Saratoga resident provides city transparency
Mike Kieffer created a blog, inside84045.org, becoming a guru of sorts for the community on Saratoga Springs law and politics. The site itself has become a hub for community news.
“The main purpose of the blog is to get information to the residents in a timely manner, so that they can actually act before the city council votes on an item,” Kieffer said. “I try to keep it as objective as possible and just give people the information and let them pick their side of the issue.”
All because of some chickens.
He and his neighbor, Jeramiah Richards, kept chickens in their backyard. About two years ago, a Saratoga Springs police officer gave his neighbor a ticket for illegally keeping chickens within city limits and gave him 30 days to get rid of them. Neither he nor his neighbor knew they had been breaking a city law.
They went before the city council to ask the mayor and council members about the ordinance. The council told the police not to enforce the chicken law until they had researched the ordinance.
“I tried to research some ordinances and found that the city was not very transparent,” he said. “They only had a few ordinances on their website, and you never knew what the agenda items were until they were passed.”
Another of his neighbors, Rick Kohler, requested a document of all city laws, and municipal staff sent him the documents in PDF format. Kieffer got a copy from Kohler and loaded the ordinances onto his site, which is named after the city’s zip code. He said he soon realized that the public couldn’t give public comment without seeing the material being proposed.
“I then bugged and bugged the city until they started sending me the same packet of material that the council members and mayor get prior to their meetings,” he said. “I now post those documents so that residents can view them and actually have the facts, so they can go talk to the city council prior to them passing an item. I feel it gives the residents a better understanding of what is going on in the city, as well as allows them to voice their opinions before action is taken.It also archives all of the documents, so that the city can’t just make things go away if they make a mistake.I think that it increases their accountability to the public.”
Neighbor Craig Guymon has known Kieffer for 10 years, and said he is about the best guy he knows.
“He’s super active with getting involved and letting the citizens know what is going on in the community,” Guymon said.
Guymon also wrote for Kieffer’s site during football season at Westlake High School. He said Kieffer’s site is an asset to the community. When there is a major Scout meeting, information that needs to be shared usually moves down through the leadership, taking some time to get to everyone.
“That information gets to them so slowly, but this is a way to get it out there quickly,” Guymon said.
“I think it’s a really neat way to communicate things that are happening here in the city, what is happening in the area that will affect me and my family,” said Mike Simpson, another neighbor.
When Simpson ran for city council during the 2009 campaign, he also found Kieffer’s site was an effective tool as a forum for candidates to let voters know what their stance was on issues. It has also become a tool to gather public opinion.
About a year ago, Kieffer started presenting poll questions so residents could share their opinion. The first poll was on what the speed limit should be on Redwood Road. The overwhelming majority of the residents wanted the speed limit raised to 55 mph.
“I’ve talked to Cecil Tooley since then, and basically it’s got the council talking about it,” he said. “They are thinking, it’s still up in the air, but it looks like it might be set at 50 or 55.”
He was prompted to post another poll when Frank Townsman, an anonymous blogger, announced the police were overzealous and out of control.
“Everybody I talked to was happy with the police and what they did,” Kieffer said. The poll results, monitored by IP address limiting each respondent to one vote, reflected the majority felt the police in Saratoga Springs did a great job.
A senior systems administrator for Ancestry.com and a 10-year resident at Lake Mountain Estates in south Saratoga Springs, Kieffer doesn’t have a lot of spare time. He has five children and contracts to develop websites for other companies outside of his main job, so he has to move efficiently to get everything done.
“I am not Frank Townsman,” he said. “I think that if you want to get change to happen, then you have to be willing to do it as yourself, not as some anonymous person. I have brought up some problems that I have had with the city council and have found that they are willing to work with you.”
www.biohazard-blog.blogspot.com
E-mail: mike@inside84045.org
