Just How Broke Is Ogden?

On September 28, I ran this article, lamenting the current administration's seeming pattern of putting "first things last," and leaving infrastructure maintenance and repair projects on the back burner, until they deteriorate to the point of dire emergency.

In this case, I referred to belatedly-initiated repairs on Ogden's Country Hills Drive, in the foothills area around Beus's Park, which had been reported in this John Wright story. The road had washed out in a landslide in the spring, and had remained unrepaired and neglected all summer, much to the chagrin of some local folks, who could barely access their own residential properties. The city administration only got around to fixing it when gas and water mains came under threat from the continuing soil slippage, and then only quite begrudgingly.

"We just don't have an extra $400,000 sitting around anywhere," Community and Economic Development Director David Harmer said. So to pay for the now-emergency repairs, Harmer and the city administration "diverted" $300,000 from other infrastructure projects (snow removal among them;) and drew down $100,000 from the city's "contingency fund, leaving about $5,000.00 in the kitty.

I wondered at the time: "just how broke is Ogden city?"

And then last week we got this bit of bad-news information, delivered by John Wright, phrased in a strangely upbeat tone. Here are a few of the more choice excerpts:

OGDEN -- Those attending conventions at the Ogden Eccles Conference Center often stay at the Marriott and walk along 24th Street twice a day.

But many of the buildings on the street are vacant, and there is no one to clean the sidewalks.

This resulted in complaints during one recent convention, according to Dave Hardman, director of the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce.

"The bird droppings were all along 24th Street, and it was unsightly," he said. "Those things are critical to having an impression that people leave our community with."

Hardman contacted the Ogden Public Services Department, which cleaned 24th Street before the next convention.

But the city doesn't have the resources to clean sidewalks throughout the city, said Public Services Director George Benford. It also is hard-pressed to stay on top of parks, trails and vacant lots.

That is why Public Services is launching a community service and involvement program, called CSI Ogden, that will allow residents and groups to adopt and maintain areas such as sidewalks, streets, parks and trails.

"There's no way that the city can take care of all that," Benford said. "We need the citizens to help out."

So let me see if I have this right. Ogden city, the "progressive" and "pro-tourism" "big-time development" city that's managed to scrape up every necessary dime for luxuries like full-time legislative lobbyists, do-nothing city council public relations people, bonus-rich grand scheming SLC-reject planning gurus, bankrupt 25th street taj mahals and $30 million downtown toxic waste-sites... can't dig up the few bucks that it would take to employ a couple of minimum-wage streetsweepers to clean up the pigeon doo off the sidewalk between the convention center and the Marriot Hotel so that tourists won't have to wade through bird-crap to and from the hotel?

Too funny!

Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that some of our citizens -- "Chamber" types especially -- are willing to roll up their sleeves a little bit and put some "sweat equity" into our community. If some citizens are willing to perform the tasks that their hard-earned tax dollars are designed to pay for, then I have no problem with that.

There's a sucker born every minute. -- P.T. Barnum.

It will all be a good thing though, I think, to give some of our community "cheerleader" types a taste of sweeping up the daily pigeon refuse. Perhaps it will give them an opportunity to take their minds off the the mindless central-planned "vision" that's scaring away private developers like Citiventure and Boyer left and right. Perhaps they'll contemplate, in a more down-to-earth context than a "chamber mixer," the proper priorities of municipal government.

And after a few early winter snowfalls, and after these community-minded citizens have shown up downtown a few times early in the morning, snow shovels in hand, maybe the smarter amongst them willl ask themselves the same question I've been asking: "Just how broke is Ogden?"

And another question may possibly arise: "Just how morally bankrupt is this "gang of six" who run this Ogden city economic development dog-and-pony show?

And I can't help wondering how many honest and competent streetsweepers could be hired for the forty-three thousand buck windfall that Mayor Godfrey dropped into the lap of the bumbling Stuart Reid, via a secret, undocumented "oral agreement."

In the case of streetsweepers, though, at least we'd get some palpable results. And at the very least, our visiting conventioneers wouldn't have to pack galoshes for every weekend Ogden convention gig.

Comments anyone?