This election was about open government and citizen participation.  Both of those are facilitated when there’s an understanding of why elected leaders make particular decisions.  Moving forward, I’ll be hearing lots of valuable opinions, ideas, and arguments and certainly intend to be an engaged listener.  The fact is I’ll have to vote, and listening and understanding won’t always mean that I make the decision everyone wants!  I’ll need to make judgements.  So, I figure the fundamental way to be open with the public is to be open about the judgements I make – that’s where you can judge whether you agree with the values I use to make the decisions.  So, WhyKai.com is here to help me explain to you why I voted certain ways.

Now, this is an experiment.  I obviously won’t have time or reason to explain every vote, nor would it be appropriate or relevant to share every reason – there are closed door sessions on personal and real estate issues, for example, that I just can’t share publicly.  I also will focus my comments keeping in mind that I intend to keep a working relationship with staff and councilmembers, and that requires a trust level that our conversations don’t all end up in the blogosphere for everyone to read.  I’m going to work to balance the amount of information I share, and that will be a learning process moving forward.

I won’t have comments activated to begin with.  To contact me, just email kai.degner@gmail.com.  There are other local blogs that I’m sure will be happy to convene the dialogue about what I write!