Gary Kespohl for Columbia City Council, 3rd Ward

We need to send a clear mes­sage: Colum­bia is Open For Busi­ness. I sup­ported three job-creating projects my oppo­nent voted to kill: Land­mark Hos­pi­tal, with 100 jobs; Cross Creek, bring­ing hun­dreds of jobs; and fix­ing dan­ger­ous, time-killing traf­fic back­ups on Lemone Indus­trial Boule­vard to make its shovel-ready sites more attrac­tive for busi­ness growth. I have been a small busi­ness owner in Colum­bia for more than 30 years. I know what it means to bal­ance a bud­get, meet a pay­roll and sat­isfy cus­tomers with excel­lent ser­vice while main­tain­ing a com­mit­ment to the community’s bet­ter­ment. This is the prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence I will bring to our City Council.

With orga­niz­ers pro­ject­ing sales of 25,000 tick­ets for the True/False Film Fes­ti­val, the eco­nomic impact on Colum­bia and espe­cially down­town is enor­mous. Kudos to the orga­niz­ers who launched this respected doc­u­men­tary film event seven years ago. It is a point of pride for our com­mu­nity! The Colum­bia Daily Tri­bune says there may still be ways to score tick­ets, too.

Tri­bune arti­cle on True/False film festival

I enjoyed the CDT’s Sat­ur­day Busi­ness pro­file of my old friend and our for­mer Gov­er­nor, Roger B. Wil­son. Roger has brought new energy and smart ideas to Mis­souri Employ­ers Mutual, which is one of Ward 3 and Columbia’s biggest employ­ers. Kudos to Roger and MEM!

Tri­bune Arti­cle on Roger B. Wilson

Kudos to the men and women on the front lines of pub­lic safety in our com­mu­nity for endors­ing down­town safety cam­eras. I sup­port these safety cam­eras and I sup­port the propo­si­tion on the April 6 bal­lot. My oppo­nent not only voted against the safety cam­eras, he turned down a busi­ness group’s offer to pay for half of the cost and save tax­pay­ers some money. There’s a clear dif­fer­ence in the Ward 3 race for City Council.

Police and Fire­fight­ers endorse cam­era idea

Thanks to the Colum­bia Daily Tri­bune and reporter Daniel Cailler for set­ting the record straight regard­ing a pre­vi­ous arti­cle about my views on grow­ing Columbia’s econ­omy and cre­at­ing jobs. We need jobs and new pros­per­ity in Colum­bia, and I will bring a small busi­ness owner’s per­spec­tive to the City Coun­cil. I have bal­anced bud­gets, met pay­rolls and kept cus­tomers sat­is­fied. My oppo­nent has repeat­edly voted against job-creating projects. The choice is clear: Gary Kespohl for Ward 3 City Council.

Tri­bune Arti­cle by Daniel Cailler

We must keep our fam­i­lies and our neigh­bors safe from crime. I firmly sup­port down­town safety cam­eras; my oppo­nent voted against them. I say we need more offi­cers on the street; my oppo­nent voted to spend pub­lic resources to hire a city Sus­tain­abil­ity Direc­tor and to ear­mark $100,000 for his spe­cial lit­tle projects. While my oppo­nent was vot­ing for city chicken coops and more bike-lane extrav­a­gance, there were almost 3,000 police calls to Ward 3’s White­gate area alone since Jan­u­ary 1, 2009. When it comes to keep­ing our neigh­bor­hoods safe, I stand with our cops in crime fighting.

What do you think would make Colum­bia a safer community?

The Tri­bune recently pub­lished an arti­cle that dis­cussed how can­di­dates for Colum­bia, MO’s mayor and city coun­cil elec­tions plan to use Twit­ter and other social media in their cam­paign. I will be using blogs, Twit­ter and Face­book in my cam­paign for a few reasons.

The inter­net allows rep­re­sen­ta­tives to com­mu­ni­cate with cit­i­zens in a way that has never been pos­si­ble. While I will be going door to door, mak­ing myself avail­able dur­ing the day to meet with peo­ple per­son­ally, and other tra­di­tional cam­paign tech­niques; social media and the inter­net allow me to be avail­able to any­one, any­where, at any time. I am using these tools to open myself up and be as avail­able as pos­si­ble for any­one that has a ques­tion, com­ment, con­cern about Colum­bia, or just wants to hear what I have to say.

Using social media will also allow me to engage with all of Colum­bia. Tra­di­ton­ally, because of time lim­i­ta­tions, can­di­dates focus all of their atten­tion on the ward that can vote for them. I am per­son­ally engag­ing with the 3rd ward, but a coun­cil per­son rep­re­sents all of Colum­bia. Even if some­one can’t vote for a can­di­date the city coun­cil makes deci­sions that affect every Colum­bia cit­i­zen. There­fore I feel it is impor­tant to lis­ten to the entire com­mu­nity as well as my ward. Twit­ter, Face­book and my blog will help me hear what every­one in Colum­bia is say­ing, not just a select few.

I have never used any of these tools prior to my cam­paign but I rec­og­nize how many peo­ple have a desire to com­mu­ni­cate this way. It takes time to learn and per­fect these new ways to com­mu­ni­cate so I appre­ci­ate any advice or feed­back on how I’m doing. Rep­re­sent­ing a com­mu­nity means hav­ing a will­ing­ness to lis­ten to oth­ers, learn new things and adapt to new ways of doing things, even if it involves time. I have time to lis­ten, I have time to learn, I have time for Columbia.