Editor’s note: The Times-Call will run candidate announcement stories as we receive the information.

Shakeel Dalal is running for Longmont mayor this November.

Current Mayor Joan Peck’s term expires in December.

She did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dalal has lived in Longmont since 2017 and spends his days working as a chemist for an aerospace company, he said. In 2018, he started getting involved in Longmont politics and has a passion for affordable housing.

Dalal serves as co-president of LAUNCH Longmont Housing, an alliance of residents that seeks to address the need for affordable housing in the city as well as help residents work toward long-term solutions.

One solution he advocates for in the city is something that he and other advocates call “middle housing.”

“The way we regulate housing favors building a single-family home, which is unaffordable for almost everyone, or you can build 300 apartments — and everything in between is unable to bear the cost of our process,” Dalal said. “I want to change the incentives of our development process so that developers have to build the thing that we want, which is missing middle housing.”Dalal also advocates for more transparency in the rental process, instead of the current system that allows landlords to hide the price of a rental property until an applicant has paid an application fee.

“I have a problem with unfair competition … (at some properties) you cannot actually find out what the cost of renting is until after you file the application and pay a fee, because they use an algorithm to set the rent,” he said.

Dalal said he also wants to focus on a more “fun” change to the city — a new flag for Longmont.

“One of the things that comes with civic pride, and Longmont has a lot of vivid pride, is we need a flag that people will feel proud to fly everywhere,” he said.

“I think we need to design a new flag to help people feel that sense of community.”

Dalal said the issues he’s passionate about are largely the same ones most candidates will mention, but he thinks it’s time for a different approach to finding solutions.

“All of us are going to talk about the same issues — we’re going to talk about housing affordability, traffic, the cost of living — the same issues Longmont has had for years,” he said.

“But it’s clear that the things that we are trying to do to solve these problems aren’t working … I want to bring creative policy solutions to Longmont.”

The Longmont City Council’s mayor seat, two at-large seats and a Ward 2 seat are all up for election on Nov. 4.

Residents Patrick Dillon, Alex Kalkhofer and Jake Marsing have announced their candidacy for the at-large seats.

“At-large” means any Longmont resident can run for the seat. Ward 2 is generally in the south and southwest areas of the city.

Voters who live in each ward elect one person to represent them; there are three ward seats.