A small-business owner and political outsider, Andrew Dalby, is running for mayor of Colorado Springs, promising to focus on public safety, roads and parks.
Dalby joins five other candidates running to replace Mayor John Suthers, who is term-limited in April and cannot run again. He is facing some well-known political names in town, including El Paso County Commissioner Longinos Gonzalez, City Councilman Wayne Williams, City Council President Tom Strand and former City Councilman and County Commissioner Darryl Glenn. Political newcomer Yemi Mobolade, another small-business owner, joined the race in April.
Dalby is a Colorado Springs native and a former information technology consultant. He got into the race, he said, because he was unhappy with the current slate of candidates, including some who have been in public office for years.
“There is a lot of demand for somebody who is new,” said Dalby, who owns an RV storage business.
If elected, he said he would focus on running an efficient small government focused on basic services. For example, to improve public safety he would staff up the Colorado Springs Police Department. Suthers announced at the State of the City address last week the department will likely need 200 new police officers in the coming years as the community grows.
Dalby said he would focus on recruitment and ensuring the police feel valued in their community and within the department. He would also like to encourage residents to be empowered to participate in ensuring their community is safe, through efforts like neighborhood watch programs.
“Getting people, particularly in more crime-ridden areas, to feel like they are participants in, rather than subjects of, policing is critical,” he said.
On roads and public infrastructure, Dalby would like to see efficient spending.
“I do have a problem with the allocation of money where we neglect the road, but we are tearing out chunks of sidewalk,” he said. In some cases, he has seen city construction make sidewalks worse, he said.
He would also like to prioritize parks maintenance and ensure particularly in poorer areas of town that parks are well cared for to provide spaces for families who cannot afford many extracurricular activities for their children. He does not want to see such parks with weeds and shuttered public restrooms.
If selected, Dalby said he would bring his experience as the leader of an IT consulting team that worked with large organizations such as Honda, the New Jersey Department of Corrections, Hennessy and Colorado Springs Utilities to the job.
“I know how to run a large organization efficiently,” he said.
All mayoral candidates are unofficial at this time because they cannot begin collecting signatures to get on the ballot until January.
This content was originally published here.
