Cottonwood Heights' mayor likely Cullimore

Cottonwood Heights residents cast their votes for the the city's first mayor Tuesday, with initial results showing Kelvyn Cullimore Jr. leading by a wide margin.

Cullimore, CEO of medical device manufacturer Dynatronics Corp., has competed against Suzanne Bitter, 40, since the primary election in August where he garnered 61 percent of the vote.

"My experience in the corporate world has seemed to be a fairly convincing factor," Cullimore, 48, said. "This is a unique situation, and you need someone with business skills and a good business sense."

The 24-year Cottonwood Heights resident also attributes his lead to the three years he spent campaigning to make the city official as a member of the incorporation committee. The new city stretches from the Holladay border on the north to the Wasatch-Cache National Forest on the east, 1300 East on the west and Creek Road to the south.

"Spending three years formulating what the city needs to be has enabled me to catch an early vision of what we can become," he said.

Bitter has served for two years on the Cottonwood Heights Community Council and said she attributed the wide disparity in early results to simply a matter of preference among voters.

"I think we were both very qualified. It was just whether you wanted experience or the big business man," she said.

Residents also elected four city council members, although preliminary results were too close to call.

In the city's council-manager form of government, the mayor will essentially be a fifth member of the city council with no veto power. The role will be critical, however, in the first few months of incorporation as 34,000 residents look to the mayor to get the city started on the right foot.

If Cullimore wins, he will now only have two months to get the city up and running, a task that includes contracting services with the county, staffing city offices and appointing a city manager.

The first order of business, Cullimore said, will be to organize the city council, create articles of incorporation and provide all new city employees with ethics training. All of that work, however, will be unpaid because the city does not get tax revenue to fund city services until January.

A primary responsibility for the new mayor will be making good on planning and zoning promises made during the incorporation campaign. Retaining authority for planning decisions was one of the central factors prompting 85 percent of voters to opt to incorporate in May.

With that authority comes the responsibility for merging the zoning plans of four community councils into one city master plan. One of the key concerns for the new mayor will be balancing the city's quality of life with the need for tax revenue to stabilize the city's finances.

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E-mail: estewart@desnews.com

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