First and foremost is this Tim Gurrister headline story, suggesting a fundamental legislative overhaul may be in store in the Utah justice courts system:
Sweeping changes are in store for Utah’s justice courts.We at Weber County Forum have been griping about justice courts since the summer of 2005. We've complained about them here, here, here and here.
Under proposals that could go to the next session of the Legislature, the small-town courts could require that judges be full time, college educated and paid as state appointees. They would no longer be appointed by — or suspected of bowing to — a mayor, city council or county commission.
And all would face re-election.
We are thus delighted to read that a Utah Judicial Council Committee is studying the problems inherent the Utah justice court system; and we strongly urge the legislature to place these courts under the jurisdiction of the State Supreme Court where they logically belong, thereby eliminating the disgraceful separation of powers municipal "cash cow" problem.
Secondly, we find two front-page articles in this morning's Std-Ex edition, on a subject near and dear to our hearts. Peewee's Playhouse -- and various and sundry other monuments to Boss Godfrey's ego -- will be opening to the public, starting in June. Read the latest hoopla here and here.
This is happening none too soon, we say. The downtown mall site has been an economic albatross for what seems like years. We'll soon find out whether outfits like Fatcats and Gold's Gym can carry their own weight. We'll soon learn whether a downtown site, whose use throughout most of the history of our town depended upon a foundation of retail commerce, can survive on a business model predicated upon fun and games.
Who will be the first comment?
28 comments:
Thanx for the link down memory lane.
Appalling to see, in print, Jorgenson's rapid flip-flop, just two months into his term!
Promising not to demolish the old mall, and then being the cheerleader along with Johnson to DO IT!
Whatever happened to the 'open air' concept?
Well, you are right, Rudi. From 'commerce' to 'fun and games'. It will be novel. No doubt there will be a flurry of customers.
However, shelling out big bux to bowl, play miniature golf, or climb that wall is going to keep many families away.
I'm afraid people will go once, unless they are well-heeled, but the average family or kid cannot afford to go more than once (in a while).
I think Riverdale is not going to see a loss of revenue becasue there are no stores at the Junction!
Miller's will see a surge in movie goers for awhile. Isn't it interesting that Miller's is direct competition with TinselTowne, which is IN Ogen?
No new revenue...just 'passing the bucks', so to speak.
The article says the recreation center cost $19.5 million, but that doesn’t count the cost of the real estate, which was something like another $21 million. So now, we all get to be in the amusement park business as taxpayer investors. Of course, this enterprise will all work out, since Godfrey has a great track record in his private sector work consisting of clerking for Iomega for a year and working for the city under his Uncle Greg for nine months. Yes, let’s invest $40 million with THAT guy. Please people, vote this man out!
Here is an idea to revitalize downtown that would cost almost nothing.
Somebody floated this idea several years ago, but it was corrupted into a city event called “Downtown Saturday Nights.” The city took a good idea, and turned it into a bunch of kiosks selling cars, insurance, and popcorn downtown, and naturally, it failed.
The city approach shunned Ogden’s hardworking, diverse, blue collar population. The original idea was to embrace it, to celebrate it, and to set it free. Here it is.
Make it known that the second and fourth Fridays of each month during the summer are always “Cruisin’ the ‘Vard Night” in Ogden. Tell the police that on those two nights they will wink at noise ordinances, music ordinances, certain dress ordinances, and other such ordinances along Washington Boulevard for those nights. Close 25th Street to automobile traffic, including cross traffic, and put a live band at each end, with a street party down the whole street. Implement extensive police foot patrols, telling them they are there to stop serious crimes and keep order, but not harass people who are just having a good time.
It would be a unique event, and people would be surprised to discover how many cool cars there are around here – the whites with their classics and rods, the Latino’s with their fabulous low-riders, and many others with some seriously customized rides. And people would bring cars in from out of town. It would be a unique, fun night for everyone, even families. And you wouldn’t have to subsidize housing downtown anymore. People would come there to be close to the action – real action, not the government-contrived kind that always costs more than it produces.
All the smart merchants downtown would open their businesses. The lazy ones would complain about having to sweep the sidewalk two Monday mornings each month. The elitists would complain it’s not the kind of thing we want here (but they would all go anyway.) Some city employees would fight it, because it would entail LESS regulation instead of MORE regulation, and regulation is what they do. But for everyone else, it would be great.
“Cruisin’ the ‘Vard Night” in Ogden: the second and fourth Fridays of each month every summer. A great idea that will never happen.
I predict that Front Runner will have the opposite effect that the local Lord is hoping for. I predict that Ogdenites will take advantage of it to escape the craziness of the Ogden Leader to go south where the air is free from the hype and B.S.
good call, Danny
I'd call it simply cruise nite. Every fri. No need to label or title these things. So 80's. Ogden could simply become cruise friendly on weekends. Sure, it could introduce a little crime. A reliably heavy police presence with a lighter hand will keep things civil. Why not show the community how well police and partiers can get along. A great exercise in self control. People want to get out and socialize. Regulations and suburban sprawl have sanitized communities and made the local taco bell the extent of the hangout scene. Cops now chase kids from party to fast-food joint to forest jam. It's exceedingly stupid. Public trans like the frontrunner makes this kind of nitelife alot safer with less drinking and driving and confines it all to a manageable few blocks of the city. Business would want to be there for the action.
great prog,
I agree, I can't wait to hop the train any evening to get to the big city. Unless Ogden gets it going with cruise nights and more, the outcome will be exactly as you say. I know everyone here is excited for it's arrival to get to the city for ball games and other events. I wonder how many in SLC are eyeing it to escape the city to take a quiet stroll around quiet downtown Ogden any given evening. Not many I'd guess, but I am confident that many of the skate and snow crowd will want to get their feet wet on the flowrider at least once.
Good ideas. To keep it 'family fun friendly', I suggest that beer be drunk INside, and not on the streets. A heavy police presence with a light hand is a good idea. Plenty of cops on foot or bikes is necessary.
Being able to eat outside would appeal to everyone. Officer Gardner and his dancing horse, Sundance, would be a BIG draw!
How about organizing this, Danny?
Tec:
Do you mean the flowrider built for one? I dont know if anyone has seen the thing, but it is only large enough for a couple people at one time.
I seem to recall Ogden had something distantly akin to Vard Night once a summer. It was called the Ogden Summer Festival I believe. One summer weekend a year. One.
And as I recall, Hizzonah Mayor Godfrey decided that it was not a family friendly event [well, many who attended drank beer, right out there in front of god and everybody]. And the Mayor decided that every event sponsored by the city must be equally family friendly, so he altered the nature of the event dramatically, drove out the arm-wrestling contest [it drew bikers, you see, from outside of town, and people with tattoos, who drank beer, and besides, arm wrestling was realy, you know, not the family friendly image up scale Ogden wanted to convey], and arranged to put the beer drinkers in a policed mini-internment camp, sort of, in a vacant lot off 25th Street and drove the beer sponsors, who had ponied up thousands for publicity, to with draw from the event, and substitued face painting and puppet shows. In previous years, according to press reports, the festival had drawn many thousands from outside the city. Big event.
And the new and improved family friendly Ogden Summer Festival didn't draw flies. And the festival died, never to be run again.
One summer weekend a year, and that was too much. And you want a Cruise the Vard night twice a month all year round? Lotsa luck....
Mercy, sounds like you spend time in West Davis County. Why do some believe that dad having a beer while participating in activities with his kids,is not family friendly? The ordinance that came with the killing of the street festival has actually hurt Ogden in many ways. To point one out, the Los Lobos concert at the amphitheatre, people were not allowed to even have a beer while sitting in their seat, they were bannished to some new fangled thing called a beer garden. Isolation area. This cost the promoter and helped cause him to lose money on the venue. He will not be trying to promote here again. There are adequate laws all ready on the books dealing with public intoxication and drunk driving. So my question to anyone is explain to me what is really the logic behind trying to ostrasize a person for enjoying a beverage while recreating at civic functions. This is one area we need to come to grips with if we ever want the world to take us seriously. Why is having a beer allowed at the ballpark, but not at the amphitheatre? What's the rationale? Ain't the ballpark a family oriented place? Why do they not have a beer garden at the heavily tax payer subsidized (for F.O.M. Gullo's ) 4th. of July bash? We need to be much more open minded about this. Do you think Mitt Romney has a liquor prohibition at his recent fund raisers? That's enough for one rant, but I'm serious folks, this ordinance is nothing more than a clandestine improper moral judgement. It's wrong.
Bill C:
There was one potential reasonable rationale for the beer garden approach to the Summer Fest: if the police had had a lot of trouble with drunken sots at previous events. According to the SE coverage, turns out, they hadn't. No drunk riots, no spike in arrests for public intoxication, etc. So this was a "solution" in search of a problem to solve. There had, according to the SE, been no recent problems in that regard at the event.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is truly a piece of wisdom. Godfrey "fixed" an event that wasn't broken and as a result, the event died and is no more. Which, I would think would at the very least give one pause about the Mayor's grand projections about how he will "fix" other things in Ogden that seem, by all other accounts, not to be broken. Like Mt. Ogden Park, maybe?
"This is one area we need to come to grips with if we ever want the world to take us seriously. Why is having a beer allowed at the ballpark, but not at the amphitheatre? What's the rationale? Ain't the ballpark a family oriented place?" - bill c.
Holy Budwiser, Bill! Now the Mayor will get the idea to ban beer at the ballpark!
Uh oh. The delayed opening of the Junction entertainment complex means the new theaters missed the megabusiness of Spidy3's opening. Not good timing that.
If the Juncting movieplex books the same films as the Tinseltonw complex at the Mall, seems to me they'll be splitting the same pool of moviegoers. But if a couple of screens at the Millerplex get a little creative with booking... films not normally booked at Newgate Mall, some indie films that don't get megamall releases, and so on, it mgiht be differnt. The kinds of films you have to drive to SLC to see now, for example, the ones that never get north of the city.
I suspect the business owners in the Junction will be nervously watching construction on the condo segment of the development. I think they will be relying a bit on residential walk-in business and they can't do that until the condos open. Ditto the business block [all those people looking for lunch just steps away....].
As for the mall redevelopment overall, well, we're all just going to have now to settle back for a spell and see how it all plays out. It's nearly done, the entertainment block will open soon, and pretty soon all the predictions ["It will put Ogden on the map!" or "It will fail and the taxpayers will have to bail it out!"] will be meaningless. Pretty soon, in I'd say twelve months or so, we'll have a pretty good idea which prediction came closest to the mark.
Nothing for it now but to sit back and watch.
Don't forget Lollapalooza. They killed that too, because somebody saw a kid peeing in his yard. Oh no!
Not to worry. Soon, we can pay fifty bucks to spend five minutes with an industrial blower hitting us full in the face, or play glow golf. Gosh, what an idea, bowling and mini golf, so creative. (BTW is that blower going to use interior air, or frigid outside air? If the former, I’d sure like to see where they put the air INLET.)
Like I have said over and over, it's the bureaucrats that are killing Ogden. They don't let you have fun. They don't let you do business (ask Moyal). And they turn the city council into zombies through sheer boredom.
Give me Lollapalooza and crusin' night. Let Moyal do what he wants with HIS property. Let us have fun. Let us be free.
The public knows what to do better than the junior mayor and his hacks. All he has is power. But he has no light at all.
But don't listen to me. I don't have any ideas. I'm just a naysayer.
The quote I liked best was the one from the "art" guy who predicted that the Gateway Center in Salt Lake was going to be jealous of Ogden's new Junction!
Gateway with its own 12 plex, plus numorous upper scale restaraunts, sports stores, high end retail, etc, etc, etc. - is going to be jealous of the Junction's gym, arcade, bowling alley and three cheap chain restaraunts!
This is Godfreyite logic in its purest form!
Don't worry boys, I'm not advocating Carrie Nation and her girls swing their axes up and down 25th Street looking for boozers!
If you kids can behave yourselves reasonably well.....well then...walk or stumble around with your beer.
Everyone knows a good time can't be had without a beer in hand.
I wonder if we'll be allowed to bring a sack lunch into the Junction in case we get hungry?
Many months ago I suggested that Miller reserve a few screens for the good movies we can only see at the Broadway and a few other venues in SLC.
I saw "Rabbit Proof Fence" at the Broadway....what a film. I don't recall it playing anywhere up here.
It's too bad that 'recreation' money won't be generated anew...it'll just be circulated between TinselTowne and Miller's.
Unless, of course, hordes of folks ride up from SLC on the FrontRunner to go to a Miller Movie Megaplex....nary a one in SLC, you know.
is it true that salvation army is putting is a store at the junction, oh I can't wait, that is my most favorite store. they have everything in it.
yea, and I heard that the mayor is going to put a new saint anne's shelter their to so the transiants can get a leg up on those going to the gym!
Goodwill, I understand.
No music.
Maybe we could also get some more of those taco stands in their to compeate with those that are migrating to this neat city.
Sharon:
Two points. First, you wrote Many months ago I suggested that Miller reserve a few screens for the good movies we can only see at the Broadway and a few other venues in SLC. I saw "Rabbit Proof Fence" at the Broadway....what a film. I don't recall it playing anywhere up here. Exactly right. And Rabbitproof Fence never played in Ogden. Didn't even make it to Layton [where I've had to drive occasionally to see films that didn't make it here.]
Hope whoever books the Miller theaters in the Mall development takes your suggestion seriously. To the argument that there is no audience here for other than mainstream releases, I have a one word reply: "Sundance Film Festival."
Second, you wrote: Everyone knows a good time can't be had without a beer in hand.
Well, Sharon, that's not really the point. [I never went to the Ogden Summer Festival, not the old one nor the Godfrey Family Friendly one.] The point is, not everyone finds the same entertainment attractive, and Ogden ought not to insist that every city-supported event must appeal to everyone [i.e. be "family friendly"] in the city. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.
For example, rodeos are exactly zero part of my family tradition [coming out of Brooklyn as I did.] If Ogden never held another rodeo, I would (a) not notice and (b) not care. But very clearly the Pioneer Days Rodeo is a big event for many, and I fully support the city's spending money to support the rodeo, because what I find important, attractive, interesting shouldn't be the only standard applied. In return for that, I'd expect rodeo fans who might not be particularly interested in city-financed entertainment events I find attractive to support city spending on them for the same reasons I support city spending on the Rodeo.
It's the Mayor's "one size, one standard --- mine --- fits all and will be used as the measure of what Ogden city will support so long as I'm in office" that rankles, and diminishes the city's opportunities to draw people from outside in. It's precisely his "my way or the highway" attitude in so many areas of city governance that makes him not a particularly effective Mayor for Ogden city now, or in the future.
We went to the rodeo last summer with the Jeske's and Matt and our own Dian.
I wasn't THAT keen on going...but I had a fantastically good time! Was I ever surprised!
I hadn't been to a rodeo for about 30 years and this was sooo much better and entertaining.
World class cowboys...such a funny 'clown' and some very tricky riding.
I want to go again! And Curm...go this year and see how you like it.
I didn't think I would be able to sit thru it, but I had the time of my life!
Sharon:
I've been to rodeos, Sharon, Interesting [for me] as something exotic, like going to a basket dance at the Hopi pueblo. And at one memorable rodeo [part of the Rayne Frog Festival in Rayne, LA] over three decades ago, I had a date along. A young lady who decided the bronc riders were being mean, and so she rooted... loudly... for the horses. Very loudly People began edging quietly away from us on the benches. Can't say I blamed them. There were seven riders that evening, as I recall. Four were thrown and three rode to the buzzer. Whereupon my date stood and cheered "Ya, horses win 4-3, horses win, 4-3!" It was a memorable experience, though not quite in the way I suppose it was meant to be.
We did see a dozen or so lovely young women compete for the honor of being known as the Rayne Frog Queen for the ensuing twelve months. Compete to be the Frog Queen. Go figure....
Glad you enjoyed the rodeo. I think I'll stick to the Raptors, the Bees, and the local semi-pro soccer team that plays at Ogden High for my summer spectator sports. And lots of mountain walking for the rest.
Undoubtedly you did not marry the horsey rooter. Perhaps you and missus C could try the rodeo this year?
They had some mighty pretty fillies there...and the girls weren't bad either.
Don't recall any frog titles, but the young ladies would surely catch your eye.
You appear to feel about rodeos like I do about monster truck rallies, mud wrestling and drag racing.
Well, I suppose there's enough of the high life to satisfy more than one taste.
If Danny gets things going...we'll have even more fun in our big city.
Don't forget the Independent Film Festival here in Ogden. We should have searchlights and lots of publicity!
Sharon:
Yup. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. What makes interesting cities interesting [among other things] is the variety of events, amusements, things going on, from Indie film festivals to baseball to Art Festivals to demolition derbies to arm-wrestling contests at summer street festivals to soccer games to plays and shows and all stops in-between.
Yep! Gotta hit the feathers...g'nite.
I don't know if anyone will notice this post but I have to say it.
Rudi, if they impliment the changes to the Justice Courts as outlined, expect the only thing that changes to be the price of a ticket. It will go up. Conviction rates will not change nor will anything else except instead of having 108 Justice court judges most of whom are parttime, you will have 50 more circuit court judges to administer the justice courts and they will cost more than the current judges, though many of them will be the same people. And the 50 of them will cost more than the 108 so the cost of tickets will have to be raised and someone will need a little bit more to adminiter it so there will be another reason to raise the amount.
ARcritic
But will justice be improved? It has been my observation that sometimes there was very little justice in "justice courts".
One in particular in Davis County had an old brine fisherman as JP. He was a friend of the Mayor's and otherwise had absolutely no legal or judicial training. Beside that, he was fairly stupid.
He was notorious for favoring his friends when they appeared before him. Even the local chief of police could not inforce laws against this JP's pals, and as a consequence they openly defied the law.
He also would always let good looking women go free of any fines when they appeared before him, even when they pled guilty!
It was a total disgrace and an affront to our laws to have this incompetent in this position for many years.
So again, would this more expensive option at least introduce justice to the "justice courts"?
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