Please note that we've made a new addition to our upper-left sidebar "Government Toolkit."
The ever-vigilant Dian has just sent us a pdf file containing semi-complete contact information for the Emerald City Planning Commission. Mr. Wheelright, Ms. Brockman and Ms. Larsen are of course no longer on the commission, according to our understanding, and we don't seem to find informsation for the newest member, Ms. Holman; but the list seems to otherwise complete as to the remaining members.
We've uploaded the file to our storage site, and constructed a sidebar link.
Alternatively, this information is also viewable here.
Gentle readers who are concerned about tomorrow night's summary modification of planning and zoning rules affecting our Mt. Ogden Parklands property are strongly urged to get moving on this.
We're also anticipating the upload within the next several hours of the precise text of Uncle Montgomery's proposed planning and zoning changes; so be sure to check back later.
Update 11/1/06 4:20 p.m. MT -- Per Curmudgeon:
WE just received the following email/meeting update from SGO:
Updated information on tonight's Planning Commission meeting: Please note that the Sensitive Area Overlay Zone Ordinance and the Mixed Use Ordinance are not scheduled for consideration by the commission until 8:15.
We learned today that it is highly unlikely that these items would be moved up on the agenda, no matter how many concerned residents are in attendance, because other presenters have arranged to come when they appear on the agenda.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
We hope you will come to the meeting, but there is no need to arrive before about 7:45 or so. Here's an idea -- support our downtown by having on 25th Street [or at another downtown restaurant< -- Curm] and then come to the meeting.
Hope to see you there.
© 2005 - 2014 Weber County Forum™ -- All Rights Reserved
20 comments:
Juditha Wright is also a new member, but can't find contact info for her.
You refer to "neoconservatives" but I don't believe you have defined the term. Since you call both Bush and Godfrey by that name, I conclude it means:
"An elected public official who is fiscally irresponsible, arrogant, and who seeks to impose his often irrational values on others."
Such persons would, in other words, be those who profess to be "conservative" but who, rather than limiting government, inflate it greatly in every aspect, using it as a tool to amplify themselves upon others for the sake of their egos.
But why invent a new term? Just call them: tyrants, Hitlers, dictators, etc . . .
I've heard that Greg Montgomery is Godfrey's uncle.
Can anyone confirm this?
They certainly don't look or interact as if they're swimming in the same genetic pool at all.
Help me on this.
Lillie IS at the New Zion Church...Tu thru Fri...during business hours. The # is 392 2211.
She is interested in your point of view. A very nice woman, BTW
I recently received an "electronic copy" allegedly sent by the Ogden City Planning Department, of the amendments to be voted upon by the Planning Commission tomorrow. I had attended the Work Session of the Planning Commission last Wednesday, (attended, you may recall, by only three Planning Commission Members,) at which these amendments were discussed, and there obtained a hard copy of the proposed revisions to the current law, Title 15 of the Ogden Code. I assumed that this "electronic copy" was just that--a copy of the roughly 25 page, double sided document discussed at the work session.
I was wrong. Someone has gone through it and has made changes. The electronic version is different from the hard version.
I discovered this because I had intended to write something regarding the hard copy revised proposal, in which it is stated that single family homes must be connected to Ogden City water and sewer. Since I had attended a Mayor's Meeting at which a revolutionary, state of the art sewage treatment plant in Malan's Basin had been discussed, I thought this mandate that homes be connected to city water and sewer important enough to point out.
So, evidently, did someone else, because in the "electronic copy," that regulation has been cut.
Under "Definitions," the whole word "avalanche" and its definition has been cut, also in the "electronic copy."
It appears that the table of minimum lot sizes, deleted from the original law in the hard copy, is now back in in the electronic copy, but has some differences.
There are undoubtably more cuts and perhaps more new additions. Going through two 25 page double sided documents, one electronic, in order to ascertain their differences is something that takes a bit of time which I have not yet dedicated to this. I'm having to get past more than a bit of resentment about it.
Wouldn't you expect that a member of the public such as myself, attending a Work Session on a proposed change in the law, should be able to trust that what occurred in that publicly open Work Session is what is going to appear at the final meeting (tommorow, no less,) where the vote on it will occur?
I am unaware of any other Work Session where changes to the proposed revisions were discussed.
Furthermore, were I on the Planning Commission and being diligent, the thought of having to work through yet another 25 page double sided document to compare it to the first one without any staff help, work sessions, or presentations before I was called to vote on it might be irritating, to say the least.
Provided I even did this. If I assumed that the electronic one was the same as the hard one, I wouldn't bother.
Perhaps if they vote, they will vote to table. That seems the wisest course of action at this point. There is simply not enough time to go through it all, since these recent changes.
I would also, of course, like to know how these changes were accomplished, by whom, and upon what authority.
But perhaps that would be asking too much.
I would be shocked to find out that Greg Montgomery and Mayor Godfrey are related, they are polar opposites (Greg is conscientious, has integrity, and is understanding of Ogden issues; while the Mayor is not). The only connection that I can think of is that the two used to work together when the Mayor worked for a while in the Ogden City Community Development/Planning Office. Where did you people who posted hear that they were related?
This latest post by Dian pertaining to what will be discussed in Wednesday night's Planning Commission meeting per the latest electronic copy is very disturbing.
There should be no vote at all until the correct copy of what is being voted on is available to the Commission and to the public.
And the Commission needs to find out which individual took it upon themselves to change the latest version from the first.
It is this sort of thing that makes us all distrust the Ogden City administration on most issues.
I did speak to Planning Commissioner Lillie Holman and she does feel that tomorrow's meeting is for the purpose of hearing from the community. This is one of those chances we have to come forward and be heard and I hope we will do so - I plan to do so. It's all well and good to blog and talk to each other, but as the saying goes, "Government is conducted by those who show up."
This proposed change is for Peterson, basically written by his attorney. The Planning Commission needs to hear from the public too. Let's give them that opportunity.
Planning Commission meeting is tomorrow, Wednesday, at 5:00pm, city council chambers in the municipal building.
Great work, Dian, spotting all those changes. I spent quite a bit of time over the weekend studying the proposed ordinance and writing up some formal comments on it. Now those comments will have to be rewritten, and I don't know when I'm gonna do that, or even find the time to study the whole new version, before tomorrow at 5.
The good news is that the minimum lot size requirements have been restored, at least for traditional subdivisions. For planned developments (PRUDs) the situation is less clear--in fact it's extremely confusing. In that case the maximum density is determined by that of the underlying zone. However, the proposed "mixed use" zone (which doesn't actually require mixed use) has no density limits!
I hope the Planning Commission will table both proposed ordinances until we all have more time to figure out what the implications would be.
I've not attended a PC meeting. Are they conducted like CC meetings with public comments USUALLY at the end of Council voting?
What's the procedure??
Sharon,
Others know the answer to your question better than I, but for each of the proposed new ordinances, there will be an actual public hearing in which citizens are invited to comment specifically on the current agenda item before the vote is taken. I don't think the PC schedules time for "general" public comments at the end of each meeting like the Council does. However, PC meetings seem to be run a little less formally than Council meetings; I think they sometimes invite comments on a matter even when there's no hearing on the agenda.
By the way, the agenda has finally been posted on the city's web site. I see that the new ordinances are scheduled for the very end of the meeting, tentatively starting at 8:15. But a footnote carefully points out that this time is only approximate and it could come up sooner (or later).
Great information recieved yesterday that you all will appreciate given the concerns that I read in this blog.
I happened to run on to 2 engineers that are working in Malan's Basin. I was able to talk to them both for an hour or so.
I am sorry that I cannot share what they told me however I can tell you that your fears will be relieved regarding the project when the engineering report is presented.
Anonymous:
Wanna bet?
For answers to questions about the eyesore building on 25th Street's 100 block, please see my posting today to the "Unwarranted Fawning Praise" thread of 10/29.
Standard Examiner Editorial Board Wakes Up
My my my, what is going on over at the SE these days? Strong editorial this morning on the mysterious third delay in Mr. Decaria issuing the Vangate report. It restates the Mayor's embarassing performance following a city employee's wife around downtown, his calling Police Chief Grenier [oh, and again, now, active Republican canidate for the Utah Senate] to relay her car license plate, and Cheif Grenier's agreeing to run the plate to identify the woman, who turned out to be wife of Officer Jones of the Ogden PD, who Grenier promptly suspended for "other" reasons, he says. The editorial also wonders what could possibly be taking three months plus to investigate, and it notes that Mr. Decaria has now promised the report would be issued three times, and has renegged all three times. Way to go, SE.
And the news department seems to be waking up as well. There is, front page of the "Top of Utah" section, a story by Mr. Schwebke this morning, discussing tonight's Planning Commission meeting and the proposed changes in zoning ordinances to be discussed, and it describes the proposed ordinances as serving the interests of, and in fact being critical to, Mr. Chris Peterson's development plans for the Mt. Ogden parklands he hopes his crony, Mayor Godfrey, can manage to sell to him, so he can finance his Malan's Basin resort and gondola plans.
My my my, a pissed off editorial board going after political cronyism in Weber County, and a reporter reporting what's actually happening rather than the Godfrey/Champer of Commerce sanitized version.
Imagine that. What is going on at the SE these days? Signs of life, maybe? The first faint evidence of the rebirth of an independent paper for Ogden?
Wow. There's an idea to put a smile on taxpayers' faces, though it is also one likely to keep the mayor, Chief Grenier, and some other local elected and appointed officials up nights sleepless. An independent paper for Ogden. Step one. And then, once the SE has mastered that, maybe even... dare we hope?... an independent crusading paper for Ogden?
So what are engineers going to find?
That the 180 acres of skiable terrain in Malan's is somehow capable of a higher skier capacity than most 180 acres?
If the engineers were working for Chris Peterson, I will seriously doubt any objectivity to their findings. The key issues besides the lack of substantial skiable terrain to draw a large enough paying customer base.... Water supply, sewage treatment, containment and handling, drainage and runoff down Waterfall Canyon, feasibility and profitability of building and operating a roadless resort, construction and operational impact, the need for a town gondola to serve a newly built resort of such minute acreage, why even talk of selling the golf course when feasibility of this thing has yet to be even studied by the principle himself. These issues and more should be addressed and have been posed as key questions for months.
That Peterson has just now perhaps scraped together the "risky" few tens of thousands pocket cash for some professional opinion now that the whole business is entrenched and divided our community, smacks of the worst kind of insensitivity.
I can't wait to here any supposedly authoritative presentation and analysis of these issues.
Tod:
Well, we need, really, to see the report they submit, if it's made public. SGO and others have been calling for a while now for feasibility studies, engineering studies, etc for the proposed development's various projects. If they are now under way, that's a good thing.
What remains to be seen is what the reports have to say, and how they were conducted. I presume they are going to be released in their entirety so their results can be vetted by people not in the employ of the developer. If the report's conclusions are released, without the underlying data on which they are based, they will not serve to silence much criticism, nor should they. If they are released in full and the data and conclusions based on them can stand up to independent scrutiny, then so be it.
I understand your skepticism, and I won't accept Mr. Peterson's word, or the Mayor's, or the Planning Staff's that the report is sound and its conclusions justified, without the full report and data being released. But I also don't want to dismiss out of hand a study I haven't seen, conclusions I haven't read, and data that has as yet not been made public.
I just received the following email from SGO.
Updated information on tonight's Planning Commission
meeting: Please note
that the Sensitive Area Overlay Zone Ordinance and the
Mixed Use
Ordinance are
not scheduled for consideration by the commission
until 8:15. We learned
today that it is highly unlikely that these items
would be moved up on
the agenda
no matter how many concerned residents are in
attendance because other
presenters have arranged to come when they appear on
the agenda.
Sorry for any
inconvenience.
We hope you will come to the meeting, but there is no
need to arrive before
about 7:45 or so. Here's an idea -- support our
downtown by having on 25th Street [or at another downtown restaurant< -- Curm] and then come to the meeting. Hope to see
you there.
Anonymous, does that mean that the engineers you spoke with will reinforce what Don Wilson told us. That is the only report that will relieve my fears about Chris Peterson's scam.
New comments are not allowed.