Candidate Nancy Day-Achauer

Tim Fulton 00:07Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, in anticipation of this fall's election, the Confluence Cast is endeavoring to introduce Columbus voters to the 12 council and two mayoral candidates in their own words. In today's interview, Nancy Day-Achauer, candidate for District Two, discusses her background, why zoning updates are key to Columbus's future, and how neighborhoods can fill gaps in social safety nets. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Columbus City Council candidate Nancy Day-Achauer, running in District Two. Nancy, how are you?

Nancy Day-Achauer 01:07I'm doing great, thanks. How are you doing?

Tim Fulton 01:09Doing well. First of all, talk to us about who you are, and what brings you to the candidacy?

Nancy Day-Achauer 01:15Well, I am not from Columbus; I chose Columbus. I came here in 2005 to earn my master's degree, and fell in love with Columbus as a place where I could live my American dream. But where I started out—my childhood was in the California Gold Country. A descendant of farmers and miners. And then I lived for 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of that I spent as a business administrator in a medium-sized business in K industries. And then for the last five years, I was the assistant to the general counsel of the nation's fifth-largest not-for-profit hospital system. At that time, it was Catholic Healthcare West, and now it's called CommonSpirit. I herded lawyers for a living.

Tim Fulton 02:03There you go. And so the degree brought you to—

Nancy Day-Achauer 02:07So yes, I came to Columbus to attend the Methodist Theological School, which is located in Delaware, in 2005, for a three-year master's program there. Like I said, I fell in love with Columbus. I was ordained a United Methodist pastor here in Ohio, and spent four years serving in a rural community before an opening came up in a more urban part of Columbus on the far west side. I had requested that type of an appointment, because that's the kind of community I'm accustomed to, where there's a great degree of diversity. But my time spent on the west side as a pastor has mostly focused on community ministries, addressing human service needs the community identifies. I know a lot of people think, "Well, I know what the community needs," and they go in there and they try to fix things, but you really need to talk to the people and have them identify what their particular top priorities are. And one of those was food insecurity. At that time, west of 270, there wasn't any public food pantry; there weren't any produce distributions. And so a group of us got together—Doctors Hospital sponsored us—and we began a produce distribution. We ran it out of the firehouse near Doctors Hospital, and we operated that inside the firehouse for four years before the pandemic hit. And then we had to move it outside, understandably. Our produce distribution was unique in that it's year-round, so even in the winter. So the pandemic hits, it's March, we're outside in the parking lot, 28-degree weather, really bitter cold, giving out our produce. And it's a great thing we were there, because so many people were out of work. The lines for our distribution went around the block. We had to bring in the sheriff's office to direct traffic, because there were so many people in line. We were able to continue out in the parking lot until the world opened up again, and then we were able to go back into the firehouse. And at this time, Mid-Ohio Food Collective identified, "Wow, there really is a great food insecurity issue out here" in what they refer to as more of a suburban area—although it's a mix of Columbus and the suburbs. And so they opened up one of their fresh markets, which is a free grocery store, just a couple blocks up from us. And we were so excited to be put out of business by something that's actually better, where people have the dignity of being able to go shop just like everybody else and select the food that they want.

Tim Fulton 04:54Talk us through how you got to your candidacy, why you're running.

Nancy Day-Achauer 04:59Well, over the years, I have had a lot of conversations with Columbus City Council about various issues that I was working on. I also worked on addressing the homeless issue. I was on the steering committee that opened Jordan's Crossing Resource Center. I worked on addressing the issue of older adults aging in place. A lot of older adults on the Hilltop want to stay there, but they need help. And so I worked with the Friends of the Hilltop and Franklin County and the Columbus Age-Friendly program to launch a Village on the Hill program to help older adults age in place successfully. And I've worked on the Franklin County and Columbus addiction plan, educating the community about addiction. And so I was always contacting my city council members and the mayor's office and talking to them about the needs in the community and ways that we can be better engaged, and also talking to them about a variety of other issues that communities care about—Lincoln Park, getting your snowplow, all those things. And over the years—because you know, that's over a decade—I felt that I would be more effective addressing human service needs if I were serving on city council than working just as a small church local pastor on the west side. I feel by serving on Columbus City Council, I can help more people in more places instead of just focusing on my little side of town, because west side issues are also issues that are experienced in Linden, on the south side. So we have a lot of communities that have needs. And I feel my experience of being actually hands-on, boots-on-the-ground in communities brings a perspective to council that would be very helpful for them.

Tim Fulton 06:54Got it. You've mentioned some issues—obviously food insecurity, homelessness, folks being able to age in place. What other—maybe it's those issues specifically, but what issues do you think are facing Columbus?

Nancy Day-Achauer 07:10The housing issue is huge, and it impacts all aspects of life. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had the lived experience of what happens in a community when a city and a region does not address the availability of housing. I think a lot of times people hear about a housing shortage and all they think of is, "Oh, well, that makes prices more expensive. But hey, I've already got a house, so it's really not my problem." It impacts quality of life in a lot of ways that people haven't considered. When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area—and rents at that time, so we're talking 1985—renting a modest home was like $2,000 a month. Okay, in 1985 salaries, right? And so it was common that total strangers had to come together and rent houses, and you had a revolving door of tens of roommates, because somebody would get a new job and they'd move away, and, "Oh no, I gotta find another roommate." And I was a single parent, so that's a very stressful thing, of always having a revolving door. But that was very common—still is very common—in the San Francisco Bay Area. And then also, every couple of years, as your rent keeps getting jacked up more and more and more, you have to move farther and farther away from where you work, and you ended up having to commute an hour to work. Now, at least in the Bay Area, we had bus rapid transit, which at least made the commute a little better. We don't have that here—hopefully one day we will, but we don't have it now. And so you have people who are no longer living and working in the same community, and that really drags you down when you work an eight-hour day and you have an hour commute on each end. People also don't consider the fact that a shortage of housing not just means that new houses are more expensive and rentals are more expensive, but when those price points increase, your home values increase as well. So even if you've paid off your house, you're going to be paying more to live there, because your property taxes are going to go up. We've already been warned by our Franklin County auditor that this is going to be a bigger increase this time, and three years from now it's going to be an even bigger increase. People will find themselves in a situation where their property taxes can equal their mortgage, and that's going to impact your quality of life. If you're a renter, that expense is going to be passed on to you; the landlord's not going to eat that. So it's going to impact everyone's quality of life. We have to have enough houses to house all the people who live here now, but we have to be building toward the future for all the people who are going to be coming here. We know that with Intel and all these other great businesses that are building here, it's going to bring in a lot of people. It's going to be a tsunami of people who are coming. Where are they going to live? Columbus needs to build more housing, but so do all of our suburban neighbors. Columbus doesn't have enough land to house all those people; all of our neighbors need to step up also. So we really need to work as a region to address building enough housing to meet our needs. And it needs to be a variety of housing, different types of housing, different price points, because people of every income level need to find a place that's affordable for them. We need housing not just for low-income people, but we need it for schoolteachers and our firefighters and our police officers and the nurses and the secretary at your office and the person who is working at the drive-thru that you go through every day to get your cup of coffee. Everybody, no matter what income you have, you need to be able to have a place to live that you can afford.

Tim Fulton 11:15What role do you think council plays in solving for that housing issue?

Nancy Day-Achauer 11:21The zoning update is going to be huge, because our zoning is way out of date. I served on the Western Area Commission for eight years. We get a lot of agricultural land out there, and the farmers sell it, and then you have this long, drawn-out variance process. It can take somebody a year, from when they buy the property to being able to develop it, simply because they have to go through all these zoning things and permit things. Getting the updated zoning will really be helpful. It'll eliminate the excessive amount of variances we have to do. We should update the way our BZA—building and zoning administration—processes permits and whatnot, so that it moves faster. I've been told by a lot of people that ours is much slower than a lot of other cities of our size. And I know friends of mine who just want to do like an addition on their house, it's like the whole permit process, it's challenging and it's expensive. And the more time and the more money people have to spend going through building and zoning, the more expensive your home is going to be, or your apartment's going to be. So cleaning that up and making it more streamlined is just going to help our process. So those are two things that council can directly impact. We of course have the investments that are going to be made in incentivizing housing that is affordable. And I emphasize housing that is affordable—that doesn't mean low-income housing. Yes, there's low-income housing, but there's also housing for the workforce, so that you can afford it. So that's going to be something that will also help. And I think as we go along, we're going to kind of find more and more different ways of, "Oh, okay, this issue has come up, and how are we going to address that particular issue?" How are we going to address—we have areas like the Darby Accord, where we have special environmental issues that have to be addressed. How can we make it so that it is more affordable to address these environmental issues in those particular areas? I just know about the Accord on the west side; there may be other areas of Columbus that have similar things. I'm only familiar with that one because of my work on the area commission.

Tim Fulton 13:49And I'm going to try to make that a segue into: how do you feel about the new districting structure that Columbus City Council is under?

Nancy Day-Achauer 13:59I actually like it. I was one of the many citizens who complained, "We don't have representation on our side of town. We should have districts so that there are people who know our part of town." When you live outside of 270, it's a different lived experience than inside 270. I can say that from experience, because I work in the middle of the Hilltop, but I live on the far west side, which is Columbus but feels like you live in the suburbs. Very different. So myself, my area, the area commission that I served on, and a lot of other citizens were saying we want this. And there was the failed ballot initiative that didn't get enough votes. But a lot of people kept asking for it, and there were all sorts of big plans. Some of them I thought were a little quirky, but there's a lot of different ideas, and I think it's good to throw those out and see what works. And the charter amendment review came on. I did attend a few of those meetings. I felt that they were very thoughtful in what they were doing. I spoke in favor of trying to keep area commissions and civic associations intact, contiguous to the district, because you already had systems in place of advocacy. And the final product that it came out with, it being at-large voting although everybody's in a district, I liked, because I feel that every council member should be answerable to every citizen, every business in Columbus. We don't want to become the next Cleveland, where you end up with gridlock and fighting and things don't get done because it's all like people care about their district first. This is a whole—the city has to work together, we can't just focus on little things. I mean, every community has a few little things that need to be addressed that are particular to them. But we have to look at the city as this whole microsystem. There's so many things that need to be done that we need to work together. I know, if I were just a regular voter, and there were all these at-large candidates and there was somebody on the other side of town who was just an obstructionist and wasn't helping do well for Columbus, I would want to vote that person out. And so I feel, hey, if you decide you don't like me, you can vote me out no matter where you live. But hopefully you'll vote me in.

Tim Fulton 16:44Well, and thank you for making my transition so easy. Why should people vote for you? What's the value proposition that you're bringing to your candidacy?

Nancy Day-Achauer 16:53I believe that people should vote for me because I bring a new and different perspective to Columbus City Council, both from my work and also from where I live and my past experience of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Because I can say, "Don't do that—San Francisco did that, and it didn't work, and it sucked." So I feel that I can bring a new and different perspective. And I also add just diversity to our council. Our council has diversity in a variety of ways. I bring age diversity, but also just the diversity of having lived elsewhere and experienced how other large metropolitan areas address issues.

Tim Fulton 17:36Got it. I end every interview by asking two questions. They are opposites. What do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is doing not so well?

Nancy Day-Achauer 17:48One of the things that Columbus does well—one of the things that I loved about Columbus when I moved here—is the opportunity for regular, everyday citizens to be engaged. You can be engaged with city hall by serving on an area commission or a civic association. You can be involved in the arts. There's all these nonprofits where you can get engaged. If you really care about children, there are all these organizations that you can get involved in, and to have direct impact on your community. A lot of other areas don't have that. And so it's really exciting for people to have the opportunity to be engaged, to be part of something bigger than themselves, and to help make a difference. And what is it not doing so well? Well, of course, there's the housing—we already covered that; there's public safety. And there's a lot of big issues. I will mention one that's a smaller issue. That is that we lack equity in our Rec and Parks Department. There are entire regions of the city—regions, not neighborhoods—that don't have a recreation center, that have zero programming. There's a lot of city programming that gets run out of rec centers—summer food feeding programs for kids, for example, homework help—there's all these programs that get run out of our rec centers. And there are huge parts of the city that have no rec center. And they have very little in the way of parks. If a kid in my neighborhood wanted to go to a park and play on playground equipment, you need to get in the car and you have to drive down, you have to go over the railroad tracks, and then you go over and there's this little tiny park and it's got a little bit of play structure and there's some grass—not as nice as some of the other rec centers' parks in town. And that's not unique to just where I'm at. There are a lot of parts of the city that don't have the same services in Rec and Parks that are available in many other parts of the city. And I think that's something that we should address.

Tim Fulton 19:49Okay. Nancy, thank you for your time today.

Nancy Day-Achauer 19:51Thank you so much.

Tim Fulton 20:00Well, thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite volunteer. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.