Steph Routh — Candidate for City Council, District 1

Campaign site

Candidate statement:

Our climate crisis is killing Portlanders, such as in my zip code in Lents, which experienced more deaths than any other zip code during the 2021 heat dome. Extreme weather, increasing wildfires, and more frequent floods are a few examples of the growing climate crisis. We need less talk about our climate emergency and more action.

I am a lifelong climate advocate. This includes taking action in various ways, such as:

– Education: When I was executive director of Oregon Walks, we partnered with AARP Oregon and the Immigrant Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) on walking safety and local advocacy opportunities.
– Policy: The Transportation Decarbonization Roundtable I served on helped to inform Portland’s Climate Investment Plan.
– Collaboration: As one of the advisors on Portland’s Planning & Sustainability Commission, I helped guide City Council on land use decisions through climate and racial equity lenses. We stood beside the community on what they needed and called on the City to deny Zenith Energy’s oil terminal permit.

That last point–collaboration–is foundational to all my work, including that in environmental justice and sustainability. Inherent to justice, and shared prosperity, is the understanding that we all deserve a say when a decision is being made. In our society, often those who are most impacted by a decision are not afforded this opportunity, an experience familiar to East Portlanders. Cultivating and expanding relationships with our most impacted communities, and the organizations seeking to represent their needs and make decisions impacting them, has been central to my work. On Council, these relationships will guide and inform my decision-making process about things such as:

– Supporting the work of the Portland Clean Energy Fund to guide our city in a way that centers our most vulnerable or underrepresented communities
– Growing our tree canopy, particularly in the heat islands of East Portland
– Investing in active and resilient transportation choices, such as e-bike rebates and expansion of the Transportation Wallet
– Setting ambitious timelines for solarizing low-income residential communities
– Exploring design standards that help decarbonize our buildings without inhibiting housing production
– Developing a Public Health Overlay Zone to address the interface between residential and industrial parts of town.

Will you ensure the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) remains climate-focused in line with what voters intended?

Yes