On Jan. 2, 2024, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall was sworn in for her second term as mayor. Here are Mayor Mendenhall’s full remarks:

Thank you!

Thank you for being here today. 

It’s an honor to serve our city and I am so grateful that Salt Lakers have put their trust in me to serve as mayor again. 

I want to thank my family — Kyle, Cash, Everett and Mila — your willingness to share much of my time and attention with our capital city is selfless. I am so lucky to have your love and your support. Thank you.

I want to thank my campaign team – Ian, Joshua, Kalani, Becca, James, MJ, Blair, Alexa, John, our campaigners, our volunteers, our donors, and everyone who helped make this honor of taking this oath possible once again.

My Mayor’s Office team – thank you. You work so hard every day in the service of this city. You love Salt Lake City, you believe in its people, in its potential, and I am forever grateful for the pieces of yourselves that you put into your work. Our city is made better by your work on our behalf.

To every single public servant who works for Salt Lake City, Thank You. There are nearly four thousand of you, and each of you plays a critical role in supporting the day to day lives of our residents. You are the muscle behind the scenes making sure the water runs, the street lights are timed, the snow gets plowed and the potholes get filled. You answer the phones when someone calls with a need or an emergency, and you protect and serve in times of danger. You envision the needs of our residents and bring those ideas to fruition in millions of different ways. You are all a part of what makes this city run for Salt Lakers and I am thankful for the way you show up and make this city great each and every day.

And finally, I want to thank the people of this great city. The backbone of this city comes from the character of its people. That’s you. You’re generous, you care, you’re diverse and unique, and you’re brave and creative. You love our city’s roots and you see its incredible potential. You’re the reason that, as our city grows, its direction is toward a future that’s better for everyone in it. Thank you for electing me to help shepherd us toward that future, together.

Standing here four years ago there was no predicting what would come next — a pandemic, earthquakes, months of protests calling for a reckoning with racism, an historic windstorm, flooding.

Let’s try to avoid those during my second term, ok? 

One day our children and grandchildren will ask us what 2020 was like here in Salt Lake City. I’ll tell them that it wasn’t a beginning or a breaking point, and it certainly was not our end — it was a revelation. It exposed the deepest parts of our character — our grace, our grit, our compassion and creativity, and our deep connection with one another.

As our city has grown, and in some ways, our connection to each other has stretched and frayed. Even as our density has increased, so somehow has the space between us.

Our community’s connection is worth fighting for. Our neighbors, our neighborhoods, our shops, our restaurants, our bars, our bookstores. Our sports teams.

We need only think back to the pandemic to be reminded of how important our connection to one another is, not only to our community, but to our sense of place in the world.

It’s our responsibility to fight for what connects us, and to seize the opportunities we’ve earned; to strengthen those connections further and to build new bridges when opportunities arise.

To build those bridges not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors — from Westpointe to the East Bench. From Glendale to Sunnyside and Capitol Hill to Liberty Wells.

It is our responsibility to be stewards of the city we inherited and trustees of the city we leave behind.

If the last four years were forged by historic crisis, the next four will be forged by historic opportunity. It may be an understatement to describe this moment as unrivaled in our city’s history — with four historic threads intersecting with breathtaking complexity.

Between the preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic Games; the determination of the long-term future of the Utah Jazz and the pursuit of Major League Baseball and National Hockey League franchises; the construction of Glendale regional Park and the momentum behind a Downtown Green Loop; and the ongoing record investments in housing construction in our city with massive city investments in wealth building for renters and homeowners.

They’re all happening.

Right now.

Any one of these on its own would shape our city in substantial and highly visible ways, but together, they could weave investments and improvements greater than we’ve seen in the 177 years since the city’s founding.

This is it. 

This is our moment. 

There is no room for timidity and we should have no patience for parochial squabbles. 

We must think big. 

Because it’s not just about our economy — it’s about our identity. 

This moment is about deciding whether our future is more exciting than our past; it’s about protecting and improving our unique quality of life; it’s about hard-wiring equity into the future of our city; and it’s strengthening what brings us together as a community.

This is a moment that demands boldness, creativity and most of all, it demands partnership.

We must work together so that our future doesn’t happen to us, but rather it happens with us and because of us.

And my friends, that future is going to be incredible.

Salt Lake is a world-class city, and as you know, we are on track to once again showcase what makes Salt Lake so special again in 2034.

We’re Salt Lakers – the outdoors are inside us. They’re in our DNA.

We’re going to knock the world’s socks off again, to be sure, but that’s of secondary concern to me compared to ensuring the city continuously benefits from the Games in equitable and sustainable ways.

The opportunity of the 2034 Games underscores that now is the time to build our vision for what Salt Lake City looks like a decade from today, and beyond.

When our city was chosen to host in 2002, preparing for the Games transformed our city in ways from which we still benefit today — from our economic growth and expansion of our public transportation system, to our reputation as a world-class training ground for winter sport. 

The legacy of 2002 is all around us and the choices we make in the next few years will define the legacy of the 2034 Games for our children and grandchildren.

I will work to expand our public transit system even further, to make it easier for Salt Lakers to leave their polluting vehicles at home. 

I will work to finally turn 5th and 6th south into the welcoming grand boulevards they ought to be.

The Medals Plaza should not once again be a temporary structure in a parking lot, but instead, become a permanent city park that we all can enjoy before and after the 2034 Games. 

We will add and protect more trees and green space throughout the city.

And we should build the five-mile Green Loop around downtown, putting some of our incredibly wide streets to better use with 54 new acres of green space where it is desperately needed. 50 new trees per block along the route. Patios, playgrounds, dog parks and places to meet neighbors.

After 15 years of quiet discussion, sporadic planning, and a lot of wishful thinking, over this last year we have collected the input of thousands of Salt Lakers, engaged with local business owners, showcased the concept in a month-long demonstration project, and for months have been offering walking tours of the route to help people visualize the concept.

I am excited to announce that my administration has begun looking at financing tools to build the Green Loop and plans to move ahead with the project with great enthusiasm.

The Green Loop is one of several bold steps I am determined to take… to lead, to partner, to support, and to harness every tool in our toolbox to center and expand the energy of sports, entertainment and culture in and around Downtown Salt Lake City.

In case this point wasn’t self-evident, let me be clear: The Jazz belong in Salt Lake City, 

And more importantly, the Jazz belong at the center of a neighborhood filled with restaurants, bars, shops and activities; one that’s easier to access by public transit; more convenient to reach by car; safer to navigate on foot and by bike; and one that’s alive with activity year-round.

I am deeply committed to building that neighborhood, but it’s not for the NBA, it’s for every resident and small business owner who would benefit from it, and for the exponential impacts that investing in the capital city has on every person in this state.

If the National Hockey League or Major League Baseball come to Salt Lake City, as they should, we will weave them into this already growing capital city, adding the presence of more teams and fans to our community, our economy, our identity. 

Pro sports aren’t just about winning and losing.

They’re about connecting. 

They create common ground and shared experiences. 

They send ripples into communities that can lift up our restaurants, bars, shops, galleries, and more.

Managed with thoughtful intention, these opportunities — the Utah Jazz, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the Olympics — they can fuel real progress for our entire city and set the course for the next half century of downtown Salt Lake City and our global identity.

And when threaded with projects like the Green Loop, an open Main Street promenade, the remaking of our Grand Boulevards, and a redoubling of our commitment to cleaning the air and protecting our Great Salt Lake, they have the opportunity to transform and modernize our downtown core in a way that lifts our city up for generations.

When left as isolated ideas and without vision, those threads might entangle into a frustrating knot of stifled and lost progress.

But when woven together with creativity, focus, hard work, and a clear vision, those threads will create something truly amazing and catalytic.

Ours is an incredibly unique moment — and we must rise to that moment — even while looking out on a horizon that is perpetually unsteady and a future that is not guaranteed. 

These exciting, new opportunities are also reliant on our ability to bring about better solutions than we have today for some of our most vexing challenges. 

We must put even more energy and passion into getting people who are living unsheltered off our streets, into homes, and connected to the help they need. 

We must put as much energy and passion into supporting renters, helping those who want to, to be able to buy a home, and preventing our residents and small businesses from being displaced.

And we must put just as much energy into the existential threats that climate change brings to our local way of life, chief among them being our poor air quality and the demise of the Great Salt Lake.

It’s sometimes difficult to accept how much of our fate is in the hands of the legislature and governor, but fortunately, we have moved beyond the political isolation of the city’s past. 

We work hard. We show up and we stay at the table to get the best possible outcome we can for our city and our namesake.

Salt Lake City will keep conserving water, and we’ll keep looking for new ways to reduce consumption. We’ll keep working to protect our annual 13 billion gallon contribution to the Lake, and we’ll be proactive in sharing our best practices but we will also take every opportunity to advocate for statewide solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake is going to take all of our work, but especially the State.

We can not do it alone.

Our city can not save the Great Salt Lake on our own any more than we can single-handedly clean all of Salt Lake Valley’s air or solve the state’s housing crisis. 

Protesting, demonizing, and shaming may make us feel better, but it won’t get the job done.  

Four years ago I promised a change in the tone of our city’s leadership along exactly these lines, and our approach is working.

The state government is investing more in addressing homelessness and expanding affordable housing than ever before. We have forged a real partnership that has produced unprecedented investments and is creating more housing for people who need it.

Because we’ve partnered with the state government, last month we opened the Temporary Shelter Community, pods for 50 unsheltered individuals who’d been living on our streets. And we know the legislature will be asked to support a permanent model of this operation in the coming months.

Governor Cox has proposed even more state funding for affordable housing, mental health and substance use treatment. Construction is underway on tiny homes, and as a city we are investing more than ever in affordable housing.

It’s still not enough, and I’ll be the first to say I wish it all were happening faster, but I also see first hand that change is happening because finally, other cities, the county, the legislature and the governor are with us on housing and homelessness. 

We will take the same approach on the Great Salt Lake and air quality — do everything we can, do more, and then work with our partners instead of against them.

That’s the real lesson to be drawn from the last election. People are tired of the false narrative that the city should bail out the rest of the state and can solve every problem on its own, because we know that’s never been true.People are tired of our city leaders fighting with those who should be doing more to help us make solutions.

Salt Lakers want the city to keep its seat at the table and work together to earn the results that we need not just to survive, but to thrive.

As you know well, Salt Lake City can be divided, and not only by train tracks and highways.

The most painful divides are the deepest and hardest to bridge.

We find them between those who are living comfortably, and those who aren’t.

Between those who feel safe, and those who don’t.

Between those who want things to stay the same and those who need for things to change.

We have a responsibility to our neighbors, to our children and grandchildren, to the people who built this city and to every one of us who call it home to find the grace within ourselves to acknowledge that just because we are not personally burdened with a particular challenge is not an excuse for being disengaged and it certainly does not mean we should reflexively oppose potential solutions.

Each time we allow ourselves to be divided, we lose a little bit of our connection to others. 

The way we move Salt Lake City forward is together.

We need each other — our neighbors, other cities, and yes, even the state. 

The stakes of this moment are too high, and we must find the grace within ourselves to see beyond ourselves.

The opportunities we have are incredible, but they need not be overwhelming.

The challenges we face are difficult, but we need not be intimidated.

If we work for our connections; if we continue building bridges; if we engage with grace and lead with love; if we stick together we will keep moving our city forward.

I love this city, and I am humbled by the honor of serving as its mayor once again.

Thank you.