By The Lovely JenniferThis morning's SE front page presents an article about Mark Johnson giving up his Hummer. He traded it for a Yukon because the scrutiny of the newspaper "... took all the fun out of driving it."
Wrong Answer!
Isn't the Yukon one of the biggest SUVs put out by GMC? It is still conspicuous in-your-face consumption, as far as I'm concerned -- at our expense. He might have considered the reasons for the scrutiny, and decided on something a little more economical and in consideration of the city's need for money for infrastructure (see using snow-removal money to fix Country Hills Drive). Thinking of the plight of the city and the concerns of the citizens would have been a much better reason for a trade-DOWN. Instead he chose the pouty, spoiled-child reason of "it's not fun any more" for a trade-ACROSS.
Perhaps we should email our friend Ace Reporter Schwebke at the Standard-Examiner to thank him for keeping the heat on. Mr. Johnson deserves the same degree of scrutiny for his Yukon as he received for his Hummer.
What's it going to take before Mr. Johnson catches on!?!
24 comments:
The LJ:
Yes, a Yukon at taxpayer expense is still pretty over the top. But, let's look on the bright side here. Daylight shined on the Hummer forced an administration appointee to drop the car, if only for a Yukon. That's good. [And kudos to the SE for highlighting the story in the first place.] The general lesson here might be then [and it's a good one for city officials, elected and appointed, to take from the matter]that folks are watching, that appearances matter where the conduct of public officials is concerned. All that's good. So however annoyed you [and I] may be at the Yukon, something good overall happened here. A small victory for public scrutiny, maybe, but a victory none the less.
How would this work. The city buys a fleet of inexpensive (to buy and maintain) vehicles for use by city employees - IF needed. These same employees - NO MATTER WHO THEY ARE - drive to work and back in their OWN vehicle - just like 99 per cent of the rest of us do.
Sarge:
Well, I think the argument is, the city ends up paying less overall under the present system than it would buying, and maintaing, a fleet of cars for [occasional] use by city employees. [I don't know if that's so; I haven't seen the numbers, but I think that's the argument.]
Of course, another way to handle it is to have city employees who drive on city business keep mileage logs, and then reimburse them a certain amount [to cover maintenance and gas for their cars used for city work] per mile. But then you have to add in the accounting costs of processing all that data constantly.
Granting that city employees whose jobs occasionally require them to drive on city business ought not to have to pay for that out of their own pockets, different cities have tried a lot of differnt ways to handle the matter. [Look at the problems SLC had with its fleet operations.] Ogden's way may be the most cost-effective overall. I don't know, but it's possible.
However, even presuming it is, administration employees have to have truly impressive tin-ears not to understand that their driving around a Hummer on the taxpayers' dime [or even a portion of the taxpayers' dime, as seems to have been the case in this instance] creates [or can create] a serious PR problem for the administration. As this one has. You'd think political appointees would have a reasonably well developed sense of the importance of appearances and perceptions. Apparently not.
Mr. Johnson gets a car allowance just like alot of other people at certain levels of government and business receive. You all are just jealous because you can't get a job that allows you to to get a good car. Get more education and ability and maybe you too can drive a car that you can only dream about today.
Your philosophical arguments appear to me to boil down to "good" equals "poor" and "rich" equals "bad." Isn't that sort of a commie thing? Class jealousy is such a childish thing to see.
Ok, well lets see what else has happened here, the administation now has all the fleet records under lock and key. what else don't they want us to find out about. any body want to ask where are the records being kept now. who owns this city anyway.
can we have the standard ex. look in to this for us taxpayers.
The Budget is open to the public, wherein the records of EVERYTHING is kept.
No secrets. No conspiracy.
Someone needs to do his homework, here.
The Budget is open to the public, wherein the records of EVERYTHING is kept.
No secrets. No conspiracy.
Someone needs to do his homework, here.
Not perhaps the right heading for this, but it does involve transportation, so maybe it's not too far a stretch.
More misinformation and deception from Lift Ogden: I found on the steps this morning [apparently delivered along with the SE] a glossy brochure touting the Gondola/Malan's Basin scheme. It was put out by Lift Ogden.
It says the following: "With the downtown gondola, you can fly into Salt Lake International Airport, take the Front Runner to Ogden, and then ride the gondola to the new Junction mall, Weber State University, a new golf course, or a new montain resort in Malan's Basin."
I didn't recall that the new Commuter Rail system ["Frontrunner"] was going to SL International Airport, so I went to the UTA site to check. Guess what? It's not. There is a station planned at N. Temple designed to eventually link up with a proposed light rail line [i.e. TRAX line] to the airport. But Frontrunner is NOT going to the SL International Airport and so you will not be able to "fly into Salt Lake International Airport, take the Front Runner to Ogden, and then ride the gondola 'as the Lift Ogden brochure claims you will.
If the proposed TRAX line between the North Temple Commuter Rail ["Frontline"] station is eventually built, you will be able to fly to SLC, haul your luggage onto a TRAX train, and take it to the North Temple Frontline station. There, you can haul your luggage off the TRAX car and onto a Frontline train and ride it to Ogden. Figuring [on average] a five minute wait for a TRAX car at the airport, and an average 20 minute wait for Frontline train at North Temple and a 40 minute run up to Ogden, you will be able to make it to the gondola terminal in Ogden, hauling your luggage along for the ride, in 65 minutes. Then you haul your luggage onto the gondola to the hotel at the mall site to check in. Finally shut of your bags, you board the gondola again for an 18 minute ride to WSU, then change gondolas for another gondola ride to Malan's Basin, which at last gets you To the ski resort. Say two hours over all from deplaning to arriving at Malan's Basin. And that ONLY if the proposed TRAX line to the airport is built.
Or, you could walk off the plane at SLC, pick up your luggage, walk about 30 yards to the shuttle service desk, have them take your bags and you and deliver both to the hotel and base of the ski lift at Snowbird in under an hour.
The Gondola/Gondola scheme must be in deep trouble if Lift Ogden has to resort to the kind of mis-information contained in its new glossy brochure to try to make it seem appealing again. It must really be in trouble. First they pretend the gondola will take people to Snow Basin, until Snow Basin complained and forced them to back off that bit of disinformation. Now they claim you'll be able to pick up the Frontrunner communter rail at the SL airport and ride it slick as a whistle all the way to Ogden. No, you won't.
Wonder what new bit of misinformation they will come up with next in their panicky attempts to save this rapidly sinking gondola/gondola scheme? Stay tuned.....
Am hoping someone "in the know" will respond to you, Curmudgeon, because I have thought much the same thing about the luggage hauling problem, even without this new bit of info you have just posted. The thought of that is really quite comic--Rube Goldberg comes to mind.
As one who believes that the weight of luggage can and will increase exponentially throughout the course of a day, I think transfers really do bear looking at.
I think the glossy you refer to is the one that was stacked on the agenda table in the Municipal Building. Does it have Q&A on the back, Gondola and Malan's Basin Resort on the Front, and What's In All This For Me? when you open it? If so, it's the same one. It's the same quote, for sure.
Anonymous said...(1) - We were trying to have an intelligent conversation here - thanks for your absplutely idiotic response!
Curm - your response to me may well be correct. By the way, when are you announcing for mayor.....
The Lovely LJ:
I've confirmed that it was an insert in the SE for Ogden zip codes only, so if you live out of the city you did not get one.
SE publishes City Council Agendas:
Ahem.
A SE person pointed out to me, more politely than maybe he should have, that the SE publishes, every week, the agenda for every meeting of every public body to which the public may come. City Council. Planning Commission. School Board. All of them. The listings run usually twice a week [other towns in SE coverage areas too] and the Ogden stuff appears as a rule on Tuesdays. In the local news section, inside pages.
Of course, in a diabolitical attempt to hide this information from the general public and to confuse its readers, the SE cleverly conceals the agendas under a section headline that reads, in its entirety: "AGENDAS". [Is there no end to their perfidy?]
If there was an emoticon signifying intense embarassment, I would post it here. I should have known the SE printed the Council agendas. Ah, well. Can't win 'em all.
I have looked through this past Tuesday's local section repeatedly after reading your post, and I cannot find any agendas.
I have found some in today's paper for Hooper, Farr West, Brigham City, and Plain City. This is normally what I find when I look for them.
I have been told the agendas for Ogden are in the SE, but I have never seen them.
Let's make this a first.
Would someone look through this past Tuesday's paper, locate the Ogden City Council agenda, and tell me where it is?
Dian:
I don't keep back copies. I'll look next Tuesday and see if it's there though.
Dian:
Yes, the brochure I got with the morning paper is the one you described being distributed at the Council meeting. I'd love to know where the picture on the front was taken. Ogden it ain't. You don't suppose they took a photo from Medellin, Columbia, do you? Isn't that where you found the pictures of the huge stanchions supporting a gondola system? Be just too wonderful if Lift Ogden was offering to turn Ogden into "the next Medellin."
One word. Gluttony runs rampant in the corrupt administration.
Well, LJ...we must've rec'd your brochure! One was under the windshield, and one ON the porch...not IN the SE!
Yes, they are the same ones that were on the table outside the Council Chambers Tu nite, and that Geiger proudly boasted to my husband after the CC mtg that HE paid for (along with the gondola, video and rental space) in the Newgate Mall.
How MANY city employees need to drive a car in the course of their daily duties? A very small fleet of cars should handle the 'busyness;....do luncheons and propaganda meetings count as city business? Oh yeah, I guess so. Also, ONE person could handle the mileage logs, etc.
Mark Johnson is such a phony baloney. Just a few weeks ago in the SE he asked for the publics' input and suggestions how Ogden could save money.
Well, I suggested at a CC mtg two weeks ago that ONLY the firefighters and police receive a wage hike...all that they originally asked for, BTW, (and had to come begging to the CC for help.) (Tom Owens blasted the mayor for ducking out on the cops!)
I also suggested that the city employees NOT receive their 2% raise...and now they'll get a 5% MERIT raise. I also suggested that the mayor and his administration take a 6% DECREASE, at the very least.
Not only should we attend these public meetings sponsored by Godfrey, but let us remind Glassman and Stephens about their campaign promises and philosophy.
One thing these politicians seem to have a bout of amnesia over as soon as they are sworn in, is that ELECTIONS do come 'round.
Once again, kudos for Dorrene Jeske for remaining true to her promises and for being the voice of constancy on the council.
BTW...I've seen other cities' council agendas in the SE...but I'm hard pressed to find Ogden's. I think I saw one ONCE! And since Ogden meets on Tuesdays...a day earlier for the agenda would be more helpful to the citizens. This administration is citizen unfriendly and unwelcoming.
Sharon:
I will be checking the SE local news section regularly, from now on, for Ogden city agendas... specifically for the Council, the Planning Commission, and the School Board, all of which the SE tells me they print in the "Agendas" section regularly. But talk is cheap and the proof is in the pudding. [Sorry. As a card-carrying historian, my guild oath requires that I use a certain number of cliche's each day, and I'm a little low on today's total so I had to work some in.]
I'll be watching closely from now on for Ogden agendas in the SE.
Lift Ogden Claims Supernatural Powers! Again!
Been reading, a little more closely this time, that work of creative fiction known as the Lift Ogden New Brochure, the one distributed by the SE the other day[and apparently in some other ways too]. These guys are slick. From the brochure:
"It's a year-round mountain resort with skiing, hiking, biking, dining, paragliding, and sightseeing that will add miles of new trails and open space." [emphasis added.]
The project will add "open space." Now there's a neat trick. Malan's Basin is now entirely open space, and wild. They propose to build a hotel, condos, shoppes, restaurants, ski lifts in it and thus add open space to the mountain? Wow. I'm impressed.
Of course, this isn't the first time they've claimed supernatural powers. Earlier, the Mayor and the Lift Ogden crowd were telling folks at the Mayor's Tuesday night soirees that by building 400 new homes on land that is now Mt. Ogden Golf course and attached city parklands and WSU wild lands, they would "create more open space." There's a really neat trick! Unless of course they intend to bulldoze 401 homes someplace else in the city.
These guys are something else.
They do publish the agendas. I see them regularly. That was how I knew to go down there the day they appointed the new City Recorder.
While the SE might say it is a certain day, it varies from Sunday to Tuesday. And depending on space some or most of the agenda might be redacted.
I went through this last weeks online versions which are exactly what is published and found something in Sundays but I don't think Ogden was there. But I didn't check really close.
The first week is usually very busy cause most of the cities meet that week.
Yes! The Ogden City Council agendas are fairly regularly published in the Standard-Examiner on the morning of the scheduled meeting.
They are available usually -- for what THAT's worth.
And when they appear, they appear as complete bureaucratic gibberish to most citizens.
Not only that... they fail to give ANY adequate notice IN ADVANCE, to citizens who might have to modify their schedules, when they wish to show up and argue issues and toss rotten vegetables at Blessed Matt Godfrey.
Moreover, many people in Ogden are so fed up with the Sanduskey-Examiner that they no longer even subscribe to it.
And then there are the computer-literate younger citizens, who get their news mainly from the internet, and can't understand why council agendas aren't posted on the magnificent and award-winning Ogden City Website as early as possible.
In that connection, we're furnishing the current Ogden website link to the "Council Agenda". We challenge ANYONE to plow through this ridiculous html form, and come up with the agenda for even NEXT TUESDAY'S council meeting.
MENSA Members and software engineers are especially invited to chime in about how confounded they are on this web-page fiasco:
Here's the link again, in case any of you missed it the first go-round; Action Minutes and Upcoming Agenda
Face it, fellow lumpmentownsfolke. Godfrey -- who runs the Channel 17 TEEVEE station as if he were Ted Turner -- and thinks the Ogden City Website is his personal playpen -- also thinks he's a smaller version of Bill Gates -- who owns all the important internet software.
Blessed Matthew Godfrey will be mercilessly un-elected in 2006, unless he can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Delusions of grandeur will get him nowhere.
He doesn't give a dang what the lumpen townsfolk want to know.
He ain't about to provide the rope for the public hangin' either.
Rudi:
On the agendas and proper [readable] notice. Two points:
1. I think the SE publishes the agendas provided by the various public agencies. So if they are difficult to understand [and they often are], and larded with bureauspeak [and they are], the responsibility lies, it seems to me, with the Councils, and other agencies, not the paper. I very much like Councilwoman Jeske's plan to have the City Council beef the agendas up with real-world plain English summaries of agenda items, so folks will have a fighting chance of knowing what will be discussed.
2. Your point about the agenda items appearing in the SE often on the day of the meeting, permitting no advance planning by someone interested in attending, is well taken. It might be better if they appeared several days ahead [presuming the Council and other bodies make them available to the paper that far ahead; I have no idea what the Council's agenda publishing schedule is]. On the other hand, I know that I usually look for info about an event in the paper on the morning of the day the event is happening. In fact, that's where and when I'm most likely to look: the SE on the morning of the same day. So, based on my own absent-minded-professor tendencies [mandated by my guild oath], it's not completely clear to me that notice several days ahead in the paper would be better [that is, provide effective notice to more people] than notice on the morning of the day of the meeting. Have to think on it some more.
As for the TV station: I have heard rumors to the effect that the Council is considering, via the budget process, rearranging lines of authority for Channel 17's operations and programming. Rumor only at this point. Will pass on anything new I hear.
What is wrong with all of you. You soon forget; “That rank has it’s privileges!”
This was Ken D. Miller moto from his years with Ogden City. It seems that this moto is still alive and running more true and more freer today than in Mr. Miller’s day.
I once heard a say that there are two types of line of work never to get involved with if you are planning on getting rich in life.
1. Working for God in the religious sector.
2. Working for the public in the government sector.
If by chance that you do get rich working for one of these two sector’s then it becomes obvious that you are really not doing God’s bidding or the taxpayer’s bidding. But your own personal bidding and interests. It is said by some that taxpayer’s money is scared like tithing money because these monies come from no only from the rich, the poor and the Eigen as well, but you have no choice but to pay it unlike tithing it is strictly volunteer however, when the government decide’s to go after the rich they have the resources to fight back however, the poor and Eigen do not. And they have no choice but to be submissive, they have no tax attorneys or accountants that will figure out the loop-holes for them.
So with that in mind it is hard for me to see, Bishops, Ministers, Rabbi, and others driving gas guzzlers vehicles to do the Lords work with tithing money to purchase them.
Then why should these City administrators (who are now or once a bishop and/or stake president) drive these types of vehicles as well. Then not only have $100.000 dollar salaries to go with it. And expect the taxpayers to pick up the tab for the maintenance of these vehicles as well.
Where is the boss! (The Mayor Matthew Godfrey) of these administrators to keep tabs on these people.... to make sure that they are “LIVING ABOVE REPROACH”. So that these people would never be an embarrassment to him.
What was I thinking, he is an embarrassment to himself. Then again, What was I thinking! We have wonderful examples of righteous government administrators here in Utah, Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett with their multi million dollar war chest. Jon Huntsman jr. and his multi million dollar war chest. Jake Garn and his Multi million war chest, Jim Hansen with his multi million dollar war chest, Chris Cannon and his multi million dollar war chest. Marty Stephens and his war chest. Doug Croft trying to swindle his neighbor out of land property next to his. Nancy Workman from Salt Lake County, Mark Shurtliff State Attorney General that demand that when The Salt Lake County Commissioner job was abolished that he received two years of Severance Pay to become the new Attorney General for Utah. The Nate Peirce C.A.O. got a $100,000 Severance pay for leaving a job in Ogden city Administration at taxpayer expense on a Friday and then walked right into a new job with Weber County on the following Friday. And the reason he was leaving Ogden was because he was retiring. Jon Griener Chief of Ogden Police. With his Cadillac, license 2F 1A This license plate is code for all law enforcement officers (that happens to follow him in traffic) in Utah. That he is the Chief of Police of Ogden.
What is all the carping about a damn Yukon? I mean take a look at this guy, he needs a rig this big to haul his big fat ass around in!
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