The return of the 2034 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games to Utah is a significant achievement that state leaders take great pride in. While Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall shares their excitement, she said her priority remains addressing present-day challenges.
“I want to reassure you that the day-to-day issues that affect our residents are our prime focus,” Mendenhall said. “Make no mistake — the future of Salt Lake City is bright. But its present is urgent. We continue the work that we started, with resolve and with clarity, because the Salt Lake City of tomorrow depends on the decisions we make today.”
“We are driven by purpose to serve our residents at the closest level.”
On Tuesday, Mendenhall gave her sixth State of the City address as mayor to an audience inside the Salt Lake City Main Library, home to thousands of books that sat for years at the top of the City-County Building. Mendenhall said the library as it is known today is just one example of Utah’s nationwide model of serving its residents through action.
Safety and policing in SLC
An “urgent” focus, Mendenhall said, is the issue of public safety.
“We will arrest those who are breaking the law. We will hold ourselves accountable for our parts of the system, and we will be up front about the systemic gaps that fail to hold people accountable and provide the assistance to stability that they need,” Mendenhall said, expressing gratitude to the Salt Lake City Police Department for following through with Salt Lake City’s Public Safety Plan that was introduced two weeks ago.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams asked Mendenhall’s office last month to develop a comprehensive plan that addresses major safety concerns — as they accused the Salt Lake Police Department of being “ineffective” — or to expect the Legislature to get involved.
In a press conference last week, Mendenhall said she welcomed the invitation by the Republican state leaders because she was “fed up” with the system already in place. “The system does not work for the highest need and highest impact individuals experiencing homelessness, and more must be done to control the cartels and the fentanyl crisis that’s on our streets,” she said.
Key actions the Public Safety Plan includes are:
- Increase police presence downtown and in high-crime neighborhoods to decrease gun violence and get drugs off the streets.
- Increase emergency shelter options to allow more year-round services for the homeless.
- Impose higher prosecution for “High Utilizers” of the legal system.
- Expand treatment for mental health, behavioral health and substance use.
- Invest in housing to create options for homeless people following their time in shelter services.
Despite concerns, the Public Safety Plan showed overall crime in Salt Lake City is at a 16-year low.
The SLCPD saw a 50% rise in proactive policing in 2024 compared to the three-year average, addressing over 8,400 calls related to transient activity, per the plan. Arrests and citations also climbed, with 8,508 people booked into jail — the most since 2017 — and nearly 5,500 misdemeanor citations issued throughout the city.
“Since the launch of the Public Safety Plan 12 days ago, the Salt Lake City Police Department has already conducted two undercover operations, leading to seven arrests, the seizure of thousands of fentanyl pills, stolen guns, and $1.5 million dollars in concentrated THC,” Mendenhall said.
Homelessness and housing
Mendenhall also addressed the issue of homelessness, which dovetails with public safety concerns.
According to Utah’s Department of Workforce Services 2024 report on homelessness, the number of Utahns in Salt Lake County without a roof over their heads increased from 2021 to 2023, and now totals 7,343 individuals — a problem Mendenhall said was both a “criminal matter” and a “humanitarian crisis.”
“Emergency shelters are overburdened, while treatment facilities and transitional housing are stretched thin. These gaps — every gap — in the entire system leads back to our streets,” she said. Tackling homelessness is something that takes a collaborative effort to remedy, Mendenhall said, and part of that is creating affordable housing.
In her State of the City address, she highlighted The Other Side Village, a master-planned community that aids people in breaking out of chronic homelessness.
She said that since her beginning as mayor in 2020, 524 affordable units have been either completed or funded, 684 family-sized affordable units, and 119 for sale or shared equity affordable units, totaling 6,567 affordable units.
“By this time next year, we will have doubled the number of units under affordability protections in this city compared to 10 years earlier. And, there are 1,500 more under construction as we speak,” she said, while acknowledging the 18,000-plus housing unit deficit in Salt Lake City.
She also introduced her office’s latest Affordable Housing Construction and Preservation Dashboard, a tool for tracking Salt Lake City’s progress in housing affordability. The dashboard tracks construction, finished projects and any additional funds expended solely on shrinking the housing gap.
“If a city isn’t explicitly focused on making their city welcoming for families, then they will be displaced by the natural market,” she recently told the Deseret News. “The creation of family sized housing units, and particularly family sized affordable housing, and the opportunity for ownership or wealth generation through housing have been some of the flagship actions we’ve taken this year.”
Updates in urban development
In addition to housing and safety, Mendenhall said that creating public spaces where the community can safely come together is key to keeping families in Salt Lake City.
State legislation passed last year laid the groundwork for a revitalization zone in the city. At the beginning of this year, Salt Lake City implemented a half-percent sales tax increase to raise funds for the project.
Smith Entertainment Group, owners of the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club, signed a participation agreement last fall to collaborate with the city in creating “renovations to Delta Center to make it a first-class arena for the NBA and NHL teams” as well as developing “portions of the two blocks east of Delta Center as a sports, entertainment, culture, and convention district.”
In her remarks on Tuesday, Mendenhall also highlighted the former Salt Lake City Bees ballpark — dubbed “Design Scenario 2” — as one of the latest projects underway in the city.
“Picture this,” she said, “The western wing of the ballpark, repurposed to house an entertainment venue, creative spaces, and retail. The adjacent ballfield transformed into a mixed-use urban space and a safe community park where kids can play under the trees, while their parents listen to a concert or stroll through a pop-up event.
“The Ballpark will be a place where families grow, where businesses thrive, and where the community’s pulse beats strong, drawing us all back to one of the most historic neighborhoods in Salt Lake City.”
As a move to balance outside activity options across Salt Lake City, the west side of the city is also planned to have more pickleball courts and park space following the completion of Glendale Regional Park this summer.
Last week, funding was confirmed for construction design for the Green Loop, a linear park that “will reconstruct 5½ miles of downtown streets into places for every generation to come together and play, walk, shop, picnic and relax,” Mendenhall said in her State of the City address last year.
Moving forward, Mendenhall said she plans to request $3 million from the City Council to “develop a full design for the Civic Campus portion of the Green Loop” from Library Square across to Washington Square Park, “integrating people-first design with green space and trees, lanes for walking, biking and new recreation opportunities.”
