We've already thoroughly discussed the oil contamination problem that arose at the seeming last moment, and caused the last re-calendering, but now there seems to be yet another belatedly discovered glitch, according to Mr. Wright's report:
Although results from those [environmental] studies are not expected before Tuesday, council members had planned to move forward with the public hearings.
But in the meantime, officials discovered that under state law, the Municipal Building Authority cannot make payments on bonds used to finance a building that is not complete. That means GE Commercial would not have been able to collect payments while the recreation center is under construction.
"We had to find a way to protect GE during that time period," Harmer said.
The city has secured a letter of credit as collateral for bonds that would finance construction, Harmer said, but has not had time to clear the letter with GE Commercial.
I'd love to have been that proverbial "fly on the wall" in Ogden Community and Economic Development Director David Harmer's office in the days following Stuart Reid's departure. Although he's a clean-cut guy, and probably doesn't regularly use the kind of language some of our gentle Weber County Forum readers sometimes do, I'll bet he's muttered a at least a few choice words from time to time. He got handed a real can of worms. I'm sure, however, that everything will get ironed out in due time, now that we have an experienced manager like David Harmer in charge of things.
If it doesn't happen pretty soon, however, the upcoming November Ogden City municipal elections could easily morph into that "citizen bond referendum" that that some Ogdenites were pushing late this spring.
There's also another interesting wrinkle in this story. The new city council bond vote date now falls on the same date as a Weber County Commission hearing and comments session for a proposed Weber County 21% property tax increase. Although I'd planned to attend the Ogden City Council session on the bond issue, I think I'll be sitting in the county commision chambers at 6:00 p.m. on August 23. For those who were unaware that our county commission was planning to take another large bite out of our wallets you can read this notice which appeared in the Standard-Examiner this morning. It's a sure bet I'll be posting a seperate article on this latest county commission proposal sometime this weekend.
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*Yogi Berra