Corroon hosts Hispanic 'fest'

Peter Corroon hosted a Hispanic open house at his office Wednesday, inviting Salt Lake's Latino community to chat with the mayor about whatever they wanted.

The Salt Lake County mayor's mastery of Spanish is, well, not masterful. He's fairly competent, but he hesitates and stumbles and gives articles the wrong gender and has a long way to go in correct use of the subjunctive tense, but that doesn't stop him from plowing on.

The open house was well-attended with lots of laughter and loud conversation (in Spanish and English and mixtures of the two) and cookies and punch.

The mayor, instead of being cooped up in his inner office holding serious conferences with attendees, frequently was in the outer office making the rounds, often speaking Spanish but admittedly — since most of the attendees were bilingual — switching to English.

"I'm very proud that you are reaching out to the Latino community," Midvale community developer Mauricio Agramont told the mayor in Spanish.