We'll direct our gentle readers' attention this morning to two Emerald City-centered articles appearing in today's Standard-Examiner. Each addresses a topic previously discussed on our Weber County Forum pages.
First, Scott Schwebke reports on a main item of last night's city council meeting agenda, wherein the council at long last approved a resolution approving the sale of the fire-ravaged Shupe-Williams property, adjacent to Emerald City's Union station.
OGDEN — The Union Station Foundation got a sweet deal Tuesday night, receiving approval from the Ogden City Council to purchase the former Shupe-Williams Candy Co. property for $510,000, which is $5,000 below the appraised value.We'll assume, at least for the time being, that the Union Station Foundation has plans for this property which go well beyond the establishment of a new parking lot.
City Councilwoman Susan E. Van Hooser said she is pleased the property will be sold to the foundation because it will allow Union Station to grow.
“The thrilling thing is that it allows them to fulfill their mission to expand their facilities,” she said.
The two-acre parcel is valuable because it keeps the station from being land-locked, said Jack McDonald, president of the Union Station Foundation’s board of directors.
The foundation’s purchase of the property should be finalized by the end of the month, he said.
The property has been vacant since a March 2006 fire that destroyed the Shupe-Williams building.
The sale agreement calls for the foundation and the city to share the cost of establishing a parking lot on the property at 2605 Wall Avenue adjacent to Union Station.
The city will be granted an easement across the property to reach the parking lot.
If the Union Station Foundation fails to make substantial building improvements on the property by April 30, 2012, the city will have the option of repurchasing the land at the original sale price.
A new museum perhaps?
For those readers interested in a little recent but labyrinthine history about this subject property, we link our past Shupe-Williams articles here. We do hope you'll enjoy the trip down memory lane.
We'll also note in passing that our city council still hasn't gotten the concept of relying upon the free market to dispose of surplus properties. Once again, another city-owned property winds up in the hands of an arranged buyer, without the benefit of any competition from prospective buyers in our currently robust Utah real estate market. Take note that even Ace Reporter Schwebke refers to this, in double-entendre, as a "sweet deal."
Significantly, this percipient transaction comes in at nearly the full appraised value, raising the question of what price this property would have fetched, had the council NOT disposed of it by the methods of Joseph Stalin, or even worse -- Boss Godfrey.
Secondly, this morning's Standard-Examiner lead editorial is a good one, we think, "sticking up for UTA" as it does, during a time when that quasi-public agency wears a target on its back. We think the Std-Ex "nails it" perfectly in the final paragraph:
Tension between the Legislature and UTA is nothing new. A few years ago,lawmakers erupted in a spasm of righteous indignation* after finding out that transit-authority executives are very well paid. Before that, in 2003, there was talk eerily similar to this year’s powerplay: giving UDOT authority over UTA. As we wrote at the time, the lawmakers’ inability to direct the operations of UTA seems to be the source of conflict — the Legislature covets what it cannot directly control. Lawmakers always say the reason they want consolidation is to better control costs and to streamline coordination between mass transit and roads. But they eventually come to their senses, because the fact of the matter is that the act of folding UTA into the state’s transportation department — the highway builders — would harm rural Utahns. As we’ve noted during previous skirmishes on this subject, UTA is funded with local taxes. It does not operate outside the urban Wasatch Front. In the Top of Utah, for example, people who live in Rich and Morgan counties don’t have to pay taxes that fund UTA operations they’ll never see within their boundaries Sponsoring lawmakers should consult planning committees like the Wasatch Front Regional Council — it already does an excellent job of transportation and transit coordination; legislators would also find out that the WFRC is unanimously opposed to HB 166. We second the sentiments of the Wasatch Front Regional Council: UTA should remain an independent entity. [emphasis ours.]
For a sampling of the kind of complaints which UTA has been drawing, check out this Salt Lake City blog.
We were on the verge not long ago here at Weber County Forum of having our own beef with UTA, as our gentle readers will recall, over a purported $200 thousand secret gondola study which Boss Godfrey ostensibly commissioned on UTA's dime. Fortunately our concerns about possible UTA financial imprudence were put to rest, in large part because of the ferocious investigation and reporting of the Standard-Examiner's Ace Reporter Schwebke. Stumbling across this crucial document of course, didn't hurt that effort either.
Like the Std-Ex editors and the WFRC, we have continuing confidence in the UTA.
We thus join the Standard-Examiner in urging our meddling legislature to keep your danged grubby mitts off the UTA!
So there!
-----
*Pure poetry
109 comments:
Be sure you know the facts on both sides of the UTA takeover plan.
According to people at the Legislature NO ONE controls UTA..they do their own thing and there is no control.
According to the article in today's Standard-Examiner, the City Council has agreed to sell the property to the Union Station Foundation for $510,000, which is $5000 less than the appraised value.
A couple of points. First, the difference between the appraised value and the sale price is less than 1%. I find it hard to believe that appraisals are accurate to that level of precision. Second, there's no indication that the city has received a better offer, even though it's been widely known for a long time that the property was for sale. Indeed, the article describes how the administration tried unsuccessfully to talk Chianti into buying the property. So this doesn't appear to be a case of cronyism.
I do find it odd that the newspaper highlighted the difference between the sale price and the appraised value, yet didn't give anyone from the city a chance to comment on the reason for the difference.
I'm outraged, Rudi! How dare you edit my post without my permission! ;-)
Could this be Mitch Moyes' revenge?
Isn't this what Mitch was proposing a couple of years ago? Didn't the mayor look down his long arrogant nose at Mitch and laugh him out of the council chamber for proposing such nonsense? (or more accurately have him removed by the cops)
What the hell ever happened with Mitch anyway?
Our great Legislature, here they go again acting like bulls in a china shop. I agree that UTA has their problems, but golly gee legislators--aren't there other more practical ways of addressing the issues?
On the sale to Union Station Foundation:
Dan's point about the city's desire to sell the land being well known for a long time is a good one, with respect to Ogden area potential buyers. No competing offer seems to have been made for the Shupe Williams lot. But Rudi's point may have some traction respecting out-of-area potential buyers not up on the Administration's embarrassing and desperate attempts to get somebody, anybody, to take the Shupe Williams property off their hands.
Second, there is a "public interest/public purpose" involved in selling the land to the Union Station Foundation that is not necessarily involved in selling it to a private developer. The Mayor has told us all time and again that the City is not required to sell public property to the highest bidder, but rather it can sell to the buyer offering the greatest benefit to the community [in light of proposed use of the land]. Certainly it could be argued, and I would argue, that the Union Station Foundation's plans for the property provide a greater public benefit than an alternative private development might. Whether it will provide enough of a public benefit to justify taking the land off the tax rolls is a judgment call. People can reasonably disagree on that point. But the Mayor is right in arguing that the greatest public benefit does not necessarily result in every case from selling a property for the largest amount of money offered. [Those who have said, and doubtless will again, that I blindly and unfairly oppose everything the Mayor says or does, please note the preceding sentence.]
I also like the provision in the sales agreement giving the city the right to reacquire the land, at the original sale price, some years down the road, if the Union Station Foundation has not developed or improved it.
All things considered, seems to me the sale is in the public interest, and the Administration [somewhat belatedly] and the Council did well to arrange and approve it.
As for justifying the difference between appraised value and sale price: any realtor will explain to you that what your property is really worth is what someone else is willing to pay for it. [Realtors spend a lot of time explaining this to unhappy people who don't get what they've asked for their homes when they list them for sale]. If the Foundation was the only entity interested in buying the property and it offered 5K less than appraised value, then it seems to me its offer established the market price for the property, the appraisal notwithstanding. And let us not forget [as Dan reminded us] that appraisals are, in the end, however carefully done, estimates and not precise to the penny calculations of actual market value. To go back to basics, it's only the market that can in fact establish "market value."
Here's an Idea.
How about the UTA board being elected from the public at large just like our school board is. I know a great Representative that would probably sponcer a bill to do just that. I wonder just how do some of these yaa-hoo's get on this board anyway.
Not Entirely Off Topic since we're discussing UTA:
As we continue to discuss the best option for Ogden transit --- rail transit [trolley] or BRT [bus rapid transit] or a tourist sky ride gondola, it might be prudent to look at the impact rail transit has had in other cities. Portland's experience [its trolley line has generate billions.. yes, with a "b"... in transit oriented development along the line] has been mentioned before.
And now this. It's from a post this morning I found on The Volokh Conspiracy [a conservative libertarian legal blog]:
A few housing market observations:
(1) The saying that real estate is all about location has never seemed more true. Last Sunday, I attended an open house at a beautiful, well-priced house well inside the Beltway in a nice neighborhood in Bethesda, but not near a metro, and I was one of very few visitors (around 5) for the entire day. My next stop was an unrenovated old house in Chevy Chase near the Metro that cost close to $1 million. This open house attracted around a hundred people.
Home for sale not near the metro [rail transit stop]: five visitors during the day. Home in worse condition for sale near a metro stop: 100 visitors during the day.
Do you suppose there's a lesson there for Ogden?
jest check the facts:
UTA is governed by very explicit and detailed state laws (scroll down to the sections on public transit districts). We can discuss whether those laws should be changed, but it doesn't help the discussion to claim that no one controls UTA.
It seems to me that UTA has a very difficult job to do. Their budget is limited. The people who need their services most (the poor and the handicapped) are those who are least able to pay for it, and who have the least political influence. So, for instance, wealthy suburbanites demand that if their taxes are going to help pay for buses, then the buses must serve their sprawling neighborhoods where nobody is going to ride the bus anyway. Then the same suburbanites complain that UTA is wasting their money running empty buses. My impression from talking to UTA officials is that they would rather put their resources where they'll be most used, but political considerations are constantly getting in the way. Aside from the issue of which neighborhoods to serve, there are all sorts of other technical considerations where the professionals know what will work best but the polticians (who are amateurs in this respect) constantly try to intervene with half-baked ideas. And this is as it should be, in a democracy where the politicians do presumably speak for the voters at some level. But if UTA is to function well at all (and in general it does), it needs some degree of independence so the politicians don't step in and try to micro-manage every decision it makes.
The same is true, by the way, for UDOT (which should really be called the highway department). They also face decisions between what's technically preferable and what's politically necessary.
In principle I can't think of any good reasons why transit districts should or shouldn't be part of the same department as highways. As the Standard-Examiner points out, though, there are some major structural differences between the agencies, both in terms of their funding sources and their geographical extent (UDOT serves the whole state while UTA serves only the Wasatch Front; Logan and St. George have their own transit districts and rural Utah has no transit). Given these differences, any attempt to merge transit districts into UDOT is bound to be complicated, to say the least. The transition would be bound to cause all sorts of problems (and expense). And if the legislature's purpose in merging the two is to gain more control over UTA, then that's almost certainly a bad thing. If it ain't broke...
As a postscript, I should add that while UTA as an agency is not (in my opinion) broke, there are some serious cracks in its county-level funding mechanism. Voters on the Wasatch Front have recently demonstrated that they're willing to raise sales taxes for transit. This has gotten the attention of the legislature and others who are now trying to divert as much of this money as they can to highways. Watch for a sales tax measure on the Weber and Davis County ballots this fall. It's looking like at least half of the funds raised would be spent on highways, mostly to subsidize developers of new subdivisions. (Traditionally, roads to access new subdivisions are put in by the developers at their own expense; now they're trying to get the taxpayers to do it. And remember that we already pay a variety of state and local taxes for roads, but the county-level sales tax is the only non-federal tax money that goes to UTA.)
Dan:
In Re: your post on UTA. Thanks for doing the digging on this [as you have so often before] and laying out the results so plainly and clearly.
Curm, of course there's a lesson for Ogden, but Ogden may not be prepared to receive it. I'll be surprised if the real estate market near the Frontrunner station does not begin to take off in '08 or '09. I'll also be surprised if such buyers come from Weber County. They'd be far more likely to relocate from higher-priced areas such as Salt Lake.
My tenants at Union Square are WSU students. Both have cars. There's a bus stop on the #603 line to WSU almost right at their door, with service every 15 minutes. Do you think they've used UTA even once to get to school? Oh, please!
(You see the $3.18 per gallon piece on S-E's op-ed page today? And its most telling phrase, "allows the political class to avoid the hard work of getting Americans to use less gas"?)
MM:
Thanks for the pointer. I was so stunned this morning by the SE's new Utah columnist [who appears at first glance to be entirely sane] that I didn't read the gas piece below. I should have and now have.
Here's my nomination for the key line: What we would need, however, is leadership . Exactly. And that's also exactly what we are not likely to get. Instead, we will get two things: first, politicos surfing the wave of [momentary] public outrage over high gas prices, bleating populist "solutions" that won't solve anything; and second, politicians serving the interests of their major donors [big Farm, Big Oil, Big Auto, etc] to rush though "solutions" that won't solve anything. This is news?
The analysis left out two points I thought should have been included. Highly subsidized corn-based ethanol has already had an impact on food prices, as corn normally used for animal feed and to produce other foods [via corn additives like high fructose corn syrup] is bought up by ethanol producers instead. Last month, food prices nationwide rose faster than gas prices.
Second, the author is dead right that so far, huge jumps in gas prices have not resulted in less demand for gas. What is occurring now, though, is consumers are cutting back discretionary spending in other areas in order to pay for gas. AAA says travelers over the recent holiday weekend cut back on restaurants, stayed in cheaper rooms, paid for fewer "attractions" on trips, in order to offset higher gas costs. The numbers are just starting to come in, but there are indications that people are doing the same --- trimming discretionary consumer spending to offset rising gas costs --- when they are at home as well. Which means, of course, if the numbers bear out, declining business across a wide area of the economy to offset rising gas costs.
The SE's new Utah columnist kept saying as he ended each point: "Madness!" The author of the column on gas prices could have done the same: "A federal tax subsidy to encourage people to buy gas-guzzling hummers? Madness!" And so it is.
Sad about your tenants. Since the day WSU put a staff UTA bus pass in my hands [a really useful and valuable perk], my in-city driving has dropped about 75%. I use the buses. It's dropped so much, we're thinking of becoming a one-car family, which will save a bundle on gas, maintenance and insurance.
Utah has a massive air pollution problem, largely [though not exclusively] caused by auto emissions. Summer and winter now. The feds are about to impose new tougher emission standards on the state. Utah doctors now tell us people are dying from breathing the stuff. We're pouring kabillions into new roads that will -- as has happened every time interstates are expanded/widened --- encourage more driving and thus more widening [most interstate improvements and widenings have more traffic on them within a year of opening than they were designed for.]
Public transit could be an effective counter to that trend. But what is Utah legislators' current proposed solution? To shift transit funds to building roads instead.
As the man said, "madness!"
And the beat goes on....
MM
One other thing. The above applies obviously to people who have discretionary spending they can cut back to pay for gas. The poor who live from pay check to pay check do not. Indications are that they're cutting back on what little health care they can afford in order to buy gas to get to work and back. And they're cutting back on food. There was a story in either the SE or the SL Trib recently that said as gas prices rise, the number people coming in to Utah food banks for food rises as well. And a frequent comment they make to the food bank staffers is that they now have to spend so much for gas, they don't have enough left for food and need help to get through the month.
Careful which bandwagon you hop on:
RAIL TRANSIT FLUNKS RIDERSHIP TEST
Transit agencies that rely on buses are more likely to grow transit ridership as fast or faster than driving than those that build expensive rail lines, says a new report. The study reveals that, over the past two decades, transit ridership has declined, or at best remained stagnant, in more than two out of three urban areas with rail transit, while it grew in numerous regions with bus-only transit.
The new report, "Rail Disasters 2005," scrutinizes transit records in twenty-three urban areas with rail transit and assigns each a letter grade based on whether transit ridership has grown faster than driving, grown slower than driving, or declined. Ridership has declined or stagnated in fourteen of the twenty-three areas, earning those areas an "F."
Transit has grown faster than driving in only two regions, Boston and San Diego. However, the report shows that transit has grown faster than driving in many regions with bus transit, including Austin, Las Vegas, and Raleigh-Durham. The report also finds that transit grew faster in many rail regions before the regions began building rail transit than after the rail lines opened.
The cost of starting a rail transit line can be fifty to one hundred times greater than the cost of starting comparable bus service. "Rail's high costs present a triple threat to regions and transit riders," says the report's author, economist Randal O'Toole.
The first threat is cost overruns, which average 41 percent for rail transit projects. These often force agencies to raise bus fares or reduce bus service. In the case of Los Angeles, this led to a nearly 20-percent decline in bus ridership. Only when the NAACP sued to restore bus service to low-income neighborhoods did bus ridership recover. A similar lawsuit has recently been filed in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The second threat comes during recessions, when declining tax revenues force heavily indebted transit agencies to choose between defaulting on their rail-construction loans or cutting transit service. To avoid default in the recent recession, San Jose made such severe cuts in service that it lost a third of its transit riders.
The third threat comes when it is time to rebuild rail lines, which must be done every twenty to thirty years. Washington, DC, estimates that it will cost nearly as much to rebuild its rail lines in the next decade as it cost to build them, yet it has no funds to do so.
Usually because of one of these threats, transit ridership declined in fourteen out of twenty-three rail regions in the past two decades. In other regions, such as Portland, Dallas, and Salt Lake City, transit ridership grew faster before rail construction began than after the rail lines opened.
The report concludes that regions are better off improving their bus service than building rail transit. The report's author, Randal O'Toole, is a nationally known expert on environmental policy and is also the author of "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths." Copies of the report can be downloaded from http://americandreamcoalition.org/RD2005.pdf
Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised to read G. Don Gale today, of whom I'd not heard before. Yes, let's hope the S-E publishes Gale early and often.
something-
Mr. O'Toole is very biased and has long been a rail transit critic (and often refuted), I'm surprised somebody is throwing this crap out there. This is old news. Take his work w/ grain of salt.
take EVERYONE's work with a grain of salt
Sounds like real nut job:
Randal O'Toole is an American economist and public policy expert. He has held the position of director at the Oregon-based Thoreau Institute since 1975. Since 1995, he has been associated with the Cato Institute as an adjunct scholar. The majority of O'Toole's work has focused on environmental policy, particularly public land use and regional and urban development.
Early in his career, O'Toole worked with environmental groups to oppose the United States Forest Service's subsidized sales of public forest timber to the logging industry. His book Reforming the Forest Service built on his experience during this effort, and proposed a number of free-market solutions to management of U.S. public land and timber. He has written analyses of the usage and development plans of a number of U.S. national forests, working with state environmental agencies and other groups.
In the 1990s, O'Toole emerged as an outspoken critic of New Urbanist design and smart growth strategies. O'Toole contends that these development strategies—in which regulatory measures and tax incentives are employed to encourage denser development, more efficient land use, and greater use of public transportation—ignore the desires and preferences of most housing consumers and ultimately waste public funds. His 1996 book The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths was written as a detailed critique of these styles of planning. He continues to advocate for free market solutions to urban planning and design in his writing and teaching. He has campaigned against smart growth policies and light rail systems in several U.S. states and in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
O'Toole has held fellowships at Yale University, and served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Utah State University. He is an avid cyclist who always rides a bicycle to and from work, and advocates alternative means of transportation where possible. He lives in Bandon, Oregon.[1]
Thanks, Jill!
Try this article, which directly rebuts O'Toole.
www.vtpi.org/railcrit.pdf
Found it with a quick googling; and there are several more like it.
And a word for DTM: I'm sure O'Toole's a very nice man, and his resume is very nice. But what intelligent people want is an examination of his assumed facts and analytical methodology.
The foregoing article does that.
Something:
I logged onto the link and did some googling to find about about "The American Dream Coalition" --- which turned out to be interesting. It's part of an anti-zoning [anti any zoning] coalition of groups. It offers Houston as an example of a no-zoning success. Having been to Houston often, I'll just say there are other opinions on how well no-zoning has worked there.
I'll have to read the full report, which is linked on its site [next week probably], but what you've posted here gives reason enough to be cautious about its conclusions.
Note for example that the posting merely reinforces one of the points made by Dan S.: when transit is intelligently routed to serve those who most likely to use it, substantial ridership results. E.g.: "Only when the NAACP sued to restore bus service to low-income neighborhoods did bus ridership recover. " So, when transit serves areas where it is needed, it works. When it serves areas where it is not needed, ridership declines. One is tempted to reply: "No s**t, Sherlock." And the posted section seems to make no distinctions between commuter rail, light rail, and trolley systems. [Though the full report may. I'll have to wait to see.] Nor does it seem to distinguish between systems well designed, financed, planned and managed, and those not. No one, least of all me, is going to argue that poorly planned, located, financed or managed rail transit will work. Neither do poorly planned, located, or maintained highways. Or bus systems. Or lemonade stands, for that matter.
I notice the summary of the report seems to focus only on rates of change in transit volume. It does not examine at all [so far as I can see], transit oriented development related to transit projects, and a number of other factors. But I'll reserve comment until I've looked at the full down-loadable report. [Thanks for including the link, by the way.]
Final comment: I notice it counts Salt Lake City's TRAX as a failure, as a "rail disaster." You're going to have a hard time peddling that one in Salt Lake, I think, especially to those erecting the sold-out-before-completion high rise condo towers along the TRAX line in Salt Lake. Just for openers that is. And [as posted above] homebuyers in the DC area seem to think proximity to rail transit significantly increases the value of homes and apartments.
Enough for now. More when I've read the full report.
discredit...
Wow, you've discovered how to copy text from Wikipedia. I guess if George W. is an environmentalist, then so too can Mr. O'Toole.
I don't mean to discredit or attack the guy (he does make a few good points), but I am sick and tired of people giving credence to these neocons and others who talk a lot and really say nothing (seems to be the case especially here in Ogden).
Jill...I didn't know that cutting and pasting was such an accomplishment...I was just passing along additional information about the person you were putting down and attempting to do so with little or no facts.
Because....I am sick and tired of people who attempt to discredit information and really say nothing (seems to be the case especially here in Ogden).
Bringing a couple of sub-threads together, it's no secret in the transit business these days that UTA has recently been one of the most successful transit agencies in the country. They've been finishing projects on time and under budget. TRAX ridership has exceeded expectations and UTA's total ridership took a strong upward turn when TRAX started operating.
Taking a statistical look at transit systems nationwide is obviously a good idea. But the number of data points is relatively small, and the number of variables from one city to another is quite large. In such cases it's pretty easy to skew the conclusions one way or another depending on which variables you focus on and which you ignore.
This site is getting to dang intellectual for me. It sounds like a bunch of college perfesers. Slow down so us bus riders can figure it all out.
Dan I couldn't agree with you more about skewing conclusions with statistics...of which you present none.
So I ask, is this statement really true: "TRAX ridership has exceeded expectations and UTA's total ridership took a strong upward turn when TRAX started operating."
For example:
Five years ago, TRAX showed ridership of about 19,500 a day on the north/south or Sandy line. Today that line carries about 23,000 a day. That's not too bad, only a 15 percent increase in five years, barely keeping up with population growth. Nowhere close to the 300 percent increase that UTA claims. It is important to note that UTA compounds its ridership numbers. That means that if you ride from Sandy to the U. Med center and back, you are counted six times: two times on the north/south line, two times on the 400 South line, and two times on the U. Med line. That's how UTA comes up with the 43,000 a day number with only 15,000 TRAX customers. Isn't that creative? These lines take away directly from the bus passengers who used to use those routes, meaning that TRAX carries the same number of passengers that used to ride the bus. (DESNEWS 2005)
Then in May 2007 also Deseret News:
UTA hopes that ridership in Salt Lake County will increase by 12 percent over the next three years. Current weekday ridership is about 55,000. It has declined about 16 percent over the past 10 years.
I'm not against TRAX or street cars or gondolas. I will ride my bike to work whether or not we have either or any of them, I just question blanket statements such "this happened when this happened." When it is possible the opposite might be true.
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, in the previous thread, I am pleased to present Mr. Bob Geiger (anonymous), fresh off his grueling tour of duty leading Wayne Peterson's famed Squirrel Patrol in a four-month nut cache reconoiter in Huntsville! Welcome back; it's dull without your lunacy. He just couldn't help himself; after all, Daddy (THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE) admonished: "Stay off that blog, Bobby! And get back to work! They're only going to raise your blood pressure with their logic, sense and reason! Those of us, including Teeny Matty Gondola Godfrey, who have had compromising but really exciting liaisons with Wayne, really think he is going to save our OTown with a silly circus ride to nowhere!"
If anyone doubts Wayne's true (like his name) intentions, read the financial extrapolations Godfrey fed the investment bankers in SLC and look at the sale price of Mt. Ogden GC:$2 million. I have a good credit score and a few assets and I could get a loan for that property for $2 million tomorrow. Savior Wayne? Don't think so. In fact, I sat on my uncle's deck (across from the Pine View yacht club) the other night, and he informed me that Wayne had purchased a wide swath directly southeast of him and adjacent to the reservoir. Why? I asked. "He's [Chris Peterson] a real estate speculator; nothing more. He's never going to build jack shit in Ogden or Malan's Basin; he just wants the land."
"His real name is Wayne," I offered.
"Oh," my uncle answered, "I guess he goes by 'Chris' because 'Prick' was taken."
Does any one have info on the energy consumption of these competing forms of transportation, those being the car, the trolley, the bus and the gondola?
It seems to me that all this rider statistical data being talked about is historical stuff. Gas is obviously going to keep going up over time, and most every one is going to have a price point where they quit driving and take public transportation. Therefore the past is not necessarily a good indicator of the future on this subject. I would guess that the most fuel efficient method will be the one that wins out in the end.
It also occurs to me that the gondola could be one of the least efficient considering the carrying capacity of the individual cars, the fact that they will be going overhead if they are full or not, and maybe several million pounds of cable will be continuously cirulating - all big energy eaters.
Has the gondolistas ever put anything out about how much energy it takes to run these contraptions?
The Trolleys and busses will also have lots of excess weight that gets move around regardless of how many riders are on board.
Cars are the only mode that doesn't eat energy if nobody is aboard.
It's all about energy cost per passenger mile. How about you geniuses calculating the energy consumption of the various modes of transportation, and tell us the future?
Oz,
Gondolas are actually the most efficient in terms of passengers per hour and energy expended moving them. The actual eqipment cost is a fraction of the other systems.
The drawback is that it is extremely costly to have stations closer than 1 mile intervals. There is little flexibility in the system beyond building out a complete network of them. A gondola system would not be a terrible idea of we could afford to put stations at Monroe, 23rd, 30th or more. These limitations make them impractical for urban deployment except in extremely dense situations and to provide very specific point-to-point service under contnual high demand. Ogden does not fit that criteria nor do any but a handful worldwide making them mostly a novelty outside of ski areas where they are most appropriate.
Wondering:
On the other hand, I offer the following:
"Most importantly, public transit ridership has surged since the TRAX LRT came online. Total bus and LRT ridership has soared by 18.5% since 1996.
[Source: Federal Transit Administration, NTDB data, 1996-2001]
and
"LRT brought huge operating cost savings. For the full first year of operation, 2000, operating cost per passenger-mile by TRAX plunged to $0.15, compared with $1.04 for UTA's bus operations.
[Source: Federal Transit Administration, NTDB data, 1996-2001]
The assumption that all Trax did was shift traffic from buses to streetcars is doubtful as well. E.g. [this applies to the original TRAX line], TRAX attracted people who had not previously used transit. About 45% of TRAX riders were new to UTA. And so on.
Statistics on percentage growth [or lack thereof] need to be especially carefully analyzed, since the selection of the "base" period against which change is measured can alter the results significantly. For example, if one selects the Olympic year as the base, when TRAX had a ridership artificially boosted by the Olympic riders, subsequent growth will appear lower than in fact it was. And so on.
I agree with you this far: that any study, report or analysis of transit needs to be evaluated on its merits, regardless of the author... evaluated as if the author was listed as "anonymous."
Ozboy,
I like your thinking! Good questions. I'm sure the Geigers and Godfrey clan will get the answer to the gondola/energy consumption post haste!
I think you bring up a good point that cable cars constantly moving will eat energy voraciously.
Ed Allen flew his family back to TN for Al Gore's presidential victory party (that never came off)...so I'm sure, as an admirer of Al's, he will want to be in the forefront of 'doing the right thing'.
Not only are you funny as heck, you are a thinker!
Someone posted that Godfrey will put up a woman to run for mayor.
Would that be the snarling, ooops, I mean smiling Donna Burdett? Or the faded redhead that Godfrey just appointed to the Arts Committee, one Dori Mosher?
If so, is that why she's on the Arts Comm? Is he attempting to resurrect her reputation?
I love it!
The Peyote Princess for Mayor!!!!!
Received an advertising flyer today saying that the new theater complex at the Junction is now open for business, featuring rocking seats.
The industry has been bemoaning for a few years now declining theater going by patrons. Without singling out the new Junction megaplex, I keep thinking it might work better for them if they spent less effort on super seating and "excellent food court options" and much more effort into putting stuff worth watching up on the screens.
But I'm looking forward to theaters that won't require a mall visit... provided tix are competitively priced.
Wondering,
As I said, statistics can be skewed if you're not careful. You've quoted a bunch of statistics out of context, and your citations aren't precise enough for someone to easily determine the context.
To get the big picture on UTA ridership, download their most recent (2005) comprehensive annual report from this page. On page 54 of that report you'll see a graph of total UTA ridership over the ten-year period from 1996 through 2005. I'm guessing these are one-way trips, with transfers counted separately, but it doesn't really matter for the point I'm going to make which concerns only the trend. The total ridership was essentially flat at about 24 million from 1996 through 1999. (Actually it declined very slightly.) Then TRAX started operating and ridership has increased steadily ever since to over 36 million in 2005. That's a 50% increase in six years, or 7% per year on average (compounded), which is much faster than the rate of population growth.
You said: Today that line [Sandy-downtown] carries about 23,000 a day. Actually, according to this fact sheet, the Sandy-downtown TRAX line now gets more than 28,000 weekday boardings.
You said: Nowhere close to the 300 percent increase that UTA claims. Please provide a reference for the 300 percent claim. If UTA actually made such a claim, I suspect you've misinterpreted it.
You said: These lines take away directly from the bus passengers who used to use those routes, meaning that TRAX carries the same number of passengers that used to ride the bus. I can't tell which lines you mean by "these", but the big picture (see page 53 of the 2005 annual report) is that when TRAX started operating (around the year 2000), overall bus ridership declined by about 1.5 million passengers per year, or about 7%. Since then overall bus ridership has remained flat, while TRAX ridership has risen from zero to nearly 13 million in 2005. So the increase in TRAX ridership has been far greater than the decline in bus ridership.
Curmudgeon
The people that make the movies are not the same as the ones who exhibit them. Not since the trust busting days that broke up the old movie studio/theatre owning giants of the golden era of movies. Most movies now are made with 14 to 20 year old boys in mind. That's why there are so many car chases, wild stunts and plenty of T&A in them.
Also people in the movie business have been bitching about declining attendance since the 50's when TV started coming on big time.
Tec
From where comes the data that "Gondolas are actually the most efficient in terms of passengers per hour and energy expended moving them. The actual eqipment cost is a fraction of the other systems"?
I find it hard to believe that Gondola equipment would cost less that busses. Just the cable alone for the Ogden proposal would cost millions and weigh millions and take a huge amount of energy to move around a four mile lap 18 hours a day. That's not counting gondola cars and people hooked to the cable.
Maybe one of the arithmetic "perfesers" hereabouts can assign a student to figure that one out? How big a cable, how long, how heavy = how much energy to move per mile. Kind of a story problem sort of deal. Then as a finals question they could add in how many cars at how much weight each plus how many lard asses = how much additional energy to make the whole thing go around and around like all good amusment parks rides do.
One thing for sure, none of the other proposed methods will ever get close to the efficiencies of the grand "Sling and Slide" method proposed herein last year. Big rubber bands are a hell of a lot cheaper than big steel cables.
And finally Jason
What is the significance of this "Wayne" biz as it relates to the beloved "Chris Peterson"? Dontcha know that all great perfomance and BS artists use stage names? I mean look at PeeWee Herman who's now known as "Matt Godfrey".
Oz,
Gondolas can move 2400 passengers per hour. That is equivilent to 40 or more busloads. If you have a route that indeed has that kind of dependable demand it is easy to see that a fleet of busses running that route constantly would be quite undesirable and consume immense quantities of diesel fuel.
It does not require immense energy to move a cable around a loop no matter how heavy is that cable. Without riders on a system there is little load as the downhill load is equal to the uphill. In fact, in an urban system there would be, theoretically an equal number of downhill riders as uphill. This makes the lifting load essentially 0 as the downhill load counterbalances the uphill. In a ski operation, all riders are going uphill and they are being lifted as much as 2000-4000 vertical feet. Plenty of juice in the system for this kind of load.
In all this Ogden gondola trashing, there are some here that, having little knowledge of lifts and cableways, assume gondolas are unsafe, rickety, prone to wind closure, inefficient, costly etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Those are none of the reasons why a gondola is inappropriate for Ogden. I forgot to mention in my previous post, that aside from the inflexibility of them as an urban transit system they would do nothing for ground level redevelopment. An urban gondola would simply bypass the majority of the city linking downtown to WSU leaving little utility for the central residential district. A ground level transit system would be a redevelopment engine driving new investment along it's corridor.
Is anyone else scratching their head over how the Miller Multiplex drew its architectural inspiration from its hallowed neighbor one block to the north? What next ... a golden Larry Miller-with-Trumpet statue atop the spire?
Whatever ... I'll be pleased if it succeeds.
Jason W.: You or someone else has referred previously to "Wayne" Peterson. Kindly confirm for those outside the loop if this is a pseudonym for Chris Khashoggi, I mean, Peterson. And if Geiger has decided, again, that lurking silently herein sufficeth not, hear, hear! He keeps us on our toes.
SL Trib has editorial this morning discussing UTA and UTA bus service vs rail service. Interesting in several ways. Link here.
Particularly interesting in re: the question of alterations in bus routes/frequency of service, and UTA's raising the fares on buses. Says the editorial: But we also believe that the transit agency should be on warning, not only about service but about price. In the face of public outcry, the agency retreated from some fare hikes for the poor and disabled, but it is increasing fares for everyone else. The adult cash fare will go from $1.50 to $1.60 July 1 and to $2 by 2009, monthly passes from $50 to $53.50 July 1 and to $67 by 2009. You can park a car downtown for that.
Editorial makes a good point. If one of the major purposes of improving transit service along the Wasatch front is to draw people out of cars and onto buses and trains... and it is and should be one of the major purposes, given that air pollution levels along the Front are now worse often than those in Los Angeles... it can only work if the cost to the rider of using transit is not more than the cost of people driving. I'd say in fact it has to cost less to use transit than to drive, if it is going to work as hoped for.
The editorial raises other interesting matters vis a vis UTA and its bus services. Worth a look, I think.
MM:
You wrote: And if Geiger has decided, again, that lurking silently herein sufficeth not, hear, hear! He keeps us on our toes.
Hear hear! I too wish more of those who think differently than many of the regular posters appeared here more often. "Wondering" for example has triggered an interesting and worthwhile conversation, seems to me.
Moroni, we don't need to wait until 2008 and 2009 before we see properties on Wall start to increase in value. In a 4-month period, the Shupe-Williams property increased in value $5,000. while the Mayor tried to find someone to buy it.
Rudi, I ask you why should the Union Station Foundation, a non-profit organization who mostly relies on donations, be expected to pay that $5,000. when they had the money in hand to purchase that land and were ready to close on the deal last January? The Administration's hunt for another buyer is the cause for the delay.
I've been told that the Council is looking at budgeting about $200,000. as their share to pay for an Alternative Analysis study for a transportation system between the Intermodal Hub and WSU. I understand this study will address several different modes of transportation in more detail than the City-WSU transportation study of a few years ago, and will be done by an independent firm.
The "Gondola Fiscal Impacts Analysis" study that the Mayor had done a year ago by Lewis Young Robertson & Burningham, Inc., and has been the subject of a couple of articles in the SE lately, relied wholly on information obtained from the Ogden City administration. How reliable do you think that study is? The Mayor should have saved the $200,000. because the report only echoes his opinion. BUT THERE WERE A COUPLE OF NEW ITEMS BROUGHT OUT IN THAT REPORT: 1) NOW THE CITY WILL OPERATE AND MAINTAIN THE GONDOLA FROM DOWNTOWN TO WSU!! Sounds just like his sales pitch for the rec center, doesn't it? 2) BESIDES THE 400 MILLION DOLLAR HOMES IN A GATED COMMUNITY, PETERSEN & GODFREY PLAN FOR A "HIGHER-DENSITY 'SKI VILLAGE' TO SURROUND THE GONDOLA STOP AT WSU!"
If Shwebke is such a great reporter, why didn't he report that important information?
If Petersen can change his mind so quickly and easily on the gondola(I heard him say that HE would operate and maintain the downtown gondola at his expense) why should or how can we believe that he will build a resort in Malan's Basin? If he changed his mind about that because it isn't cost effective (how can it be when he will nead to provide his own security, provide required sanitation and water facilities, and build a maintenance facility to maintain the resort). With all those extra buildings and facilities required, he won't be able to build a large enough lodge with condos to make the venture cost effective. Then we will be stuck with a huge ugly gondola system marring the beauty of our town that goes NOWHERE!!
I love your alias, "Just the Facts!" I wish there were a way we could make Godfrey give us "Just the Facts" and face reality.
Curm,
I wish there were a lot more pro gondola posters. Unfortunately, the few that do post, usually start and finish by labeling the naysayers, tossing expletives, and have no sense of humor. They also have problems with facts, fact checking, and swallowing a complete dismembering of their position. They continually revert to default...that any other thinking is lacking vision and that if you are against the gondola you are against any and all progress for Ogden.
Moroni, Wayne Peterson is the brother of Chris Peterson, and the person who is listed on Bootjack's, LLC documentation.
Tec, you also forgot that the pro-gondola group believe that those who oppose them, the Mayor, Lift Ogden and Chris Peterson, are mindless/brainless, with no thinking capacity and are always ready to give the 3rd-finger salute to those who have differing opinions. Doesn't say much for their thinking capacity, now does it?
oz and tec,
Tec is right when he says that there's really no lifting involved in running an urban gondola. So the energy cost of moving the cable (with or without cabins attached) comes entirely from drag in the system, which isn't easy to calculate from basic physics. There's also an energy cost to accelerate the cabins as they leave each terminal, which would be easy to calculate if you knew their mass (which I don't). So rather than doing the calculation from first principles, I'll just look up the answer.
According to an appendix of the UTA/WFRC transit corridor study report, the annual electricity cost for the urban gondola would be $211,125. This estimate actually came from the city's consultant, Roger Gardner, and he gave the same number for either the 23rd Street alignment (5 stations) or the 26th Street alignment (6 stations and 2 extra bends). Obviously the estimate isn't accurate to six significant figures for both alignments! But it gives us a rough idea.
For the streetcar the report breaks the expenses down a little differently and there isn't a separate line item for electricity, but it seems to be included in the "Maintenance of Way--Materials, Utilities" entry which is $222,825 for the 23rd Street alignment and $247,932 for 26th Street. Unless there are other major expenses included in this entry, we can conclude that the gondola and the streetcar would have about the same annual electricity cost, about $200,000.
I don't know what rate they assumed for electricity, but large customers generally get better rates than you and I get. If the rate is 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, then $200k would pay for 4 million kWh. For comparison, Ogden City's recently announced participation in the Blue Sky wind energy program seems (from what I can tell) to be at a level of 900,000 kWh per year, which amounts to 19% of the city government's electricity use. So either the streetcar or the gondola would use about as much electricity as all the city's government facilities combined, and about 4 or 5 times as much electricity as what the city is now getting from renewable sources (mostly wind).
Speaking of wind: Tec, I agree that the difficulties of operating a gondola in the wind have been over-stated by some opponents. But even when the gondola can operate safely, I suspect that on windy days a lot of people won't enjoy the ride or will be afraid to ride. Your typical urban commuter doesn't have the same sense of adventure as a visitor to a ski resort.
Actually, Wayne Peterson is Chris Peterson; he is a principal of Bootjack, as is his brother FL, the "managing partner." No word on what the F and the L stand for. I don't know why he uses the alias "Chris," but he's pretty smart, seeing as how he has a Harvard degree and an MBA from Stanford, and can talk the mayor of a 78,000 population city into selling him 185 acres of pristine publicly owned benchland for $2 million.
Jason,
All the public documentation including official ones I have seen has his first name as Christian. I don't have any at hand. Someone else here I am sure could produce some. Anyway your posts are hilarious.
Here is the latest on Bootjack. Apparently updated when renewed in April. Now the agent is C Peterson. Used to be F L or some law firm. Someone said they were dilinquent for a while.
Name Type City Status
BOOTJACK LLC Limited Liability Company SALT LAKE CITY Active
Business Name:
BOOTJACK LLC
Entity Number:
5876050-0160
Registration Date:
04/05/2005
State of Origin:
Address
3434 E. 7800 S. #177
SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84121
Status
Status:
Active
Status Description:
Good Standing
This Status Date:
04/05/2005
Last Renewed:
04/05/2007
License Type:
LLC - Domestic
Delinquent Date:
04/05/2008
Registered Agent
Registered Agent:
C PETERSON
[Search BES] [Search RPS]
Address Line 1:
SUITE 177
Address Line 2:
3434 E. 7800 S.
City:
SALT LAKE CITY
State:
UT
Zip:
84121
Additional Information
NAICS Code: 9999
NAICS Title: 9999-Nonclassifiable Establishment
My sense why the change of agent... Peterson is simply cutting and running. He doesn't even want to fork over another dime paying a paralegal to even register his damn LLC. This is so pathetic. He's so fed up and at a loss for ideas just waiting for Godfrey to pull all the strings. People, get a clue about these guys and their scheme to sell off our public parkland cheap for home development wrapped in a half baked ski resort access gondola as transit marketing ploy.
I found this one that's interesting. A Wayne C Peterson in Murray. Could be someone else entirely. We should not unwittingly trash another innocent individuals' reputation.
PETERSON BROTHERS, L.L.C. DBA MURRAY Expired
Business Name:
PETERSON BROTHERS, L.L.C.
Entity Number:
6188683-0151
Registration Date:
04/20/2006
State of Origin:
Address
6151 S 570 E
MURRAY, UT 84107
Status
Status:
Expired
Status Description:
Conversion
This Status Date:
05/18/2006
Last Renewed:
N/A
License Type:
DBA
Delinquent Date:
04/20/2009
Registered Agent
Registered Agent:
WAYNE C PETERSON
[Search BES] [Search RPS]
Address Line 1:
6151 S 570 E
Address Line 2:
City:
MURRAY
State:
UT
Zip:
84107
Additional Information
Duration Time: 99 YEARS
Incorporated in Home State Date:
NAICS Code: 4543
NAICS Title: 4543-Direct Selling Establishments
Wayne Chase Peterson is Chris Peterson; Wayne is Christian, Chris is Wayne. And they're all batshit!
All this talk about Wayne and his Squirrel Patrol has me thinking about nuts! I'm off to the corner convenience store for some almonds and a cup of coffee.
Jason W: As a fan of your postings, I request respectfully to be enlightened on what the squirrel patrol actually is/was (upon your return from $tarbuck$, naturally). Sorry to be so un-hip.
Legend has it that before Wayne was unceremoniously shitcanned by his father-in-law billionaire, he was obsessed with preventing evil and ruinous squirrels from overtaking the gracious slopes of Snowbasin. After a ritualistic reading from the Planters employee handbook and the solemn crushing of a walnut, Wayne commissioned his famed Squirrel Patrol, whose gallant members ferried out across the snow in search of nut caches; the discovery and eradication of the cache would thereby remove the scourge of squirrel that apparently plagued Wayne's subconscious. The brave men and women of the Squirrel Patrol continue to fight the good fight, although much of their work is in secret and is shrouded in the red cloak of Lift Ogden idiocy. They are known by such names as GTrain Wilkerson, Gondola Boy Mike Dowse (jackass!) and THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE, Curt Geiger.
LO=Guano
Some cool links from medellin. Take note of the gondola stations and their imposing size. "EnvisionOgden" with a few of those at key stops. This unit cost Medellin 23 million for a 2km system. Ogden needs triple that length and at least 5 of those stations. The installed cost of the cableways was quoted to me by Dopplemayer to be $5mil/mile for equipment ONLY(no stations, platforms, signs, curbs, utility reconfiguration...) My guess is that it cost Medellin about 4 million per station when subtracting the equipment cost from the overall cost of the project. A station at 23rd/Harrison, for instance is required, as the terminus for both the 23rd st leg and the Harrison leg. This station would have to straddle Harrison like a massive quadropod. Those stations in Medellin were smaller and would not span our boulevard. CP and MG were talking abouyt maybe aligning it above the sidewalk of Harrison to avoid destroying the view of the homes on Harrison and maybe to avoid building said quadropod. This is evidence of MG's bluff that he has talked to the experts. Neither of the solutions are real and they are just guessing. They are just tossing out hypotheticals to every concerned inquiry.
Anyway here are the Medellin links. Envision this in the OGD.
http://blabbeando.blogspot.com/2006/01/medellins-metrocable.html
Medellin Visit
MetroCable Info
MetroCable Photo Gallery
Holy Crap!...you gotta see this. Looks like it was produced by Rupert for Matt and Pete.
EnvisionMedellin?
Here's a 3.5 minute gondola ride
Gondola Ride
But Tec ... Cocaine is to Colombia what oil is to Saudi Arabia! I should think Medellin has a lot more money for such public extravagances than we mere mortal Ogdenites, whose modest tax dollars, after all, are leveraged from here to ... well, whenever our great-grandchildren finally pay off our municipal debt obligations.
MM,
Since our government has forced narcotic prohibition on the world, that money(hundreds of billions) is in the hands of cartel criminals, terrorists, gunrunners.
Envision legalized drugs and those billions would go into the hands of the local farmers who produce the poppies, coca, cannabis and to legally collected taxes on the luxury of recreational drugs.
What a hopeless mess the do-gooders of the conservative moralistas have us embedded.
MM,
I wouldn't doubt if cartel money went to build the Medellin MetroCable. The neighborhood it serves was a notorious hotbed of criminality and home to many assassin/enforcers for the cartel. I would not be surprised if the cartel owned most of the real estate on that hillside and helped fund the gondola to raise real estate values and force redevelopment.
Tec:
Thanks for the film clip links. I noticed two things: (a) the Columbian gondola seems to be moving people up/down substantial elevations --- i.e. is doing what gondola systems are designed to do. Ogden's public gondola will be largely a flatland operation, moving people along the same route as the city streets it will follow only 30 feet above. I.e. it will be doing what gondolas are not designed to do effectively.
(b) The Columbian gondola takes 3.5 minutes to transit just over two miles. Ogden city's public gondola will take, last we heard from the boosters, something like 16 minutes to transit just over four miles, thanks to the two right angle turns and several "stations" enroute [requiring slowdowns to exit/enter]. This means the total transit time downtown to WSU [if those estimates are correct] will be very close to the transit time for the UTA 603 bus over the same route, or a car.
Finally, the "built by drug money" matter is a non-issue. The question is, is a gondola system [whoever ponies up the cash for it] well designed to meet the transit needs of, and conditions now existing in and likely to exist in the future in Ogden, UT. The answer seems pretty clear to me: no.
Curm, good comments.
Corrections, Medellin MetroCable is 2km not 2 miles, equal to Snowbasin's length and the travel time is about 10-12 minutes. the 3.5 minute figure I gave was for the youtube clip.
It figures that a flatland operation is the sole idea a flatlining mayoral administration can concoct!
Curm,
Agreed that drug money is a non-issue in this context. I hope you do not feel drug prohibition is a non-issue. Prohibition is the underlying destabilizer in the world today. Think Afghanistan is about Al-Queda? Think again. #1 poppy producer last I heard.
The black market that is created and propped by prohibition allows a huge international flow of cash and contraband that would disappear overnight by ending prohibition. Drug money provides the pocket money to criminal organizations worldwide allowing them to underwrite larger operations. If all of the demand for opium, cannabis, and cocaine were produced locally(stateside), guess what, no black market billions flowing to all these hostile regimes. I do not know about the coca shrub but I do know that kali and poppies thrive everywhere.
Dan,
It wasn't me saying that UTA counts legs for ridership numbers, it was the D-News.
Those weren't my numbers, they were the from the D-News.
I wasn't speculating or misinterpreting anything. I just quoted and sourced the articles directly.
Perhaps the D-News in wrong. Perhaps they are not.
Yes, the 23,000 figure in the 2005 article, is 28,000 now. But you suspect they don't count legs for ridership? Yet one of SLC's major newspapers says differently. Interesting.
And the same newspaper (2007) says overall ridership for UTA is down 16% in the past 10 years.
I'm sure TRAX is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I would ride the train long before I would ride the bus..I don't even know why. I like trains.
I'm just trying to point out that everything is not as it seems nor how people present it. Is the jump in ridership really 5000 in the past 2 years? Not if the number represents 1666 people riding three legs or 2500 people riding 2 legs. Or 833 people riding 2 legs each direction.
Utilizing www.peoplefinders.com, I have come to the conclusion that Christian N. Peterson is the leader of the squirrel patrol. Search results indicate he's associated with K-38 LLC, which paid the delinquent Weber County property taxes on the Malan's Basin property last year. Interesting what you can dig up online.
auslander,
I couldn't find a K-38 LLC in the UT Business Entity Search.
Wonder what is the deal with that?
Tec-
You need to use K- 38
(k dash space 38) as the search term when doing a UT Business Entity Search. Should come up with two results- one for an expired listing for a name reservation originally assigned to NA Peterson in Rancho Santa Fe, the second listing is an active LLC and assigned to Christian N Peterson in Sandy UT. If you google the address listed, you will find a listing for a McMansion that is currently on the market.
Thanks Auslander.
Good detective work.
Interesting all these LLC's of Peterson's. I know it is routine and common to form LLC's for all kinds of financial and business activity. It does shed some light on Peterson about the fragmented appearance of his affairs. For a guy making these outrageous and expansive development (non)proposals on a level of a major corporation he seems to be flying by the seat of his pants. Quite obviously, he leveraged some family and friendly money in to the Malan's Basin acreage to bolster his credibility and to appear serious. Certainly he holds major cards but he seems to have squandered any credibility by his absence from the local scene. Clearly there is no long money behind it all. Ogden should put this beast to rest once and for all.
Gracious, since I've been so enthralled with Wayne Peterson's many identities and the legendary exploits of his famed Squirrel Patrol , I have forgotten that Little Matty Gondola Godfrey is potentially up for re-election in the fall. I just finished answering some very interesting questions posed by a telephone surveyor about: 1. Little Matty Gondola Godfrey's (lack of) performance on a host of issues; 2. The likelihood of me voting for Royal Eccles, Donna Burdett, Little Matty, Amy Wicks or, get this, Curt THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE Geiger! Not once did the telephone operator utter anything about the GTrain, but I sure did. Also, he attempted to gauge my awareness of Councilwoman Van Hooser and mispronounced her name in an apparent attempt to disuade recognition. Furthermore, the questions were all slanted to offer someone's assessment of Ogden being "better off" during the reign of terror of Little Matty Gondola Godfrey. The funniest thing I can glean from this experience: Curt THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE Geiger pondering a public office; he has spent the last two years as Godfrey's and Wayne Peterson's unabashed fluffer; does he really think that (and I object, in principle, to his unelected status as an in loco agent of Ogden City, flying around and making promises on behalf of the public he can't keep) the public worships him as do Lift Ogden morons like Little Matty? The GTrain stench on that guy is affects him more deeply than anyone in town not named Godfrey. Stay by your phones and please respond. This is getting interesting.
Boy, I hope that Donna Burdett doesn't run for mayor or we would be in trouble. She would win hands down over anyone else!
Yea, and I hope that Royal "Pain in the Ass" Eccles don't run either, He just might think that this city is too good for him, after all, after his daddy endorsed little Matty last time, He moved to washington terrace.
great support for the mayor.
Hey Jason,
Hasn't Neil Hansen already announced that he is running and I have seen some of his signs out. Why wasn't he metioned in the poll. It it because he may be a threat to the 9th floor?
Just for the Record:
Mrs. Curmudgeon was phone polled on the Mayor's race tonight too. The list of names she was asked if she recognized was a little different. Wicks, Van Hooser, Godfrey, Eccles, Andrew Hall [?], Geiger. Neil Hansen's name was not on the list. Then she was asked if the election was today, who would she be most likely to vote for from the list above.
Also was asked a generic question about Hizzonah's performance in office [excellent, good, fair, poor] and then the same question about his performance on a variety of issues like jobs creation, crime, etc. Not once did the pollster so much as mention the word "gondola" or "sale of public park lands."
There was also an open ended question about Godfrey's performance to which respondents could raise anything they wanted. That was only option for gondola to appear and only if the respondent raised it. [When Mrs. Curmudgeon commented about the Mayor's wasting time on "that pie in the sky gondola" instead of focusing on the city's real needs, the pollster chuckled and said "we're getting a lot of comments like yours."]
I can think of only one reason for omitting from the list about "who would you vote for if the election was today" the name of the only announced candidate: this was a poll commissioned by someone considering entering the race, or some group evaluating the potential of people who are not declared candidates. But why Councilwoman Wicks would be in that list, I have no idea.
The polling firm came up on our caller ID as "Focus.com."
Wondering,
Please provide me with the citation (exact date) of your DesNews article.
Ok, Wondering...
I got impatient and searched the DesNews archives for "uta ridership 16%". I found three articles (this year) that mention the statistic.
Here's what you said: "...overall ridership for UTA is down 16% in the past 10 years."
Here's what the articles say (picking the March 7 article, for example): "Over the past 10 years, [UTA spokesman] Jones said that UTA's bus ridership in Salt Lake County has declined by 16 percent." (The other two articles, from February 27 and May 24, say the same thing in slightly different words.)
Please note that there are two huge differences between what you said and what the paper actually said: (1) Your word "overall" implies that this is throughout UTA's service area, whereas in fact it's only in Salt Lake County; (2) Your word "overall" also implies that this is for all of UTA's service, whereas in fact it's only for buses, not including TRAX (or paratransit or vanpools).
So the 16% decline is not an "overall" decline as you stated, it's just for buses in Salt Lake County. (I suspect this means buses that operate entirely within Salt Lake County, not including, for example, the very popular express buses that carry commuters into Salt Lake County.) The fact is that overall ridership for UTA increased nearly 50% between 1996 and 2005. (Sorry, I don't have data for 2006.)
The 16% decline is actually totally consistent with the statistics that I quoted from UTA's 2005 annual report. I said that when TRAX started operating, UTA bus ridership (everywhere, not just in Salt Lake County) dropped by about 7% and has remained flat since then. If you look at the full difference between 1996 and 2005, the decline is actually 9%, with the other 2% coming from before TRAX started operating. But it's quite natural to guess that the decline in Salt Lake County was actually greater, because quite a few bus riders were able to switch to TRAX. Even so, this decline in bus ridership (about 2.5 million) is many times smaller than the increase in TRAX ridership (13 million) that occurred between 2000 and 2005.
The other point that seems to concern you is that UTA apparently counts riders every time they board a vehicle, so the same person can be counted several times in a day if you include transfers and return trips. So what? If they do this for TRAX then I'm sure they do it for buses as well, so as long as we're looking at percentages and trends, it makes no difference whatsoever. (Hypothetically, it might matter if a route that formerly required only a single vehicle were replaced with a service that required transferring between two or more vehicles. I'm not aware that this has happened, though it may happen to some extent when commuters who currently ride the express buses switch to the FrontRunner with a short TRAX connection between the train station and downtown SLC.)
Splitting hairs about what the transit study numbers may or may not prove obscures the overriding consideration: cutting back on gasoline consumption should be considered a matter of good citizenship. To reiterate the two most obvious reasons: Every tank of gas funds our enemies in the middle east. And every tank of gas contributes to the worse-than-L.A. pollution in the Top of Utah, with its consequent health risks.
Good Old (?) Curmudgeon:
The Hall referenced in the telephone poll is Alan Hall of MarketStar, Grow Utah Ventures and e-Station fame. He may well be business genius, a philanthropist of the highest order and a bonafide community treasure, but I consider him a douchebag because in the spring of 2006, he was quoted in the Stand-Ex as saying he supports giving up the city's property to fund, at most, one-fourth the cost of a silly circus ride to nowhere because "it's the only way to do it without affecting the public." Yeah, no effects whatsoever, there, Princeton. Since all the names the pollster referenced except for Councilwoman Wicks are gondola freaks and Little Matty Gondola Godfrey sycophants to some degree or another, I suspect the GTrain commissioned the poll because: A) They heard Councilwoman Wicks may run for mayor; B) They're finally trying to take stock of how badly Little Matty Gondola Godfrey has been damaged due to his grade-school fantasy of building his circus ride; C) They want to assess the public's ability to recognize their roster of moronic gondola freaks; D) They want to field a gondola freak candidate in the race against Mrs. Van Hooser. And the phone operator called her "Susan Hoosier," so maybe it was a simple pronunciation error, not an intentional slight.
Two SE Items this morning of note:
First, top of Utah section front page, more on the matter of whether the city violated grant terms in selling the American Can building and will have to return the 900K. Not much more actually, but some. [AG to render opinion on what the state development agency look-see has turned up so far.] Link here.
Second, an example I'm afraid of bad taste or at least piling on by the SE. Front page story about Roy police pursuing and arresting those who've ignored traffic fines and who've ignored summonses to appear in court. Picture accompanying is of a distraught crying woman being arrested from her home for ignoring summons to pay $350 for driving without insurance. Link here.
Now, I'm all for going after scofflaws, all for tracking down those who ignore court summonses and who ignore fines. Good idea. My problem is with the SE putting a huge picture of the distraught woman's face on the front page. Piling on. Over the top. This is about a $350 ticket, guys, not about a child molester, or an embezzler of school funds or a murderer or a drug dealer or a Republican state legislator... not therefor a story about a grave threat to the peace and safety of the citizens of Roy. Yes, cover the story, report the crackdown, use her arrest as an example to others. But spreading her distraught face in a large color pic across the front page... jeez, guys, how about a little sense of propriety? Maybe a tad of compassion? Do the story, take a pic from the back maybe of her doing the perp walk to the Roy police car if you like. But full frontal distress for ignoring a no-insurance ticket? Come on.
Running a paper is to some extent an exercise in the prudent use of power. This was, IMHO, an unwise use of that power. Big guy beating up on a little one. Not a classy thing to have done.
Jason:
Thanks for clearing up who Hall was. Appreciate it.
One caveat. You wrote: Since all the names the pollster referenced except for Councilwoman Wicks are gondola freaks and Little Matty Gondola Godfrey sycophants to some degree or another....
Ms. Van Hooser's name was in the list, and from what I've seen of her work on the council so far, I don't think she can be fairly described as a "gondola freak" or "sycophat" of the Mayor. She seems to have maintained, it seems to me, an independent position on most items that come before her in her capacity as Councilwoman. Willing to consider any proposals, willing to look at arguments, evidence, opinion on all sides, and willing even to dig a little on her own, to press for more information from those addressing the Council [particularly in work sessions] and then to reach whatever conclusions she finds justified on the evidence. [Sometimes I concur with her judgment, sometimes not.] But she seems so far to understand the Council's oversight role in the strong mayor form of government, which Ogden has.
Based on her performance in office so far, I wouldn't call her a sycophant of anyone.
Indeed, Good Old (?) Curmudgeon, that was uninentional with regard to Mrs. Van Hooser.
My husband also had the pleasure of responding to the poll last night. Before he did so, he inquired who had commissioned, and was paying for the survey. "The city of Ogden" was the response. Surprised, no. Irate (again), yes.
Curm, there's been one main ingredient omitted by the SE and all those that have issued comments on the CAN building, Riverside Technology Foundation, they are on the abstract, and fraudulently claimed to be a 501 c3, which they weren't. They seemed to be the real recipients of all that free money,state and federal, and some the ownership was transfered by them to this questionable foundation headed by little matty. Their address being the 9th floor of the muny building.
Sweet:
You wrote: My husband also had the pleasure of responding to the poll last night. Before he did so, he inquired who had commissioned, and was paying for the survey. "The city of Ogden" was the response. Surprised, no. Irate (again), yes.
I doubt this very much. [Not that your husband was told it, but that it's true.] The phone poller who called us was... well, let's just say not very well informed even about the questions she was asking. For example, after running down the list of names ["Have you heard of..."], she asked "If the election were held today, which of them would you most likely vote for?" My wife asked "For what? Some of them are running for the Council, at least one is a candidate for Mayor. What election?"
The poller said she didn't know, and would my wife hold while "I ask my supervisor." When she came back, she said "election for Mayor."
So it may be, at least is possible, that you got the poller's guess as to who was paying. As rule, at least in my experience, polling firms do not usually disclose their clients unless its one of the big public opinion polls like the NY Times Poll.
Certainly needs to be checked out for sure, though. Absolutely no way should the city be paying for a mayoral election preference poll. Absolutely no way. But I doubt, again, that it did.
Bill:
Be interesting to know if the state investigation into the American Can matter includes the question of whether the money went to a proper non-profit as was required or whether the investigation is strictly limited to the question of whether the current use to which the building is being put falls, somehow, within the intent of the original grant.
Anyone know?
Fact:
Ogden City lobbyed for, politicked for and received the $900,000.00 grant from Utah to buy the American Can property.
Fact: Ogden City received a $2 million grant from the Federal government for a parking structure. $200 grand of that grant was put with the $900,000 from Utah to buy the American Can property from the Hatch's for $1,100,000.
Fact: Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation wound up the owner of the property the day Ogden got the $900,000 Utah grant out of escrow to buy the American Can property according to Dave Harmer's recent statement.
Question: Do Ogden City records show that the Council okayed the gift of the property to the Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation?
Fact: Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation financials immediately show their net worth to be in the millions based on the gift from Ogden of the American Can property plus $2 million in tax increment on the come and $3 million historical tax credits on the come.
There are several diffrent bogus financial figures for the Foundation and Da Vinci Academy in the early stages.
Fact: Ogden received nothing for the American Can property because it was given to the Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation.
So now is Godfrey going to claim that the deal to give it away was legit because the City did not sell the property because nothing was received for it so technically the property was not sold???????
Question: Where is the $3 million the Ogden Community Foundation supposedly received for the sale of the property to Jon Peddie?
Somebody needs to explain some of the unanswered million dollar questions.
In order to get to the bottom of the final decision on the $900,000.00 Utah grant you need to interview Lewis Reese, the fired principal of Da Vinci Academy, who was terminated because of all the questions he kept asking.
Reese and the former President of the Da Vinci School Board are the only ones who can paint the real picture of what went on. I understand that the last of the teachers who were on staff at the beginning have been fired as well as Lewis Reese.
A Utah State audit of Da Vinci Academy in June of 2006 brought out certain facts which leads some of us to believe that Da Vinci/Riverside Technology High School should own the property. This includes Reese and a State Auditor.
The grant to Ogden was made to create Da Vinci Academy of the Arts and Sciences/Riverside Technology High School.
Instead Da Vinci has wound up paying rent of $17 thousand per month to Da Vinci Technology Non-Profit which did not legally exist.
It was just created by Godfrey and his "advisers" to control things.
The plan was that Da Vinci would fail within the first 3 years based on the statistics of charter schools.
Why doesn't someone get a Grand Jury called to get to the bottom of this skullduggery?
Has anyone seen a copy of the Ogden City Resolution transferring the American Can property purchase to the Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation?
The Mayor can't just give the title to the Foundation the day of the purchase as Harmer has said was done without authorization by the City Council to give it away to a Foundation.
Some have commented on the mayor poll going around.
It is as I have predicted.
Sensing he may be vulnerable (you can say that again), but feeling his policies are pure genius and have turned the city around, the mayor’s supporters are testing the waters. If they feel he may not win re-election, they will field other candidates.
This is what they did in the last election, when they ran Bill Glassman against Kent Jorgenson. Kent was obviously a Godfreyite, but he did not support the gondola. For people like the Godfreyites, the Geigers and the Chamber of Commerce, anything less that total, reflexive, unthinking obedience means you have to go. Kent was justifiably voted out, but Glassman was far worse. Happily though, finding him a butt kisser of unusual talent, Godfrey couldn’t help but put Glassman on his own staff, making it possible for Van Hooser to be on the council.
The Godfreyites recognize that in the last election his policies caused the loss of his lackeys Jorgenson and Burdett, and the retention of the skeptical but more public minded Garcia. This time they hope it will be different, what with all the “good that Godfrey has done” being visible to everyone. But being realists, they are polling nonetheless.
Watch for the Godfreyites to run two candidates for mayor, for these reasons. First, a multiplicity of candidates will make it more likely that the 20-40% of the vote that Godfrey can pull will keep him in the general election, in addition to making it possible that the anti-Godfrey vote will be sufficiently split up that in the general election Godfrey may end up actually running against another Godfreyite (who will immediately hire him in a city staff position.) Second, there is safety in numbers, and the more candidates you run, the more likely your side will win.
So that’s all there is to it. It is however, imperative that the Godfreyite candidates in the election be identified so the 60-70% of the electorate that want something other than Godfreyism can make sure a good candidate actually makes it to the general election. It’s not enough to vote out Godfrey. We must vote in someone with an alternate vision, or nothing will change.
It’s not about throwing rocks. It’s about having the right people in office for the right policies and the right vision.
to "incredible isn't it" -
The $17,000 monthly rent from Da Vinci Academy has been going to the Riverside Technology Non-Profit Foundation and not to the Da Vinci Non-Profit Foundation.
Now it goes to the Ogden Community Foundation on the 9th floor.
Danny:
While I agree Hizzonah can be somewhat devious in the conduct of what he considers the public's business [e.g. following a city employee's wife around downtown so he can get his crony, police chief and now state senator Greiner [R-Ogden] to track down her license plate number], the level of Machiavellian electoral plotting and counter-plotting you've laid out seem too Baroque even for him.
I do find it a little funny that, two years out from the event, Kent Jorgensen's defeat for re-election is now being attributed to his having been insufficiently pro-administration. That's revisionist history with a vengeance!
Jorgansen was a yes man for Godfrey without reservation. He only got a little religion on the Gondola and other matters after he was voted out.
Glasmann was not in any way connected to or promoted by the Godfreyites. He ran on a completely anti Godfrey platform. In fact he ran more against Godfrey than he did against Jorgansen. He won with a big margine because of it.
Glasmann was promoted into running by a very small number of anti-Godfreyites. He ran his own campaign with very little help from anyone. He told it like it is and the voters responded and elected him as a candidate who was going to hold Godfrey's feet to the fire and bring a little honesty to the city government.
You can make of it what you want, but he wasn't any one's pawn during the election.
After getting on the inside he changed his mind about things and did the honorable thing by resigning because he could not represent the voters who elected him.
Jeske also ran against the mayor's policies and won, also with a big margine. She still believes in what she ran on and she continues to fight the good and nearly impossible fight against the evils of the Godfreyites.
The point is that both ran against Godfrey and won. They both have done the honorable thing since.
Yes...once again, so few real accurate facts being spewed on this site.
If you'd actually talked to Godfrey or those close to him, you would know that he doesn't want to run again.
That doesn't mean he won't.
Regardless, that is more truth than you will hear in any other post here. But it is more fun to wildly speculate and make up shit.
Godfrey the reluctant candidate! He will only run if the desperate masses beg him to! Gawd, you just gotta love the nutty rationalizations of these Godfreyite koolaid drinkers.
Oz:
I think you are wrong about Jorgensen, at least in part. I ran into him at one of the early Lift Ogden Cheerleading sessions, during the campaign, at the Ben Lomond hotel. Several candidates for the Council were there, and were invited up, after the propaganda and cheerleading were done, to make statements. Several gushed about the gondola scheme and were roundly applauded. Kent got up and said it was an interesting idea, but he'd reserve judgment until a great deal more was known and some hard figures had been produced. A polite smattering of disappointed applause. [During the campaign remember.]
He offered me a ride home to save me waiting for a bus, and we chatted about the meeting. His general comment was "there are no hard numbers, just a lot of unsupported estimates and predictions. I want to see something a lot more specific than I saw tonight before I make up my mind."
Struck me then, strikes me now, as the right attitude for a Council member to take on such matters.
Kent supported, down the line, the mall tear-down and subsequent mall project and all that involved, and the river project, and was in my view not as hardnosed about overseeing the Mayor's actions as a Councilmember needs to be, but your characterization of him as pro-gondola and as raising questions about it only after the election are, from what I saw, incorrect. You are absolutely wrong about the timing of his reticence about the gondola. I was at the meeting, during the campaign, and saw him refuse to join the Amen Chorus at a room full of gondolistas urging candidates to do so.
There is too often in elections a tendency to paint candidates, in our case council candidates, as all one thing or all the other, as Godfrey sycophants or staunch opposers of Hizzonah's administration. In fact, in most cases [I will concede on sycophant for the administration on the Council], the members are more complex than that, and are not knee-jerk followers of one side or the other on hot-button issues. Most of them, I think, do their level best to do a decent job, and to draw conclusions on the basis of evidence they find compelling. Pigeonholing them as "Godfrey sycophants" on the basis of a series of votes that go against your [or my] preferences is not only unrealistic, it is counter productive, because it tends to shut off all communication with the councilman or woman. So when you want to lobby on the next issue up, you want to try to convince them about something, there's no line of communication left open.
In most cases, treating Council members with whom you disagree as people who are wrong [rather than mindless stooges or hopelessly corrupt] and who it is your job to convince that there is a better option than the one they like on the table is a more productive approach.
I'm a Democrat, Oz, and that means I'm a pragmatist. I'm interested in finding out what works when I lobby. And labeling Council members as mindless stooges is a tactic absolutely guaranteed not to work as a way of influencing Council decisions.
Curm is right about the following:
Jorgenson was a Godfreyite while in office except for the gondola, for which he was hesitant, as any sane person would be. Most of the time it is better to try to persuade politicians than to simply criticize them.
Curm is wrong about the following:
The mayor being too Machiavellian to do the election calculations I mentioned. Indeed, it is from his cronies where I heard the idea being both discussed and planned! (And also, some politicians are corrupt. They need to be destroyed by any legal means possible. And I find it strange that Curm is always so pro-Democrat, as if they are always right, which they are far away from being.)
Oz is wrong about the following:
Jorgenson becoming skeptical of the gondola only after the election. (He expressed the skepticism before the election. But he is a Godfreyite – the sort of person who sees the government as the solution to the problem rather than the cause of the problem. He should never hold public office.)
And as far as Glassman being anti Godfrey – he was supported by Bob Geiger – so enough said. He ran a strident anti-Godfrey campaign, then ten minutes after winning he switched sides. Honest? You gotta be kidding. A caricature of mediocrity before the election, he was a caricature of sleazy corruption after it.
Oz is right about the following:
Jeske.
And the guy who said Godfrey doesn’t want to run? Yeah, so I guess that means he’s selling his soul, lying, manipulating, mud slinging, and probably breaking the law, all for nothing! As far as those close to him - I’m closer to him than you are! As for the last word contained in your post, I think you could have just stated that one word and it would have conveyed your thoughts rather well.
Danny:
You wrote: And I find it strange that Curm is always so pro-Democrat, as if they are always right, which they are far away from being.)
Just for the record, you will not find anything from me posted here, or anywhere else, suggesting that Democrats are always right. I save most of the venomous emails about my party's problems [especially in Utah] for the party leadership who can, if they will, do something about them. And for my party's officeholders when they are wrong about something, I let them know directly. That can have some effect. [Pragmatist, remember?]
As for postings here, since as a general rule Democrats are more right about more things more often than Republicans... and by a good margin... it may seem that I never criticize them. Any of of my party's leaders could disabuse you of that notion right quick.
Curmudgeon
Show me one instance where Jorgansen voted against anything Godfrey put forward, regardless of how lame brained or dishonest it was.
He and Johnson ran on a platform that voraciously opposed buying and tearing down the old mall. Ten minutes after being elected they both switched positions and became the primary advocates of tearing it down.
Johnson of course quit and joined Godfrey in the highest paying job he ever had or could possible hope to have. His main claim to fame before being a big Kahuna in Ogden City Government was as manager of a four plex in the slums. This of course was very similiar to Godfrey's resume. Johnson's rise to fame and glory is a prime example of the "Peter Principle" in action! I suppose you can never under estimate the allure one slum lord has for another!
Godfrey then appointed the queen of mean Donna Burdett to fill out Johnson's term.
Jorgansen fully supported all the draconian measures that Godfrey has taken against the poor and disinfranchised of Ogden. His finger prints are all over the BDO scandals, the Reid plundering of the treasury, the Kemp $2.5million dollar give away, the American Can fiasco, the imigrant merchant hatchet job and on and on and on. He was a dyed in the wool Godfreyite who never said no to the little lord. I have absolutely no doubt that he would have become a full fledged Gondolista had the voters of Ogden not got hip to his perfidity and un-assed him from the Council.
You can be as pragmatic as you want. You can even do it till Godfrey gets a heart, but all you will be doing is futher diluting your hopeful Democrat dream world. These NeoCon Republican bastards that control everything in these parts don't negotiate. Their idea of negotiating is for you to roll over and give them what they want, including your soul. Godfrey doesn't give a squat about you or me or anything else but his own sense of how important and godly he is and the monument he intends to build so all future generations will know of his greatness.
The only way to deal with a rattle snake is to cut of its friggen head. Being nice to these NeoCons in the hopes that they will some how change their arrogant control freak tendancies and be reasonable with you in future negotiations is why the bastards keep you democrats suppressed and de-balled.
The only way to make them be honest and fair is through hard ball tactics that expose them to the public. When you shine the light on them they scurry like the cock roaches they are. They count on you being nice and rational and in the dark. It makes it easier for them to break it off and stick it up your kiester. So lobby them with all the nice you can muster up and see where it gets you here behind the Zion Curtain.
And Danny
I stick by my prior statement of Glasmann doing the honorable thing by quiting when he could no longer in good faith represent the positions that got him elected. Although Geiger supported him in the election it was not because they agreed on the gondola - they didn't. Glasmann's position with Geiger was that he would wait for more info on it before he committed. Geiger, being a gentleman, felt that was good enough and he supported him. Besides, they are neighbors and both ex-Jar heads. That is a bond that is beyond our ability to understand (the Jar Head thing that is) I think you are way off base if you think that Glasmann was a secret Godfreyite before the election.
And yes, I did say that Geiger was a "gentleman". Although I think he is bat shit crazy with this Gondola business, I consider him to be a good and honorable man with a lot of passion for what he believes in. His motive is to make a better Ogden for the future, same as most of us here on this blog.
Curm: regarding democrats and what you said, fair enough.
Oz: regarding almost all of what you said, fair enough, except for this.
A man runs for office, saying it is because he can’t stand the mayor and what he represents. Given the mayor is very unpopular, he wins. Then, days later, he claims he has learned the error of his ways, he now agrees with the mayor, and he resigns. In this case, if the man was not a liar, then we must assume he is an airhead. But we can also say he is a man of integrity because he did resign. But aren’t we forgetting something?
The man took a friggin’ job, for easily more than 100 grand per year wages and benefits, as part of the bargain from the very mayor he ran against! Now if that isn’t corrupt, what does it take for you to feel that it is corrupt, 200 grand a year?
But perhaps you subscribe to the theory that if you know somebody fairly well, they can’t be that bad. So what aren’t you telling us?
As far as the Geigers, give me a break. Those guys literally hate their opponents. They try to get them fired. They lie. They manipulate. Gentlemen? You mean salesman. That they are. Your impression of them confirms that only too well. I too have met them. They have the opprobrium of the public for very good reasons. If they would change their ways, then opinions of them would also change.
You guys are well spoken and thoughtful. Moreover, you are a delight to read. These comments are simply respectful attempts to sway you, as Curm likes to talk about doing.
Bob Gieiger tried to get me fired because I wrote "assclown" in a work email to Lift Ogden; that's how big a pussy that clown is. Cmon, Ozboy, defend him; Cmon, Geiger, tell me you want our small little tete-te to become public. I dare ya.
Oz:
I believe Kent voted with the majority to change the dismissal/resignation rules so that the Golden Parachute Godfrey arranged by handshake unknown to the council could never happen again.
You asked for one... there it is.
In any case, the only point I disagreed with you about in re: Jorgensen was your saying he only raised questions about the gondola after the election was over. If you'll go back and read what I posted, I noted that he had voted down the line with Hizzonah on the mall matter, the river project, etc. and was not as committed to oversight role of the Council as he should have been. Very few on the Council were before the last election. A handful only.
The poll:
I am really curious now who is doing it. Got polled myself. Young woman mis-pronounced Mr. Geiger is "Curt Guy-gree". [Another asked about "Susan Hooser" not Van Hooser.] When the one who called me asked who I was most likely to vote for if the election was held today, and I asked "in what election? Mayor of Council?" she replied: "I don't know. It just says election here." And she reread the question. Second pollster I've heard of who couldn't answer that question.
Doubt Dan Jones would run a poll with pollsters this poorly trained [or with the script they are working from this poorly composed]. So am really curious now about both who is running the poll and who commissioned it. Anyone have any hard information on either point?
Regarding the "poll": I haven't been called yet.
But the whole operation, as described in this blog, reminds me of a phone call I got a little over a year ago.
I was invited to discuss the proposal for a gondola with the mayor.
The way it was described, I thought it was a meeting with maybe a half-dozen other people. I told the woman, "can I get back to you?" She said sure, and left a callback number -- Ogden City offices.
I checked and decided I was cleared to go with my employer. I subsequently found out it wasn't a special deal at all, but rather the usual dog and pony show. Mrs. Monotreme and I went.
Anyway, the whole M.O. on this "poll" reminds me of that phone call. Could he actually be using city employees to poll Ogden residents? Gosh, I sure hope not, but someone (that means you, Mr. Schwebke) should make some inquiries, no?
Curmudgeon
The "one vote" you mention by Jorganson seems to me to be a vote to retroactively legalize the mayor's illegal act. Would that not make it in fact a vote "for" Godfrey? Sure they shut the door on any more crooked mayorial acts of the exact same stripe, but I believe the real reason was to protect the little criminal from the repercussions of his criminal acts.
Danny
Touche! One minor correction - Glasmann is making more like $60 grand than $100. Even with the normal 28% in additional perks he is short of a hundred grand per year.
As to both Glasmann and Geiger Jr., I ask is it fair to judge their whole existance thru the lens of one issue? Does the sum total of Geiger's life come only from his irrational and rabid efforts to Gondolize Ogden? Is Glasmann to be condemned for taking a job with the politician he opposed? Besides, shouldn't the famous Pink Tutu incident count as a positive for them?
FYI, I do know one of them well, but not the other. I don't hang with either one however.
Mono:
You know, the first time I talked to someone who was polled, and they described the muffed names, the inability to state what election they were asking about, I wondered if perchance it could be Hizzonah's secretarial staff doing a little freelance phone work. But dismissed the idea as so clearly unethical that even Hizzonah would understand that. Then I got polled myself, and the suspicion snuck back. Now you've stated it plainly as a question.
Surely the Mayor is not using city staff to conduct a mayoral preference poll. Not even he.... Surely.
Right?
I neglected to mention that the email I sent to Lift Ogden in which I accused them of stealing my terrific Little Matty Gondola Godfrey sign included my name, home address and home phone number; instead of contacting me like a man, and challenging my accusation, Gieger went after my employment. And the simple, Eisner-like arrogance displayed by he and his father (THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE) is otherwordly. Those guys are total dicks.
Oh, and Wayne Chase Peterson's (also known as founder of the famed Squirrel Patrol) brother is Frank Layne Peterson; Wayne may have referred to himself as Chris because he was sick of the Idaho kids saying "Wayne and Layne, Wayne and Layne!"
Jason
I have read here a number of times your words in reference to Geiger Sr. - "The Ski is beautiful blue"
I don't get it. Is it an inside joke of the "Squirrel patrol"? Is it a play on the words "Sky" and "Ski"? Does he have one blue ski and one red? What??
I enjoyed your explanation of the "squirrel patrol" please do the same for this supposed quote from the Senior Geigermieister.
Oz, please do not insult rattle snakes, they serve a valuable purpose and some in the great state of Texas believe GOD works thru them. Have you never heard "praise the Lord and pass the snake"? Godfrey has made himself, lower than any life form in existance on this planet today.The only exception possibly being the aids virus. The SKI is beautiful appeared first on this blog, as a smart assed closing to a post by Curt Gieger, I think he thought it cute.
As for Riverside Technology, if they can't show that their a legal 501c3, wouldnt the title to the Can building and any other grants payments and such be considered personal income? Where's the IRS?
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