Meet Salt Lake City mayoral candidate Erin Mendenhall

Of note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

📲 First tap in the morning: "The Messages app to see what flew overnight."

😄 Hobbies: "Does being a mom of three count as a 'hobby'?"

• "I enjoy cooking for my family and friends, gardening, playing with the Merlin app, hiking the foothills and riding my bike around the city."

🏠 What neighborhoods have you lived in? "Avenues, Liberty Wells and now East Liberty Park/9th and 9th."

🎨 How would you bring more public art to the city? "I increased the public arts budget in Salt Lake City by 50% in my first term and I have worked closely with the city's Arts Council to bring public art into more aspects of city infrastructure."

• "We won a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to fund public art in all seven council districts to inspire residents and visitors to be part of the solutions to protect the Great Salt Lake."
• "We've expanded our Arts Council staff by 40% and recently deployed $500,00o in grants out into the community through a National Endowment for the Arts grant."

🤔 What's the top issue Salt Lakers face?

• "Homelessness. This has been my top priority since the day I took office and raced to stand-up a 145-bed emergency winter overflow shelter in Sugar House after the state closed the Downtown Road Home and left the system hundreds of beds short. Homelessness affects every resident, housed and unhoused.
• "It's a statewide challenge — not just Salt Lake City's — and the solutions have to be statewide."

🏠 How would you address the lack of affordable housing in Salt Lake City? "This year we began implementing elements of my 22-point anti-displacement strategy ... to ensure more of our residents will be able to stay in their homes as the city continues to grow.

• "Most of that work will happen in a second term if I'm re-elected."

🌊 As the Great Salt Lake dwindles, what policy solutions would you recommend to conserve water? "We have raised water prices incrementally over the last several years and will continue into the future."

• "Salt Lake City government is conducting a top-to-bottom review of water usage in every city-owned facility and park, identifying new opportunities to do a better job of conserving water. The results of that review will inform significant city policy changes and funding decisions over the next four years."

• "I proposed a temporary drought surcharge on the city's biggest water consumers."
• "And with the city's water reclamation facility treating 35 million gallons of water each day, I began the legal process of permanently committing that 13 billion gallons a year (a number that will grow as the city grows) to the Great Salt Lake to slow its deterioration."

🚩 What sets you apart as a candidate: "My genuine commitment to working with our potential partners and allies rather than against them. I have rebuilt the burned bridges of our past and the city is getting better results and stronger investment because of it."

☝ First action as mayor: "We're not waiting. My administration is building right now — partnerships, affordable housing, supportive housing for the currently unhoused, net-100% clean energy for all of the city, more transit and more free transit passes, solutions to the most complex challenges that have existed here for decades."

🏛 Finally, why do you want to be mayor? "Because we still have so much more work to do and this is such a pivotal time in our city's history. We're at an inflection point and I don't want to see Salt Lake City taken backward."