Mayoral candidate James Olsen says rising property taxes inspired him to run.

Olsen, who is a long-time Hamilton resident, will be running a write-in campaign for mayor against Hamilton Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf this November. Olsen said that if elected, he hoped to halt tax increases, improve plans for affordable housing and make local government more “user-friendly.”

“I spent decades trying to give groups of people a voice to interact with governments and it’s hard,” Olsen told the Ravalli Republic. “As a citizen I’m not special. I just have a role and my job is to find out what citizens have to say and I’m going to work really hard to do that.”

Olsen clarified that he didn’t necessarily disagree with the way that Hamilton’s current mayor operated, but argued that by getting rid of thi

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