Kai for Frederick County Commissioner

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A bit about Kai...

Kai in kindergarten

Kai is 48 years old. He grew up in Washington DC, but established a life-long connection to Frederick County when he was four. That's when his grandparents moved to the old Catoctin Mountain hill farm he explored as a boy, and where he now lives with his wife and their two sons.

Kai left the region for a while, attending college in a small Minnesota town set amid endless farms, then living in Minnesota and California for a number of years before moving to Frederick in 1995. Since then, he has been actively involved in our community in many ways.

Beginning in autumn of 2003, until he announced his candidacy for the Board of County Commissioners, Kai wrote a bi-weekly column for the Frederick County Gazette. Before that, he wrote a bi-weekly column for the Frederick News-Post for a year. You can read Kai's columns here.

Kai with his grandparents and all their grandchildren on their old Frederick County hill farm

In 2002, Kai was appointed by the Board of County Commissioners to the Citizens Zoning Review Committee, which met every other week for a year and a half to review the current Zoning Ordinance, the proposed “Public Hearing Draft Zoning Ordinance” (January 2002), and any recommendations presented during previous Zoning Ordinance update efforts, and to assess the documents, correspondence, testimony, etc., and provide the Board of Frederick County Commissioners with recommendations as to amendments, revisions or the re-writing of specific sections of the ordinance.

Since mid-2003, Kai has been a member of the Frederick County Parks and Recreation Commission, which is composed of 8 members appointed by the Board of County Commissioners and one county commissioner who serves as a liaison.

Since autumn of 2004, Kai has been the Director of the Frederick Regional Action Network. The organization's mission statement says the non-profit organization "promotes common sense solutions to persistent challenges associated with growth and development."

Kai served as co-chair of the Western Maryland Committee of Reality Check Plus (stepping down when he announced his candidacy for County Commissioner). Reality Check Plus is a series of growth visioning exercises that are planned to be held in four different regions of Maryland in the spring and summer of 2006, including business, civic and elected leaders from throughout Maryland who will participate in Reality Check exercises. Participants will be asked to decide where the thousands of new residents and jobs that are expected to come to Maryland over the next 25 years should be located.

Kai with his family: October 2003

Kai has been coaching youth soccer and basketball in Frederick County for the last nine years. He is a serious amateur photographer, whose images of Frederick County have been exhibited in various venues in the county.

Kai has been married to Kirsten Waller for twenty-six years. Kirsten is head of the Infectious Disease Surveillance section of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. They have two sons, Tor, 14, and Leif, 9.

Read Kai's columns

WHY I'M VOTING FOR KAI!

Carolyn Franklin
Frederick, MD

I love Frederick! I have high hopes for Frederick County's future with the expectation that Kai Hagen will become one of its commissioners. I respect Kai's experience and trust Kai's ability to thoroughly weigh the appropriateness of how decisions might affect all of us. Frederick County deserves someone who will evaluate pending items carefully, objectively, and with energy and knowledge to explore options. I believe that Kai will do everything...

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