Been knocking doors, distributing literature, and — most importantly — talking to our community. Clark Hedric, Keven LeBlanc, and I divided up Herndon for purposes of canvassing so we could cover more doors. I am mostly doing Herndon 2 but would be happy to talk to you regardless of which precinct you are in (Herndon has 3 precincts).
But if you are wondering what my literature looks like click on the title above to access the full blog entry!
At the Public Hearing on September 14th, 2022 I delivered the following remarks about Traffic Safety. You can also view the meeting at Town Council Public Session – Sep 13th, 2022 (granicus.com) (my remarks begin at the 01:20:50 mark).
Madam Mayor, Members of Council, and Mr. Ashton,
My name is Stevan Porter and I reside at 905 Vine St in Herndon. As a candidate for Council, I have been spending time talking with members of our community and many people have been raising concerns about traffic safety particularly on our smaller, neighborhood streets. My own street is a small, non-conforming street with a 25 mph speed limit but every day I see vehicles easily doing 15 – 20 mph above that. Like much of Herndon, many of the houses here have children and the street has significant pedestrian and bike traffic. I fear that it is only a matter of time before we have an accident like we have recently seen in other parts of town.
I believe the most immediate viable option would be for increased enforcement with high level visibility of officers obviously conducting speed checks on the smaller neighborhood streets. This could be made more effective if combined with a public awareness campaign similar to how DUI checkpoints, anti distracted driving campaigns, and seat belt enforcement are sometimes run in various localities. In other words get the word out that if you speed on Herndon’s residential streets you will be ticketed and back that up with actual enforcement.
Obviously, this is not a perfect solution since we have limited law enforcement resources and they cannot be everywhere at once. So more permanent traffic calming devices will be needed. Your Speed signs, unusual speed limits, additional stop signs, rumble strips, speed bumps, speed humps, and other emerging techniques should all be considered to find the best fit for specific neighborhood streets and situations.
I also wanted to comment briefly on the impact on emergency vehicles. I have been operating and training individuals to operate emergency vehicles for 20 years. The legal standard for operating in emergency mode – i.e. with lights and sirens – is that “due regard for the safety of persons and property” must always be observed. Emergency vehicles should not be traveling our smaller neighborhood streets at high speed and – depending on the specific design and frequency of deployment – speed calming measures can be implemented that will not have a significant detriment to overall response times. Yes, we would need to slow down for such devices but national standards as well as specific policies in most local departments already require we come to complete stops at any red lights or stop signs. Slowing down for an occasional speed control device is not significantly different. In Leesburg where I do the majority of my paramedic work, there are a number of neighborhoods and streets that have speed bumps or speed humps. I am sure we can find workable solutions here as well.
Obviously these are complex topics and three minutes is not much time to discuss them. If you would like to discuss further, my contact information will be included with the written comments supplied to the Town Clerk.
Thank you.
Stevan Porter
By now I hope everyone realizes that the top priority for #SmartGov4Herndon is community engagement. I believe that fully engaging our residents, businesses, organizations, and government can provide better and more cost effective solutions than relying mainly (or completely) on government.
So what does this look like? Well a great recent example is the recent effort started to provide desks for virtual learning in the Herndon/Reston area. A resident saw a need, created a Facebook group, invited some friends, and in roughly 2 weeks has already created a good framework, created a partnership with the schools, and has delivered around 80 desks to students in need in our community. Other businesses and organizations are (or are becoming) involved as well.
This all has happened in roughly 2 weeks! I can pretty much guarantee that if government was driving this we MIGHT be at the point of a legal review of options and any real solution would still be weeks away — assuming we could even find funding. Speaking of funding — this is being done with no increase in your taxes and minimal public cost (some of the desks are surplus and some school staff time is being used to identify recipients).
Innovative ideas and utilizing the talents of our community has provided a solution to this need. We can, should, and must repeat this model wherever we can! If I am elected to Town Council I will always look for these types of opportunities.
Steve
Ps If you would like to get involved with the desk project, message me or comment. I will be happy to put you in touch with the organizer!
I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to a special group of supporters — the people who have been sharing my posts and talking to your friends and neighbors about me. It makes a HUGE difference especially in a campaign where where positive name recognition is so critical.
While doing door to door this weekend I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who had heard of me. Even better a number of them were saying things like “(Name) was telling me about you. (He/She) had good things to say.” That type of word of mouth and social media sharing is golden in a campaign like this and I truly cannot thank you enough.
So please keep it up — talk to your friends and neighbors about Porter4Herndon, share posts in your social media circles, put up a yard sign, and whatever else you can do to positively get my name out in our community. IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Steve
Another important aspect of #SmartGov4Herndon is financial responsibility. Especially with the economic impacts of COVID-19, it is critical that the Town use YOUR money carefully, avoid taking on new debt unless absolutely necessary, protect our reserve funds, and maintain our AAA municipal bond rating.
Politicians often like to focus on taxes but I do not believe that is the right approach. Taxes are simply the means to pay for the spending decisions that we make as a community. So before we get to taxes, we need to take a comprehensive look at spending and our priorities as the residents, businesses, organizations, and government of Herndon.
Services and projects provided by the town are not free and fall somewhere on a sliding scale between must haves (basic requirements the Town must do by law) and luxury nice to haves. For example, the Community Center is not a requirement but I also think it is more than just a luxury item. So where do we prioritize it? That is a decision we must make as a community.
Once we understand what our spending priorities are as a community, then we can take a look at how to fund them as well as innovative ideas of ways to provide some things that are not largely or exclusively based on taxes. But that is a topic for another post!
As always I welcome your suggestions, questions, and feedback.
Steve Porter
#SmartGov4Herndon requires community engagement. But to be fully engaged also requires that our community be well informed which in turn makes transparency and access to data critical. This transparency must necessarily start with me and the other candidates for Town Council.
My promise to all of you is that I will answer any reasonable question you put to me as truthfully as I can. Sometimes the answer may be “I don’t know — I need to learn more” but I will always be honest about it. You may or may not like my answer, but you — as my constituents — have a right to that information. Once we know where we stand then we can have meaningful conversations and try to seek common ground. Will we always find it — of course not. But unless we are honest and transparent with each other, we will miss out on opportunities to make Herndon a great place for all of us.
#Porter4Herndon
My campaign’s hashtag / motto is #SmartGov4Herndon, but what is Smart Government? For me it begins with understanding that a healthy Town requires the active engagement of the entire community — residents, businesses, organizations, and the government.
Our community is full of dedicated, talented, and diverse people. I believe that it is critical that Town Council do a better job of not only soliciting feedback from the community but also directly involving them in implementing solutions. When all the elements of our community are actively engaged, it makes our community stronger, more resilient, and better for all of us.
#Porter4Herndon
At the heart of making good decisions lies the need for good data to base those decisions on. I am a troubleshooter by nature and profession. Whether it is resolving a technical issue in the IT realm or saving a life as a paramedic, determining the best course of action requires getting as thorough of an understanding of the situation as possible. With that information you can then look at your possible courses of action and decide on the best one.
This is a large part of why transparency and easy access to information is so important to me and my campaign. If you are going to have an engaged community, the community must be well informed. Whether it be financial data, police performance data, minutes of key meetings, or any number of other things, the community should be able to get key data easily and at minimal (preferably no) cost to them.
I have had some people tell me that the Town Council and its members/candidates need to stay away from divisive or controversial topics. I personally believe that is a serious mistake. Ignoring issues in the hopes that they will simply go away is not #SmartGov4Herndon.
Government is about controversial and potentially divisive topics. Things that are not controversial seldom need government intervention. It is the job of elected officials to give a fair hearing to different viewpoints and then try to find the best overall approach for those that they are elected to represent.
Most things do not get better by ignoring them. Get the issues out in the open, hold hearings, get feedback from experts and the community, and then make intelligent, informed decisions on how to move forward. Yes that is hard work and sometimes painful, but it is also how you tackle issues and grow as individuals, families, organizations, neighborhoods, and as an overall community.
Steve
I want to take a moment to thank my friends and followers (here and on other channels) of color for their thoughtful and respectful efforts to help me better understand the issues. I was fortunate to grow up in a place (outside of Seattle) and time (70’s – 80’s) where race really was not a big issue. That is not to say there were not some of the more subtle, institutionalized elements of racism as I look back but certainly nothing like people have encountered in Virginia and other parts of the country. I was raised that it was a person’s actions that mattered — not their ethnic background, their sex, their religion, or anything like that. It is not inherently a bad mindset in terms of not treating people with prejudice, but I have come to appreciate that the real goal is not a “colorless” society but rather one that respects and honors our different ethnic backgrounds, histories, and experiences.
The other perspective that has developed over the years is around “all lives matter”. I have been a member of the rescue service for almost 18 years and as a paramedic and an instructor it is a key mindset that “all lives matter”. In the back of my ambulance NOTHING other than your injuries and needs come into consideration. Not race, ethnicity, gender identification, socio-economic status, or even your “guilt”. I treat each patient as an individual and provide the best care I am capable of. That is what the law and the ethics of my profession as a paramedic require of me.
In the larger societal context, however, I have come to better understand why “black lives matter” is important. It is not that all lives do not matter, but rather that right now too often some lives matter more than others — which is wrong. So we need to call attention to that and make people really focus on “black lives matter” so that they can see and change the fundamental problems of racism within our society and ourselves.
I firmly believe the key to making this a better country for everyone is that we take time to listen to one another, challenge our own preconceptions as appropriate, and then take necessary action to make our communities and country a better place for ALL of us.
Steve
#endracism #blacklivesmatter #Porter4Herndon #SmartGov4Herndon