ISSUES WE FACE

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Our neighborhoods badly need more investment in basic level infrastructure. From sidewalks and street lights to adequate drainage and roads in disrepair, part of rebuilding our community must include a robust infrastructure investment.

• Create jobs and put people back to work by funding a neighborhood infrastructure investment plan
• Allow neighbors in neighborhoods to work together to prioritize infrastructure needs and then work to address them 
• Hold contractors accountable when their road and sidewalk work fails.

 Very few people could look at our current criminal justice system and say this is the best we can do.  We need our system to be pro-active, not just reactive.

• More funding into early intervention strategies (mental health, addiction counseling, job training, etc) to help empower people instead of imprison them.
• Broaden our tools for responding to public safety issues like homelessness and drug addiction so police officers can focus on responding to violent crimes.

Food and shelter are basic necessities and no civil society can rest while thousands of families face a growing threat of housing insecurity. 

• Expand housing incentive programs to build and develop more affordable housing and apartments.
• Sell city-owned vacant lots and buildings to non-profits and business partners who will restore or build affordable houses.
• Connect residents with existing foreclosure assistance programs.
• Invest more funding into rental assistance programs.
• Continue cleaning up blight and abandoned properties.

  Schools, educators and students are facing a great challenge as we work to safely provide educational programming this fall.  We have always needed to do more to help them, but now we cannot afford to kick the can further down the road.  We must:

• Ensure schools and teachers have the funding and resources they need to offer high quality education.
• Oppose any effort to punish schools by withholding funding because they taught virtually during COVID-19.
• Attract and retain the best and brightest teachers by giving them a pay raise.
• Have a state funding formula that gives urban schools a fair share of the funding not just the suburbs.
• Continue investing in early education programs to give our kids a head start.
• Ensure every neighborhood has a good school for families to send their kids to.

 The importance of having strong neighborhoods has never been greater.  We need to work block by block to help improve the quality of life in our community. This takes:

• Active engagement from residents and elected officials in neighborhood meetings.
• A strong focus on finding solutions to problems, avoiding partisan politics.
• Active assessments of needs like infrastructure improvements, street lights, drainage or abandoned housing and a plan to achieve progress.
• Willingness to work together to get things done.

Ground zero has been our hospitals and the healthcare workers that keep them running.  We need to improve access and affordability to the system while ensuring our healthcare professionals have the tools they need to safely keep us healthy. 

• Expand access to the State’s Healthy Indiana Plan to ensure more families have affordable access to healthcare
• Allow for the reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada
• Seek more controls on the rising healthcare and insurance costs
• Oppose attacks on the requirement that pre-existing conditions be covered by insurance