Candidate Profile: Jason Dozier For Atlanta City Council

ATLANTA — Fifty-six City Council candidates are running for 16 seats in Atlanta's Nov. 2 municipal election.

Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles as Election Day draws near.

Jason Dozier is running for Atlanta City Council District 4.

Age (as of Election Day)

38

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Family

Claire (Wife)
Rayna (Daughter)

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

Denison University - Bachelor of Arts in History and Education
University of Georgia - Master of Public Administration
Georgia State University - Master of Science in Real Estate

Occupation

Nonprofit Director - Hire Heroes USA (9 years)

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

None

Campaign website

votedozier.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I'm running for Atlanta City Council because 157 Atlantans were victims of homicides last year, and many more have been killed this year due to pervasive gun violence. Most of these victims were young, black men and children who were ignored by our city’s leaders and who through no fault of their own feel helpless and hopeless.

I'm also running for Atlanta City Council because in the last five years, more than 2,000 Atlantans were injured or killed in collisions with speeding vehicles. These men and women were just living their lives, just trying to cross the street to a bus stop or ride a bike to the corner store or go to school on roadways that are designed for cars and not people. And disproportionately, these victims are black, underserved, and reside in southwest Atlanta communities without sidewalks, crosswalks or street lights.

Finally, I'm running for Atlanta City Council because thousands more are at risk of displacement or eviction. Families who built Atlanta--who built West End and Mozley Park and Oakland City and Mechanicsville--can no longer afford to stay in this city and reap the benefits that come from years of investing in our culture and our history.

I'm running to make our streets, safe streets. I'm running to make our communities, safe communities. I'm running to ensure that we preserve the institutions that made our neighborhoods so special in the first place. I'm running to keep Atlanta, Atlanta, and to ensure that all Atlantans have access to our newfound prosperity and a seat at the table.
The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

There are myriad challenges facing the City of Atlanta right now. Gun violence has increased to significant levels and much of this election cycle has focused on discussions around crime and public safety. But I believe that failing to address our housing and transportation challenges will irrevocably change the City of Atlanta forever. Housing and transportation are inextricably linked, and so I would advocate for policies that can change that dynamic.

Firstly, Atlanta has a housing shortage. I believe that everyone should be able to live in the community of their choosing and that Atlanta needs to do more to protect both legacy residents and the next generation of young talent and leaders who can no longer afford to stay in the communities that raised them. I'm fighting to ensure that families that have been the organizational backbone of our communities for decades can continue to shape our city’s cultural legacy as we continue to gain new residents. But the only way to do that is to make sure that everyone has a place to live.

Legacy residents are fighting tooth and nail to stay in their communities at the same time that young transplants with well-paying jobs are hoping to live in trendy communities close to the BeltLine. On top of that, graduates of Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta University, and Georgia State University want to continue to live in the city where they’ve chosen to pursue their education. Everyone’s competing for the same limited housing stock, and housing prices are skyrocketing because of it. But unfortunately, new housing is being built at less than half the pace as our peak in the mid-2000s. In short, we’re not building enough housing supply to meet that demand.

Buildings that used to be duplexes or triplexes are being converted to accommodate only individual families, and there are few mechanisms in place to reverse this. In fact, duplexes and triplexes are flat-out banned in many of our communities. Reducing barriers in our zoning policies mean that we would give families freedom of choice. Freedom to choose our communities. Freedom to choose housing that best accommodates our lifestyles. Freedom to choose amenities and access to jobs. I believe that Atlanta shouldn't limit those choices.

In addition to this, many of our vulnerable, transitioning communities have a higher rate of residents who rely on walking, biking, or riding the bus to get to work, school, and everything in between. But these communities also lack the infrastructure allowing residents to move safely. In fact, District 4 has one of the highest rates of collisions between pedestrians and motor vehicles, which means that these crashes are disproportionately injuring or killing black and low-income residents.

Despite this reality, there has already been $2.5 million set aside for District 4 to deliver long-promised and badly needed street-calming solutions, including speed bumps, speed tables, and sidewalks to slow down speeding cars.

In conclusion, I believe I would have the most immediate impact by rectifying these missed opportunities to make our streets safer for kids, seniors, pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders. Separately, I’ll make necessary adjustments in our zoning laws to allow for more housing types to be built. These are fixes that have been desperately needed and long-demanded by neighbors, and I intend on delivering on this promise to our communities.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I've lived in Mechanicsville for the past six years, serving as a community leader and organizer fighting for housing justice, access to safe streets, and putting an end to the flooding that has so badly ravaged our south Atlanta communities. My whole life has been centered around service--first to our country, and now to our community. As a combat veteran, I served in the Army for six years. That included more than two years leading as an officer in deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Professionally, for the past nine years, I've grown a national nonprofit from 15 employees to 120 in order to help tens of thousands of military veterans and military spouses find good-paying jobs across America. I’ve also served on the boards of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, Advance Atlanta, the BeltLine Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee, the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition, the Intrenchment Creek Community Stewardship Council, the Mechanicsville Civic Association, and in various roles with Neighborhood Planning Unit V.

And it’s because of these diverse experiences, I believe that I am uniquely qualified to take Atlanta’s challenges head-on.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

hat do you identify as the root causes of the recent and ongoing increase in violent crime, and how would you address the issue?

First, I would acknowledge that public safety shouldn’t be centered around policing. In fact, I believe in safer neighborhoods supported through strategies that broaden our public safety tools and rethink the role of police in our communities. To make this a reality, I believe we must invest in wraparound services centered on social work, community organizing, and economic development, intervening in adverse behavior, and providing stability and opportunities for at-risk youth. Decentering policing would help reduce racial inequity and inequality in our communities.

To achieve that, I believe that the City of Atlanta must create a Department of Public Safety that recognizes that Atlanta’s myriad public safety needs and challenges require solutions beyond policing. The city must also recognize that much of this work has already been done by organizations, nonprofits, and faith groups for a long time. Atlanta must encourage partnerships with existing community institutions and nonprofits to ensure that ongoing complementary programming and support services are enhanced rather than replaced.

Policing is still an important part of public safety, but more work needs to be done to ensure that it's an effective part of public safety. That means changing the culture of policing in our city to encourage more foot patrols in our communities, ensuring that officers are seen, accessible, and made accountable to our citizens. That also means addressing issues related to police retention and morale and investing in programs encouraging residency in policed communities, ultimately breaking barriers between officers and those they are sworn to protect.

Do you support or oppose the creation of Buckhead City? Why or why not?

A Buckhead cityhood would make it harder for our city and our region to address public safety. Public safety is a regional problem, and it’s harder to find a regional solution to these issues when we have so much fracturing across competing localities. Fragmentation across our 140 cities and 28 counties has already disrupted our ability to find comprehensive solutions to transportation, housing, and economic development, and public safety is no exception. Yet another municipality means yet another police force, yet another court system, yet another obstruction on the path to accountability, and yet another redundant bureaucracy competing for already-limited resources.

Residents in my community in southwest Atlanta want the same things as those in Buckhead do. And I believe that the loss of Buckhead’s tax base would make it more difficult for Atlanta to fund the public safety measures that Buckhead residents are demanding, including hiring more police officers. In fact, increases in violent crime impact my community more than other parts of the city. And so, we need to work together and unite to push for new approaches to fighting crime throughout the city.

It is also not lost on me that none of Buckhead's political leadership--none of its representatives on Atlanta City Council, or Fulton County Commission, or the Georgia State Legislature, or even members of the business community such as the Buckhead Coalition and Buckhead CID--are pushing for this measure. It’s been a pet project of a vocal minority with outsized influence at the Georgia Assembly, and I believe that needs to be called out. That doesn’t make the concern of Buckhead residents any less valid, but it does take our focus away from actually solving the public safety challenges that the city, region, and state are facing. I believe strongly that humoring the ill-thought-out fantasies of a few short-sighted agitators imperils not only Atlanta but also our region and our state.

How would your administration react to the creation of Buckhead City and the resulting loss of a major residential, commercial and cultural center and significant source of tax revenue? How would you respond to residents and businesses in that community if cityhood were rejected?

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

I'm fighting to: preserve access to quality affordable housing; build safer neighborhoods supported through strategies that broaden our public safety tools and rethinks the role of police in our communities; ensure that Atlanta plays a bigger role in reversing the effects of climate change; preserve our city's cultural diversity by protecting and strengthening our city's arts community; put an end to the blighted properties that hurts our neighborhoods and depresses our tax base; empower citizens to be informed, engaged, and to hold their elected officials accountable; and guarantee an open, honest, and responsive government that values citizen input and community engagement.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

My story as a community organizer and advocate began after my wife and I moved into Atlanta’s Mechanicsville community several years ago after searching for affordable housing opportunities close to the heart of Atlanta. While we succeeded, we also found neighbors, businesses, and community institutions that had existed in the community for decades that were at risk of being displaced due to market forces driving up the cost of living across the city. This was compounded by the announcement that Turner Field would be sold to a development team which included Georgia State University and Carter USA.

I loved my neighbors and my community, and I was committed to fighting to ensure that these families could stay in their homes for decades to come. Because of that, I volunteered to serve my neighborhood, my Neighborhood Planning Unit, and the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition. Eventually, I went on to serve as spokesperson for TFCBC, fighting to make sure that our communities had a voice when decisions were made at City Hall. Our organization fought to ensure that approval of any sale agreement be conditioned upon or require a Community Benefits Agreement between the affected neighborhood and the development team.

In our struggle to ensure our communities had a seat at the table, I quickly recognized that Atlanta City Council was a significant, continuous roadblock that threatened our ability to guide the future of our neighborhoods. The city was aggressively pushing for legislation that allowed developers to sidestep the community input process established by the Neighborhood Planning Unit system. As per city rules, NPUs enable citizens to express ideas and comment on city plans and proposals while assisting the city in developing priorities that best meet the needs of their communities. However, the ordinances being pushed by Council effectively curtailed that community input by circumventing the zoning review and zoning adjustment processes which traditionally provided the mechanism for citizen engagement.

We believed that submitting and voting on legislation without community input—legislation which ultimately closes the door to other legally mandated opportunities for community engagement—was unsatisfactory, and that it ultimately failed to adequately balance the obligations of the public and private interests involved in the sale with the needs of the community.

I took our fight to City Hall, demanding that city leaders condition the sale of Turner Field on a legally binding community benefits agreement. While the Coalition wasn’t successful in getting a Community Benefits Agreement signed, the Coalition was able to get the City of Atlanta to designate $5 million to support projects and activities that benefit the communities surrounding Turner Field.

Beyond my work with the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition, for five years, I served as Vice President for the Mechanicsville Civic Association, where I oversaw many of the neighborhood’s efforts to keep families safe and in their homes. Mechanicsville has one of the lowest life expectancies in metro Atlanta, and I have fought tirelessly to reverse this, working to clean up the neighborhood and make it a safe place for our kids and our seniors.

As members of the Dunbar Elementary School PTA, my wife and I have partnered with the school over the years to help improve outcomes for kids in the neighborhood. This includes helping Dunbar start a bike club for its kids from scratch and helping to expand its Safe Routes to School program.

As a bike commuter and MARTA rider, I have been fighting tirelessly for safe streets in Atlanta for nearly a decade. I have fought to get streets repaved in communities across southwest Atlanta so that our roadways are safe for our kids and our seniors. My advocacy has directly led to the creation of two new bus routes: the #832 which connects West End to East Atlanta through Mechanicsville, and the #40 which connects West End to Midtown through Downtown.

Furthermore, I served on the boards of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and Advance Atlanta, two organizations focused on expanding safe, equitable transportation access. Through my work with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, I helped the organization transition its mission from cycling advocacy to a broader focus around the urgent need for safer streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. As a board member with Advance Atlanta, I worked on campaigns to expand transit into Gwinnett County, which would have opened up more job opportunities and economic resources to Atlanta residents.

Lastly, I currently lead the Intrenchment Creek Community Stewardship Council, an organization working to reverse decades of environmental injustice impacting the residents of our south Atlanta communities. Through ICCSC, I have been working to restore, revitalize, and protect the ecological health of the Intrenchment Creek Watershed Basin through the lens of equity and is actively working to fight displacement and flooding.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

Out of sincere love for this community, I ran for this exact seat in 2017. As a first-time candidate, I took a then-six-term incumbent into a runoff for the first time in her career. In the end, I lost by just 240 votes, one of the tightest margins of any race in that year’s municipal elections. Four years later, I’m back to finish what I started, and I believe our voters are ready to embrace the change that our district deserves.

The issues I’m fighting to solve are based on my lived experience organizing in marginalized spaces. We’re losing too many of our citizens to senseless street violence. Many of them were young, black men and children who were ignored by our city’s elected officials and who through no fault of their own felt helpless and hopeless in their own neighborhoods.

Others are injured or dying because poor road design makes it extremely difficult and unsafe for people to walk or bike to destinations. These were men and women who were just living their lives, just trying to cross the street to a bus stop or ride a bike to the corner store or go to school on roadways that are designed for cars and not people. Experiences I’m far too familiar with having been a transit commuter myself for years. And disproportionately, the victims of these basic infrastructure discrepancies are black, underserved, and reside in southwest Atlanta communities without sidewalks, crosswalks or street lights.

At the end of the day, families who built Atlanta--who built West End and Mozley Park and Oakland City and Mechanicsville--are getting displaced and can no longer afford to stay in this city to reap the benefits that come from years of investing in our culture and our history.

We have to remedy that, and it’s why I’m running. We owe our communities so much more than what they’ve been provided.