The mayor’s office and Salt Lake City’s Human Rights Commission, one of the capital’s leading civilian panels for diversity, began to address a deep rift between them in a meeting Thursday night, but not before airing grievances and baring some teeth.
At the end of the occasionally tense hourlong session, amid pledges of newfound understanding and cooperation, it was apparent that the two sides still suffer from a failure to communicate.
The schism, if it persists, threatens to impede or at least distract from the mayor’s ambitious diversity and human rights agenda, affecting initiatives in those matters in the areas of affordable housing, education and economic opportunity.