A New DC

As Mayor of DC, my priority will be to make sure our city lives up to its basic commitments to our residents.

Fill the potholes and repair the broken sidewalks. Build more homes and protect our renters. Lower prices. Improve 911 wait times.

I'll fix what's broken, enforce what's promised, cut what's unfair, and invest in making DC work for everyone because you deserve a Mayor who keeps her word.

Here’s Our Platform:

Fix The Basics

City government’s first responsibility is to deliver the basics.

In DC, that’s not happening. In the past few months alone, city infrastructure has completely broken down.

A snowstorm we knew was coming paralyzed City Hall. For weeks, streets and sidewalks were impassable and dangerous. Trash piled up. Water lines burst.

Water pipes collapsed and caused the largest wastewater spill in US history into the Potomac.

Regular repairs to potholes and broken streetlights can take weeks. 311 calls go unanswered. 911 call centers are so short staffed that residents suffer and in some cases die while on hold.

Over and over again, residents ask: where are my tax dollars going?

The Problem
According to the DC Department of Transportation, the city’s standard is to repair reported potholes within 72 hours and to investigate broken streetlights within 48 hours. But as residents know, many requests miss these timelines or require repeat reporting.

Why It Keeps Failing
Oversight findings and analysis of DC’s 311 system show that the city tracks whether a request is opened or closed, not whether it was fixed on time, why it was delayed, or whether delays trigger escalation. Without public reporting on missed deadlines, these “service standards” are empty promises.

Our Plan
- Day One: Direct the DC Department of Transportation to publish a monthly pothole and streetlight scorecard by ward using existing 311 data, including median repair times, percent completed within standard, and overdue requests.
- Year One: Structure maintenance contracts around service-level compliance, consistent with best practices used in high-performing municipal operations systems.
- One Term: Shift from reactive patching to preventive maintenance by linking repeat 311 complaints and pavement condition data to resurfacing and capital planning.
How We’ll Measure Success
Residents will be able to see:
- Percent of potholes repaired within 72 hours
- Percent of streetlight investigations completed within 48 hours
- Median and 90th-percentile time to close
- Repeat failures by location
All published through an expanded District 311 public mapping dashboard and mobile application.
The Problem
A DC review of 911 operations documented persistent challenges, including staffing shortages, dispatch timing issues, governance gaps, and inconsistent oversight. While more recent agency testimony shows improvement, public trust depends on whether improved performance is consistent.

Why It Keeps Failing
The auditor’s findings make clear the problem wasn’t just slow call answering. It was a compound operational failure involving staffing pipelines, training, technology transitions, and incomplete implementation of reform recommendations.

Our Plan
- Day One: Issue a mayoral performance directive aligning District 911 and 311 service targets with nationally recognized standards and require monthly public reporting.
- Year One: If service targets are missed for consecutive months, require public corrective action plans modeled on independent audit recommendation tracking.
- One Term: Complete modernization and resiliency investments so performance holds during emergencies, seasonal surges, and major events.
How We’ll Measure Success
Publicly reported metrics will include:
- Average 911 call answer times
- Percent of calls answered within 10, 15, and 20 seconds
- Call abandonment rates
- Staffing levels compared to minimum operational requirements
- Public incident logs for major outages
We will use existing Office of Unified Communications public transparency dashboards as the baseline.
The Problem
According to DC’s Chief Financial Officer, the city publishes budget and spending data and vendor payment information through clunky websites that are hard to navigate. Residents often need insider details — such as invoice numbers or purchase order identifiers — to track routine city spending. Meaningful oversight requires accessibility and more details.

Why It Keeps Failing
Oversight analysis shows that transparency fails when data is technically available but not usable by residents. Residents should be able to answer basic questions like “Who got paid?” and “What did we get for it?” Peer-city models show that effective transparency needs to be easily accessible.

Our Plan
- Day One: Launch a resident-facing spending tracker that connects budgets, contracts, payments, and outcomes, modeled on tools such as New York City’s Checkbook NYC and Chicago’s vendor, contract, and payment search portal.
- Year One: Remove barriers to accessibility by allowing searches by agency, vendor name, service type, and neighborhood.
- One Term: Require every major city program to maintain a public, monthly budget-to-results page.
How We’ll Measure Success
Residents will be able to track:
- Spending versus budget by program
- Contract registration and payment timeliness
- Vendor concentration for major services
- Geographic distribution of spending
- Service outcomes tied to dollars spent

Strengthen Neighborhoods

We all deserve to feel safe and connected in our neighborhoods.

More than 30,000 DC residents live in neighborhoods without easy access to a grocery store, with the largest gaps concentrated east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8.

Traffic injuries and deaths continue to hurt our communities despite city programs to improve traffic safety.

Rats run rampant, directly affecting public health and neighborhood livability.

The Problem
According to the DC Hunger Solutions and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, grocery access varies sharply by ward. Higher-income neighborhoods have significantly more full-service grocery stores, while residents in Wards 7 and 8 are far more likely to live in low food access areas. Despite years of supermarket tax incentives, local reporting shows that many neighborhoods still lack convenient, affordable access to fresh food.

Why It Keeps Failing
The city has focused too heavily on attracting large grocery chains while underestimating real estate costs, financing barriers, permitting delays, and safety concerns. Incremental store openings have not translated into equitable access.

Our Plan
- Day One: Publish a neighborhood-level food access heatmap using Open Data District low-food-access area definitions, transit access, and store types.
- Year One: Create a grocery permitting concierge to streamline licensing and inspections, paired with accountability for opening timelines.
- One Term: Scale financing and procurement support for local operators, including programs modeled on DC Central Kitchen’s Healthy Corners initiative.
How We’ll Measure Success
- Full-service and healthy food outlets by neighborhood
- Share of residents living in low food access areas
- Time required to permit new grocery stores
- Prices of staple foods across wards
The Problem
According to official Metropolitan Police Department traffic fatality data, DC has experienced large year-to-year swings in traffic deaths, underscoring persistent safety risks. The city’s Vision Zero Washington, D.C. initiative, launched in 2014 to eliminate traffic deaths, has repeatedly missed the mark. According to the DC Auditor, enforcement gaps and implementation delays undermine results.

Why It Keeps Failing
Vision Zero falters when it becomes a brand rather than an execution system. Street redesign, enforcement, and transit priority require sustained coordination, staffing, and public accountability — areas where audits show recurring breakdowns.

Our Plan
- Day One: Publish a delivery schedule for high-injury corridors.
- Year One: Enforce bus lanes and transit signal priority as standard operations, not pilots.
- One Term: Address enforcement gaps, including cross-jurisdiction accountability for dangerous driving.
How We’ll Measure Success
- Decreased traffic fatalities and serious injuries by corridor
- Project delivery timelines
- Bus speeds and reliability on priority routes
- Curb and lane enforcement activity
The Problem
The DC Department of Health has acknowledged an increased number of rats across the city. Rats can spread harmful bacteria, contaminating public spaces like our playgrounds and sidewalks.

Why It Keeps Failing
Responsibility for sanitation, pest control, enforcement, and public space maintenance is fragmented across agencies. Cleanup is too often reactive and does not identify root causes leading to recurrent issues.

Our Plan
- Day One: Launch a rat hotspot command using 311 service request data to target chronic problem areas.
- Year One: Expand containerized waste systems and align cleanup and enforcement teams using shared public maps.
- One Term: Invest in alley cleanability, waste management compliance, and park maintenance to reduce pest and disease risk structurally.
How We’ll Measure Success
- Decreased rodent complaints and response times
- Illegal dumping reports and cleanup timelines
- Repeat hotspot recurrence
- Sanitation enforcement actions

Lower the Cost of Living

The cost of living is too high in DC.

DC residents work hard, but rising costs and city government’s failure to execute make it harder to afford the basics. Childcare costs in DC can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year per child, forcing parents, especially women, out of the workforce.

Renters face rising housing costs from layered fees and weak enforcement of existing protections. The city increasingly relies on fines, fees, and taxes that fall hardest on working residents and small businesses.

The Problem
According to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, DC already serves 89% of all three- and four-year-olds through universal Pre-K. However, childcare for infants and toddlers remains scarce and expensive. Cost modeling by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education shows that per-child childcare costs reach tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Why It Keeps Failing
Research consistently shows childcare can’t scale without stabilizing provider economics and simplifying access to subsidies. Local reporting documents administrative burdens that delay approvals and discourage providers from participating in subsidy programs.

Our Plan
- Day One: Publish a ward-level childcare supply-and-demand dashboard using Office of the State Superintendent of Education and subsidy program data.
- Year One: Expand childcare subsidies using cost-based reimbursement rates tied to official cost modeling, while simplifying eligibility and renewal requirements.
- One Term: Implement a childcare workforce stabilization strategy so new capacity does not collapse due to staffing shortages.
How We’ll Measure Success
- Increase the number of eligible families served
- Time from application to subsidy use
- Provider participation in subsidy programs
- Growth in infant and toddler slots
- Family out-of-pocket childcare costs as a share of income
The Problem
DC residents and small businesses are being crushed by high taxes. Beyond income, property, and sales taxes, families and entrepreneurs face a growing stack of licensing fees, permit costs, inspections, renewals, surcharges, and administrative penalties.
For small businesses, the barrier begins before a single dollar of revenue is earned. Opening a storefront in DC requires navigating multiple agencies, zoning approvals, compliance requirements, and recurring fees. Research consistently shows that licensing costs and bureaucratic delays reduce business formation and disproportionately impact small businesses. Business owners regularly report that the upfront costs and uncertainty of opening in DC lead them to delay their plans, scale down, or choose Maryland or Virginia instead. When fewer businesses open, neighborhoods suffer, jobs disappear, and the city’s long-term tax base erodes.
Why It Keeps Failing
Instead of conducting regular audits of existing taxes and fees, the city has relied on layering targeted charges to close short-term budget gaps. Over time, duplicative or outdated fees remain in place without review. Enforcement practices often emphasize penalties over compliance support, creating instability for small businesses and reinforcing the perception that government is more focused on collection than partnership.
Our Plan
On Day One, we will publish a comprehensive public inventory of every city-imposed tax, fee, and surcharge, detailing what it generates and why it exists. In the first year, we will eliminate or consolidate duplicative and low-impact fees while launching a unified “One Business, One Portal” system that provides predictable timelines for licensing and renewals. We will shift to a compliance-first approach for first-time administrative violations, reducing unnecessary fines while maintaining accountability for repeat bad actors. Over the course of one term, we will require automatic sunset reviews so that new fees expire unless they are reauthorized based on measurable need.
Protecting Revenue
Cutting unnecessary fees doesn’t mean destabilizing the budget. The majority of city revenue comes from core tax sources, not small administrative charges. Fiscal stability will be protected by reducing administrative duplication and broadening the tax base where appropriate rather than increasing rates. The objective is to remove friction that suppresses economic growth, not reduce essential services.
How We’ll Measure Success
Success will be measured by the number of fees eliminated or consolidated, reductions in licensing timelines and startup costs, increases in new business registrations, reductions in revenue derived from minor administrative fines, and improved storefront occupancy across commercial corridors.
The Problem
Housing in DC is too expensive, and too many renters feel like the system isn’t working for them.
DC already has rent stabilization laws that limit rent increases in many buildings and provide additional protections for seniors and residents with disabilities. But according to the Office of the Tenant Advocate, tenant complaints about housing conditions, rent disputes, and fees remain among the most common issues renters face.
At the same time, DC has not built enough housing to keep up with demand. When supply is constrained and enforcement is weak, rents rise and tenants lose trust that the system is working fairly.

Why It Keeps Failing
The problem is not just policy. It is execution.
Tenant protections lose credibility when enforcement is slow, opaque, or inconsistent. Illegal junk fees, delayed repairs, and unresolved housing complaints make renters feel powerless even when laws are on the books.
At the same time, DC’s housing shortage continues to drive up prices across the city. If we want housing to become more affordable, we must both enforce the rules we already have and build more homes so supply can meet demand.

Our Plan
- Day One: Launch a housing enforcement initiative focused on high-complaint buildings to crack down on illegal fees, delayed repairs, and violations of tenant protections.
- Year One: Require clear disclosure of all rental fees and publish housing enforcement outcomes so residents can see where violations occur and how they are resolved.
- One Term: Make DC a city that both protects renters and builds more housing, by improving enforcement, streamlining permitting, and accelerating new housing construction near transit and job centers.
How We’ll Measure Success
- Rent increase complaints
- • Rent increase complaints
  • Illegal junk-fee enforcement cases
  • Time to resolve tenant petitions
  • Housing condition complaints and response times
  • Housing production and new units delivered
  • Eviction filings and displacement indicators

Here’s How We’ll Do It

Learn more

WHY I'M RUNNING

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