Mayor's style is rocking boat in Bluffdale

BLUFFDALE — Sitting at the head of the conference table in her spacious office, Mayor Claudia Anderson turns to face the eastern window and gestures to the snow-covered farmland that surrounds the city building.

"This is where I used to pick tomatoes, right out this window," she said. "This was my dad's farm."

The moment of nostalgia hits suddenly, interrupting her discussion of the difficulties she has faced in her first year in office.

She has contended with an ongoing feud with the five members of the City Council, clashes with city staffers, a legal battle over one-third of the city's land and a pending referendum on the city's form of government.

Action by the City Council that stripped Anderson of her administrative powers in September was the catalyst for a legislative push to bar such moves in the future. Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Cottonwood Heights, is sponsoring a bill to keep city councils from shifting mayoral powers to a city manager without a public vote.

In Bluffdale, the controversy that helped spur the bill rages on. Anderson is taking it in stride, and on this winter day, she pauses to reminisce about the rural city in southwestern Salt Lake County where she spent the first 21 years of her life and then returned 15 years ago with a successful business in tow.

"I can't tell you how much I love Bluffdale as a city and as a community," she said. "Bluffdale has always been there for me, and (serving as mayor) is my way to give back."

Her hard work in the business world is evidenced by the success of her $30 million-a-year company Audio Enhancement. But her hard-charging leadership style has produced mixed results in the business of running a city.

Triumphs in her first year as mayor, such as the completion of a city park, have been drowned out by the verbal jabs exchanged among elected officials at City Council meetings and staff's criticism of her management.

Anderson's hands-on approach to doing city business has been an adjustment for staff members who were accustomed to the delegating ways of the previous mayor, Wayne Mortimer.

They have accused her of being a leader who expects people to fall in line or get out of the way. Staff and City Council members say the mayor regularly would get frustrated over governmental procedures that would slow down changes she wanted to make or policies she wanted to enact.