Wanted: New Colorado Springs mayor to match our peak aspirations and challenges

Feb. 11—Those of us who know John Suthers expected him to be an excellent mayor for Colorado Springs. He exceeded everyone's expectations. His legacy is impressive, and he would be easily reelected this spring if he were not term limited.

Suthers will leave office, yet the rapid population growth he presided over leaves a long list of challenges that cry out for imaginative, innovative and visionary civic leadership.

The new 42nd mayor of Colorado Springs, to be elected on April 4 and perhaps in a May 16 runoff, cannot alone solve all our problems, but he or she can be the catalyst for heightened collaborative leadership efforts. The challenges include:

1. To reverse the horrible rise in all kinds of crimes, from homicides to shoplifting.

2. To ensure balanced and sensible, not excessive, growth.

3. To preside over wise water planning and water conservation.

4. To craft even more effective and humane ways to deal with homelessness.

5. To preserve the beauty of our parks, neighborhoods, arts institutions, museums and civic buildings.

Our next mayor needs to nurture and enhance the social fabric, trust and communal spirit of our sprawling city of approximately 500,000 citizens. Our city is hardly alone in this regard. Opioid addiction, suicides, depression, distrust, tribalism, polarization and loneliness are on the rise in every city in the United States.

Being mayor of our city is demanding, often thankless, and comes with a meager salary currently at about $114,000 per year. That fluctuates according to the consumer price index. Our semi-sacred entertainment organization, the Denver Broncos, is shelling out tens of millions of dollars for their newly hired coach. . Makes you wonder about our priorities. We pay the mayor less than we pay most of our high school principals.

More than 3,100 city employees are supervised by the Colorado Springs mayor, including police, fire, airport, public works, and parks. Note that Colorado Springs Utilities, with another 1,800 employees, reports only to City Council. Local public schools report to separately elected local school boards.

Colorado Springs, which has grown by about 20%over the past decade, is now the 39th-largest city in the United states. If we continue to grow at this pace, we will soon have a greater population than the state of Wyoming.

We have about a dozen candidates interested in becoming our next mayor. Many of them are local office holders or have previously held elected office. But there also are a handful of newbies, some of whom we will drop out before the candidate debates get underway.

These city elections are conducted on a nonpartisan basis.

April 4 is election day. We think there will be a required runoff election on May 16, pitting the two highest vote getters from the first race against each other. A candidate must win 50% in the first race to become mayor without a runoff.

Mail-in ballots are a hallmark achievement in Colorado election campaigns. A ballot will be mailed to every registered voter in March.

The most talked-about mayoral candidates appear to be City Councilmember Wayne Williams and former three-term (12 years) El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark.

Both are supported by important real-estate developers. Both are well-liked by folks who live in older neighborhoods.

Clark served for more than three years as a Trump appointee in the regional office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Clark twice ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1999 and 2003.

Williams served as El Paso County clerk and recorder and was elected Colorado secretary of state in 2014. He won praise for his service and was successful in getting his proposed bills to improve the Secretary of State's Office enacted by the Legislature. Williams had previously served as the chair of the El Paso County Republican Party.

Williams earned a law degree from the University of Virginia and has practiced law for several years. Clark and her husband, Welling Clark, operate a highly regarded bed-and-breakfast in the Old Colorado City area. Holly Williams, Wayne Williams' spouse, serves as an El Paso County commissioner.

Williams and Clark are likely to win a number of establishment endorsements. Williams will likely be endorsed by The Gazette editorial board, or maybe both Williams and Clark will be endorsed. Both have been endorsed by The Gazette on several occasions.

There is a third candidate running who might be called the insurgent contender. He is "Yemi" Mobolade, a Nigerian immigrant who is a U.S. citizen and has lived in Colorado Springs since 2010. He has enthusiastically immersed himself in local economic development and civic enterprises and he has won a wide circle of friends.

He co-owns the Wild Goose restaurant, which is downtown, and the Good Neighbor restaurant, which is in the Patty Jewett neighborhood. He worked for several years with the Chamber of Commerce and won high praise for his volunteer work with Pikes Peak State College and Springs Rescue Mission.

He founded The Movement Church that merged with the Sanctuary and also served as a pastor and community outreach leader at First Presbyterian Church.

He is proudly apolitical, calls himself an "unaffiiated" and boasts of his collaboration abilities and his leadership of "COS, I Love You," a service program. He was vice president of business retention and expansion at the chamber before serving as the small business development administrator with the city.

He will, as a major newcomer in the mayoral race, have to run an impressive campaign to compete with the already well-known front-runner candidates Williams and Clark. But Mobolade's upstart candidacy could pull together fellow small-business leaders, church activists, and some of the moderate to progressive coalitions that backed former City Councilmember Richard Skorman and former Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace.

It should be noted that Skorman finished first in the first round of the 2011 mayor's race yet lost in the runoff that year.

"Yemi" has raised the most money and earned the early backing of several local entrepreneurs.

There are other notable candidates in the race for mayor that could surprise us with strong campaigns. El Paso County Commissioner Longinos Gonzalez Jr., City Council President Tom Strand and former County Commissioner Darryl Glenn.

We should note that there are at least a couple of populists and a perhaps a maverick or two also running — they are worth watching and could stir things up while probably not posing a major challenge to the front-runners.

Williams and Clark will split the conservative vote and contend with candidates who are even more conservative. No well-known Democrat is running. We realize this is a nonpartisan race, yet we cannot recall a mayor here who was a Democrat. It is has been about 50 years or more since El Paso County had a county commissioner who was a Democrat. (Democratic Gov. Jared Polis won 47% of El Paso Country and doubtless won a majority in Colorado Springs.)

Here are the questions that we would like the candidates for mayor to answer:

1. What would you do differently and better than outgoing Mayor John Suthers?

2. How would you convince us that you have the vision to deal with all the fast population growth that Colorado Springs is currently enduring?

3. How would you diversify our economy, so it is not so dependent on military and defense spending?

4. Who are your five or six biggest campaign contributors?

5. We are proud of our city's awards for being one of the nicest places to visit and live and hold weddings — but what will you do to have our city earn recognition as the "safest" city in America?

6. What is your position on limiting annexation of new neighborhoods in order to meet the water requirements of the future?

7. What will you do to help unify our increasingly young, diverse, secular, and sometimes divided city?

8. What will you do to enhance our public parks and strengthen our struggling music and arts communities?

9. How will you help to resolve the dreadful impact that fentanyl is having on our schools and neighborhoods?

10. What special qualities and talents do you have that especially qualify you to be mayor?

11. What magazines and newspapers do you regularly read? Who are the post-FDR American politicians you most admire?

We encourage city voters to look at all the candidates' websites and to watch the upcoming candidate debates in March. This is an enormously important election. The candidates need to be asked challenging questions before they earn our votes. And with the weird embarrassment of New Yorkers electing George Santos to Congress recently — there is an additional challenge for every candidate to be as honest, transparent and forthcoming as possible.

Save these dates: April 4 and May 16.