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Letter: Garbett puts forward bold ideas while other candidates peddle more of the same

(Francisco Kjolseth  |  The Salt Lake Tribune)  David Garbett make a point as he joins his fellow candidates for Salt Lake City mayor during a debate at the Salt Lake City Library on Wed. June 26, 2019.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) David Garbett make a point as he joins his fellow candidates for Salt Lake City mayor during a debate at the Salt Lake City Library on Wed. June 26, 2019.

If you look at the field of Salt Lake City mayoral candidates and have a hard time telling one from the other, you’re in luck.

An important difference between David Garbett and other candidates just made headlines this week, in a Salt Lake Tribune article titled “Salt Lake City mayoral candidates attack David Garbett’s plan to move oil refinery as empty hype.”

I endorsed David Garbett because I saw in him a kindred soul — someone, like me, who was ready, willing, and able to put forward bold ideas — bold, well-grounded ideas. And in a time when other candidates seem content to peddle more of the same — as if Salt Lake City is doing just fine and we just need a new name on the door of the mayor’s office and a fresh voice welcoming visitors to Salt Lake International Airport.

We all want the refineries gone. And the refineries themselves are aging. It’s the perfect time for everyone to come to the table and chart out a future without them. But even that — a conversation — seems too much, too fast for our current crop of candidates.

To paraphrase Elizabeth Warren I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for mayor of Salt Lake City, just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. I don’t get it.

Salt Lake City is facing enormous hurdles to our long-term health, happiness and prosperity. And we can’t just coast into the future. Bold ideas, grounded in sound thinking, are the hallmarks of leadership. Anyone can do mediocre; a city manager could do middling. But we’ve been coasting as a city for far too long.

Salt Lake City can’t afford four more years of business-as-usual. Salt Lake City needs a mayor who leads out on the biggest problems of our day.

D. Christian Harrison, Salt Lake City

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