Salt Lake City streets are riddled with more potholes today than when oxen hauled wagons around town in the late 1800s. Native sights at Liberty Park include junkies who milk needles at Rice Pavilion. Further into the park’s interior, blue smoke billows from a stone fireplace. Originally intended for family picnics, the hearth is now regularly covered by tarps to trap warmth for neighboring tents.
Downtown sidewalks slant asymmetrically toward curbs that crumble into streets that collapse into themselves.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall sanctions raids of the unsheltered in the name of sanitation — as if tactics of abatement resolve filth or homelessness. Tents appear, disappear and reappear as far east as Trolley Square. (I’m old enough to remember when the only sleeping bags to speak of on our streets unrolled on the parade route the night before the Days of ‘47 Parade.)
The City Council drones on about “affordable housing,” but their solutions are soberingly few. Property taxes continue to skyrocket. Landlords raise rents accordingly.
I purchased my first home in Central City in 2001. Today, I’m in my fourth downtown residence — immediately next door to my second and only a few blocks from my first and third.
I love Salt Lake City: our broad streets and attractive foothills, refugee community and growing diversity, local arts and literature, street fairs, farmer markets, the University of Utah and our mature underground music scene.
I stand in awe of the Wasatch, the Oquirrh, and what remains of the Great Salt Lake. Our wondrously beautiful state deserves a clean and thriving and progressive capitol — one that sets standards for other cities to follow instead of offering substandard living. There is so much to preserve here, so much to fix and build upon, so much that Mendenhall has proven she can’t get done.
In May of 2007, I saw then-Mayor Rocky Anderson debate Sean Hannity at Kingsbury Hall. I say “debate” because of Rocky’s fact-based, well-studied responses to each of Hannity’s bombastic claims and ridiculous arguments. Salt Lake needs a mayor with compassion and intelligence and grit, someone who embraces dialogue and transparency. We deserve a leader who champions those who lack privilege. We require a mayor capable of addressing tough issues before the problems of our city outgrow anyone’s ability to fix them.
I recall participating on a Zoom City Council meeting in 2021. I’d spent an afternoon measuring the depth of curb tops to gutter around my Central City/Liberty Wells neighborhood to raise awareness about a real infrastructure problem. The council’s reaction to my report: humorless, self-certain, drab, unresponsive.
“What a waste of time,” I thought afterward, believing still that civic engagement should represent time well-spent.
I voted for Mendenhall based upon a hope that she’d pull us from the wreckage her predecessor, Jackie Biskupski, left behind. Now, thanks to Rocky Anderson’s re-election bid, we can vote for more than hope.
Rocky has a plan to cap property taxes, increase green space and green energy and generate truly affordable housing. He has alternatives to raids on the homeless. He’s more a political activist than politician, more a humanitarian than bureaucrat, and more a problem solver than grandstander. Maybe he’ll even figure a way to re-curb our walkways and fill all those holes.
Sounds like I’m stumping for him, but I’ve never met the man. What do I know about Rocky? His work, his success, his vision. If I’m stumping, and no doubt I am, it’s for the future of our great city.
Calvin Jolley
Calvin Jolley, father of two daughters, lives and writes in downtown Salt Lake City.
