Basic Information
Democratic Party – running for Montgomery County Council District 4
Email VoteKateStewart@gmail.com
Website www.VoteKateStewart.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/KateforTakoma
Questions & Responses (All Candidates)
1 – What lessons learned do you have since the start of the pandemic?
We need to do a much better job of connecting with our residents who are most vulnerable and who face barriers to accessing the services and resources they need. The disparities existed before COVID-19, but the pandemic shown a bright light on what needs to be done. For example, at the outset of COVID, I successfully worked with Delegate Charkoudian and pushed the County to provide key guidance to renters because early County communications did not address their questions and concerns. Moving forward, we need to ensure that we are connecting with and addressing the needs of different communities on day one and that means putting in place the new systems now.
In addition, we have amazing community and nonprofit organizations that provide needed services to our community. We need to leverage and support their work so that we can most efficiently and effectively meet the needs of our residents.
The pandemic also underscored the depth of food insecurity in our County, with long lines at food distribution centers. In particular, we lag far behind other counties in the state in SNAP enrollment, with only six in ten of eligible residents receiving benefits. Moving forward, the role of the County here is five-fold: 1) identify and address barriers to enrolling in the programs; 2) raise awareness for those who are eligible; 3) ensure we have community ambassadors who can enroll people; 4) advocate for expanding eligibility; and 5) fill in the gaps for those who still need help feeding their families.
2 – If you could go back and do one thing differently from what was done in the last two years in Montgomery County what would you change?
Over the last few years, after much trial and error, the County was able to, in partnership with non-profits and residents, gear up emergency distribution of food, vaccines, masks, test kits, etc. If I could go back in time, I would have ensured that before the pandemic hit we had in place the programs and policies to create long-term sustainability and to do so in ways that ensured people’s agency and dignity.
During the pandemic, we saw when families were receiving direct financial support, there were improvements in family welfare that comes from having basic income stability, as well as the benefits to people’s mental well-being when the stress and worry were reduced. Income insufficiency builds on itself: those with little financial resources have difficulty getting credit, must pay higher upfront fees, are less able to handle emergencies, and have less capacity to get legal assistance when others take advantage of them. Unfortunately, assistance was not always easy to access. For example, rental assistance required people to fall behind before they could apply for it, adding stress and uncertainty, during an already stressful time.
I am glad to see the County piloting Guaranteed Income. I have been trying to get a pilot in the City and am glad the county can do it at a larger scale. For the last few years, I have been part of the Mayors for Guaranteed Income and have seen the research and the work other communities have done. Programs like these proactively assist families and ensure people’s agency, dignity and ability to make choices in their lives.
3 – What do you think are the 3 biggest and most pressing issues facing our county in the next 4 years? Why?
Mental Health: Mental health was a crisis before COVID-19 and it has only gotten worse, especially for young people, and we do not have the structures in place to address it.
Housing Affordability and Stability: We need to ensure that we are able to meet the housing needs of County residents. Safe, stable housing is a human right and right now we are faced with the dual problem of not enough housing and displacement.
Spur Economic Development: As a former small business owner, I understand the challenges confronting entrepreneurs who drive our economy. We need to do more to attract, promote, and grow our local businesses. This means listening to our small businesses and making sure that County government provides them with paths to success, not needless roadblocks. It also means providing training programs and access to capital to make sure that all of our residents can participate in our economic growth and prosperity.
4 – What specifically do you plan to do in the 3 most pressing areas from Question 3?
Mental Health: First, we need to address the immediate needs created by the crisis. We need to expand the number of professionals in our communities and schools and this will require putting in place loan forgiveness programs and partnering with Montgomery College, UMD and other institutions of learning to address the shortage of mental health professionals. We also need to expand capacity to address emergency situations. Right now someone experiencing a mental health crisis will mostly likely interact with the police or possibly one of the few crisis intervention teams in the County, and then they are likely to spend two or three days waiting for a bed to open up to receive care. We need to do better and find ways for people to get the treatment they need faster.
Next, we need to look at the full spectrum of mental health and put in place programs and resources to ensure mental health promotion, crisis prevention, and treatment. For young people, we need resources in schools and the broader community to address promotion and prevention. Promotion is intervening to optimize positive mental health before a specific mental health problem has been identified and preventing is intervening to minimize mental health problems by addressing the underlying causes of these problems. All of this work must be done using an equity framework, because we know some communities have suffered generational trauma and disparities in accessing care.
Housing Affordability and Stability: There is no one solution to our affordable housing crisis. Rather, as a County we need to use a variety of tools to ensure that we create affordable and sustainable housing for all who live in the County. These tools include:
- Increased density and infill development around public transit
- Inclusionary zoning practices
- Subsidies for affordable housing in transit and amenity rich areas
- Partnerships with nonprofits to develop affordable and middle housing
- Use of federal housing programs to increase affordable housing
- Down-payment assistance to help those looking to transition from renting to home ownership, particularly communities that have historically been disadvantaged and discriminated against because of immigration status, tenancy, age, ability, race or ethnicity, or economic status.
- Protections for tenants because ensuring residents have a safe and reliable home should not depend on whether they chose or can afford to buy a home
I started my tenure as Mayor in Takoma Park by hosting a community conversation on housing that brought together city staff, members of the community, and local and national housing experts. Based on what we learned from that conversation, spearheaded the adoption of a Housing and Economic Development Strategic Plan and followed up with programs to address housing affordability. Through these programs, we have partnered with nonprofits to build missing middle housing and provided down payment assistance programs that have helped community members move from renting to home ownership. I also recognized that affordability is a regional issue and worked as a member of the Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to set ambitious housing affordability goals for the DMV region.
Spur Economic Development: As a former small business owner and current Mayor, I know firsthand there is a lot more we can do to foster and support our locally owned businesses. We have fallen short in our outreach, implementation, and targeting of those businesses most in need. We need to change the attitude toward businesses. We can’t just talk about all our great businesses – we need to make sure they are consulted, supported, and set up to succeed. Specifically, we need to:
- Make Permitting & Licensing Easier: Permitting and licensing processes are a cumbersome nightmare. We need tomake these processes, much easier to navigate and increase the number of small business navigators we have in the County. We know no one has time to visit all the different websites or stay on the phone all day for information about licensing, permitting, planning, procurement, and everything else you need to go through to set up or expand your business.
- Assist in Securing Capital for Women, Black & Brown Businessowners: Better programs to ensure women, Black & Brown businessowners can secure capital. We need to support and expand programs and actively engage and assist people to secure those resources. Barriers to access are real whether it is historical racism in lending practices or a lack of programs in a range of languages. We need to invest more in program to help entrepreneurs and small business actually secure the capital they need to overcome these barriers.
- Prioritize Local for Procurement: Prioritize County based businesses in the procurement process. DC does this and so can we.
- Increase Incubator Spaces: As Mayor of Takoma Park, I have seen the great success of the TPSS Community Kitchen, which provides space and facilities to food entrepreneurs. Many new business owners, particularly Black and Brown entrepreneurs, lack the capital to invest in their own production facilities and rental costs can be a barrier. Incubators and places like the Community Kitchen help meet the needs of these types of entrepreneurs. As we look to transform some of our office space since work habits have changed due to COVID-19, we need to work with property owners to create incubators to give entrepreneurs the jumpstart they need to launch their businesses.
- Would you consider supporting changes to electoral process such as open primaries or non-partisan elections in Montgomery County to allow 155,000+ registered Unaffiliated/Independents in Montgomery County to vote locally when it counts?
The electoral process needs to be reformed. The first step is Ranked Choice Voting. Today a candidate can win an election with only a fraction of the popular vote. As FairVote, recently noted:
“RCV promotes majority rule without the need for a second runoff election. Voters can honestly rank the candidate they like most, without fear that doing so will help the candidate they like least. With greater choice, voters have more power. Candidates have incentives to engage with all voters to earn both first choices and later choices, meaning voters will have a greater chance of being heard and campaigns will reduce personal attacks. Because RCV only requires one election, it can save taxpayers’ dollars by eliminating the cost of a second runoff election.”
I have some concerns about open primaries (particularly without other reforms), but would be open to considering non-partisan elections at the County level (like we have in Takoma Park) if they are combined with Ranked Choice Voting and other reforms.
Questions & Responses (County Council)
1 – What is your plan to attract and KEEP businesses in Montgomery County? How can we get more businesses across the county and especially where its lacking in the Up County and East County and compete with Northern Virginia?
I already noted a number of changes I believe need to put in place to support our small businesses. In addition, Montgomery County has lagged behind neighboring jurisdictions in terms of economic development. I am Vice-Chair of the Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and see what other jurisdictions are doing. We need to take several steps to improve our economic vitality and regional competitiveness. Among the actions we need to take:
- Build new economic development expertise in the county government so that we move from “marketing” to actually planning and attracting business. We should not just approve individual projects, but implement a plan to grow our economy.
- Reduce needless red tape that makes it harder (and longer) for small businesses to move from dream to reality. We’ve fast-tracked processes for individual projects, but need to do this across the board.
- Move from talking about our transportation infrastructure to actually building it, including BRT, the Purple Line & MARC.
- Promote (and amend zoning to permit) more and more-dense, mixed-use development in transportation rich areas.
- Get rid of Taxes & Fees that Don’t Make Sense: As Takoma Park’s Mayor, I pushed to eliminate an inventory tax that was difficult to administer and unfairly burdened certain types of business.
2 – How will you hold developers accountable for past, present, and future infrastructure commitments (schools, transit, roads, etc.)?
County agreements and requirements need to be explicit and enforceable with appropriate benchmarks and monitoring to ensure that all parties live up to their commitments.
3 – What do you plan to do about the increase in incidents of carjackings and homicides in the county and decline of applicants and morale in the police force?
As Takoma Park’s Mayor I have experience working with a full-time police department and working on public safety reform at a local and state level. In the short term, we need to do three things.
First, we need to set clear expectations for our police officers. In Takoma Park we moved from a department seeking to “intimidate” to one focused on promoting public safety while upholding residents’ rights and dignity. Today, County police do not have similar guidance and that means we don’t have the right tools to attract police officers.
Second, we need to act more strategically. In Takoma Park we reduced discretionary traffic stops dramatically by prioritizing safety and revamping our incentive structure to reward community safety rather than the quantity of enforcement. At the county level, discretionary traffic stops are the most common form of interaction between MCPD and residents — more than 110,000 stops annually. The vast majority of stops are conducted by patrol officers, rather than as part of a strategic effort to address safety and are a major component of discretionary policing. We know that this type of policing results in over-policing and the targeting of Black and Brown residents. If we change this system, we can focus our police resources where they are needed most. For example, resources spent on discretionary stops could be redistributed to support carjackings and homicide investigations. And, one way we can do so is by increasing collaboration and coordination among jurisdictions. I have seen the benefits of this collaboration to help address car jackings or spikes in car break-ins in Takoma Park.
Third, we need to stop asking police to handle situations that call for civilian intervention. For example, police are often the only resource available to confront mental health emergencies. Trained mental health professionals can often handle these situations with less danger to the individual in crisis and the public. Again, this will enable us to focus resources on violent crime.
Long term we need to be looking at addressing issues such as job and work force development, youth development, and disparities in our education system and the wealth gap.
4 – What do you see as your biggest advantage or positive that you bring to the table over your competitors?
As a Mayor of Takoma Park since 2015 and Vice-Chair of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, I have worked with residents, staff, and public officials at the local, regional, and state level to address COVID-19, implement programs to address housing affordability, support small businesses, help our schools, rethink how we address public safety, make our community more sustainable, and further racial equity.
Among other things, I worked to:
- Put in place a down payment assistance program to help families move from renting to home ownership in the community.
- Make Takoma Park the first City in the County to convert all our streetlights to LED, improving public safety, reducing energy use and saving taxpayer dollars.
- Adopt the first racial equity framework in the State of Maryland, which furthers equity and informs decision making from where we prioritize installation of bus shelters to how we assess park quality and accessibility.
- Coordinate with local school officials to address students’ needs inside and outside the classroom.
- Implement police and public safety reforms at the local and state level.
As a result of this work, I was asked to serve as Co-Chair of the National League of Cities’ Racial Equity and Leadership Council, which works to advance racial equity in communities across the country, and on the Board of the Mayor’s Innovation Project, which provides cutting edge solutions and concrete policies and programs for local governments to implement to confront the challenges of housing affordability, climate change, and more.
I am also a former small business owner and have worked with business during the pandemic to help small businesses not only survive, but thrive and grow.
I am ready to bring my experience, hard work and common-sense solutions to county government.
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