Mayor Monica Zoltanski, who recently took office as Sandy’s first female top executive, believes the city is at a crossroads.
Many of the city’s facilities are aging, and it faces transportation and affordable housing challenges.
Sandy is increasingly competing with other government agencies and businesses to attract and retain skilled employees, and Zoltanski said they’ll have to figure out how to pay for high-quality staffers and services without burdening residents.
The city’s growth also raises questions, she said, about how to “preserve the best of what we have in Sandy and improve on the rest.”
Here’s how Zoltanski plans to tackle some of these challenges as mayor:
Growth
Zoltanski said in a pre-election candidate questionnaire for The Salt Lake Tribune that she desires a “sensible pace” for development, explaining that she would guide growth to the city’s Cairns district near transit hubs and Interstate 15.
Projects that “are sensitive to the scale of surrounding neighborhoods” are more likely to receive her support, she said, noting that she’s particularly interested in adding more single-level housing for older city residents.
“There are many people in Sandy who are ready to turn over their home to the next generation of owners,” she said, “but not if it means they have to leave the city they love.”
Gondola
The mayor made clear during her campaign that she opposes the idea of constructing a gondola to ferry people into Little Cottonwood Canyon and says she instead supports a phased approach to dealing with congestion along this thoroughfare.
She does agree that the city needs transportation improvements but argues the solution can’t start and end at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
“We need our transit solutions to be much deeper into the community,” she said in an interview, “starting from our freeway access and even from different areas around the valley,.”
Zoltanski also believes in having a conversation about what the canyon traffic should be — not just what it can be. Maximizing traffic to the mouth of the canyon by building a gondola could worsen the city’s air quality, create congestion inside Sandy and demand expensive investments in large parking structures.
Instead, she’d like to explore car pooling and paid parking reservations at the resorts.
“I’d like to see more leadership from the resorts to help solve the problem for their own customers,” she said. “The question is what is the proper capacity for our canyons? Just because we can push 3,000 people an hour up the canyon, should we?”
Community engagement
Zoltanski, who began her civic involvement in Sandy as a community organizer for parks preservation, said her first act as mayor was to create a survey asking residents what they want to see from the city. She said engaging residents and figuring out what they think about city issues will be one of her top priorities.
“Whether you’ve lived in Sandy 40 years or are a new resident, everyone should feel informed and have a chance to weigh in,” she said. “I will use new technology and old-fashioned neighborhood meetings to empower residents to participate and build a sense of civic pride in our community.”
