Gerard Keiser for Saint Marys City Commission

As a father of young children, and the husband of a Saint Marys native, I brought my family here because I knew it was the best place for them. This city is full of talented, dedicated people working hard to build a strong and beautiful community. If elected, I will focus on long-term maintenance and improvements of our facilities and infrastructure so that these involved citizens can keep making this an even better place to live and raise a family.

I taught high school for seven years. In that time I saw repeatedly how essential it is to speak clearly, openly, and graciously about goals and processes, to treat everyone involved as a rational person, explaining the reasons behind decisions. I learned to motivate by aiming towards a shared understanding of the purpose. Because of this, even when there was still disagreement with a student, a parent, or a fellow teacher, we could count on good will and a continuing desire on all sides to obtain an optimal outcome.

Currently I am working as a software developer. When writing code, in that space of effectively endless possibilities, one quickly learns the need to relentlessly prioritize. The limiting factor in the world of bits today is time, and the requests for features and bug fixes never end. But hastily changing code is a sure way to break something you didn’t think about. So you inevitably end up with an ever-growing backlog of things you’re not doing, because you have decided that something else is a more valuable use of time, and you might have to explain to the users, politely, why their requests, which are often very important, are not being taken care of.

In just the same way, there are so many great things the city government could be doing, but resources are limited. And there will be disagreements, there are disagreements, about what should be prioritized. So if elected, I will strive to the best of my abilities to identify the most essential projects and keep those fixed at the top of the list, but also to always be willing to explain, and to listen, and to respectfully discuss with anyone the needs of the community and the role of government in addressing them.

I hope to have your support in the upcoming city commission election. Let us make Saint Marys even better.

About

I grew up in north Louisiana, earned an undergraduate degree at University of Oklahoma, and lived for several years in central Minnesota, teaching high school and later working as an office manager for a small residential contractor. There I married Marie Melechinsky, a Saint Marys native. In 2023 we moved to Saint Marys for work, to give our children the benefits of living in this unique community, and to be nearer her family. I currently work as a software developer at the Onyx Collection.