By CurmudgeonWe want to call your attention to today's editorial in the Standard Examiner.
It reviews the Mayor's recent announcements regarding the Mt. Ogden parklands and the storied [but never produced] "Peterson Proposal," and today's Mayor Godfrey clarification about the "city gondola," stating in no uncertain terms that such a gondola will not be built with city funds, and would now only be built if Mr. Peterson agrees to pick up the entire construction, maintenance and operating costs.
The editorial is suffused with a quality far too lacking too often in the discussion of the gondola/gondola and "Peterson Proposal" so far. There is much to commend in it. Well worth the reading, every line of it. But let me highlight here a small portion near the editorial's conclusion:
"Godfrey backed Peterson -- at least in part, we presume -- because the developer kept promising to submit his formal proposal to the city, setting deadlines and then blowing them time and time again. As far as we know, there still has never been a full-blown, formal plan submitted to anyone in an official capacity."...absent the details it's impossible to know whether it deserves support."
Absent the details in such a document, speculation by both supporters and detractors has filled the void, and the Ogden community has been polarized on the topic....
And we will continue to wait with great anticipation to see where Peterson plans to go from here with his 1,440 acres east of Ogden.
The resort idea sounds interesting to us, but absent the details it's impossible to know whether it deserves support."
Exactly. And think how much better off Ogden would have been, how much rancor and ill-will might have been avoided if Mayor Godfrey had grasped that simple and common-sense-filled point two years ago: that absent the details... or what most might call instead "the facts"... his enthusiastic championing of the plan, his denigration of those who raised questions about it as "naysayers" and enemies of progress in Ogden, his administration's active support of zoning ordinance changes to accommodate a Peterson Proposal that never appeared [recall the "Ellison Ordinance" matter?] --- all of that, absent the details, the specifics, the facts, was ill-advised, inappropriate and did not well serve the interests of Ogden and its people.
Update 7/11/07 8:22 a.m. MT: Alert and gentle reader "Jill" provides a link to this morning's Salt Lake Tribune editorial, which presents a challenge to we citizens of Emerald City, to act decisively to permanently protect our precious open space.
This is must reading, we think, especially for our city council.
