Governor Michael O. Leavitt

I attended my 25th high school reunion this summer. There's something rather memorable about the summer you graduate from high school. For me, it was the beginning of adulthood. I entered basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. A young private, first time away from home.

It was the summer we landed on the moon. They let us off from training that afternoon. I watched it in the day room of our barracks. I wasn't sure which made me the happiest, the moon landing or the afternoon off to watch it. That night I can remember looking at the moon and tried to visualize men walking its surface. It was easy for me to visualize it once they were there. The wonder of that event is that the most visionary of men met the challenge of their generation by dreaming big enough to imagine it before it occurred, and then making it happen, changing forever the horizons we were capable of reaching for.

Do you remember where you were when it happened?

• Lane Beattie had just hitchhiked into the Wort Hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He stood in the hotel lobby with other guests and watched it on a TV monitor.
  
  
• For Judy Buffmire it was like watching a Saturday Buck Rogers matinee come true. She took off work and sat glued to the television all day.
  
  
• Lyle Hillyard had written a college paper on the surface of the moon, and remembers the thrill of watching Neil Armstrong take that first incredible step.
  
  
• Now imagine with me Frank Pignanelli at nine years old. Imagine his parents living room converted to a lunar landscape; the Sea of Tranquility fashioned of old blankets and pillows. Frank had built a model of the lunar module, and in perfect timing with Neil Armstrong, Frank's GI Joe Action figure took the first lunar step on his parents' living room floor.
  
  It wasn't that long ago.

But imagine what has occurred during that time. In 25 years:

• business empires have collapsed and new ones have emerged in a new global marketplace.
  
  
• the Berlin wall came crashing down as communism collapsed.
  
  
• fax machines, mobile phones, cable TV and VCR's have become a routine part of our lives.
  
  
• the corner gas station all but disappeared.
  
  
• an electronic wonder called the Internet connected millions of computer users all over the world, making postage stamps all but obsolete for many people.

And, in the last 5 years, Utah has become an economic force. People all over the world are coming to know Utah as a well managed, vibrant state with an unmatched quality of life.

That night at the reunion, I couldn't believe it had been 25 years. Much of the discussion centered around what had occurred in our lives. It caused me to think of the next 25 years. They will pass as quickly as the last and if anything, the pace of change will be even faster.

One of my classmates attending the reunion is now a Realtor in St. George. He told of an attorney from Los Angeles, looking for a home in Washington County . His client said, "I've got to get my children out of California; my 17-year-old just got out of a detention center for stealing a car, and I've got a 13-year-old that is starting to fool with drugs, and run with a gang. "I've just got to get them out of there."

"Do you plan to move your practice up?" "No," he said, "I'll just commute."

My Realtor friend gave him some good advice. "If you're not here, moving may not solve your problem. He continued, "Nothing magic's going to happen, just because they are in Utah. This is a great state, but we are not exempt or immune from the forces of a changing world. That job's basically up to you."

That's good advice for all of us. There is nothing magic about Utah that will guarantee a generation to carry on the virtues of this state. The same thing can be said about preserving the quality of life we have in Utah. This is a great state, but we are not exempt or immune from the forces of a changing world. That job's basically up to us.

What will Utah be like 25 years from now? Will magazines still write, "It's a great place to live and do business?" Will they still call us the "best managed" state?

There are some things we can forecast about the next 25 years.

First, our population is going to grow. Our state is like a lump of leavened dough sitting on a table on a hot summer afternoon. Because of the large population of young people, we will grow from within. In the same amount of time since the first man walked on the moon, Utah will have a population of about 3 million people.

Some are already saying limit growth. But those we would limit are primarily our children and grandchildren. Even if Utah experiences zero in-migration during the next 25 years our population will still approach 2.8 million people. The only way to limit growth is to export our children because they can't find a job, or to destroy the quality of life here, so it becomes unattractive to people. That is not an acceptable option.

Population growth will be a fact of life in Utah during the next 25 years and we must plan for it.

Nearly 150 years ago, the settlers of these valleys arrived to face a daunting challenge. They were called on to pioneer crops where none had grown before. To scratch out a civilization under conditions of unrelenting hardship. Each generation since has done its part, met its challenge, kept its stewardship.

The challenge of our generation, in some ways as difficult as the pioneer trek, as complicated as going to the moon, is to preserve the quality of life we have inherited in an atmosphere of unparalleled social, technological and demographic change, all in a global context.

It is a stewardship we must keep.

A year ago I issued challenges regarding the use of technology to this body and the education community. Those challenges included :

• making education an activity that is not bound by place or space
• making technology a part of every student's education
• picking up the pace in education

While these are long-term challenges, our state is responding. In just 12 months much has been accomplished. We are:

• Dramatically expanding the number of sites where interactive video learning can occur.
• Connecting schools all over the state to UTAHNET, our wide area network.
• Developing 90 core college courses and whole degrees to be delivered electronically to high schools and colleges across the state.
• Undertaking a massive training program so teachers, administrators and parents catch this vision and take advantage of the technology.

We have begun to build the infrastructure of the future. We must continue. In state government and education we continue to expand our bricks and mortar infrastructure at an alarming rate. As I prepare next year's budget, I begin with new maintenance and operations costs for buildings alone of nearly $4 million.

Last year alone we approved a planning list of $147 million in buildings. That is on top of $43 million in buildings that have been planned but not built. That means we have nearly $200 million of planned buildings, which exceeds by a magnitude of four times what we have the capacity to build in any given year. The irony of this is that we are not maintaining what we have very well.

I mentioned earlier the pressures we will face in higher education. Our population of students will double between now and the year 2010. The building requirements alone if we continue to build as we have in the past will exceed $2 billion.

This happens at a time when other infrastructure is in desperate need of attention. Our highways and transportation system will require hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. Within the next 12 years the number of cars on our freeways will double. If we continue to build buildings but leave our people in cars on the freeway during rush hours, idling under crumbling bridges as they pollute the air, they will revolt. And who could blame them? We must respond.

So today I issue 6 new challenges. The first one I have spoken of before:

We must slow our investment in the bricks and mortar infrastructure of the past, and invest more in the infrastructure of the future.

Part of the problem is our bonding process. Every year, in order to get a bond passed, we fill a Christmas tree with enough projects that are important to someone. To meet the challenge I have just issued we need to rethink that process together -- before the session starts.

I know from individual discussions with dozens of you that none of us feel particularly good about how the bonding process works. If we wait until the session starts, it will be impossible to change. I propose we work together between now and January to review this. We can find a better way.

My second challenge is driven by a harsh reality. When one compares the demands for buildings, transportation, water development, education and meeting the increasing social burdens with the money we are likely to have available, we can reach only one conclusion: There will never be enough.

The solution is the second challenge: "Use what we have better."

I am reminded of a saying I have heard from my grandmother: Use it up; Wear it out; Make do; do without.

We will never build our way out of the growth problem. In transportation-- we will build. But we must also:

• alter our commute patterns
• use public transportation more
• convert to telecommuting
• car pool
  

In water development, we will build, but our needs will increase by 70 percent in the next 30 years. Most of the state does not presently have water supplies adequate to meet the needs for more than the next 10 years. We will build -- but to assure adequate water we have to begin:

• developing a conservation ethic. Without conservation, in 25 years we will use 338 million gallons of water a day more than we do now.
• we are among the highest per capita consumers of water in the world

In buildings -- we will build, but to meet our needs, we have to:

• use our existing campus facilities year round; morning, afternoon and evening.
• use technology to teach students at home and other learning centers
• double bunk at prisons
• consider double shifts in state buildings
• use public buildings for multiple uses

It will soon have been 150 years since the pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley. On Monday we will unveil a statue of their leader, Brigham Young, in the State Capitol. Even now, 150 years later, we benefit from his extraordinary sense of the future. Our wide streets, the strategic placement of communities, the consistency of his planning.

We sent hardy people here to Cache Valley, to Sanpete, Sevier, San Juan, to Vernal, Fillmore and Orderville.

Did they know how important their efforts would be to us and our children 175 or 200 years later? Did they know they were sowing the seeds of solution for a generation they would not know? Their contribution is only now becoming clear.

In the same time passed since Neil Armstrong landed, the Wasatch Front could become a mega metropolitan center of 2.5 million people. When my 4-year-old son Westin is 50 years old it could be 4 or 5 million. When they celebrate the bicentennial of the state it could be 7 or 8 million. Time marches on. That day will come. What will our children and grandchildren think of us. Have we sown the seeds of their solutions?

Challenge # 3: it is time we fuel the economic resettlement of rural Utah.

Unlike Brigham Young's day, leadership cannot deploy settlers. But we can institute policies that provide incentives and the basic infrastructure to attract economic resettlers to those communities.

We must begin to acknowledge the economic, cultural and social development in the less populated regions of our state also benefits Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden. It will take pressure off those areas. Less congestion, less pollution. This is not a short-term strategy. But 100 years from now, it will be our equivalent of wide streets in a logical well organized grid.

In our day of leadership, issues of lasting long-term importance will be resolved.

In building the information superhighway, our state must be wired north to south, east to west. It would be easier and cheaper in the short run not to extend this infrastructure. But in the long term -- over 25, 50 and 100 years -- the economic resettlement of rural Utah will be important to the whole state.

We must solve the dilemmas of rural health care and find new and innovative ways to resolve public land and resource issues so that we can sustain both ecosystems and economies.

Challenge #4. We must become a generation of planners. Not compulsive regulators, but dedicated planners, always following the rule and fighting for the principle that the more local the decision the better.

Nearly 20 years ago, my father served in this body as the majority leader of the Senate. A bill he supported appropriated substantial money to assist local governments in the development of plans.

The law became the subject of intense controversy. A referendum was passed, the law repealed and regrettably many areas of our state fell dangerously behind in community planning.

Today, in addition to the pressures from intense growth, we find ourselves dealing with unreasonable pressures from the federal government. Over the past 20 years, many federal bureaucrats have concluded that they are best able to make many decisions about our local communities. In part because of our lack of planning the past 20 years, we find ourselves disadvantaged in maintaining control of our communities.

In the decades to come we must not make that error again.

Challenge # 5 Make quality our comparative advantage.

Quality jobs -- jobs that support a family.

Quality education -- training our citizens to compete in a global marketplace.

In the century past, social and economic admiration flowed toward biggest, fastest and loudest. In the century to come, the world will hunger and grope for quiet, competent quality -- for communities and people that are steady, safe and secure.

Our future is not advantaged by becoming biggest, fastest or loudest, but by staying true to what we have always been -- quiet, competent quality; steady, safe and secure.

Challenge #6: A rekindled sense of individual responsibility and community values.

During the 18 months I have served as governor, I have learned much about what makes this state work. I have not experienced a lesson more profound than May 14, Centennial Cleanup Day.

I witnessed the power of what can occur when individual responsibility and government coordination join.

On that day 300,000 Utahns joined together to make a difference, not compelled by government but out of a sense of loyalty to community, pride in heritage and commitment to the future.

In one day, a million hours of labor were donated; 15,000 thousand people walked the freeways, picking up litter; a thousand at pioneer state park; 500 at Antelope Island; civic organizations, school classes and clubs cleaning vacant lots, parks and pavilions. I saw church groups in the yards of the elderly.

Perhaps the most symbolic, I flew to Tropic, Utah, There I saw 150 families who had driven 3 hours from Utah Valley; camped in Bryce Valley High School; then joined with people they didn't know to give that town the most complete grooming it had since it was settled in the 1860s; front-end loaders and people cleaning ditches, yards. Tearing down outbuildings, hauling away cars.

The mayor went house to house. People who had not spoken to neighbors for years out on their front lawns.

Most of all there was a spirit of excitement and caring -- caring right down to the soul; a manifestation of what will sustain our state through the next 100 years: a rekindled sense of individual responsibility and community values.

We must accept and fulfill these challenges to protect a legacy entrusted to us . . . so that our children and grandchildren can begin a new century with hope and optimism. So that they can look at the moon, dream big dreams, imagine great accomplishments -- and meet the challenges of their generation.