Interview with City Council Candidate Hannah Gay Keao

You can learn more about Hannah’s platform, priorities, and background on her website, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. She also welcomes comments and questions directly via email (hannahforedgewater@gmail.com) or phone (970-515-3842).

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Q: Why are you excited to be running to serve Edgewater this year?

This is a great question, as I have my second baby due in early December and it could conceivably be much less stressful for my family if I stepped down after four great years on our City Council. But also, I have never not served my community and opened gates for those without access in some capacity; not since becoming the founding President of my high school’s Civil Rights Team over 25 years ago, and frankly, we need to keep moms on that dais. I’m proud of the work I’ve done there the past four years as a Councilwoman, I love Edgewater and this community deeply, and look forward to hopefully earning another term in its service.

Q: What past personal or professional experience qualifies you for the job? Tell readers about your background.

The bulk of my work that actually pays bills right now sits in business strategy and operations, and, as an MBA and government major in undergrad, I enjoy navigating organizational and fiscal management conversations as much as I enjoy the harder policy conversations. At the end of the day though, I’m a former middle school teacher and a mother and, increasingly, a member of the sandwich generation managing my own mother’s care. I do not thrive in egos and antagonism; I don’t have time or space.

When so much else in politics is messy and ugly, I show up measured, prepared, kind and humble in my service to all of Edgewater, including community members who can’t vote for us – whether undocumented, unhoused, under 18, or employed or running a small business here – and I’d be honored to continue it in this capacity for four more years.

Q: What do you hope to achieve in your time in office?

I hope to continue to GSD (Get “Stuff” Done) to keep Edgewater accessible and warm to those for whom it feels accessible and warm and build that access and warmth where it may lack, but also do so with diligence to the realities of running a municipal government. I will continue to show up with respect for both diverse community voices as well as the work and capacity of our city staff, while also leading when necessary on thornier issues.

Our community deserves for us to address hard conversations and decisions head on, and we can’t afford any inclination to delay or avoid those. I do the research, talk to our community and stakeholders on my own time, and come to the dais each and every meeting with a point of view that I’m able to change when presented with new information. I am ready to continue to talk through both logistical and also more heated topics with respect and diligence. This all is especially important now given the distrust and divisiveness in our national political climate.

Q: There are only four candidates for four open seats this year, and only one mayoral candidate on the ballot. What do you think the city can do to encourage more candidates to run in the future? And/or: what ideas do you have to engage citizens more in the policymaking process in the city?

A few things:

a) Structurally, we just have a lot of elected seats for the size of our population. As one example: Westminster, which is over 20 times our size in population, has fewer elected seats than we do. This situation is not unusual.

b) City Council and Mayor positions also are not accessible for so many citizens. They don’t pay a living wage (we make $300 monthly and the Mayor makes $500). Evening meetings are challenging for families and caregivers. We need another referred ballot measure to increase Council and Mayor pay, and should consider access to benefits like caregiving stipends and healthcare for elected officials.

c) Finally, we as elected officials need to be out in the community, and empower city staff to feel comfortable and equipped supporting this with city resources. We’re the only city around here that I know of without town halls and/or less formal district/ward meetings (we’re all elected at-large) and we can’t expect our community to show up to City Council meetings as the only touchpoint with its elected representatives. We tend to locate city events and meetings in the center of the city, not its edges where many of our renters reside, or in diverse community-centered third spaces. I appreciate the “Council in the Community” pilot my colleague Mayor Pro Tem Kali Janda led this past year, and hope we can continue such efforts moving forward.

Q: Ahead of budgeting season, what are a few budget line items you think the city is spending too much money on? What are a few budget line items you think the city is not spending enough money on?

Our staff puts a ton of work into constructing our budget annually in line with City Council strategic priorities. The bulk of both our ~$11M general fund as well as enterprise funds (for infrastructure and capital investment) support operations, which isn’t abnormal, but in a city our size (relatively small), programmatic and policy line items are sometimes challenging to keep sustainably funded. I have and will continue to advocate for those line items I believe are backed by community support and need.

I don’t have any major sweeping categories I’d change. However, I am concerned about the long-term impacts of high capital costs and healthcare that our current federal administration is impacting. We don’t directly rely on government funding in Edgewater, but indirectly our benefits costs are going to go up a lot with rising healthcare costs, and I worry about the Medicaid and marketplace healthcare access our part time staff may lose. Our Sustainability, Mobility, and Urban Forest Master Plans, which my colleague and fellow candidate Lilly Steirer has championed over her several years of service to Edgewater, all cost money to implement further, and also all are imperative to a gentler future for our community and children. We also need to have hard convos on right sizing our municipal fee structure and enterprise funds to ensure they are balanced and don’t need to borrow from our general fund.

Q: According to a recent city survey, residents said public safety, affordable housing, public infrastructure, and promoting and supporting local businesses were the four most important issues for city decision makers to address. Pick any or all of them, and provide 1-3 ideas you support to address each.

Public safety can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different folks and I will always consider community-focused, preventative measures first. I broadly support more housing units as well as more diverse housing offerings as recommended in our thoroughly-vetted 2025 Comprehensive Plan, but also appreciate the challenges with infrastructure and homeowner/tenant rights and more this may bring. We need to address some potentially antiquated code restrictions that are hindering our small businesses, and I have already spearheaded work to identify these with city staff.

Overall, we have a responsibility to do the following when building future policy:

a) Continue to consider each of the above issues from an equity standpoint;

b) Center community voices (including those of small business owners and employees) while doing the hard work balancing those with operational needs and budgetary constraints; and

c) Lead the continued evolution of this community without changing its small town and community-centered feel that so many of us hold dear.

Q: What do you hope for the future of Jefferson Jr./Sr. High is? What do you think city leaders can do to promote positive educational experiences for Edgewater youth?

We on Council do not control our schools and do not control their budgets, and I appreciate the rock and hard place the school district is between with declining enrollment, federal budget cuts, and a state budget crisis. I also believe school district leadership missed a lot of opportunities in this process so far to center community voices. That’s critical moving forward, and I appreciate the ongoing dialogue on the future of Jefferson that is now happening thanks to grassroots community organizing, led in a large part by my colleague and fellow candidate Joel Newton in his former day job.

We on Council do have a responsibility to engage with our schools, impacted community members, and the district. I am proud of the work former Edgewater Mayor John Beltrone, our City Manager Dan Maples, Joel Newton and I worked on pushing for equitable capital funding at Edgewater Elementary and the eventual new playgrounds there (these three folks led way more than I did). These are areas in which we can continue to co-advocate alongside our school-based community, which contains one of the most diverse and also lower-income populations in all of Jeffco Public Schools.

Q: What personal perspectives on the current debate regarding Flock’s automatic license plate reading technology do you want to share with voters?

I have been talking to our community and staff about Flock’s impact since well before it ever came to our dais. We are wrapping up year two of a five year contract with Flock that costs our taxpayers $15k/year. Reneging on this contract is tricky, but while the tech has undeniably aided our local law enforcement, I don’t trust Flock and don’t believe in the national surveillance state they are building.

Multiple media sources have revealed that Flock technology has been used to support ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and to search for a Texas woman who allegedly had an illegal (in Texas) abortion. In each of these cases, Flock has released public relations statements refuting these truths, at times sharing them with our own staff. That’s either lazy or intentionally dishonest. I trust our Chief and police in using this tech responsibly. However, I don’t trust the company, I don’t trust current federal law enforcement who have had access to Flock’s data to follow constitutional law, and I don’t support our using city resources to condone any of this. I am glad our Chief decided to no longer share Flock data with police agencies nationwide, only in CO, but until we can guarantee sustainable honesty from Flock and lawful use of its technology, I am hopeful we can just turn the cameras off.

Q: If you would like to list endorsements for other city candidates, school board candidates, or the two statewide initiatives, please list them.

Because of the math of this election, explained on my website, I will be voting for only three candidates for Edgewater City Council: Joel Newton, Lilly Steirer, and me. I have worked with Mark Stechschulte as the Council Liaison to the HARP Board here, on which he serves. I really like him, and am excited to work with him for two years and hopefully support him in his reelection campaign in 2027. But right now Lilly and Joel and I have worked together on so much that is critical for our city and needs guaranteed longevity of four-year terms for each of us.

I am in favor of Propositions LL & MM.

I am still, as of today (Oct 16) making some decisions on the school board. Chalkbeat Colorado has a questionnaire with all candidates similar to this one; it’s worth Googling and researching. I will hopefully share my final decisions on social media and please reach out to me (contact info below) anytime.

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