Polonne Sunflower Garden
Co-founded the garden on Wisconsin Avenue. Add a line on what it is and the Polonne connection — most neighbors won’t know it.
About
Meet Connor
Connor is a 14-year Washingtonian, originally from Connecticut, who lives here with his fiancée Lindsey.
He began as a Peace Corps schoolteacher. He has bicycled across America more than once to raise money for affordable housing. Today he works for a charity that leads humanitarian aid convoys into Ukraine.
What ties that together isn’t heroics. It’s a habit of showing up for work that is difficult, slow, and largely invisible — which is a fair description of a commissioner’s job, and the reason he wants it.
Optional: one or two sentences in his own voice on why this seat, and why now.
Before the ballot
He didn’t wait
Wisconsin Avenue
Across the district
Last winter
He didn’t wait
to be elected
Everything below happened without a title attached to it.
Adopt-a-block cleanups
Organized and led a community cleanup program across the neighborhood.
Winter weather support
Set up a group chat connecting neighbors who needed a walk cleared with neighbors who had a shovel and an hour.
The plan
What he’ll do
Streets
Streets you can
Housing
Building that
Main street
Storefronts worth
What he’ll do
for your block
A commissioner’s power is narrower than people expect and sharper than they realize. The commission recommends — and DC agencies must give those recommendations great weight. It votes on the licenses that decide what opens on our commercial blocks. And it can pry loose the city services that ignore an individual resident.
Connor would use all three for the same handful of things.
Streets you can
cross safely
Reno Road reform and speed humps top the list, along with real benches at bus stops, sidewalks that are safe to walk, and a more bike-friendly city.
Building that
fits Ward 3
Sensible development and affordable housing that follow the ward’s historic development patterns instead of ignoring them.
Storefronts worth
walking to
Thriving small businesses along Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues, fewer vacancies, and real improvements to Bryce Park and the spaces we share.
How he’ll serve
Answers on the
Answers on the
first call
Two thousand residents, one seat, and a monthly meeting most people can’t attend. How a commissioner operates matters as much as how they vote: semi-regular office hours at a real place and time, zero tolerance for conflicts of interest, and a reply on the first call rather than the fifth.
Beyond 3C08, he wants to lead city-wide reform of the ANC system itself — making commissions across DC more proactive and more empowered, so the closest layer of government to residents is also a useful one.
That starts with listening. This plan should change as he knocks doors, so if your block has a problem that isn’t on it, that’s worth an email — he answers his own.
