City Council Candidate Tiara Ross

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome 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, we're continuing our conversation with candidates for Columbus City Council District 7. Today, we hear from Tiara Ross, an attorney and deputy chief of the city attorney's Property Action Team. We discussed her background in law and public service, her work addressing housing and safety issues in Columbus, and what motivated her to run for city council. Ross also shared her views on how the city can grow equitably through collaboration across housing, transportation, and community engagement. Together with yesterday's episode featuring her opponent, Jesse Vogel, this conversation rounds out our look at the candidates vying to represent District 7. 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 Tiara Ross, candidate for Columbus City Council District 7. Ms. Ross, how are you?

Tiara Ross 01:22I'm doing well. How are you, Tim?

Tim Fulton 01:24Well, thank you. Talk us through what brought you to your candidacy. What's your background?

Tiara Ross 01:30Yeah, so, one, I never thought I would be doing this. This is kind of a surreal moment. But I was born in Columbus to a single mom, and raised by my grandparents. And they served as pastors of a church here, actually in District 7, in the Milo-Grogan community, for over 50 years. And I really always remember my grandfather just saying, "You know, find a place in the world where you can give back." That has always just kind of been the mandate for our family. And I feel like I've been in service really since I can remember. I always tell folks, since I was five years old, I've probably been feeding the unhoused and working in our clothing closet. I remember we had a ministry called Bread of Life. Always really, really excited to volunteer for homeless individuals that would come to our church; we would feed them. And that used to be like one of my favorite parts of being kind of in church during my childhood. And so I've always just had kind of a service-minded family and legacy for as long as I can remember. And so I went to Old Orchard Alternative until the fifth grade, and then my grandparents moved further out east. I graduated from Reynoldsburg High School — go Raiders. It's actually — I'm coming up on my 20th year anniversary here soon. Wild. But we had a Thesis in Law class. You could take various thesis classes, and I chose Thesis in Law. Ended up being really good at it, and decided, like, that is how I feel like I'm going to give back to my community, is through legal work. And so went to OSU on scholarship, graduated from OSU in 2009, and then went to Moritz College of Law from 2009 to 2012, and have been a lawyer for almost 13 years now. I am currently deputy chief of our Property Action Team, but I started in the corporate sector. I was working in financial compliance for private equity and hedge fund clients at JPMorgan. And this is like your ultra-wealthy, super — well, like categories like politically exposed people, just too rich. Lots of perks. Ended up overseas during Brexit, kind of helping with operations, and that was a really cool kind of job. But very quickly it was just like, this is not necessarily tugging at my heartstrings. And so I remember asking City Attorney Klein a couple years back, before he ran for county prosecutor, like, "Hey, I'm really interested in maybe transitioning into public service." And so while I was overseas, he actually reached out to me. I turned 30 years old in Scotland, was by myself kind of doing this project for work. So he reaches out, and he's like, "I think I may have an open role that you might be interested in." So I'm coming back home, interview for what was then called the Zone Initiative. And that is a team that I still work on to this day. I'm now deputy chief of, but we call it the Property Action Team at the city attorney's office. And our main job is to make sure that we are in community, working with the community to address blighted properties. So essentially, every time you hear that Klein shuts down a drug house, or a business that's experienced chronic criminal activity, or a multifamily apartment complex in derelict condition, we are responsible for filing lawsuits against those property owners. They maintain their properties according to the laws of the City of Columbus and the state of Ohio. So I have worked in that job since 2018. I have been deputy chief for the last few years, which puts me in a management role to just think high-level about the intersection of housing and safety in our community. And then I also serve as general counsel for the Department of Inspector General for the police, which, if you can remember, that department the voters voted on in 2020, in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, in an effort to bring transparency to the Division of Police. Historically, the internal affairs bureau would investigate misconduct allegations against police officers here in the city. The Department of Inspector General, along with the Civilian Police Review Board, are now the entities that investigate misconduct or citizen complaints for misconduct. So I serve as the general counsel for that department as well, as part of my everyday job. But really, when I decided that I thought I could run for city council, is really after years of my work as a member of the Property Action Team and an attorney of the Property Action Team, because I would have the opportunity to be in communities where you found really a collision of need. And it would be not just you talk to somebody about their housing conditions, but that conversation would turn into, "I also have food insecurity. There are also not enough hospitals close enough for me to get to." And you started to think about all of these resources that I knew the city had. I was well-positioned to be able to navigate systems for people, but people didn't know where those resources were. And even if they did know where the resources were, there seemed to be so much bureaucracy and red tape around access to those resources that they weren't getting them. And, as you can imagine, I'm in apartment complexes that are upwards of 300 to 500 to 700 units, which means these are thousands of people kind of being affected by this lack of equitable access, is what I call it. And I found myself just wanting to be in a position where I could take the lessons learned over years of working in the city, working with the city attorney's office, working with community, to be able to pull on some very low-hanging fruit that I believe we have, that we can pull on really quickly, but also to be able to contribute to transformative change. I think that we are on the precipice of growth. You hear it all of the time by all of the elected officials and even community members. But what does growth really look like? And I think we are in a position as a city to be an example of how equitable growth can look. I'm from Columbus, and so I'm super excited. I remember when folks used to call us Slowlumbus, right? Nobody was really interested in being in the city of Columbus. So to see Columbus become a city where folks are excited about coming to, where culture is growing, is great. But I want to make sure that growth is accessible by everyone in our community, and that everyone has an opportunity to participate in it. That is why I am running for council: to really continue advocating for the folks I've been advocating for for the last almost decade now, to make sure that when we're growing, our people infrastructure is strong too, so that the cracks that we have — because we have them, right — don't continue to grow, that we can shore up some of that, so that we can really be a city that everybody has an opportunity to thrive. So that's what I'm running.

Tim Fulton 08:34Can we talk — this is maybe a little nuts and bolts — but sort of the path to candidacy? Sure, there was some, you had to go in front of the Board of Elections and say, "Yep, I moved here in order to run." So, like, you've been a couple of — let's say dominoes had to fall, but they were looking like they were gonna fall when Shayla Favor gave up her seat because she's now, what, county prosecutor? Yes. And then there was an appointment process — full disclosure, I was one of those people seeking appointment. You did not seek appointment.

Tiara Ross 09:23I did not.

Tim Fulton 08:34But you had moved into the district in order to fill the seat. Very cool. Talk about, in addition to housing, in addition to access, what are the other sort of big issues you see facing —

Tiara Ross 09:23Yeah. I think that we've got — and when you talk about housing, I think we talk about it in silo a lot, but like, you can't talk about housing without talking about transportation. You can't talk about housing without talking about addressing our unhoused population. Like, all of that conversation has to happen together, right? Because when you talk about building dense communities, that is what also drives economic growth in our communities, right? So we're thinking about trying to mitigate the amount of food deserts that we have in certain communities. All of that comes with building density, right? Making sure that our transportation corridors are doing what they need to do, so people have access to get from one place to the next, but also so that you don't always have to choose a car, even public transit, to get where you need to go. What do walkable communities look like? Where you can walk to or ride your bike to a certain place? All of those things work together toward making our community more affordable and more accessible for working families. But I'm also very interested in making sure that as we grow as a city, that job growth and opportunity also grows. Our costs are increasing, our wages are not, right? The amount of jobs that we have, the types of jobs that we have, how we are preparing our young people to fill those jobs in 2025 looks very different. And so when I think about being a council person, I want to make sure that when we're advocating for affordability, we're doing that in all of the various aspects that matter, housing being one of them, but also, how are we partnering with our public schools and our school board? And I think for years, historically, it's been, "You know, these problems are for the school board, and these problems are for council." I think now, in this environment where the federal government is just gung-ho in disinvestment, disinvesting in people, that we are going to have to change that narrative, right? Like, we're going to have to think about ways that we can partner with our school board and be a real partner and maybe help to fill some of those gaps. So what does that look like? And I think public safety is important. As a woman of color, public safety is always going to be something that I'm thinking about. How can we do it better? How can we make sure that transparency and accountability is first, but also thinking about what does technology uplift look like? How are our officers best suited to respond to the violent crime that's out there? It absolutely is out there. But how are we also looking at investment into our neighborhoods, into our young people, making sure that when school is out, there are productive things for our young people to do? How are we building villages around our young people, young people that may not have villages? How does a community come together to be that? And then also, what does it look like to respond differently to nonviolent incidents? Over half of our calls for service at the Division of Police, as I understand it, are for nonviolent mental health crises. We have a pilot right now, the mobile crisis response, but it's a pilot, so clearly it's not addressing the need. So how do we build the appropriate infrastructure so that it becomes a part of our response to public safety issues in our community? And then again, just equitable access, right? Every zip code should have equity and equitable voice in what's happening in our community. I spend a ton of time in certain communities and certain community meetings, and you're like, "I know that I'm not hearing the full breadth of the need from our community as a whole." And I want to be a council person that's in community and is talking to the communities that don't necessarily always get a chance to have that buy-in. So when we're thinking about our immigrant communities, when we're thinking about our Black and brown communities, when you're thinking about communities that aren't as resourced as some of the neighborhoods in District 7 — because you have other neighborhoods in District 7 that have historically seen disinvestment — how do you bring those folks into the fold to make sure that they also feel like they have buy-in?

Tim Fulton 13:28Fair. Can you talk about, then — so we're only two years into our new districting system. Can you talk about how do you believe that people are represented better by having at least geographic diversity in the council members? Additionally, the fact that they all are voted on citywide.

Tiara Ross 13:51Sure. So geographic representation, I think, is important. And, if I'm right, and you can check me on this, I think the reason in which the current districts were drawn was to really decentralize where council people lived, so that you had council folks living in every part of the city, so that hopefully that would engage council members with different parts of the city that didn't necessarily have the opportunity to be engaged. But it's still a citywide election, so it's not a true ward system. And as I understand it, I don't even think the districts were drawn such that every ward had equal representation, or even equitable representation. So, like, if you think about District 7, we have very different neighborhoods. You have everything from downtown to Italian Village to German Village. Then you have Franklinton and King-Lincoln Bronzeville and Milo-Grogan. And so they're not the same, right? They're not contiguous communities, and they have very different needs from one another sometimes, right? So I don't know that this particular system, the way it's drawn, is truly representative, in a sense that every community would have equitable representation. But I do think it's helpful to have council members that are not all in one part, that don't all live in one part of town. And depending on how well this infrastructure is managed, or this system is managed, really will reflect how much buy-in residents feel like they have in the decisions that council is making.

Tim Fulton 15:37Yeah. And I mean, so to your earlier point, yes, indeed, there were three council members living in what is currently District 7. One of them moved in order to not be in that same district anymore, and one of them just didn't run. So talk about — and I asked, for people who listened to the interview with Jesse Vogel, we talked about the endorsement process, the county endorsement. Talk about your feelings on that, that the party sort of has blessed you as the candidate, that you're on the postcard.

Tiara Ross 16:13I'm grateful to have been the candidate chosen by the party to be able to run as an endorsed Democrat. I worked really hard for that endorsement, and I think it carries with it responsibility — one, not maybe this clear runway to be chosen by the electorate, but really a mandate and a responsibility to make sure that the party itself is doing what's best for the community. That's what I'm really excited about. I think that more elected officials endorsed by the party should make it their job to be in community and to make sure that the party understands what it is that the community needs. So I'm excited to be able to do that kind of work. I think a returning to community is necessary for the party. I don't think that the party is doing everything right, but I also think that in order to be a partner and help the party get to where it should be, which I believe the core values are, we want to make sure everybody has access to meet their needs, right? That is why I'm a Democrat. I believe that's the work we should be doing. We've gotten away from that over the course of the last few years, quite honestly, and I look forward to being able to be a bridge to help get back there. To be a candidate that does the work to get elected, right? To be a candidate that earns people's votes, to be a candidate that moves the needle on behalf of working families.

Tim Fulton 17:46Okay, anything else in your elevator pitch? Like, just what's the pitch of you as a candidate? Yeah, so I've talked about why you're running; talk about why people should vote for you.

Tiara Ross 17:59I have always — or not always, I've started to, because this is my first time running, so you almost, when it's time for people to vote, you're just kind of getting in your stride a little bit. But I've tried to couch my campaign in three E's: equity, empathy, and experience. I am certainly, I believe, the most experienced candidate running for District 7. I have had the opportunity to work in the intersection of housing, which is literally going to be one of the number one issues that we are working with, for the entirety, the lion's share, of my career — not just working in the city attorney's office, but being able to lock arms with the folks in the Department of Development and the Department of Utilities, because utilities is also a thing you need to talk about when you're talking about housing, right — to know who the folks are that really want to see change and really want to hold the line for the residents of the City of Columbus as we are going through growth, but at the same time budget restrictions, at the same time affordability crisis. These are all things we're going to have to intimately work together on. And in order to do that well and do that quickly, you got to have the appropriate relationships. And I think I've been able to build that rapport over the course of the last almost 10 years. Empathy, because that is what I believe I lead with as a woman of color, period. I believe that the folks that are closest to the solution are also the folks that are closest to the problem. And bringing community into the fold, I think, is necessary. We got to stop depending on people to make it to City Hall, but maybe we, as the resourced body, go out to meet the community where they are, so that we are hearing from real people, so we can take those real issues and bring solutions to them on a consistent basis, not just when we're looking for a vote. And then, you know, equity, again. I'm a strong believer that just because a resource is available doesn't mean a resource is accessible. And how are we breaking down those barriers to equitable distribution of our services? I have had the great fortune, I say, because the silver lining in being a part of a lot of crises here in the city of Columbus, and having to pull together county partners and statehouse partners — so if you think about Sawyer Towers, we had to literally displace hundreds of residents on Christmas Day. I was one of the first people to respond to that. Literally worked with our Department of Development to put together a crisis response that we did not have to that issue. But I saw how quickly we were able to snatch down red tape that had been there for years to make sure that we mitigated harm for folks. I don't think that red tape always has to be put back up. Even though we can't operate in crisis — the city can't literally every day operate in crisis — but we can take a moment to step back and say, "What things are necessary, what things are unnecessary?" And if our goal is to move the needle on behalf of real people, then we should be taking away the unnecessary so that folks have access to the things that they need. We're a global city. We've been a global city for a long time, just like we've been in housing crisis for a long time. But whatever, for a long time, right? What do our translation services look like, right? With LinkUS coming, the implementation of that is critical, right? I work in the Wedgewood community a lot. We have thousands of Somali Bantu individuals that don't speak a written language. There's a COTA bus stop right in front of Wedgewood. I'm sure, with all good intention, that bus stop was put there to break down that transportation barrier. Not a lot of those residents use the bus, because they don't know where they're going. I wouldn't use the bus either, right? There was nothing to tell me or to translate how I can get from one place to the next. I really think we have to, from an equity perspective — we have a Department of Equity and Inclusion — we need to start taking those lessons that we know we've learned over the course of many years and start literally building that into the fabric of how we do business as a city, like nuts and bolts, like you said, from the bottom all the way to the top. How are we making our community the most welcoming, the most inclusive and equitable community that we can?

Tim Fulton 22:28Okay. I end every interview with the same two questions. What do you think Columbus is doing well, and what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?

Tiara Ross 22:37Okay. What do I think Columbus is doing well? I honestly think that the public-private partnerships that Columbus has been able to garner over the years have done a lot of good. And when you think about what we're going to have to do in the coming years to fight disinvestment, that private partnership is going to be ever important. We're going to need resources. What I think we can improve on are the guardrails to that. So when we think about incentives, for example, money that's given out by the city to various nonprofit entities and for-profit entities, how are we auditing that to make sure we're reaching the goals that we intend to reach based on the investment that we're giving? I don't think a lot of times — I've never seen the city go through an audit before. When coming from corporate, like, that was a thing, like that just happened. It's just built into how we do business. And I guess, for fear of sounding like I'm a part of a party that I'm not a part of, I do think audit is important, and I think you can still do it in a people-first way, right, that makes sense. I think as we grow, we really need to look at how we are delivering services. Are we doing it effectively? There are programs and policies that have been around longer than I've been alive. Are they still working? Is the money that we're putting into a various corporation or nonprofit, or is the incentive we're giving out to a developer, actually giving back to the community —

Tim Fulton 24:18As promised?

Tiara Ross 24:20Yes, as promised, right? So I think that that is where we could use some help, use some improvement, as a city.

Tim Fulton 24:27Full stop. Okay, yeah. Tiara, thanks for your time.

Tiara Ross 24:31Thank you, Tim. I appreciate you.

Tim Fulton 24:40Thank 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 candidate. 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.