Below are six issue platforms with substantive policy positions, line-item costs, and the council partners we'll need to pass them. No slogans. Read them. Argue with them. Bring better ones to the next town hall.
Riverbend is short an estimated 6,200 housing units, and rents have risen 47% since 2019. Marisol's plan calls for building 2,400 affordable, mixed-income homes by the end of the next mayoral term — funded, sited, and breaking ground in year one.
The plan has three pillars. First, a $40M revolving construction fund seeded from TIF revenue along the Cleary Avenue corridor, providing low-interest gap financing for nonprofit and small-builder projects targeting 60–120% AMI.
Second, by-right zoning along Cleary, Lambert, and Marlow corridors for buildings up to four stories with at least 15% affordable units. By-right means no zoning variance, no community-board veto, no twelve-month delay — if you meet the rules, you build.
Third, a renter relief program for households earning under 80% AMI, providing one-time emergency assistance up to $2,000 plus right-to-counsel in eviction proceedings. Funded by closing the industrial-park abatement loophole.
Riverbend Public Schools have run a structural deficit every year since 2018. Marisol's plan closes the gap by ending sweetheart industrial-park abatements, restores arts and a fifth-grade orchestra by fall '27, and puts a guidance counselor in every middle school.
The structural deficit is roughly $14M a year. Approximately $11M of that is directly attributable to property-tax abatements granted to two industrial parks (Eastfield and Marlow North) in 2014 and renewed in 2024. Marisol opposed the renewal then. As mayor, she will lead negotiations to phase those abatements out by 2028, restoring the school district's revenue base.
With the closed deficit, the district can restore: (a) elementary art and music programs cut in 2019, (b) a fifth-grade orchestra program at all four elementary schools, (c) a full-time guidance counselor in every middle school (currently three of four), and (d) reading specialists in every K–3 classroom.
None of this requires a tax increase, and none of it requires charter expansion or vouchers — both of which Marisol opposes.
Four neighborhoods — Lambert, Sycamore, Tow Path, Eastview — flood every spring like clockwork. The county told us to wait. We're done waiting. A $120M, five-year, federally matched investment fixes it.
Riverbend has a combined-sewer system from 1953 that overflows into basements roughly fourteen times a year on the south side. The federal Clean Water State Revolving Fund will match 70% of qualifying separation projects through 2030. Marisol's plan applies for the full match in the first 90 days.
The plan has two layers: grey infrastructure (separated storm sewers along Lambert, Sycamore, and Tow Path corridors — eight miles total) and green infrastructure (bioswales on every elementary-school lot, a daylighted Marlow Creek between 18th and 24th, and 1,400 new street trees in the four target neighborhoods).
The South-Side Flood Mitigation Authority — which Marisol authored in 2021 — already has the legal framework. We just need a mayor who will use it.
A safer Riverbend means a fully staffed police department doing the work we ask it to do, paired with mental-health and EMS first-responders for calls that aren't crimes. And consequences when things go wrong.
Marisol's plan staffs RPD to its budgeted complement of 412 sworn officers (currently 386) by raising starting pay 14% to be competitive with Columbus and Cincinnati, and offering a $5,000 hiring bonus for officers who live in Riverbend. Recruiting locally, paid well — the only formula that has ever worked.
It also creates a 24-person RBR Crisis Response Team — paramedics, social workers, and harm-reduction specialists who handle mental-health, substance-use, and welfare-check calls instead of patrol officers. Cities our size that have stood this up (Eugene, Olympia, Albuquerque) have seen 60–80% diversion of those call types and zero use-of-force incidents on the diverted calls.
And it strengthens accountability: an independent review board with subpoena power, the no-knock-warrant ban Marisol authored in 2023, and a public dashboard showing use-of-force incidents in real time.
A serious, achievable climate plan for a Midwestern industrial city. Net-zero municipal operations by 2040, with five concrete milestones along the way and not a single dollar of new property tax.
Riverbend's climate exposure is real: 14 flooded basements per spring, two heat-related deaths in 2023, an industrial-corridor air-quality district that exceeds EPA fine-particulate limits 23 days a year. The plan addresses all three.
By 2030: 100% of municipal vehicles electric or hybrid; 100% of city-owned buildings retrofitted to ENERGY STAR; the Riverbend Solar Authority generating 18 MW of city-financed rooftop solar across schools, the wastewater plant, and the bus depot.
By 2035: a fully electrified city bus fleet (the Marlow North bus depot is already wired for it) and a curbside composting pilot expanded to all 22 wards.
By 2040: net-zero municipal operations, with annual public reporting and a citizen climate advisory board.
A real small-business strategy for the corner shop, the family restaurant, and the second-generation hardware store. Cleaner, simpler permitting; predictable rents; targeted micro-grants for storefronts under 4,000 sq ft.
Riverbend's small-business permitting is a notorious mess — fourteen forms, six departments, 84 days median to open a restaurant. Marisol's plan creates a single Office of Main Street with one form, one permit fee, and a 30-day SLA. (Council partners: Tran, Aldridge, Vega — already drafted.)
It also funds a Storefront Stabilization Grant — $2.5M annually to provide $5,000–$25,000 grants to existing small businesses (under 25 employees, in continuous operation 5+ years) facing rent shocks or owner-transition issues. Funded by reallocation of the unused Industrial Marketing Bureau budget.
And it expands the Cleary Avenue Pilot — a one-year rent-control pilot for ground-floor commercial along the four corridors most affected by the recent wave of national chain takeovers.
None of this gets done if Marisol doesn't win on November 4. Chip in $25 — that's eighteen door-knocks — or sign up to volunteer for a weekend canvass.