Josh Leake — Candidate for City Council, District 4
Endorsed 350PDX CJ platform? No
Will you support PCEF? Yes
Candidate statement:
Climate, Environmental Justice, and Sustainability — Josh Leake, District 4
I’ve spent years telling Portland’s environmental stories on film. One documentary followed Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill and the people who depend on it; for many of our poor and unhoused neighbors, returning cans is real income. Another followed the first company to build shoes from recycled materials. The thread running through both is simple: people do what we reward them for. If we want less waste, cleaner air, and fewer cars, we have to make those choices the easy and affordable ones.
Make transit free. Transportation is Oregon’s largest source of emissions, and District 4 carries a heavy share of the region’s traffic through downtown, the South Waterfront, and the West Hills. The fastest way to get cars off the road is to make the alternative cost nothing. I will push the City to partner with TriMet and pursue state and federal funds to move toward fare-free transit, starting with youth, seniors, and low-income riders.
Put the freeways underground. I will not support widening freeways; decades of evidence show it doesn’t reduce congestion. Instead, Portland should do what cities from Boston to Seoul have done: remove the freeways that wall off our rivers and move them underground. I-5 on the east bank and the I-405 and I-5 corridors through the South Waterfront occupy hundreds of acres of state-owned land along the Willamette. Reclaiming that land gives Portland room for parks, tree canopy, and thousands of homes beside our river, and I have a plan to bring it into public use at no cost to Portland taxpayers. Ask me how.
Clean up District 4’s air. Our district sits downwind of the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub, where hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel sit on liquefiable soil in an earthquake zone. I support drawing down fossil fuel storage at the hub, ending crude-by-rail through our neighborhoods, and requiring real seismic accountability from operators. I also want the City to press the Governor on stricter high-particulate fuel standards, following California’s lead, and to expand real-time air monitoring in Northwest and Southwest Portland.
Give people somewhere safe to go. During wildfire smoke and heat events, too many Portlanders, especially those living outside or in older buildings without filtration, have nowhere to go. I will work to fund a network of clean-air and cooling shelters in every district using libraries, community centers, and underused public buildings, and I support continuous funding for the Urban Forest Plan so shade reaches the neighborhoods that have the least of it.
Keep PCEF focused on its purpose. The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund should remain a climate and environmental-justice fund, with jobs going to the communities it was built to serve. I will not support raiding it to backfill unrelated budget holes.
Incentives work. Oregon proved that in 1971 with the Bottle Bill. It’s time to apply the same thinking to how we move, breathe, and stay safe in a changing climate.
