By Curmudgeon
Let me call attention to a long op-ed piece in this morning's Standard Examiner by Mr. John Patterson of the Godfrey administration.
It's a plea for moving the St. Anne's Center to a larger facility on 12th Street, as part of a six acre "campus" designed to house a variety of services for the homeless by other providers. Mr. Patterson is to be congratulated for laying the city's case [and I presume he speaks here for the Godfrey administration] for moving the St. Anne's Center out fully and openly. He talks about not only the desire to provide better services for the homeless, but the desire of some groups to have problems associated with the homeless congregating downtown [like pan-handling which reportedly creates problems for conventions and meetings coming to Ogden] removed to another part of the city.
We can now, at last, start to have the public discussion we should have when all this first surfaced in the papers, and when Administration spokespersons were denying that getting the homeless away from the developing business district downtown had anything to do with the idea of moving St. Anne's. It would have been better had the full case, all reasons, motives, etc. been laid upon the public table right off, but it's good now that a Godfrey administration spokesman has finally done it.
Of course, what Mr. Patterson does not mention is his having informed the City Council that the St. Anne's management was all for the move, which it turned out it was not. Let's hope the Administration has learned not only how important it is on matters of importance to fully disclose and fully inform the public of what is being advocated and why, but that it has learned to take care to make sure the information it passes on to other branches of the city government is accurate.
Mr. Patterson's op-ed piece is an encouraging sign that maybe, just maybe, the Godfrey administration is capable of learning. We can only hope that more evidence that it is will appear soon.
Update 3/6/07 2:30 p.m.: We hereby incorporate the pertinent part of a very important comment from the lower comments thread per Dan S.:
Off-thread breaking news: The Salt Lake TribuneDon't let the cat get yer tongues.
reports that WSU now has "every reason to say no" to Chris
Peterson.
