Murray development is thorn in mayoral race

MURRAY — Dave Wilde's arguments for why he should be mayor of Murray break down into a handy acronym he's using on his campaign signs — the C.H.A.N.G.E. stands for Cooperation, Honor, Accessibility, Neighborhoods, Good Growth and Efficiency.

While Wilde's campaign centers on the tenets of his motto, his primary push is to change Murray's landscape.

Wilde doesn't necessarily approve of Murray's commercial development in the last decade under Mayor Dan Snarr's leadership, and he thinks Snarr has neglected the city's neighborhoods in favor of establishing a strong retail base.

Snarr takes umbrage with the accusation that he doesn't care about neighborhoods — after all, he points out, he is the one with a weed-spraying backpack roaming city streets during summer — and insists commercial development is necessary to provide the money for maintaining those neighborhoods.

Beyond their politics, the two candidates' personalities differ greatly. Snarr is gregarious, amiable and zealous; Wilde is mild, reticent and careful. Snarr's office includes an oil painting of him on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle; Wilde's walls hold his diplomas and a 2002 Winter Olympics poster. Snarr is a former contractor with a penchant for alliteration ("prior planning prevents pathetically poor performance"); Wilde is a lawyer who distributes a newsletter about Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska courts, and weighs his words before speaking.

Snarr is running for his third term as mayor, and Wilde is partway through his second term as a Salt Lake County councilman. Both have lived in Murray for decades and both purport a deep love for this mid-valley suburb of 43,000.

Wilde, who started thinking about running after a friend approached him at Costco in January, wants to focus more on neighborhoods — a point he has hammered from the beginning of the campaign season. Murray has focused too much on commercial development and "not tuned into taking care of neighborhoods," he said.

Wilde's assertion about commercial development does not seem to be supported by the raw numbers. Murray retailers sold approximately $1.41 billion dollars worth of goods in 1997, according to an economic census by the U.S. government; in 2002, that number dropped slightly to $1.37 billion. The 2002 numbers, however, do not include sales from stores that have opened since then — Costco, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Thomasville Furniture and several restaurants.