Estimated read time: 8-9 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Editor's Note: This article is the fourth in a series interviewing Utah politicians from both sides of the aisle about how their work in government impacts the lives of young Utahns.
SALT LAKE CITY — On a generation scale, Erin Mendenhall falls just shy of being considered a millennial. She says that she still listens to Generation X music but doesn’t feel like she’s experienced the same things as her GenX peers. She says she probably identifies culturally with the millennial generation but also feels too old to be classified as that either.
"I’m somewhere in between, I guess," she said, with a chuckle, as she sat in front of a pair of paintings in a meeting room next to her office in the Salt Lake City and County Building.
Throughout this series, KSL.com is asking various Utah politicians across political aisles about their views on various aspects of government, as well as its impact on younger generations. Mendenhall, 39, took over as 36th mayor in Salt Lake City history two months ago after a stint as a city councilor for a half-dozen years. She entered the Salt Lake City Council after co-founding an air quality nonprofit called Breathe Utah in 2010.
The new mayor sat down with KSL.com Tuesday to discuss the importance of city government amid a presidential election year, as well as a bit about some of the issues that affect Utah’s capital city and younger generations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: How has the transition been from city councilor to mayor since you took office in January?
Answer: "It’s awesome. I love it. I wake up excited every day to get to work, and I feel capable, actually, and the biggest piece of that is an incredible team of people who work here for Salt Lake City and work in my office now. They're very good at the work they do. They come here with heart, wanting to do the work for the public good. I think your intention, no matter what your job is, really sets the tone and the culture in the workplace.
"It's always been a wonderful building to come into as a councilperson over the last six years. And now as the mayor, that being a part of and building the culture that I want to, I've got a great team that's helping me do it. So I'm, I feel very grateful and happy to be here. We've already done a lot of things. So it's an exciting time in the city."
Q: This is a presidential election year. With that, voter participation is traditionally the highest right now. What would you say to a voter coming in once every four years about the importance of city government in between presidential election years?
A: "City government is where it happens. This is the work that affects your quality of life most directly year in, year out, but also from a day-to-day basis. Being able to flush that toilet, turn a tap on and get clean, fresh water, pull out of your driveway and onto a street that's functional or not, public safety issues, transit access, trees on your street, street lighting, the kind of businesses that happen, whether or not there's a single-family home next to you or a big apartment tower: these are all decisions that happen right here at the local level.
"And we're accessible. One of my values that I bring to this work is to be accessible to the public, to hear from our people. When we've done something they would have done in a different way, how can we improve how they want us to spend taxpayer dollars? So, it's an accessible place. It impacts your life every single day in ways you may not even think about, and your voice matters. So showing up in these in between years, as we will have next year with council district elections throughout the city, it's really important that you do so."
Q: You were 33 when you got elected to the city council. What advice would you have for millennials about that age — or even younger — who are thinking of getting into politics?
A:
Can't see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Q: Moving into topics you addressed in the State of the City address: How important is it for your office and the city to address climate change now?
A: "It is so critically important; I can't emphasize it enough. I think it is the biggest issue facing our global community, by far, and the window of opportunity for us to have any positive effect on the outcome is closing. Government moves slow at almost every level, and the kind of seismic shift that we must make in order to just sustain moderate impacts of climate change are huge. They have to be done at a policy level; they need to be done in a sweeping way.
"And the narrative that we've heard in Utah for decades of individual responsibility — to reduce miles traveled and recycle, and do the environmental stewardship things that we want to do and we try to do — is not nearly enough. Corporations and government have to step in. Regulation should happen in order for us just to sustain the moderate impacts which are still quite devastating for tens of millions of people throughout the world.
"We're already experiencing the impacts of climate change here in Utah. Over the next couple of decades, our atmosphere, our climate here between St. George to Park City is going to shift quite dramatically. And local scientists, researchers from the University of Utah and onward, are telling us what those impacts are going to look like. So this will be economic in the effects of it. It will affect our demographics — where people live, how and what they can afford — and it will obviously impact our ability as a state to make the kind of decisions that we should be making today.
"We're doubling our population, regardless of climate change, along the Wasatch Front by 2050. ... I don't think anybody wants to live in a city that tries to grow its road infrastructure to accommodate every person's single car. We need to grow public transit. And we can't do it, again, by small incremental shifts at the rate things are changing. So, both for quality of life and access to the economy for the people here, also for the air quality and ultimately the climate, we need to be investing in these seismic shifts."
Q: What is the status of the Inland Port discussions between the city and the state at this point?
A:
Can't see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Q: How is the city addressing affordable housing?
A:
Can't see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube.
Q: You have called for a system to better track homeless beds in the city. What’s the status of that and what’s the current situation regarding homelessness in the city?
A: "We recently sat down with a third-party consultant who works nationally and has come in to help give our team here in City Hall advice about how we can communicate better about services, how better we can coordinate with people — the unsheltered homeless who are on our streets and camping throughout the city today — and, really, about the shelter-resistant portions of the population who, even if offered a van to take them and their things to a shelter right now would likely say no. How do we help people get the services they need, the care that they need, and still feel supported?
"When I go out and talk to people who are camping at Library Square and ask if they've tried the new homeless resource centers, most of the people say no. The vast majority say, ‘No, I've tried those things in the past — hasn't worked.’ Many of them are choosing to stay out there on the street for a number of reasons. And one of those pervasive reasons is also being around a community that they have a shared experience with. There's a lot of narratives like, ‘These are my friends. This is my street family. I don't want to leave. I don't want to go be in a one-bedroom apartment by myself and not have a community of people around me.’ That's a hurdle we really have to work harder to overcome.
"Today, if we're working to get someone to housing, it's most likely an isolated housing situation, not a communal living or community that has a shared experience like that. So there's some creative things happening around the country. Managed tiny house communities is one of those concepts that I'm really interested in. And so we'll be exploring all of these options — the successes and the failures of the creative pursuits around the country — and coming up with our own creative solutions in combination with the county, the state and other cities throughout Utah. This is not a Salt Lake City issue alone. This is a statewide issue, and we need to continue with the partnership approach to solving these problems."
