Ever since the original publication of this April 27, 2006 article, we've been "ribbing" our visionary "little but loveable," "radiant but rabid" Mayor about "the big one that got away."You remember the story line... "'Pleasant View lands 500 job meat-packing plant... meanwhile Godfrey fiddles 24/7 with a nit-witted gondola/parkland neoCON 'Welfare to the Wealthy' giveaway scheme that's doomed to be our fair mayor's most extravagant political blunder so far. "
Well now, it seems there's been a little "glitch" even in the well-designed Pleasant View Plan. It would appear, according to this Deseret News article of today's dateline, that the Pleasant View meat-packing plant is as dead in its inception as the turkey carcasses that would have been processed there. Something about "wetlands."
The Standard-Examiner and ace reporter Schwebke are scooped again... as is all to often the case for our so-called home-town newspaper. Oh for the days when The rag from Sanduskey employed and ran the stories of a stable of REAL reporters.
This time the Std-Ex got caught out-to-lunch by the 800 Lb. Gorilla house organ , the Deseret Morning News, and now...the humble plagiarising and copyright infringing Weber County Forum (Proposed Official Motto: The Voice of truth in the face of hegegemous, oppressive and news-monopolist Standard-Examiner)
If Matt Godfrey Godfrey had the sense that God gave a goose, he'd be cancelling this week's personal invitation-only condo-style gondola sales jobs (one per night every night until eternity,) and would start pitching this Iowa meat processing company to consider bringing those five-friggin'-hundred REAL jobs to Ogden city, as the "Plan B" fallback situation.
We'll concede that meat-packing jobs probably ain't all that "Cool & Sexy."
We are old enough to remember though, a recent time in Ogden when Ogden City was famous for meat-packing! One of our sitting City council members even had a good, high-paying job at Swift's during Ogden's "Golden Age," he admits privately.
No crude Cool & Sexy meat-packing jokes please, gentle readers. We're talking about Swift's & Co, and Wilson Meats, plus a few others we temporarily forget.
Godfrey has the opportunity to turn himself from a zero to a hero here. All he needs to do, is bring that plant to Ogden.
Comments are requested.
They are DEMANDED, in fact, in this case.
This is your forum, afterall.
Well??????????????????
Update 5/10/06 9:41 a.m. MT: One of our gentle readers just posted this 5/4/06 Weber Sentinel News article in the comments section below. It appears that even the Deseret News got seriously scooped on this story. Kudos to the Sentinel News. Many of us are hoping that the Mackleys will one day up the ante, go into daily production, and run the Suits from Sandusky back to the Ohio neoCON haven from whence they came.
23 comments:
Well, ok, 500 jobs is 500 jobs. But you have to admit marketing Ogden as "The Haunch" instead of "The Hub" just isn't nearly as sexy.... [grin]
Wow! You are so on the money (no pun intended), Rudi.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a real business come here that would employ a whole lot of people at good wages??? And, with health benefits.
Even the elite are known to eat bologna...or is that just serve it to the masses?
BTW, to change the subject for a moment, but perhaps this does tie into promoting the GOOD in Ogden. Last nite we attended the fabulous reenactment and GOLDEN SPIKE celebration at the historic Union Pacific Station.
The actors were in period costumes and it appeared that a lot of work and rehearsal had gone into the reenactment. We saw a film about the laying of the rails and the invaluable service and back-breaking work of the Chinese. It was all first rate!
We saw Councilwoman Jeske and her husband, and also Dave Patterson and his wife in attendance.
We chatted for awhile. I didn't recognize anyone else representing the city.
I expected the mayor and others from the council and administration to be there to give support. Ninety five (95!) year old Nate Mazur (correct spelling?) was the force behind this event which will now be offered annually. Nate held a few of us spellbound after the show with stories of how those beautiful murals came into being.
I'm disappointed that the city father and kids couldn't have enuf pride in our city's history to promote and attend this marvelous reenactment that united East and West!
Every May 10 Corrine hosts a reenactment and the two steam engines come together. The shows are at 11 AM and 2 PM. It's deliteful and I encourage families to go. If I had school age children....I'd take them to Corrine tomorrow. Real history.
So, the mayor missed another opportunity to support Ogden...just as I hope he won't MISS a second opportunity on grabbing the meat processing plant!
How about "Baloney Bayou"?
"Salami Square"?
"Chicken Corners?"
"OLIVE LOAF Ogden"? Kind of sexy and cool, I think.
Just read the editorial you linked to. I had not read it all the way to the end before. Probably, the SE is right about re-posting an entire article without permission constituting violation of copyright.
On the other hand, when the SE itself becomes the story [for example, its reporter Schwebke choosing to describe, in his lede, the SGO Wasatch Elementary School meeting as "raucous"], then providing readers the article is merely providing them with the facts/evidence involved in a matter of public discussion and debate. [Good newspapers strive not to become the story themselves. But it happens. Witness the NY Times Judith Miller stories and the Times stories by that young journalist who, it turns out, was making it all up.] Anyway, when the paper's account itself becomes the story, I see no way around [and nothing wrong with] a blogsite providing the text [duly sourced, of course]to readers.
But beyond that, it would seem to me, were I editing the SE, that I would want my reporters' work, and my paper's coverage to get as wide a play as possible. And so long as the stories linked or even reprinted fully on a blogsite are properly credited to the paper, I'd be hard put to see why I'd object.
Besides, when my readers consistently read important Ogden area news first in the SL Trib or the Deseret News, if I were editor of the SE, I'd have a lot more on my plate to worry about than whether a blogger or two was posting an article now and then.
I'll grant the editorial's point for feature articles [as opposed to straight news] and the "tips" articles [household hints kind of stuff] and personality profiles of high school athletes and the like.
Finally, why would an editor not want his paper's news pieces to be matters of widespread discussion and citation [even in full] on blogsites? Beats me. Seems to me the message being delivered by having your articles picked up and repeated is this: "Hey, you want to be in on the know about what's happening in Ogden, you'd better read the SE regularly." Que no? In fact, I'd start to worry, as editor, if local public forum blogs were not picking up my paper's stuff to use as the basis for comment and discussion.
PS: for the record, I'm a subscriber and have been since the day I arrived in Ogden four years ago. However much the SE has declined over that time [and it has declined], it is still the local paper and, IMHO, being an active citizen requires reading it. Every day, however much Malox you need along with it.
Is this LEGITIMATE wetlands or "there is a puddle of water therefore we must leave it alone forever" wetlands? The government stikes again!!!!
He should (Mayor Godfrey) drop his condo / timeshare sales pitch, to persue the meat packing plant, but it's not a sexy and cool business to bring to Ogden. It doesnt compliment the vision that a few have for Ogden. And Matt cant see past the end of his nose.
The Little Lord ainta gonna do it cause it wasn't his idea. It wasn't in his vision. Nowhere at the bottom of the gondola can he recall seeing a wiennie plant. He don't wanna be no mayor of a bunch of sausage makers. Besides, he don't want us making jokes comparing sausage making to the way he makes Ogden's law, or about how he is a little wienner himself.
OzBoy....you're comments are always meaty!
Huzzahs to Rosemary Hoffman who wrote the well-reasoned and articulate Guest Commentary this AM in the SE! She puts forth some caveats on the gondola/resort scheme.
BTW, I couldn't get thru Geiger's first line! WHERE did he come up with that garbage? Which school taught him that? Close it down. Now.
Godfrey and his gang and the LO's would do all of Ogden a favor by paying attention to REAL economic growth potential and to what Ms. Hoffman knows from first-hand experience. Godfrey and his LO sycohants would've done well to travel to MS and find out how to do due diligence from the folks who learned it the costly hard way.
Now, West Liberty Foods says they want to stay in the Top of Utah....I hope this administration (after the closed, by invitation only propaganda meeting) buttonholed the West Liberty people last nite and hammered out a deal to present to the City Council!
We NEED this plant and all that comes with it. 500 jobs, plus, with the refrigeration plant, would be helping our citizens in many ways....new housing?, more retail to accomodate an influx of workers?, a big boost to our economy....more so than visions of riders in the sky on a gondola a lonnnng way off...if ever.
Everyone eats....not everyone will plunk down money (how much???) to ride a gondola to WSU, ESPECIALLY if one has no earthly reason to go there!
Maybe we don't need a meat processing/packaging plant after all. Godfrey Peterson and Geiger are manufacturing enuf baloney for all of us.
Curm, Do you have an email? Can we meet for alternative strategy session. Your moderate tone and broad view is needed in formulating a citizen's alternative development proposal. Can we meet for lunch or snack and suds tomorrow before the next CP and Mayor(dog and pony) show at Union Station? Name your time and place(25th st hopefully)It's on me.
Pleasant View will never succeed in economic development in their community until they build a gondola.
It's elementary.
WoW!!!!
Did you get a load of that mumbo jumbo dished up by the boy/man Geiger in today's SE?
Is this guy full of himself or what!
He makes this long, and very boring, faux argument coached in what he assumes is high falutin educated economic lingo. Unfortunately it is all based on wishfull thinking, faulty logic and unreralistic assumptions.
Is this the kind of thinking they teach at the military academy these days? If so, is it any wonder that the military is in such a mess?
Sharon,
To answer your question about Bob... Bonneville High School, Annapolis, Boston College. What are your credentials?
thought so!
Dear And No Animosity:
Am decamping with the family for brief vacation at Moab shortly. Intend to spend morning hiking and afternoons reclining in the shade watching the Colorado roll by and the clouds drift over the red rock, with suitable libations close to hand. [I know, I know, it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.]
You mention citizen alternatives. Several folks are at work along those lines already, I think. For example, former Councilman Jorgenson is circulating what he calls "Option B". He's annoyed it seems [as am I] by the "all or nothing" approach taken by the Mayor and Peterson, and has devised a kind of median proposition in which both "sides" get some, but neither "side" gets all, of what it wants in this matter. It seeks to balance a gondola [one] and Malan's basin development with preservation of the city's public lands and limited financial public committment. I've suggested he see if Rudi will post it here, but I don't know if he has. I hesitate to submit it for posting w/o his permission. When I get back, I'll ask him if he would mind if I posted it here [credited to him of course], Rudi consenting. I'm not sure it's a viable plan, given the heat involved in the discussion, and the non-compromising stands taken in so many of the public statements so far. But it might provide an interesting basis for some discussion along the lines, I gather, you are interested in. [I'm sure if you contact Jorgenson, he'd be happy to get you a copy of his "Option B."]
But for the next week, I am concentrating on red rocks, blue skies, the brown Colorado and cool amber liquids suitable for consumption.
Permit me to suggest, again, that personal attacks in either direction are not particularly effective. If the Peterson/Godfrey/Geiger proposal is a viable, feasible plan [and I think it is not], it is so regardless of whether Mr. Bob Geiger has a PhD from Oxford or a GED from East Overshoe Correspondence High School and Storm Door Company.
To be effective, those of us who think the plan is not feasible, and has failure written all over it [as I do] need to criticize it on its merits [or lack thereof], not on the educational credentials [or lack thereof] of its proponents. A carload of degrees would not make its proponents right anymore than a carload of degress would make its opponents right. The wildly speculative nature of the plan, and its low probability for success make, I think, far more effective targets.
Dear And No:
Come to think of it, "Mary Livermore" who posts here put up on this blog a plan not all that different from Jorgenson's. It was a number of topics ago, and [sorry] I don't recall exactly under which heading.
To No Animosity and Curm,
Going back and taking a look at the posts, I see that I mentioned a petition drive in "Clumsy Maps....", and that Chris Peterson should build the gondola up his canyon to his resort on his own nickel, in "NO. Ogden....Did What?"
Also, in another post I made the same argument that Peterson build the gondola to his resort on his own money. Wait three years and see how many tourists are lured off 1-15 to ride it. Keep numbers. Let's see if it will be a financial success.
Wasn't that the first idea floated? A gondola owned, maintained and built by Peterson TO the resort?
Everything else has sequed into this economic boon vision.
Get the meat packing plant here with real jobs for so many. THAT'S what will help our economy!
Looking at the article in the SE today that Ogden is alluring and luring as a 'ski hub' and because of a gondola going from downtown to WSU is pure Geiger, Godfrey PR!
I had the distinct impression that this area is attractive because of Weber, DAVIS AND MORGAN counties also.
Peterson is telling us all about it again tomorrow at Union Station. Speaking at 3:30 and 5:30.
I'd be very interested for those who have been invited to the private meetings (by invitation only) to please attend tomorrow and let us know if they hear the same scenario! Take notes, pls.
Thanks Curm,
Enjoy the sun and rock, Sounds like alternatate scenarios are beginning to surface which is good.
NAYSAYER!
So we finally have a Godfrey/Allen insider admitting that they are only interested in their own - Ogden replaces Park City - fantasy when he wrote:
"real" jobs surrounding tourism and recreation seem a little more worthy of your drool"
He was rambling on rather dumbly about how years ago a meat packing plant in Colorado stunk and how we don't want this meat company here in Ogden cause they would rather have 3 man start up ski companies save us from their invented dooms day scenario.
Seems like Swifts had a animal slaughter and full on meat packing plant right here in Emerald City through my entire youth. There was also an animal rendering plant over there that was particularly odiferous if you were on the spot. Don't ever remember the town being overcome with bad smells. Once in a while a wiff yes, but it was never a bad thing that caused problems in Ogden.
This sausage plant being discussed is far from what Bernie, the fantasy spinning attorney, is trying to paint it as. Check it out on the web. These modern meat factories do not put out any bad smells! They capture the fumes in house and sell them to the Godfreyite's as hot smelly air to pump up the asses of the masses.
So do you suppose that the Little Lord neglected to even look into this meat company locating to Ogden because his "councelor and uncle Bernie" told him about his college days experience with meat plants?
Also because it didn't fit in with his "cool" dream?
With the level of hubris that infests this whole clan, I would not be suprised at all if this was typical of the decision making process within the Godfreyite's leadership circle.
Bernie,
Your attempts at sarcasm and creative writing confirm the consensus that you are truly an ass.
I think you don't really understand the difference between truth and erroneous and specious 'facts'.
Your little nephew, daddy-in-law and the whole clan are attempting to perpetrate a scam. I know you know that some have been incarcerated for such doings.
You, as a learned attorney should not only realize that but give counsel to your little nephew and Peterson that the 'masses' want answers that are based in truth and fact.
I'm sure we'll see the same posters at Union Station that were on display at WSU.
How do you explain (truthfully now) how Godfrey and Peterson are telling us that Ogden will realize $5 MILLION in tax benefits, then THIRTEEN, and then TEN????
Who the *&^%$^*$# do you think you scam artists are dealing with?
First, you (collectively) denigrate Ogden as a dump of a town that needs 'fixing'. Ogden is a dying, last gasp , soon-to-be ghost town.
Then, BAM! 'Hey gang, let's have a gondola run right though our prettiest streets (23rd and Harrison) down to WSU! "Can't you just imagine how many college students from out of state...out of the country even, will enroll at WSU BECAUSE we have a gondola????!!"
"Oh yes. We build it on the backs of the taxpayers, and the kids will DRIVE to the HUB downtown so they can have a thrilling experience riding back down to WSU!"
I'm sure WSU is 'drooling' at the thought of a horde of students who only want the experience of riding in a gondola back and forth on Harrison instead of pursuing an academic career. And, maybe there will be some who like to ski and have the time and money to spare to ride a gondola to Peterson's still unbuilt resort.
DROOL.
Peterson needs to build HIS gondola to HIS resort....get it all going. We'll keep close tabs on the numbers of TOURISTS and LOCALS who utilize the gondola. Also, we'll ask all those thousands of TOURISTS if they exited 1-15 JUST TO RIDE THE GONDOLA!! Those figures will give us a true picture of this ATTRACTION as an economic boost and life saver for 'old, rotting, backward Ogden.' We'll watch carefully for three years how PETERSON'S gondola and resort are doing.
Also, and most importantly, this proposal must be put on the ballot for the people WHO PAY to vote yea or nay for another BOND.
Do we remember that we are bonded for THE JUNCTION for over two dozen years???
Sometimes I think the little emporer would have us yoked like oxen or shackled about the ankles in striped outfits laboring 20 hours a day to build his empire.
Bernie, OzBoy writes wisdom. Now, go forth and try to put some sense into the thick and delusional skulls of your family.
The rabble who drool over packaged meat will thank you for not choking us with more bologna!That's baloney, son).
Mercy, Mercy, give old Bernie a break here. He is only doing the best he can with what he's got to work with. Their boy star is flaming out. The whole clan has another 18 months of glory left and they are desperate. When the Little Lord hits the cliff at the end of his sorry term in office, the Allen/Godfrey era will be over. Praise the Lord. Like the dying dinosaurs, they will most likely go out kicking and clawing.
Mean while in their dying throes, they can do some more significant damage to our pocket books that will pain us long into the future. This Gondola scheme could ultimately be even more financially damaging to the citizens of Ogden than the Mall deal is. Just look what is happening in Portland with their Gondola fiasco. It is about a third as long as the Ogden proposal, it was projected to cost $15 million, it is still unfinished, the tab has passed $57 million and counting. Why would the Ogden experience be any different than Portland's?
This down town leg of the Gondola scheme is a total disaster waiting to happen. If it does happen, it will be the tax payers and property owners in Ogden that will take it in the shorts for this nonsense. The tab could end up in the $50 to $70 million dollar range given Portland's horrid experience.
The sorry epitaph to this sorry affair could ultimately be our children paying millions of dollars to tear down a haunting relic that served as a reminder of a very disengenuous cult that bankrupted the city.
Some thoughts OzBoy:
One...will the Lord's legacy be the beleagured taxpayers on welfare?
Two. Perhaps like the extinct dinos....we could have bronze larger than life (that would please Godfrey) statues in the park?
Pigeons need a place to roost too.
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