The 180-Day Action Plan
Education, Environment, Equality, Engagement, Excitement As a professional planner, small-business owner, and legislative leader, I am prepared to combine all of the skills, experience, and relationships I have developed over the years into the job of being mayor of Salt Lake City. My vision for our city is ambitious, and it is comprehensive; our residents expect and deserve nothing less.

Taken largely from my Blueprints for a Great American City, I have identified a 180-day action plan that will kick-start Salt Lake City toward a new era of community involvement and collaborative vision that will move us forward in five broad areas: Education, Environment, Equality, Engagement, and Excitement. I will bring these action items to the City Council, with whom I intend to work closely and constructively to “build” on these Blueprints that have been outlined. I encourage all Salt Lake residents to read these Blueprints, and then engage with us as we move forward to build a Great American City.

The 180-Day Action PlanEducation
The mayor can do much to enhance the quality of education in our city when there is a meaningful relationship between city government and the school district. Education is key to improving the lives of our children and their families, and to moving people out of the cycles of poverty and crime. To accomplish that, I will:

- Appoint an Education Partnership Coordinator. I will create a senior-level position within the mayor’s office called the Education Partnership Coordinator. This person will forge partnerships with the Salt Lake City School District and with neighborhood public schools, help determine and coordinate Salt Lake City governmental policies and action for schools, enhance school safety, and work with the business community, state government, and higher education entities to match community resources with school needs.

- Create the Mayor’s Monthly School Summit. I will arrange monthly roundtable meetings, in coordination with the school district personnel, the school board, and with school principals, to share ideas and better understand how city administration and policy can support their efforts in our schools.

- Work with the University of Utah, Salt Lake Community College, Westminster College, and Brigham Young University to create a “Salt Lake City is College-Bound” scholarship program. This program will bring together private business, existing scholarship programs, and college admission personnel to explore ways for our children to go to college.

Environment
As a city government, we must encourage all our residents to accelerate our efforts—initiated by Mayor Anderson—toward becoming a more sustainable city. This means conserving resources, continuing to be a national example for reducing our impact on the global climate, improving air quality, and protecting our open spaces. Accordingly, I will:

- Accelerate the planning and funding for Salt Lake Bikeways. I will accelerate planning for three east-west bike trails and an additional north-south trail, along with a system of dedicated bike-highways along arterial routes.
- Initiate completion of the Jordan River Parkway. I will ramp up funding for the Jordan River Parkway to complete trail development and initiate a true restoration of the river corridor. This will include leveraging the city’s resources with other stakeholders, including the state of Utah.

- Address a comprehensive review of staff, land-use ordinances, and overall planning policies within the Community Development Department and Building and Housing Services. Salt Lake City’s plans are often out-of-date, and land-use, housing, and permitting processes are implemented inconsistently. I will move forward with my “Fix by Six” effort to update existing community general plans within six years. I will also assure clear standards for development, following master plans, and a faster process for approval of developments that meet the standards. I will also push for a muscular sustainability ordinance and a strengthening of the city’s Foothills and Sensitive Lands Protection Ordinance.

- Revise Salt Lake City’s building codes to strongly encourage use of LEED (or LEED-equivalent) building standards. Because buildings are a leading contributor to carbon emissions and climate change, I will work very closely with the City Council and with the business and development community to implement an effort to expand LEED building standards into the private sector.

- Require departmental carbon footprints. All city departments will develop and implement new strategic plans that include carbon footprints and that consider the air quality and the land, water, and conservation impacts of their proposals and actions.

Equality
Salt Lake City should continue to lead the way in acknowledging and building on the strength of our diversity and encouraging respect and tolerance for everyone. To assure that our ordinances reflect the spirit of our community, I will:

- Pass a nondiscrimination ordinance. My administration will present to the City Council a comprehensive nondiscrimination municipal ordinance that will go beyond the current ordinance, which proscribes discrimination based on gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation, among others. This ordinance will be expanded to broader protected classes and will cover housing and realty, employment, public accommodation, and city activities.

- Establish a city registry for domestic partnerships. I will take to the City Council a request to establish a Domestic Partner Registry. This registry will allow for a clear and efficient mechanism for the city to offer health, retirement and other employee benefits to domestic partners or another designee as allowed in our current ordinance. Concurrently, I will author an executive order that requires the extension of benefits equally to registered domestic partners or another designee by companies that contract with the city and already provide benefits to employees’ spouses. I will actively work with private-sector insurance providers to encourage provision of such benefits to companies that provide services to our city.

- Change the city’s retirement plan to allow an employee to name a domestic partner or another designee as a beneficiary.

Engaging the Community
I want our community to be fully engaged. Our residents are creative and diverse, and should actively participate to find solutions to issues in our own neighborhoods. To expand and encourage this kind of neighborhood and community involvement, I will:

- Initiate “Salt Lake Solutions.” To improve Salt Lake City government responsiveness to our residents and to help establish an open, transparent, and inclusive approach to decision-making in Salt Lake, I will initiate “Salt Lake Solutions.” This approach to Salt Lake City decision-making will establish a new standard and approach for Salt Lake City employees. It will emphasize that we are public servants, here to serve the public. We will adopt an approach to solving problems that engages all segments of our community, follows standards, considers alternatives, and arrives at the best possible solutions.

- Establish open communications with state government and neighboring communities. Building on relationships developed over a span of 25 years in governmental service and in my business, I will reach out to our municipal neighbors, the county, and to the state legislature to address opportunities and challenges. Many city issues are dependent on those relationships, such as air and water quality, transportation, arts programs and structures, and economic development. Most of these regional issues require regional solutions. Because of my long-standing relationships and experience in coalition- and consensus-building, I look forward to a new era of partnerships for success.

- Strengthen security and neighborhood safety. I will work to strengthen police presence and responsiveness throughout the city, through the deployment of additional police officers. Our city residents, in all neighborhoods, must have positive, mutually supportive relationships with police officers. I will meet with the chief of police shortly after the election to initiate that effort, which will begin the day I am sworn in.

- Provide additional police officers. I will work closely with the City Council to fund the increase of total police officers openings by at least 20 new officers. These officers would be deployed to neighborhood-direct services.

- Encourage neighborhood involvement in public safety. Our residents need to work together to create safe and vibrant neighborhoods. I will initiate an effort through our community councils to strengthen our mobile and neighborhood-watch citizen efforts. We will also initiate an effort to address crimes that detract from our city, such as graffiti, panhandling, and drug trafficking in parks.

Excitement
Salt Lake City is the crossroads for a growing, expanding region of our country. Residents of our city enjoy the cultural arts, professional sports, the presence of a world-class university, an accessible international airport, and four-season sports and recreation areas within minutes of our downtown. Our city’s vibrancy depends on how we plan for our future. The next generations depend on us to make wise decisions right now. To build a vibrant and exciting city, I will:

- Implement elements of Downtown Rising and the Downtown Transportation Plan. I will prioritize action steps to implement the Downtown Rising plan and the Downtown Transportation Plan (which is currently in draft form). Upon taking office, I will immediately pursue the following: 1) the creation of a downtown cultural district, in coordination with Salt Lake County, which would include preservation of the Utah Theater and development of a Performing Arts Center; 2) the creation of a year-round Public Market; 3) working with the state of Utah for a Global Exchange Place; 4) the creation of a Downtown Parking Authority; 5) the initiation of a downtown transit circulator system; 6) capitalizing on the completion of commuter rail from the north and our Intermodal Hub Central Station with bike lockers, bike rental facilities and a safe bikeway system downtown; and 7) developing, in conjunction with the University of Utah, an extension of the campus to our downtown and along the transit lines of University Boulevard (also known as 400 South) with research, classroom and housing facilities in a manner that is compatible with existing neighborhoods.