El Paso County Commissioner Amy Lathen and Colorado Attorney General John Suthers have announced their intent to run for mayor of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Voters will decide on their new mayor in May 2015.Lathen, who represents District 2, which includes the Falcon/Peyton/Calhan area, has been on the county board of commissioners since 2008. Suthers has served as Coloradoís attorney general since 2005.Both agree they need to focus on leadership issues within the city government, and both agree that the county and city needs to work together for a healthy region. Lathen and Suthers already have a strong support system ó neither had plans to run for mayor but each were approached by individual friends and colleagues who asked them to seek the office.Lathen said she had been asked as early as a year ago to run for mayor, but she didnít give it much thought at the time. ìOver the last several months, there was a renewed, more organized effort; where people came to me and we had discussions,î she said. ìItís pretty amazing when people say they want you to think about running. I feel honored that people have that faith and level of confidence in me.îAlthough Lathen said her platform needs to be solidified, she plans to focus on changing the face of leadership in Colorado Springs. ìIt starts with working together with the City Council, working with staff and empowering them to bring their ideas forward,î she said. ìItís essentially a total collaborative philosophy of leadership that I want to bring to the city. A strong form of mayor should not be an ëus versus themí situation.ìThe mayor needs to be accessible to the people; thatís just fundamental to me. But the mayor needs to be accessible to City Council as well. Even if we disagree, weíre at the same table, having talks. Thatís really the bedrock of how the city needs to be run, and I think thatís what will allow everything else to change.îLathen touted her experience working at a local level with businesses and other entities and building relationships. She said she understands the local needs of the Springs, and her experience as a county commissioner is helpful in bringing the city and the county together on various issues. ìI have a philosophy of not governing at the local level based on boundaries, but by governing based on efficiencies throughout the region,î Lathen said. ìIf the city and the county can work together on things like the infrastructure; and, they recognize the connection from the city to the county, that benefits people inside and outside the city as well.îAssessing the needs of the military community and other municipal partners and bringing more jobs through more businesses to the Springs are other issues Lathen plans to address.Suthers, who lives in Colorado Springs, said he had planned to practice law with a regional or national firm when his term as Coloradoís attorney general runs out in January 2015. However, others had a different plan for him. ìI had a lot of people in the Springs talk to me about it (running for mayor), and my wife and I decided that this is too important not to do; and that I needed to take a shot at it,î Suthers said.He said he believes progress in the city of Colorado Springs has stalled, and things need to gain traction to once again move in the right direction. ìWeíve lost a lot of high-tech manufacturing companies and have not gained the private sector niches that we need to complement our tremendous military presence and tourism industry,î Suthers said.To regain momentum, Suthers said the city needs to dispel the belief that it is too politically log-jammed to move forward. ìThe bottom line is that we need leadership, and I believe Iím prepared to do that,î he said. ìWeíve got to change the leadership style. We canít have every single article in the newspapers being about City Council and the mayor being politically and, in some ways, vociferously at odds. A lot of disagreements need to take place privately.îOther issues Suthers intends to tackle include the cityís infrastructure and information technology systems. ìYou can conclude that the city has not been investing in itself,î he said. ìThe infrastructure has major problems; the streets are deteriorating, and we simply have to address that. Stormwater is a regional problem, and we should address it regionally. It is broken in the Springs, and we need integration with the county services so that they arenít separate and apart.î
