In hindsight, it was a symbolic moment: At a Tooele County Chamber of Commerce banquet last January, motivational speaker Chad Hymas challenged the mayors of Tooele and Grantsville, both in attendance, to open a bottle of water without using their hands. As Grantsville Mayor Byron Anderson proceeded to pick the bottle up in his mouth and try to work the cap off with his teeth, Tooele Mayor Patrick Dunlavy calmly turned to the person next to him and asked for help — thus illustrating the moral of the challenge.

Now that the dust has settled on mayoral elections in Tooele County’s two largest cities, it’s worth examining why Tooele voters returned Dunlavy to office with 64 percent of the vote in last week’s general election while Grantsville voters bounced Anderson out of the race at the primary stage with only 14 percent of the vote. Neither mayor deserves all of the blame or praise for what happened on their watch, but looking back over the past several years it’s easy to see two very different leadership styles emerge.

Under Dunlavy’s leadership, Tooele City built up a rainy-day fund so that good economic years would help cushion the budgetary shock of lean times and enable the city to avoid raising taxes. Anderson took no such step. He will leave behind a city government that is flat broke after residents rejected his rather half-baked attempt to raise taxes almost 50 percent last August.

Dunlavy has scrutinized city personnel costs carefully, and his own pay has risen by only 17 percent in the four years he’s been in office. Anderson not only indulged Grantsville employees with perks like an outrageous 13 percent match on their 401(k) plans — a perk that would bankrupt most private-sector businesses — but also allowed his own part-time salary to be raised 74 percent to $47,000 since 2004.

Dunlavy made impartial appointments and did not pursue personal vendettas. Anderson packed the Grantsville Planning Commission with people from the construction and real estate industries, and spent time and money pursing a frivolous court case against nemesis Dennis McBride for allegedly stealing one of Anderson’s campaign signs during his re-election bid in 2005.  

Dunlavy has been praised by ordinary citizens for his open-door policy of allowing people to drop by his office anytime they have a concern. Anderson did not even keep an office at City Hall, and perhaps the most frequent complaint leveled at him by ordinary citizens was that he was simply inaccessible.

Dunlavy used incremental funding mechanisms like Tooele’s PAR tax, instituted the year before he took office, to expand and improve Tooele’s parks system. He also pushed an ambitious agenda to preserve open space in Tooele, particularly along the foothills of the Oquirrhs. Anderson did not propose, create or implement any such long-term funding mechanisms, meaning even modestly priced projects like a sidewalk to Willow Elementary went undone, no new city parks were added, and no emphasis was given to preservation of open space.

In short, Dunlavy has made significant progress in areas ranging from economic development to new road construction to lifestyle enhancements like the Fridays on Vine concert series.

Meanwhile, Anderson failed to translate almost a decade of rampant residential growth into good things for the people of Grantsville. As high-end homes went up all around Grantsville, basic infrastructure — roads, sidewalks, sewer — did not keep pace. New amenities — swimming pool, library, recreation center — were not built. Nor was significant retail business attracted to enhance the city’s tax base and provide close-to-home shopping for residents.

In the end, it’s not surprising that Dunlavy sailed to victory. It’s also not surprising that in Grantsville, a town of almost 10,000 residents, only 151 people cast a vote for Anderson, a two-term incumbent, in the primary.

The point of this recap isn’t simply to kick a man while he’s down. No one disputes that Anderson is a good person who cares about Grantsville and has given considerable service to his community. But what’s very much in dispute is how Grantsville fared under his leadership.

There are those who would have you believe Anderson was doing a fine job, yet for some indefinable reason Grantsville was just “ready for a change.” That non-critical interpretation does a great disservice to the truth. Communities should analyze what went wrong and assign blame for errors. Without this, they forfeit not only accountability in city government, but also the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Nowadays, political optimism is running high in both of the county’s largest towns. Mayoral challengers Becky Bracken and Jill Thomas ran strong campaigns that raised serious issues — for which both women should be commended. Tooele voters feel they kept the right man at the helm. Grantsville voters are excited by the prospect of a fresh start under Mayor-elect Brent Marshall. We’ll be watching both leaders closely. For now, however, we’ll just say congratulations, and wish both mayors well in the years ahead.