Never Unopposed

When I looked into who was running this election, I found that it was only the incumbent.  I believe no election in a representative democracy like our should ever have an election where any candidate runs unopposed.  That was one reasons I decided to run. 

I was skeptical at first, but the more I learned about ranked choice voting, the more excited I became about it.  One of my conclusinos about ranked choice voting was that to garner all the possible benefits from it, we would need to have at least 3 candidates in an election.  This is another reason I decided to run. 

There is a lot going right in our city.  The economy is strong, unemployment is low, and the current city leadership is working on lots of great improvements across the city.  There is seemingly no end of good news and positive press releases coming from city hall.  I decided to run to ensure that the things going right continue to do so.  But everything can't be going right, can it? 

I am one of the organizers and activists working to save the historic Pantages Utah Theater downtown.  I have spent innumerable hours talking to people from across the city about the rotten deal the city and RDA made with developers giving them the land the theater sits on for zero dollars in return for what we learned were bait and switch so called public benefits.  When I talk to people about that deal we always end up talking about what is going wrong in the city.  

Residents talk to me about being ignored or limited in their public comments about contentious projects.  Residents talk to me about the city and RDA taking part in gentrification and development over the best interests of residents.  Residents talk to me about city leadership putting their desires and goals above what residents and community councils and what they are telling them they want.

These conversations and my own experiences is why I have concluded there is also a lot going wrong and things need to change.