Mayor Harrington says farewell after six years on council
“Everything felt on fire at every turn,” Harrington said Tuesday. His term ran through the pandemic, ushered in major victories for housing and water advocates, and even repelled Nazi assaults.
The Laramie City Council meeting Tuesday was the last of Mayor Brian Harrington’s six-year tenure with the governing board.
Throughout that tenure, Harrington served on or led councils that secured water rights, reformed city zoning, established protections for renters and debated police oversight.
“This council has sat together every Tuesday night, and we’ve made decisions that were complex and contentious,” he said at the close of his final meeting. “But we’ve done it — always, without fail — with respect and consideration for the others’ opinions.”
Winning a two-year council term in the 2018 election, Harrington went on to win a full four-year-term in 2020. This year, he did not stand for reelection to the council, opting instead to run for an open seat on the Albany County Commission. He lost that race.
In the years since 2018, Harrington and his fellow councilors purchased a 4,600-acre ranch south of Laramie and helped to craft the joint city-county Aquifer Protection Plan — both with the aim of ensuring future access to drinking water.
“For me personally, this meant my kids have clean water,” he said. “And I know you all are in similar boats.”
In 2022 — after several years of tragedy, activism, protest, committee work and debate — the council voted against calls for a civilian oversight board to review the work of the Laramie Police Department.
Harrington voted in favor of that oversight board, but one of his colleagues, Councilor Pat Gabriel, flipped his vote at the last minute and sunk the proposal. The council did establish a citizen advisory board, which has no oversight or enforcement powers, but has served as a communication channel between the police and the public.
Before his mayorship, Harrington and his fellow councilors successfully adopted the City Rental Housing Code in 2022, establishing basic habitability standards to protect the majority of city residents who rent the home they live in. The rental regulations have been attacked by a lawsuit and legislation, but these efforts have so far failed. The rental code suffers from low levels of compliance on the part of Laramie landlords.
Harrington also voted for a number of progressive housing reforms, all with the aim of encouraging denser, more varied housing. It’s part of an ongoing effort to address the housing shortage faced by Laramie and much of the nation beyond.
From late 2023 into the current calendar year, the Laramie City Council suffered a wave of attacks from online white supremacist trolls seeking to disrupt local government meetings across the country.
“We fought off literal Nazis for a while there,” Harrington said.
As the council wrestled with these trolls, it changed its public comment policies in minor ways that still stand today.
In May of this year, the council considered releasing a private landowner from the agreement that establishes the First Street Parking Lot on the corner of First and Garfield Streets. The lot is privately owned but publicly maintained. The landowner wanted to sell the lot to a housing developer — one who was looking to install apartments.
The proposal was vigorously opposed by members of the public who did not want to sacrifice downtown parking in the name of housing. The council ultimately voted to uphold the parking lot agreement.
Harrington’s tenure with the city council straddled the COVID years. His first council meeting as the city’s mayor, in January 2023, was also the council’s first in-person meeting since the pandemic drove much of the white-collar and bureaucratic world online.
Emerging from the chaos and division of those COVID years, Harrington said his council worked to reestablish relationships, build bridges and address the community’s most pressing concerns.
“Everything felt on fire at every turn,” he said. “It just maybe bears repeating that I think we did all these things with respect in our hearts, and I think with a respect for democracy — the thing that we all hold so close. So it has been a real honor to be your mayor.”
Outside of holding public office, Harrington is a photographer by trade and the co-founder and co-owner of Western AF, a country music video production company.
The councilors will elect a new mayor when the next council — and its four new members — are inducted in January.