Rocky addresses problems facing city

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said downtown Salt Lake is turning into a melting pot where people from all parts of the valley come to do commerce and diversify the city. Also, Salt Lake City is a "major resettlement community," having had the second-fastest growing Hispanic population in the United States as well as the fourth-largest per capita Pacific Islander population, according to Anderson. "That kind of enrichment is what's offered by a downtown," Anderson said before an audience of U students and community members Thursday in the Hinckley Caucus Room. Because the U is a great place for learning and a safe-harbor for the LDS population, all students are integrated to the university, added Ted Wilson, former Salt Lake Mayor and past director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics. "We all need our safe place, but we also need to step across the line where the greater world teaches us how to act," Wilson said. "Being the Mormon capital is a great thing, but we need to realize that less than 50 percent of our population has been Mormons since 1885." He added that BYU doesn't offer as much of an opportunity to be "in the community, but not of the community." Environmental protection Despite the strides Salt Lake City has made toward increasing its diversity, Anderson said a large challenge ahead of the city is sprawl development, or the expansion of built-up areas. Anderson said confronting the problem would help Salt Lake City save open space and cut down deteriorating air quality. "Air quality goes handin- hand with good development, and we have got to do everything we can to clean up the air," Anderson said upon his return from international conferences in New Delhi and Europe with heads of the G8 regarding the Kyoto Protocol- an environmentally friendly initiative that neither the United States nor Austra - lia signed. Both were the only industrialized countries in the world not to, he added. He said t he city must move toward building mass transit instead of more la nes of traf- fic, which is "conducive to increasing the same problem we now face." However, he added that the city's recent efforts, such as shifting city vehicles to natural gas and placing LED lights in traffic signals have helped Salt Lake City become among the more environmentally friendly U.S. cities. In 2000, Salt Lake City committed to a 21 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emission by 2012 and are already 76 percent of the way to reaching that goal, which led the Bush administration to honor Salt Lake City with the Climate Protection A ward, Anderson said. Equity in funding Salt Lake City projects With high-rise buildings, surrounding neighborhoods, a downtown area, a flourishing religion, a professional basketball team and an intellectual component-of which the University of Utah is the center-Wilson called Salt Lake City an international city. A common misconception among state legislators, he added, is that all good things in Utah come directly to Salt Lake City. As a result, the state comes after Salt Lake residents' pocketbooks to fund various projects. He said the state is overlooking commuters who travel to Salt Lake City and bene- fit from its development, thus paying little in return. Wilson said Salt Lake City's population is double the resident population in the daytime. "At high noon, we double the midnight population," he said. "Commuters, you're wonderful, but you're also freeloaders who come use what Salt Lake residents pay for." Anderson said he has been working with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and legislators to bridge the gap between the state and the Mayor's Office. "We need a lot of community discussion and input about where we're headed with our downtown," he said. sgehrke@chronicle.utah.edu