to do more to help our local businesses grow and flourish and to make our city welcoming to more businesses.   We also must tackle the crime immediately.  Patrons of the city should feel safe in our downtown.  By creating an inviting tax environment, increasing the safety of our communities, and investing in our schools, we will encourage businesses to move to Roanoke, to hire locally, and to stay here to raise their families.

Address the growing homeless situation.  In order to make our city thrive again, we need to rescue those in greatest need. We should solve the homeless situation holistically, and not by creating yet another taxpayer funded solution such as one proposed by a current city councilman.  His answer was to create lawless “villages” that will become filled with the lost and the physically and mentally ill who will be in danger of becoming victims of abuse and sexual assault in our own backyard. That is not the answer.  We need to empower our existing public and charity-based support systems and funnel the homeless in need to the help they deserve. I pledge to partner with our current shelters, local churches, the Veterans Administration (VA), and our partner hospitals and clinics to bring those in need to the services that already exist but are underutilized. We need to give people the chance to take back their own lives and rejoin our communities, not a place to stay lost.