OGDEN - A month after leaving Ogden with a $43,561 severance, Stuart Reid has signed a $77,828 annual contract to oversee a city-owned business park.
Mayor Matthew Godfrey said he feels lucky to have Reid, Ogden's former director of community development, at the helm of Business Depot Ogden (BDO). "I'm surprised he would want to do something like this."
But City Council members Rick Safsten and Jesse Garcia are not happy about how they found out about Reid's new business relationship with the city - from the rumor mill and not from the mayor's office.
"It doesn't say much about the communications to the council from the mayor's office," said Safsten, who is chairman of the council. "It raises questions. Why are you hiring someone that just left the city?"
The council has a host of questions for Godfrey about Reid's departure and his contract to oversee Business Depot Ogden. That is the huge business park on the city's northwest side that was given to the city by the federal government when it closed Defense Depot Ogden in the late 1990s.
The article adds detail about the nature of Mr. Reid's recent severance package:
Godfrey gave Reid a severance as if he were being terminated, but the mayor said Monday that Reid resigned.
A 1999 ordinance allows a severance of one month's pay for every year of service for department directors or members of the mayoral or council staff who are terminated or who refuse a job at lower pay, said Michael Goodwin, city treasurer.
Godfrey said that ordinance does not bar him from treating "good" employees the same way, if he chooses.
"We can do what we want with people who are good," he said.
Because Reid was with Ogden City for five years, he was paid the equivalent of five months of his annual salary of $104,547, as well as for more than 322 hours of accumulated vacation pay, or $16,217, when he left July 15, said Goodwin.
Am I wrong about this, or did out Ogden City Mayor just say that Mr. Reid, who authored the downtown mall, Union square and Wal-Mart fiascos, received a $43,561 severance bonus solely at Mayor Godfrey's discretion?
It seems the Mayor's office is being rather cavalier in it's treatment of the taxpayers' money in this instance to me. If Stuart Reid's prior performance is deemed "good" in the Mayor's eyes, I'd love to see a performance he labels bad.
Please consider this an update to yesterday's WCF article, and feel free to offer your observations and comments on this, gentle readers.
You have to know that something's rotten in the land of Oz when even people like Mayor Godfrey's right-hand man, Comrade Safsten, start asking detailed and probing questions.
I suppose that it would be fair to say that Mr. Reid really is pretty good, in one sense of the word, at least, if he succeeds in pulling this deal off.
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