Font ResizeWest Valley City » While they may hail from opposing political parties and represent constituencies as different as the capital's downtown skyscrapers are from Bluffdale's bucolic fields, the mayors of seven Salt Lake County communities can agree on this: More should be done to improve the Jordan River.
In a roundtable discussion on watershed issues at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, the mayors pressed collectively for a governing body to oversee long-term Jordan River development and for a funding stream to help pay for those projects.
"It is important that we work together to make a uniform system," said Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon. Preserving -- and improving -- the river corridor "is something we have to do. We can't do it in isolation."
The trouble is, even the mayors who tackled the topic during the Salt Lake Countywide Watershed Symposium on Wednesday -- including Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, Cottonwood Heights Mayor Kelvyn Cullimore, Bluffdale Mayor Claudia Anderson and Murray Mayor Dan Snarr -- couldn't agree on what that government or cash-catching mechanism might look like to move parts of the river from blight to beauty.
Should the county form a special-improvement district around the river with taxing authority? Should it sink storm-water fees into the system? Should voters be asked to approve a general-obligation bond?
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That committee hasn't reached a conclusion yet for how to raise the millions needed to buy up and improve the land along the Jordan River and who should govern that growth.
"We all see the Jordan River as a gem that has been under-utilized and under-appreciated," Becker said. "It can be a tourism possibility, but it will take us making the investment up and down the river."
And that investment, the mayors agreed, will take valleywide cooperation -- already flowing under the Blueprint Jordan River plan.
"We are moving in the right direction," Corroon said. "We just need to keep the momentum going."
