Next month, House Speaker Greg Hughes is competing in a charity boxing match and he got a little practice throwing haymakers — verbal ones, at least — at Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski on Tuesday.
Hughes said he is “as frustrated as I can possibly be” and accused the mayor of working behind the scenes to undermine the efforts to clean up the Pioneer Park and Rio Grande area, specifically by refusing to use her authority to temporarily close Rio Grande Street between the Road Home shelter and nearby homeless services run by the Catholic church.
“She is opposing this safe space,” he said in a KSL Radio Interview.
It was a very public disintegration of the team that came together for Operation Rio Grande. Think of the last Avengers movie when Iron Man and Captain America ended up pummeling each other.
This is hardly new. Biskpuski clashed with the City Council when the Council demanded to see a plan for dealing with homelessness. She clashed with Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams over how many new homeless shelters there should be and where they should be located. Now she is at odds with Hughes and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox over closing the street.
I haven’t been a fan of herding our city’s homeless into makeshift pens like it’s some urban zoo. It’s unsettling for those on the outside of the chain link and undignified for those within.
But I’m also convinced it needs to be done and should be done today. Mayor Biskupski is the only one who can do it, and her refusal to do so is jeopardizing the progress that has been made in the first two weeks of Operation Rio Grande.
Because those entering and exiting the corridor between the Road Home and Catholic services would be screened to keep out those under the influence of drugs or alcohol — the same screening both facilities now conduct — it would provide a safe place where people can congregate during the day, much safer than simply gathering at Pioneer Park.
It allows the service providers to focus less on the security and more on helping their clients in need.
And by moving many, if not most, of the truly homeless, law-abiding people out of the park, it allows law enforcement to focus on driving out those who are there trafficking or using drugs.
In essence it helps delineate between the two prongs of Operation Rio Grande — the side desperately in need of human services and those who are breaking the law.
This is not a new idea. Former Sheriff Jim Winder proposed it back in April and, while Winder’s roll-out left much to be desired, McAdams and Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill pushed for its enactment.
Then, as now, it was Biskupski who stood in the way for reasons that she has not clearly articulated.
On Tuesday, she argued it was about consulting with the City Council and the public — consultation that surely could have taken place in the four months since the county proposed it in April.
Now she wants three more weeks so the service providers can get approval from their boards of directors and so the public has time to weigh in — a lesson she says she learned in the ill-fated homeless shelter siting process.
The mayor’s desire to include the public in the discussion is admirable and, under almost any circumstance, is the ideal course of action.
This is not an ideal situation.
Nor is this a decision that will impact hundreds of people, like locating homeless shelters did. Go down to Rio Grande and see the throngs of homeless and out-in-the-open drug dealing on the otherwise abandoned block and tell me who will object to the closure of that road.
As Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox noted Tuesday, waiting three weeks or more to get the closure approved means it will be another month to build the fences and set up the “safe space.”
Operation Rio Grande has created a tipping point.
If we don’t capitalize on the momentum and continue to build on the progress we have seen, we will assuredly slide back into the drug infestation, the crime and the predatory behavior that became too common in the area.
The mayor — and ONLY the mayor — can seize this opportunity. We need her to act and we need her to act today. And we need The Avengers all fighting on the same side.
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