Godfrey a Salesman in Proposed Land Scheme

By Jason Wood
Via Standard/Net
Std-Ex Guest Commentary

The full-time, publicly paid mayor of my town is a spokesperson for a private developer. Or so it would seem, if you were to read anything about the antics of Matt Godfrey the last few months.

As a taxpayer and homeowner in Ogden, I expect the mayor to serve as a protector of the people's trust, one who safeguards our shared resources and acts an administrator of city government. Instead, Godfrey fancies himself a private-venture entrepreneur, who spends an inordinate amount of his time as the point man for a questionable land deal.

I've covered county and municipal government for many years and, from what I can gather, the elected chief executive should attempt to shepherd development according to how a community has been planned, or to improve its collective welfare without overextending it financially.

Never have I seen a mayor act like a carnival barker in an attempt to trade a public asset for a personal fantasy.

Our land is the most valuable thing we own in Ogden, and there is likely no acreage worth more than the east bench. Mt. Ogden Golf Course and the trails that surround it belong to us, the taxpayers in Ogden city, not to the mayor. In his attempt to fund what he thinks will revitalize a depressed economic center, Godfrey is proposing to give our golf course and highly trafficked trails away to a business person whom he fondly refers to by his first name. And he is using every available public pulpit to preach the gospel of this golf-for-gondola idea that is doomed to fail -- at our expense.

Not only is he taking on the unenviable role of corporate shill when he should be representing our interests, Godfrey and his administrators are spending city time and money to create the very proposal that would rob us of our golf course and our mountains.

Neither Godfrey nor Peterson can explain why the course wouldn't lose money if it's privately operated, they only say it will be reconfigured and improved. No one can detail these nebulous "improvements" to the course; no one has hired an experienced golf course architect to redesign the holes around these half-million-dollar homes that are sure to flood every spring; no one has looked at the feasibility of extending this mountain course farther east; no one can offer a reasonable explanation of how Peterson's going to get water to fairways and greens above the walking paths that cannot be serviced by any conceivable pump or drainage system; and no one has bothered to raise the issue that once the golf course is zoned for residential uses, there's little to stop this so-called developer from ruining the property or plowing the whole thing under after a year or two when it's found that revamping it is an untenable business proposition.

All we have are Godfrey's platitudes, his patronizing about how change is painful, and that he and his magnanimous partner will change our fortunes with a golden gondola from Wall Avenue to Weber State University.

As a professional skeptic, I have my doubts. But I do have an idea of two people this deal will benefit. And they like to call each other Matthew and Chris.

Wood, an Ogden native, works in marketing. He is a freelance correspondent for the Standard-Examiner covering Farmington and Hooper. He is a member of the Mt. Ogden Golf Course Men's Association.

What about it, gentle readers?