GARLAND - By Cari Doutre, Headliner Publisher, November 4, 2021
It's official. After a nail-biting election too close to call until now, Linda Bourne has been elected to serve as Garland City's first female mayor. It's a first for this small rural town that was settled and established over 100-years ago.
According to election results released Thursday, November 4, only 44 votes separated Bourne and incumbent Todd Miller in Garland City's mayoral race. Bourne totaled 287 votes to Miller's 243 votes.
Registered voters in Garland City put the 2021 Municipal Election's mayoral race between Bourne and Miller too close to call until provisional ballots could be counted. Unofficial preliminary election results released Tuesday night reported Bourne with 259 votes to Millers 220.
This isn't the first time Bourne and Miller have faced off for Garland City Mayor either.
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In 2017, Bourne and Miller ran against each other in the Garland City mayoral race where Miller won by a landslide. Miller was first elected to the Garland City Council in 2014 and was appointed mayor in 2015 when the position was vacated by former Garland City Mayor Scott Coleman.
Bourne's start in local politics wasn't without it's controversy either. She was first elected to the Garland City Council in 2015, just months after she was fired as Garland City Police Chief in April 2015. Bourne was the first female police chief in Utah, a position she served for 23 years beginning in 1992.
In 2015, Garland City Mayor Scott Coleman at the time, cited that the reason Bourne was let go was because of a "lack of effectiveness" over the city's small police department.
Coleman told KSL News in an article published on April 29, 2015, that, "It was something I've been contemplating for at least six months... It had been six months and nothing really had changed so I felt it was time to make a change to someone that would actually make the changes that were necessary," Coleman stated.
It's a position in a police department that no longer exists. In 2019 the Garland City Police Department combined with Tremonton City's police department to form a unified Tremonton Garland Police Department.
Two months after she left the police department, Bourne filed her declaration of candidacy for one of Garland City's 4-year council seats up for election that year. When Election Day 2015 arrived, registered voters in Garland City elected Bourne to serve on the city council with 195 votes - the highest amount of votes for a candidate in that race.
Four years later in 2019, she was re-elected to serve another 4-year term, a position she is currently only half-way through serving. The council will appoint a new councilmember to finish the remaining two years left on that seat's term when Bourne is sworn in as mayor in January 2022.
This year registered voters in Box Elder County received their ballots in the mail weeks before Election Day, November 2. Ballots had to be postmarked before November 2 or dropped off a designated ballot box throughout the county by 8 p.m. on November 2.
Find more 2021 Election results on the link below.
