I served on the Lancaster City Planning Commission from January 2017 – May 2021. During my time as Chair of the commission (2019-2021) we issued a statement about the centrality of racial equity in our commission’s work. The local paper also covered our discussion of the issue here and it got picked up by the German TV station ZDF as part of their documentary on racial healing and justice struggles in the US.

Subsequent to the statement, our work has involved making some changes to the development process that ask developers to submit a community benefits statement detailing the effects of development for a range of community considerations. Under my leadership, the commission also made several changes to the zoning code that mandated inclusion of bicycle parking infrastructures in new developments, improved tree coverage requirements, reduced parking space minimum requirements in our zoning, and initiated a new comprehensive planning process for the city.

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