Meet Herriman’s new gun-toting, belt-tightening mayor-elect

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Josh Mills is the incoming mayor of Herriman and a… (Leah Hogsten / The Salt Lake Tribune)

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Herriman » It’s good to be mayor: The respect, the recognition, the reserved parking space and … the car?

For Herriman’s incoming mayor Josh Mills, the intangible perks will have to suffice. He plans to attend City Council meetings in “Bonnie Blue,” his 1981 Ford Fairmont wagon.

Mills, a disciple of money-managing AM radio host Dave Ramsey, bought the car two years ago for $1,500 — cash. Living within one’s means is a Mills family doctrine, one the new mayor hopes to bring to the city of 20,000 within 30 days of taking office Monday.

Mills and other Herriman residents were enraged in 2006 when council members passed a parks and recreation fee, and then gave themselves a pay raise a few months later.

Mills, as well as incoming Councilmen Mick Shannon and Craig Tischner, have pledged to reverse both actions next month.

Frugal living is truly a way of life for Mills, his wife, Barbara, and their three daughters. They have a comfortable, but modest home, visit family for vacations and try to find family activities that don’t cost money.

Mills does splurge on one thing — season tickets to BYU football games. He takes one of his daughters to each game, where they sit with his brothers.

“The game is kind of boring, but we get cotton candy,” says 7-year-old Brooklyn, “and we always know where [Cougar mascot] Cosmo is.”

Family comes first for Mills, and most of his time

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is spent with at least one relative. He works with his father and brother in a commercial truck insurance brokerage. He loves the job’s flexibility, which allows him to volunteer in his daughters’ classrooms and occasionally work from home.
 

In his spare time, Mills teaches a concealed-firearm permit class with his brother, Mark. Always gun enthusiasts, the two decided to start their own class after noticing the lack of course offerings when getting their own concealed-carry permits. Josh usually carries his Springfield XD40, although he sometimes trades it for his wife’s XD9.

The Mills girls can defend themselves just as well as their father. The family often travels to the Front Sight Firearms Training Center in Pahrump, Nev., where Barbara and Josh have memberships. Brooklyn and her 5-year-old sister, Addison, have taken children’s classes there on stranger danger, and 3-year-old Paige is excited to attend when she is old enough.

The Millses also spend time in Joseph, near Richfield in south-central Utah, where extended family owns a home. They ride four-wheelers, collecting bottles and cans for target practice. Although the shooting is fun, Mills says he teaches his daughters that safety reigns.

The mayor-elect is a patient, thorough teacher, says Scott Barzee, who recently hosted a class taught by Mills in his Herriman home. He not only explained gun laws, Barzee says, but also the reasoning behind them.

Barzee, a practicing Mormon who always chafed at the LDS Church’s ban on weapons in its meetinghouses, was particularly impressed by Mills’ reasoning on the prohibition. Just as gun owners have the right to carry firearms on their property, churches have the same right to deny guns in their houses of worship, Mills told the class.

Mills says he enjoys teaching the classes because he meets so many like-minded people. He talks guns and politics with students — and at the office, where the family listens to conservative radio talk shows.

His passion for politics led Mills through the ranks of the Salt Lake County Republican Party, where he campaigned for Rep. Carl Wimmer before deciding to run for office himself.

“I always joked: ‘I’m always running. I just don’t know what race,’” Mills says.

That campaign experience, Wimmer says, helped propel Mills past three-term Mayor J. Lynn Crane in November.

Mills had to make up a huge campaign-cash deficit — Crane had outraised him by nearly 10 to one — but he did it with shoe leather. He and his volunteers spent hours going door to door and calling voters, covering the entire city more than once.

Members of Mills’ own LDS congregation often chided him for running against Crane. By election night, Mills was ready to write off the campaign as a “good experience.” Then the surprise came. He defeated Crane, the only mayor 10-year-old Herriman ever has known, by less than 200 votes.

Now Mills will lead City Hall. But he will have plenty of help. Besides other elected officials and city staffers, his students, friends and family plan to give lots of advice — even if unsolicited.

“We’ll tell it to him,” brother Mark says, “whether he likes it or not.”

kdrake@sltrib.com