But government is not the only segment of society that needs to look before it leaps. If it were, all sorts of awful and irrevocable actions could occur while the government was still looking for its shoes.

That's why it seemed like a good idea for the Salt Lake City Council June 9 to place a temporary hold on the growing and distasteful trend of people buying smallish homes in beautiful old neighborhoods only to tear them down and replace them with monstrosities that damage the psychic, if not the monetary, value of the surrounding homes.

And that's why it was disappointing to see the same governing body, on the flipped vote of Councilman Dale Lambert, kill that moratorium less than a week later and send its staff off to draft some new legislation.

Study first, legislate after, is the proper order of things. Some of that study could take place as soon as tonight's Council meeting.

The problem here is that, while the studying goes on, there is nothing to stop property owners or speculators from abusing the right to control property they own in such a way that it casts a figurative and literal gloom over properties that other people own, without so much as a by your leave.

If anything, anybody with more money than sense who might have been tempted to alter an entire neighborhood will now be encouraged to hurry up and do it before the city passes any reasonable and properly thought-through laws to stop them.

Lambert's expressed concern that "monster homes" is not a problem that lends itself to a citywide, one-size-fits-all ordinance, while a reasonable cavil concerning permanent legislation, is precisely why the Council should have preserved its temporary zoning ordinance.

The real law on this matter, if and when it becomes a law, should not be made in haste. But a moratorium is the polar opposite of haste. It is an opportunity for all involved to say what a wise man once said are the three most important words in the world: Wait a minute.

We have time to wait, and it would do us good to do so. The owners and builders who might have already borrowed money and retained architects in hopes of doing something awful would have been discommoded.

But the affected neighborhoods really could have used that breather.