Civil Municipal Magazine - Dec 2023

212 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 “What I want for myself and my family,” says Wood, “I want for every person in our community.” Much prosperity Weidenhamer spoke of South Salt Lake’s economic advantages. The federal highway system’s interstates (I-15 and I-80) have perennially served as corridors of commerce. Light-industrial and manufacturing businesses brought success to the city. The close proximity to the state capital doesn’t hurt either. “Salt Lake City has grown in redevelopment, post- World War II in particular,” says Weidenhamer. “That housing bubble started to squeeze further and further out. We started to redevelop. About a third of our city is residential. A third of it is industrial. A third of it is mixed government and commercial, and there’s the railyards.” This potent economic combination, as he points out, started to bring more affordable housing options as the valley developed. The suburban sprawl came in and around South Salt Lake in the foothills. Also, the economic importance of the nearby University of Utah cannot be overstated. “We stayed a little truer to our industrial and manufacturing roots,” says Weidenhamer. “My perspective is that we’re a fairly gritty kind of pick-ourselves-up-by-our bootstraps culture, because in our culture, there’s not a whole lot of pomp and circumstance and fanciness here. With that, there’s a lot of people who work really hard and really value the community and value their neighbors and value the relationship of a very small geographic town.” That small-town feeling also helps South Salt Lake to better interact with policymakers, and it facilitates the interaction of neighbors with each other at community functions, as Weidenhamer opines, adding that it beats anything like it that he has ever seen in his 24 years in local municipal government. That aspect, he continues, “is really unsurpassed.” Weidenhamer also extols the efforts of Kelli Meranda and Promise South Lake City, a City-related initiative. It is, he says, very good at “focusing on celebrating our residents.” This City-based effort is a network of 14 programs at 12 locations throughout South Salt Lake. It offers free services for youth, families and the community at large. Promise South