A Tale of Two Cities: Lessons in Competence & the Lack Therof

There were three similarly-themed articles involving citizen petitions re revenue bonding in today's Standard-Examiner.

The most interesting of the whole lot was this one, which reports how a group of competent Box Elder County citizens actually gathered more than enough signatures to get their local bonding issue put on the ballot. The battle's no means over in Box Elder County, of course, but these citizens have nevertheless cleared the first hurdle. The Box Elder County Clerk's office still needs to verify and compare the signatures to the voter registration rolls. Apparently they actually knew what they were doing though up there in Box Elder County, unlike our handful of Weber County clowns. The reason they succeeded, of course, is because it was an issue popular with the local Box Elder County citizenry, and it wasn't necessary to browbeat citizens to sign it, unlike here.

The "incompetence counterpoint" is this: Mitch and the boyz are about ready to get blown out of US District Court. Having failed miserably to get 20% of the local voters' signatures, they've decided to blame their own problem on everybody else, and make a "Federal Case" out of it, as we've discussed here before.

Here's the latest Scott Schwebke story on this:

OGDEN -- A hearing is slated for June 24 in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to consider a motion from Ogden officials to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the group protesting the development of a proposed downtown high-adventure recreation center.

District Judge Ted Stewart has scheduled one hour for the motion hearing related to a complaint filed by Mitch Moyes, Sharon Beech and Rulon Yorgason against the city, Mayor Matthew Godfrey and the Ogden Municipal Building Authority.

The plaintiffs are members of Citizens & Businesses Concerned for Ogden's Future...

This really isn't "news" to regular readers here, of course. Nevertheless, the somewhat belated Schwebke reporting goes on:

Norman Ashton, attorney for the city, said the lawsuit should be dismissed because it doesn't assert claims that are legally viable.

"Our motion (to dismiss) is well-founded on facts and law, and we are optimistic it will be granted," he said.

I've read the complaint, and I can't imagine how it could have been any more inadequate than it already is, unless it were scrawled in crayon on the back of an envelope. Norm Ashton may not be the brightest litigation crayon in the legal crayola box, but he's definitely in "color harmony" in his above statement.

Finally, there was this Std-Ex editorial gem today. It's basically a re-hash of all the other whining that's been repititiously droned recently by this mysterious and shadowy local citizen's "group" that calls itself CBCOF. For some unknown reason, the Standard-Examiner editorial staff still apparently feels the need to give more voice to our local group of local Don Quixote windmill-tilters. Perhaps, as our regular poster Concerned Citizen suggests, the Std-Ex intends to tar all critics of the current city government with the same tarry broad brush.

I'm not going to delve more deeply into the subject matter of this guest editorial right now, but I am still wondering why these people are still complaining that the Gold's Gym and Fat-Cats principles aren't bring more money to the table. Why don't these obviously business-unsophisticated people realize that it's normal for an owner of raw property to build-out a building to suit the requirements of a long-term tenant? That's how it works in the real world, ferchripesake. These tenants aren't buying the property; they're merely signing onto a long-term lease. If they were buyers, the scenario would obviously be different. They'd then be required to put up substantial amounts of their own money. This is just one of my critiques of Ms. Beech's psuedo arguments. I won't go into its multitude of further problems though, unless and until a discussion develops here on the subject.

There's a virtual cornucopia of false assumptions and outright mendacity built into Ms. Beech's article that's far too complicated and elaborate to go into now.

And one other thing. Normal litigants usually know that it's improper to even comment on a pending case before its final resolution. The plaintiff Rulon Yorgason obviously knows that. Even the flamboyant Mitch Moyes seems to know that. For some strange reason though, their co-plaintiff, thinks its just fine to try her case in the press, even unto publishing a guest editorial about it.

Sheesh!

I'm still hearing that internal voice though, which keeps asking: "Why won't these dummies just GO AWAY?