Meet Oakland’s newest commissioner

Kris Keller is a world traveler and has taken vacations to some amazing destinations, but she is just as content spending her time in her favorite place — the town of Oakland.

Keller was sworn in as the newest member of the Oakland Town Commission at the Jan. 28 meeting, the same night she was selected from a candidate pool of seven following former Commissioner Rick Polland’s resignation.

The five-year Oakland resident grew up in Nebraska and lived for many years in the Orlando area before she discovered West Orange County when a friend invited her to dinner on this side of town. She bought a bicycle so she could ride the West Orange Trail and eventually moved to the Longleaf at Oakland neighborhood because of its proximity to the trail and to the Florida’s Turnpike, which was handy when she had a job that required frequent travel.

“It’s this perfect little (area),” Keller said. “Even though you’re close to anything you need to get to, you’re still insulated by this little town of Oakland. … It feels like this perfect little niche carved out of the chaos around us.”

GETTING INVOLVED

Keller’s initial experience with town politics was at the 2024 Oakland Heritage Day event, when she noticed attendees wearing T-shirts supporting the two candidates running for the mayor’s seat in the municipal election. She met and spoke to one of the candidates at the festival and later met the second candidate over coffee.

That’s all it took to get her involved, she said. She attempted her first foray into town service by applying for another seat vacated when that commissioner ran for mayor. She was not selected to fill the seat, but she was not deterred and applied to serve on the Planning & Zoning Board; she was named an alternate.

She began attending all of the P&Z meetings, as well as Town Commission meetings, to learn as much as she could about the town’s processes. She respectfully questioned the commission on issues and tried to make fair, common-sense comments, she said.

It was the perfect time to get more involved after she had stepped away from her longtime national sales career in commercial flooring.

“I needed to change my life and make my life more about my life,” Keller said. “Knowing that I didn’t have my big career holding me back … I felt freed up to apply again (and) submitted an application again.”

Keller said she became interested in serving on the commission after attending several meetings and listening to the topics discussed.

“I wanted to see some representation of some newer residents,” she said. “It’s wonderful the history and the people who have made this town their home for a long time — but we’ve got new neighborhoods. … I just thought it would be nice to have a perspective of the newer residents in town. But I also think it’s important to respect why we all moved here and the loveliness of this town. … This is my home, and I saw an opportunity to serve the town and felt strongly about doing it.”

Keller was appointed to serve the remainder of the term vacated by Polland at the end of 2024. Her seat will be up for reelection in March 2026, meaning she has about a year at the commission table this term.

Her goal is to find the right balance of commercial for the town “in keeping with what we want our town to be, what supports our town financially,” she said.

“It’s really important to all of us that we maintain why we all moved here and what we love about the area, and I think it’s critical for the town to have a tax base to contribute to supporting that,” she said. “We have gone to a very small town to a bigger small town with the population, and we do need things to serve the town, but we need the funds to continue to provide the services we need, and that will come from the commercial development and the residential projects that are underway currently without losing our identity.”

ACTIVE PASSPORT

When Keller isn’t playing paddleball, biking or spending time with her 11-year-old lab-pit mix, Finn, she is an experienced traveler who has seen spots all around the globe, frequently by taking Viking cruises. She has been to more than 20 countries and has a cruise planned from Venice, Italy, to Athens, Greece, in December.

“I also think that going to other places — like I went to Egypt right after the Arab Spring (uprising and rebellion) — going to a country that’s fighting for their own democracy and seeing how people in other cultures live and experiencing other cultures, it’s really easy to take for granted that we do live in such an amazing place,” she said. “I think it makes me a well-rounded person.”

Just as she is open to experiencing other cultures, lifestyles and opinions when traveling, she’s ready to hear from residents and find out what they want in the town.

“It’s finding that balance of what works for the town, what works for the residents, what works as best as it can for the most people,” Keller said. “I will continue to be thoughtful in my comments and remarks. We did it on the P&Z — when people show up, what can we take what they’re asking for and marry it with what is best for the town?

“I want us to be thoughtful in everything we do, in decisions we make,” Keller said. “I try to be respectful of people, I try to be an honest person, and I try to conduct myself that I don’t have any regret. … I just hope I will contribute to continuing to make this little town the amazing town that it is.”