Thank you for your interest in my campaign.
Working for Frederick County’s Future:
Vibrant. Affordable. Sustainable.
We live in a wonderful place. And, as a community and as a local government, we do a lot of things well. But we are faced with a diverse range of specific and important issues in Frederick County.
Local government has an enormous impact on our day to day lives. The next County Executive must not only share your values, but ensure that our county government functions efficiently and effectively, and that it is honest and ethical, open and transparent, forward-looking and innovative. Frederick County can and must support the residents and businesses in a continuing effort to be a more vibrant, affordable and sustainable community.
No matter what our form of local government may be, it is vital to elect people who understand that county government should and can work well to represent the interests and protect the well-being of our evolving community.
Too often, and for too long, we have approached a broad range of issues and challenges in our county as if they are completely separate matters, each to be viewed and addressed individually, as if they are not related or connected to each other. But most of the important issues and challenges we confront, as well as opportunities they present are related and connected.
We will not have the ability or the money to adequately face the challenges ahead if we only react to each problem as it comes, and try to resolve them one at a time. A smart, more proactive approach, and effective solutions to one challenge, should not create new or worse problems in another.
If we want to thrive and prosper, especially as the county grows and the world around us changes, we need decision-makers who understand the connections, who are committed to good process, who care about everyone in our community and will work…with you…toward real and lasting solutions.
Below please find brief comments about a number of important issues, most of which link to additional information further down the page for those who want to take a deeper dive. Over the coming days and weeks, we will be adding a lot more information about Kai’s record and platform in some of these categories, as well as adding some other subjects, such as “Working with our Municipalities,” “Waste Management,” “The Arts in Frederick County,”
EDUCATION
The future and success of Frederick County is inseparable from the future of Frederick County Public Schools. Their success is our success. Kai knows every child should have the opportunity to receive a high-quality education. He is committed to investing in our public schools to ensure our teachers and students have the resources they need to be successful. Frederick County can’t thrive and prosper without an outstanding and well-supported public school system that will benefit us all, that can lift families in marginalized communities, build a strong workforce with more diverse skills, and keep Frederick County a great place to live and work. [READ MORE…]
GROWTH: LAND USE, PLANNING and DEVELOPMENT
In a variety of roles, Kai has been highly and effectively engaged in every comprehensive planning process in Frederick County over the last twenty years. He has not simply been involved, however. Kai has been a knowledgeable, strong and effective advocate — a proven leader — for land use policies that protect our quality of life, our environment, natural resources, open space, rural communities and our public health. Policies that respect and reflect fundamental Smart Growth principles, and contribute to more efficient public infrastructure and services. Policies that make Frederick County more sustainable and more economically dynamic and competitive. [READ MORE…]
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Kai has been a champion for Frederick’s working families and small businesses for decades. Our community is strongest when we have a dynamic and sustainable economy that works for everyone and effectively addresses the diverse needs of Frederick County citizens and businesses, from the City of Frederick and our small towns to our rural communities.
As a county commissioner and a council member, Kai has worked to support our small business owners, grow our tourism industry, and support our farmers in Frederick County in many ways. But he also understands that our businesses are part of a broader community, and their success, and our ability to attract new business, is inseparable from the overall quality of life in our communities — attractive and affordable communities with great public schools, nice parks, a vibrant arts community and a great deal more.
Under Kai’s leadership, Frederick County will continue to do everything it takes to maintain that strong and relatively rare bond rating, which reflects good management and saves county taxpayers a considerable amount of money.
ENVIRONMENT and GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
Over the past few decades, Kai has been a strong, tireless and effective leader in the fight to protect our environment, as an active community leader, as a Frederick County Commissioner, as the Executive Director of Envision Frederick County for ten years, as a co-founder of the Smarter Growth Alliance of Frederick County, and as a Frederick County Council member today. Our environment is Frederick County. It is our home. And Kai has a very long and impressive record of working effectively to protect our environment in Frederick County.
AGRICULTURAL PRESERVATION
Frederick County has been growing and changing in many ways. Those changes have included the conversion of thousands of acres of farmland for residential, commercial and industrial development. In the long run, the only farmland we will have left is the farmland that we actively preserve.
There are roughly 185,000 acres of farmland remaining in Frederick County. The county has a long term goal of preserving 100,000 acres of agricultural land. We can be proud that we have permanently preserved approximately 70,000 acres of farmland. The current administration and council has increased our commitment to farmland preservation. But it is not acceptable for 85,000 acres of our remaining farmland to be developed. It’s time to update our goal to 150,000 acres, and further ratchet up our commitment to make it a meaningful and realistic goal. [READ MORE…]
RURAL COMMUNITIES and FARM ECONOMY
Frederick County has one of the strongest agricultural economies in Maryland. Simply maintaining the basic viability of our agricultural communities and farming economy rests on a foundation of preserving most of our remaining rural and agricultural landscape. But maintaining and expanding the economic strength of agriculture in Frederick County will depend on a lot more than just ensuring that there is still an agricultural landscape. [READ MORE…]
PARKS and RECREATION…and TRAILS
Healthy and thriving communities must have an attractive and abundant combination of small community parks, gardens and playgrounds, larger regional parks, nature-oriented parks and trails that are accessible to all citizens. Kai has been a strong and effective advocate for expanding our park system and broadening its mission. [READ MORE…]
PUBLIC SAFETY
Public safety is an absolutely essential responsibility of local government. Kai as a long and consistent record of support for our critical emergency response, fire and rescue, law enforcement and public health services, including ensuring each of these vital agencies has the funding necessary to support competitive wages and operate in modern facilities with the appropriate technology upgrades. [READ MORE…]
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Virtually everyone understands that owning a home or renting an apartment in Frederick County has become more expensive, leaving it increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for growing percentage of the people who live and work here. A healthy and prospering community should not be unaffordable for the teachers and nurses and firefighters and retail workers and so many others that work here, providing so many of the basic services that support our community and make it a great place to live…for those who can afford it.
This is not an easy problem to solve. We do have some good programs and local organizations to help address the issue here, but and isn’t enough, and the problem is getting worse. This has been a priority for Kai for a long time, and he understands many and innovative approaches we can take, and how we can better utilize some of the tools we already have.
ALICE
“ALICE” is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. As reported by the United Way ALICE Project, more than a third of the households in Frederick County (37%) are struggling to make ends meet. That means 35,291 county households cannot easily afford basic needs such as housing, child care, transportation and health care, as well as food and technology. We can do more to address this and make our county stronger. [READ MORE…]
SENIORS
As commissioner, I was a strong supporter of the Department of Aging, Senior Centers, Citizens Care and Rehabilitation Center, Meals on Wheels and much more. As vital as these and other facilities and programs are, however, with a rapidly growing senior population, we have to better address other issues, too, such as affordable housing, better transit options, tax breaks for low income seniors, etc.
OPEN and TRANSPARENT LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Frederick County government must be open and transparent, honest and thoughtful, practical and problem-solving. In every way, since Kai first ran for and won a seat on the Frederick County Board of County Commissioners, he has been 100% committed to the most open and transparent county government possible.
As a county commissioner, Kai supported many improvements to the way county government functions, from things as seemingly mundane as improvements to the county website and the utilization of social media to strengthening the county’s ethics ordinance and passing lobbying reform. [READ MORE…]
Infrastructure
When it comes to much of our public infrastructure, doing business as usual, or “the way it has always been done,” has not been working. There are many reasons for that, but the single biggest factor affecting our ability to adequately plan for, pay for, develop and maintain adequate infrastructure is land use and planning.
Applying Smart Growth principles to our long term vision, planning and implementation would go a long way to ensuring that adequate infrastructure is properly developed to meet the needs as they arise and are anticipated…AND ensuring that it is more efficient and affordable. [READ MORE…]
[READ MORE about why the following two items are last on this list.]
EQUITY and INCLUSION
Kai has always been a strong and active advocate for civil rights, racial equity and social justice. Near the end of his first year on the county council (December of 2019), Kai began a very public process, working with stakeholders and others in our community, to draft what was then referred to as a “Racial Equity and Social Justice” bill.
The ultimate version that passed last year to “Establish an Office of Equity and Inclusion” was an excellent step for Frederick County, and one important element of the bill is that it will ensure that all proposed legislation is reviewed through the lens of racial equity.
But there is more to do. Incontrovertible data makes it clear that significant racial disparities continue to persist in our communities, in economic opportunity, health care, housing, public safety, criminal justice and other aspects of life in our society. We have to recognize and understand the problem, and commit to being actively engaged, with the affected communities, in ongoing efforts to make more progress.
CLIMATE CRISIS
Our global climate crisis is real. And Frederick County is not an island.
Frederick County has taken some good steps to reduce our contribution to global climate change, we we’re not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to sequester carbon and to become more resilient in the face of the changes and threats we are already experiencing and will face.
He was proud to co-sponsor the Climate Emergency Resolution which passed in July, 2020. A key aspects of that was to establish a Climate Emergency Mobilization Workgroup (CEMWG), with the City of Frederick, which worked diligently for a year to produce an outstanding and Climate Response and Resilience report that included dozens of well-supported recommendations, and provides a roadmap for how we can more effectively contribute to a healthy climate future!
It is important to note that virtually all of the recommendations are for steps and changes that would offer real and important benefits to our community even if climate change was not an issue, including improvements to our local air and water quality, our farms and forests, public health and economic competitiveness in our changing world.
Take a deeper dive below into the issues described above!
Education
The future and success of Frederick County is inseparable from the future of Frederick County Public Schools. It is impossible to share a vision of a thriving and prosperous future for Frederick County that does not include an outstanding and well-supported public school system.
A public school system that will benefit us all, that can lift families in marginalized communities, build a strong workforce with more diverse skills, and keep Frederick County a thriving place to live and work.
Despite funding above Maintenance of Effort levels (“MOE,” or the minimum allowed under Maryland law) for seven consecutive budgets, we have not gotten out of the hole created during six consecutive years of MOE funding, and Frederick County remains last in per pupil funding in Maryland. That is completely unacceptable. We are 15th when it comes to the per pupil allocation from the county. But still at 24th of 24 when it comes to overall per pupil allocation, given differences in funding from other sources (most substantially the state).
As Frederick County Executive, I will commit to a four year plan to move Frederick County from 24th of 24 in per pupil funding to 12th in Maryland, at least.
My commitment to public education goes well beyond simply supporting responsible budgets. In far more ways and more dramatically than most people fully appreciate, making the wrong choices makes it significantly less likely we would have the financial resources that are required to fully fund what must be a top goal and priority. Schools…and our school system…are not islands that can or will fare as well as possible, even with adequate funding, if they are not also part of a healthy community, with safe and attractive neighborhoods, with affordable housing, with adequate and accessible parks and other recreational opportunities, with clean air and water, and so on, in a broader community with a sound, diverse and sustainable economy and a well-managed local government that provides efficient and effective public services.
As Frederick County grows and thrives, elected officials are responsible for making many significant choices about how we shape our community and our future. That could be an entirely separate and substantial conversation, but the shorthand version of it means adhering to the full range of Smart Growth principles as our community adds tens of thousands of new residents (and students), and we — including our public school system — are faced with all the genuine challenges and opportunities that come with that.
County budgets are a reflection of our values, goals and priorities, and as Frederick County grows and changes, we have to be fully committed to public education, as a top priority. That includes consistently and reliably funding FCPS at a level that supports a genuine commitment to having and maintaining a top notch public school experience for every student in the county, no matter where they live and no matter what individual challenges they face.
I appreciate that it might not sound ambitious to shoot for number 12. But this is an ambitious and reasonable and necessary goal for our county (at least as a starting point).
Achieving it will require a serious and significant commitment. The kind of commitment you make and adhere to when it is a top priority.
GROWTH: Land Use, Planning and Development
In a variety of roles, Kai has been highly and effectively engaged in every comprehensive planning process in Frederick County over the last twenty years. Here are a few examples.
In 2002, Kai was appointed by the 2002-2006 Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to serve on the 15-member Citizens Zoning Review Committee (CZRC). The committee was charged with providing information to the BOCC, upon which to base future decisions regarding the revision and updating ofthe Frederick County Zoning Ordinance. A significant part of the CZRC’s responsibility was to gather and consider input from the citizens of the county. The CZRC reviewed and discussed and debated every section (every word) of the county’s comprehensive plan.
Between 2002 and 2005, Kai wrote dozens of columns about local issues, most of which were published in the Frederick News Post and the Gazette. The columns cover a wide range of subjects, but many of them addressed issues of growth and development, land use and planning. A lot has changed, but the columns hold up well. You can read any or all of them here (http://www.catoctinmountain.com/columns.html)
Starting in 2004, until he ran for the Frederick Board of County Commissioners in 2006, Kai served as the director of the Frederick Regional Action Network (FRAN). FRAN was an early effort to effectively organize county residents around issues of growth and planning. It was dedicated to preserving and enhancing the social, economic and environmental health and vitality of our community, promoting common sense solutions to persistent challenges associated with growth and development through effective public education and advocacy, community organizing and networking, and facilitating increased citizen participation in the public decision-making processes that affect our lives and shape our future.
Through his work with FRAN, Kai was engaged with communities of concerned county residents on a variety of important local issues in almost every part of the county, on issues as focused as saving the “Indian Cave” in the Lake Linganore community or working to stop the Urban Power Loop transmission line through the Sugarloaf area, or as broad as county government issues such as strengthening the county’s Adequate Public Facilities ordinance to fighting to improve a disastrous New Market Region Plan.
From 2006 through 2010, Kai served as one of the five members of the Frederick County Board of County Commissioners. During the same four years, Kai also served on the Frederick County Planning Commission. Among countless other things during those four years, there was a great deal of attention given to improving the county’s land use policies, ordinance and planning documents. That included re-writing the New Market Region Plan, strengthening the county’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, passing legislation to protect forests and stream buffers and much more. Perhaps the single most significant land use and planning related accomplishment of that BOCC was the development of the 2010 Frederick County Comprehensive Plan, which took a much more comprehensive look at how we shape our communities than had been done in the past, and was in place for nine years.
For exactly ten years beginning in January, 2011, Kai served as the Director of Envision Frederick County (https://envisionfrederickcounty.org/), a non-partisan non-profit organization with a bipartisan board of directors that founded on the principle that informed public discourse and active engagement of individuals and groups in our civic life is essential to our well-being and prosperity,” according to the mission statement. A major part of Envision Frederick County’s work was (and still is) concentrated on land use and environmental issues and choices facing Frederick County.
Before being elected as a Frederick County Council member, at-large, Kai was heavily engaged in the process of developing the new county comprehensive plan, known as Livable Frederick (https://ww3.frederickcountymd.gov/lfmp/), including being appointed as a member of the Energy and Environment Working Group. The process of developing Livable Frederick overlapped into Kai’s term on the Frederick County Council, so he had an additional opportunity to support it as a voting member. And, before that, to offer a number of amendments, most of which passed, to strengthen it, particularly with regard to the environment and climate change.
The abbreviated but still impressive history above is shared to illustrate the depth and breadth of Kai’s long experience with growth and development, land use and planning issues in Frederick County. He has not simply been involved, however. He has been a knowledgeable, strong and effective advocate — a proven leader — for land use policies that protect our quality of life, our environment, natural resources and rural communities, and our public health. Policies that respect and reflect fundamental Smart Growth principles, and contribute to more efficient public infrastructure and services. Policies that make Frederick County more sustainable and more economically dynamic and competitive.
Frederick County has benefited enormously and been presented with real challenges by our proximity to two major metropolitan areas. We also benefit today from our historic past, our rich natural resources, our good agricultural soils, our relative mild weather and our location along or at the crossroads of major rivers, rail and highways.
Our good fortune comes with both challenges and opportunities. If we do not plan wisely and well, we will sacrifice a great deal of what we love about where we live, while exacerbating many of the problems we have and challenges we face ahead.
We won’t get where we could — where we would like to get — by accident. Good planning that reflects proper priorities matters, a lot.
One key to being able to avoid serious problems is to embrace and apply Smart Growth principles when planning and shaping our future.
Below is a list of some of the basic principles to guide smart growth strategies:
• Mix land uses.
• Take advantage of compact building design.
• Create a range of housing opportunities and choices.
• Create walkable neighborhoods.
• Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.
• Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
• Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities.
• Provide a variety of transportation choices.
• Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective.
• Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
These are practical and proven planning principles. And applying them, in concert with other basic/core values, such as equity, social justice and opportunity, commitment to education, etc., not only contributes substantially to a broad range of positive outcomes for our community, it enables the investment of otherwise inefficiently spent or wasted financial resources back into the kinds of systems and programs that are designed to address a variety of remaining, but fewer, critical unmet needs.
There is a lot more to say about a range of issues related to growth and development, land use and planning, because it is an inherently large and complicated set of issues, and because the choices we make about how we grow shape the community we love and affect virtually everything. That’s why it will come up in other discussions about a long list of other issues, which are really not separate matters, such as affordable housing, transportation, parks and recreation, public education, the cost of basic infrastructure and public services and much more.
Frederick County needs leadership that has that experience and knowledge, and who understands how all these things are connected. Someone that has the right values and vision, and that can and will be an honest broker in dealing with complicated development issues and powerful development interests. Someone who will do that with the interests of our community and all its residents at the heart of every process and every decision.
Economic Development
Kai has been a champion for Frederick’s working families and small businesses for decades. Our community is strongest when we have a dynamic and sustainable economy that works for everyone and effectively addresses the diverse needs of Frederick County citizens and businesses, from the City of Frederick and our small towns to our rural communities.
As a county commissioner and a council member, Kai has worked to support our small business owners, grow our tourism industry, and support our farmers in Frederick County. His record on economic development includes support for the Frederick County Office of Economic Development, including the Small Business Development Center, the Fast Track Program the Business and Employment Center; serving for four years as the liaison to the Frederick County Tourism Council and the Agricultural Business Council, supporting investments in the Small Business Loan Fund, as well as support the Frederick Innovative Technology Center, the Arts and Entertainment Tax District., filling vacant spaces through the Redevelopment Tax Credit and much more.
But Kai also understands that our businesses, small and large, are part of a broader community, and their success, and our ability to attract new business, is part and parcel, and inseparable from the overall quality of life in our communities — attractive and affordable communities with great public schools, nice parks, a vibrant arts community and a great deal more.
Good planning, responsible budgeting and high quality public facilities and services are among the reasons that Frederick County has achieved and maintained a Triple A bond rating from all three rating agencies in recent years. Under Kai’s leadership, Frederick County will continue to do everything it takes to maintain that strong and relatively rare bond rating, which reflects good management and saves county taxpayers a considerable amount of money.
Preserving our Environment and our Green Infrastructure
Over the past few decades, Kai has been a strong, tireless and effective leader in the fight to protect our environment, as an active community leader, as a Frederick County Commissioner, as the Executive Director of Envision Frederick County for ten years, as a co-founder of the Smarter Growth Alliance of Frederick County, and as a Frederick County Council member today.
Our environment is Frederick County. It is our home. It is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we garden and farm, the forests and fields, streams and rivers, mountains and valleys, and all the creatures that share it with us. We are blessed to live in a beautiful place, with a rich diversity of landscapes. Protecting our home means preserving and even enhancing its ecology and biological diversity, an even as our natural environment faces a myriad of other threats and challenges, from poorly planned development to invasive species to climate change.
Kai has a long and impressive record of working effectively to protect our environment in Frederick County, we’ll be adding more details here shortly about the long list of specific ways he has initiated and supported the important progress Frederick County has made in protecting our environment.
Agricultural Land Preservation
Over the past few decades, Frederick County has been growing and changing in many ways. Those changes have included the conversion of thousands of acres of farmland for residential, commercial and industrial development. As the county grows, it is essential to appreciate that, in the long run, the only farmland we will have left is the farmland that we actively preserve.
Today, there are roughly 185,000 acres of farmland remaining in Frederick County. That is a little more than 40% of the entire county. For many years, Frederick County has had a long term goal of preserving 100,000 of agricultural land. Through a variety of different local and state programs, we can be proud of the fact that we have permanently preserved approximately 70,000 acres of farmland.
Under the current administration and council, Frederick County has increased its commitment to farmland preservation., but I sincerely doubt that most Frederick County residents, whether they live in the countryside or the City of Frederick, think it is a good or acceptable idea for 85,000 acres of our remaining farmland to be developed.
It is time to update our long term goal to 150,000 acres, and continue to ratchet up our commitment to the land use, planning and zoning policies and funding that make it a meaningful and realistic goal.
To go further, for the last two decades, I have supported the utilization of a variety of tools to more aggressively preserve a broad swath of farmland and forest across southern Frederick County. On the east side of the county, that has included drawing and holding the line at Interstate 270, from the Montgomery County line to the Monocacy River. But the idea is bigger than that.
Consider that the southern part of the county already has Sugarloaf Mountain, a long stretch of the winding Monocacy River, the Monocacy Natural Resources Area, the Potomac River and C&O Canal National Park, Carrollton Manor Rural Legacy Area and the Mid-Maryland Frederick County Rural Legacy Area, the southern reaches of Catoctin Mountain and thousands of acres of South Mountain State Park. These areas and more provide a very substantial foundation for protecting the region from sprawl and other large scale development, and ensuring that many unincorporated communities, such as Buckeystown, Adamstown, Point of Rocks, Jefferson and Burkittsville maintain their identities as distinct communities set in a rural landscape.
Our Rural Communities and Agricultural Economy
Frederick County has one of the strongest agricultural economies in Maryland. Simply maintaining the basic viability of our agricultural communities and farming economy rests on a foundation of preserving most of our remaining rural and agricultural landscape.
But maintaining and improving the economic strength of agriculture in Frederick County will depend on a lot more than just ensuring that there is still an agricultural landscape. In other words, preserving farmland is a necessary first step, but having a thriving rural and agricultural economy as part of Frederick County’s future requires understanding the circumstances and changes that challenge farmers and threaten farming in our county and region, including the development and fragmentation of our farms, increasing costs, global and shifting markets, technological changes, a changing climate and much more.
We will be sharing more information and details here in the coming weeks.
Parks and Recreation…and Trails
Healthy and thriving communities must have an attractive and abundant combination of small community parks, gardens and playgrounds, larger regional parks, nature-oriented parks and trails that are accessible to all citizens. Kai has been a strong and effective advocate for expanding our park system and broadening its mission.
Kai’s focus on supporting parks, trails and nature centers began more than two decades ago, when he was on the Fountain Rock Nature Center and spent eight years on the Frederick County Parks and Recreation Commission. He has diligently worked to ensure that Frederick County is able to provide a diverse mix of attractive parks, accessible to county residents wherever they live, as the county grows.
Kai coached youth soccer and basketball for more than fifteen years, and still plays both as often as he can. He understands the importance of having enough outdoor and indoor facilities for youth and adults to practice and play, informally and in organized leagues. And he is proud of what he has done to support the dramatic expansion of our county’s recreational parks and facilities.
But he also worked to broaden and diversify the scope and mission of our park system, advancing the idea that our park system has to be about more than active sports venues and playgrounds. As Frederick County’s urban and suburban communities grow, it is essential to establish more parks that preserve natural areas and provide for nature-oriented experiences.
He is particularly proud of his advocacy and support for the beautiful Catoctin Creek Nature Center, in the Middletown Valley.
He is also proud of the initiative he took early in his term as a Frederick County Commissioner to change Frederick County Parks and Recreation from a department within the Frederick County Public Works Division to a new upper level Division of county government (in 2007).
As the county grows and changes, it is going to be very important to plan ahead and make the necessary investments to ensure that all county residents have access to a rich and diverse array of community parks, gardens and playground, larger regional parks, nature preserves and better connected walking and biking trails.
Public Safety
Public safety is an absolutely essential responsibility of local government. Kai as a long and consistent record of support for our critical emergency response, fire and rescue, law enforcement and public health services, including ensuring each of these vital agencies has the funding necessary to support competitive wages and operate in modern facilities with the appropriate technology upgrades.
Come back soon to read more about Kai’s record supporting public safety.
Affordable Housing
Virtually everyone understands that owning a home or renting an apartment in Frederick County has become more expensive, leaving it increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for growing percentage of the people who live and work here.
A healthy and prospering community should not be unaffordable for the teachers and nurses and firefighters and retail workers and so many others that work here, providing so many of the basic services that support our community and make it a great place to live…for those who can afford it.
The issue and the challenges associated with our affordable housing problem are not unique to our county, or even our region for that matter. And it is was easy to solve, we would have more examples of communities to learn from. We do have some good programs in place to help address the issue, and we do have some excellent local organizations working hard on and making a difference.
But put all that together, and isn’t enough. The problem is getting worse. Even with some good buckets, the boat is leaking faster than we can bail it out. And it is only going to get worse if we don’t.
This has been a priority for Kai for a long time. He served for four years on the Affordable Housing Council, and is constantly researching what is being done — and what is working — in other places in Maryland, across the country, and even in other parts of the world. There are many innovative approaches we can take. And we have some tools that we have hardly been utilizing that could make a real difference.
Come back soon to read more about some of the ways Frederick County can use those tools more effectively.
ALICE
We often don’t know who is struggling. Sometimes, they are hiding in plain sight.
In Frederick County alone,, 35,291 households (37%) struggle to afford basic needs such as housing, transportation, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology. Despite overall improvement in the federal poverty level, employment rates and gain in median income, our economic success in Frederick County has not reached all families. That was a genuine concern before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which both revealed and exacerbated the challenges too many face every day. A growing number of families now face challenges from low wages, reduced work hours, depleted savings and increasing costs.
Come back soon to read more about some of the ways Frederick County has been able to address the challenges so many of our neighbors are experiencing to get by on a day to day or month to month basis, and learn about some of the things we can still do to make more progress.
Open and Transparent Local Government
Early in his term, Kai initiated and advocated for making all BOCC — and now county council — meetings (and many others, such as the Planning Commission, etc.) available for viewing online, both live and archived for viewing at any time. (This is standard now, but it wasn’t in 2006.) The county made that investment, and then the City of Frederick followed suit (piggybacking on the county’s contract), along with other municipalities over time.
Kai believes county government should be as accommodating and responsive to public information requests as possible, in a timely manner and with no unnecessary costs.
Infrastructure
When it comes to much of our public infrastructure, doing business as usual, or “the way it has always been done,” has not been working. There are many reasons for that, but the single biggest factor affecting our ability to adequately plan for, pay for, develop and maintain adequate infrastructure is land use and planning.
Applying Smart Growth principles to our long term vision, planning and implementation would go a long way to ensuring that adequate infrastructure is properly developed to meet the needs as they arise and are anticipated…AND ensuring that it is more efficient and affordable.
The infrastructure associated with sprawl, for instance, is not only a lot more expensive to build and maintain, but it often fails to meet the demands for it and/or serve other community goals. In other words, doing things the way we have always done them is costing us too much, while accomplishing too little. Business as usual will guarantee we won’t “catch up,” and we will only fall farther behind, if we approve the kind of sprawl that was commonplace for many years, and, unfortunately for the county, re-established by the Blaine Young BOCC between 2010 and 2014.
Smart Growth utilizes existing infrastructure more efficiently, makes new infrastructure less expensive (and more possible)…while also supporting and/or enabling more affordable housing, better public transit, more adequate parks and more, while reducing a variety of environmental impacts.
But basic infrastructure is not limited to roads, water and sewer, schools and libraries, as is so often described. Those are critical infrastructure, but so are things such as fast, reliable and price competitive internet access, safe paths for bicycles, access to adequate-or-better recreational facilities (especially in lower income communities), and, finally, our “green infrastructure.”
According to the EPA: “Green infrastructure is a cost-effective, resilient approach to managing wet weather impacts that provides many community benefits. While single-purpose gray stormwater infrastructure—conventional piped drainage and water treatment systems—is designed to move urban stormwater away from the built environment, green infrastructure reduces and treats stormwater at its source while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits.”
But my definition, and that of others, is of the “green infrastructure” that is necessary to preserve (and enhance) the biological integrity and ecological health of our broader community. That includes protecting and connecting natural areas of ample/sufficient size, and in the critical places, to preserve biological diversity over the long term. It means protecting the basic natural assets on which we depend, such as clean water and soil health and fertility. It means being able to live in a community with a healthy environment and with sufficient proximity and access for our citizens.
If we do that, and apply smart growth principles to our land use and planning, the infrastructure we have to build will be less, do more, and cost a lot less.
A SPECIAL NOTE: The next two categories here are not last because they are any less important, but rather because, in addition to being very important, they share one characteristic that Kai has worked to emphasize and put into county practice and law:
It is essential that we evaluate all significant executive policy and legislative proposals through the lens of both equity and climate change.
Moving forward, because of the “Equity and Inclusion” legislation and our “Climate Emergency Resolution,” Frederick County should soon be reviewing the the equity and climate change impacts of proposed bill as part of the legislative process!
Equity
Kai has always been a strong advocate for civil rights, racial equity and social justice.
Near the end of his first year on the county council (December of 2019), Kai began a very public process, working with stakeholders and others in our community, to draft what was then referred to as a “Racial Equity and Social Justice” bill.
Working on a parallel track in the following months, County Executive Gardner established the position of Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, thereafter hiring Michael Hughes to fill the position, and, not long after that, set up the temporary, volunteer-based Racial Equity and Inclusion Leadership Team. After that, Kai and the county executive merged their efforts, and in October of 2021, the council voted 5-2 to pass legislation he sponsored to “Establish an Office of Equity and Inclusion,” codifying the position of Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, and creating an Equity and Inclusion Commission as an advisory commission to the Office of Equity and Inclusion, that will, among other things, seek to promote equity in planning, policy, recruitment and hiring and general decision-making in county government, work to advance goals developed by the Leadership Team, and help identify issues, concerns, and needs of County residents to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and make recommendations.
From his first efforts working with members of our community to draft meaningful legislation, Kai included and strongly advocated for the development of an ongoing process for reviewing the equity and inclusion impact of proposed legislation in the county. That element was in the final bill, and will ensure that all proposed legislation is reviewed, before it is passed, through the lens of racial equity.
This legislation is an excellent step for Frederick County. But there is more to do.
Incontrovertible data makes it clear that significant racial disparities continue to persist in our communities, in economic opportunity, health care, housing, public safety, criminal justice and other aspects of life in our society.
We have to recognize and understand the problem, and commit to being actively engaged, with the affected communities, in ongoing efforts to make more progress.
Climate Change
Our global climate crisis is real. And Frederick County is not an island.
Kai has been a tireless leader on this issue for a long time. During his campaign for county council and in a speech at Hood College shortly after being elected, Kai noted that Frederick County and some of our municipalities have taken a number of good steps to reduce our contribution to global climate change, but that we were still not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to sequester carbon and to become more resilient in the face of the changes and threats we are already experiencing and will face in the future.
Kai called for the county to declare a Climate Emergency and to examine executive policy and legislative efforts through the lens of climate change. He was proud to co-sponsor a resolution to do just that, and more, which passed in July, 2020. One of the key aspects of the resolution was to establish a Climate Emergency Mobilization Workgroup (CEMWG), with the City of Frederick, which brought together more than 50 volunteers from the fields of science, education, agriculture, construction, and other experts, who worked diligently for a year to produce an outstanding Climate Response and Resilience report. The very impressive final report included dozens of well-documented and well-supported recommendations, and provides a roadmap for how we can more effectively contribute to a healthy climate future!
It is very important to note that virtually all of the recommendations are for steps and changes that would offer real and important benefits to our community even if climate change was not an issue, including improvements to our local air and water quality, our farms and forests, public health and economic competitiveness in our changing world.
We must harbor no illusions. When it comes to our climate crisis, winning slowly is losing!
Please don’t hesitate to contact Kai directly with any questions: kaihagen@gmail.com