POLICE HEADQUARTERS AT LIBRARY SQUARE ABANDONED

From The Salt Lake Crawler -- Fiasco accomplished.

Mayor Ralph Becker says Library Square will no longer be considered for a police-security headquarters. But it took more than 400 negative comments from the public, not to mention the opposition of former uber-librarian Nancy Tessman, architect Moshe Saftie and the threat of Rocky as a re-election opponent to convince him. It was like hitting a mule between the eyes with a 2x4 to get Ralph's attention:

We certainily are responding to what is clear public sentiment — that people do not want us to touch Library Square.

Duh.

The bad news is that Ralph would not acknowledge that he had screwed the pooch in trying to jam the Library Square site down the public's throat. When I asked him if he had lost public trust and credibility by trying to "zoom" the site selection past the public, he insisted that this mess was a good and correct thing and was what he wanted from the beginning.

The public isn't necessarily used to the way I like to engage the public in decisions.

Whaa? Can somebody lend me a double-speak translator?

As former councilmember and de facto leader of opposition to the cop shop-on-Library Square Deeda Seed puts it:

This has been a learning experience for all of us.

Ralph may have learned to involve the public in his big plans. We'll see.

Salt Lake voters have definitely learned not to trust Ralph.