A new face in Salt Lake City
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Wednesday, January 16, 2008
"We want our friends from the north to come to Salt Lake City; we just don't want them to increase our city's traffic, further foul our air, undermine the quality of our lives and make us sick simply because of the choices they make about where they live and how they get around."
-- Salt Lake Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson in his 7,400-word 2005 State of the City address
That quote marked the second of two low points in the relationship between Top of Utah residents and the state's capital city. The other was the former Salt Lake mayor's joining of a lawsuit to stop the Legacy Highway, which in the end delayed the highway by years and, in the process, wasted more than $200 million in tax revenue that could have gone to better purposes.
We recall those two dark periods as Anderson's successor, Ralph Becker, assumes Salt Lake City's mayoral seat. We hear that Becker's inaugural speech lasted six or seven minutes. That had to be a relief for those used to Anderson's never-ending orations. And in his remarks, Becker made clear the days of antagonism between Salt Lake and the Top of Utah are a thing of the past: "I look forward to working with the City Council, our neighbors to the north and south, our governor and Legislature ... ."
Before Becker was elected mayor, he served for a number of years in the Legislature. He even made the drive north a couple of times to meet with the Standard-Examiner's editorial board as part of delegations of Democratic lawmakers who presented the minority party's legislative agendas. Our visits were always interesting and convivial, and Becker was never one to paint Democrats' likelihood of success -- the GOP has had super-majorities in both the House and Senate for many years -- as anything but realistic. Now, surely, he will be working in an environment that is more hospitable to his political philosophy.
We wish him luck. But more than that, we have every indication the Becker administration will be less about my-way-or-the-highway confrontation and more about consensus building and, if necessary, compromise -- if so, then a model for other leaders to emulate. If Becker remains the man he has always been in public life, he will be prone to reasonable dialogue on issues of shared interest, regardless of city or county borders.
Will we agree on all things? No, we won't. But we will hope that Becker continues to pursue the progressive and worthwhile components of his predecessor's agenda -- most notably, a commitment to more public transit, cleaner air and saner development -- while rejecting the slash-and-burn hysterics and off-putting ego that so often went along with it.
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