Colorado Springs Mayoral candidate: Christopher Mitchell
What are your top 3 priorities for this office?
Growth: Formulate and implement a set of pro-resident “graduated growth planning” policies with respect to land use, development and infrastructure.
Community: Formulate and implement a set of “clean city” policies addressing trash cleanup, homeless populations and gang violence (urban warfare).
Public Safety: Reduce workforce deficits in public safety services and increase service coverage.
What do you think the city’s largest challenge is and how do you plan to address it?
Growth planning for the future. I subscribe to “graduated growth planning,” which relates multivariate trend lines and the relationships to the outcroppings (e.g., infrastructure, crime, service coverage and open space conservation) of the growth of the city. Graduated growth planning is a customized growth management and projection model.
The “city’s affordable housing crisis” is a direct result of ill-conceived development polices and traditional supply-demand economics. Graduated growth planning balances the multivariate dynamics of the housing market to bring housing cost stability. Before affordability, there has to be stability. “Affordable housing” is a term marshaled and misapplied primarily by housing developers who peddle a false hope to the city of Colorado Springs, rather than focusing on stability in housing.
What makes you the most qualified candidate for this position?
As an engineer by trade, I have over 27 years of experience and practical working knowledge to 1. Formulate long-term goals and develop action plans to achieve desired outcomes; 2. Build, manage and lead teams; and 3. Produce departmental budgets. As a longtime resident of Colorado Springs, I am very aware of the issues relevant to the local community.