By Dan S.As many of us were hoping, the Standard-Examiner's Ace Reporter Schwebke has a second article today on the revelations of the recently obtained emails regarding the secret gondola study and UTA.
For Std-Ex readers, the new information here is that the Godfrey administration wanted to use the rest of the $247,500 (after getting LYRB paid) to reimburse Chris Peterson for his costs associated with the project. As I reported above, UTA is emphatic that it will not make any such reimbursements.
For those who have been following this issue here on Weber County Forum, the only thing new in the story is Mayor Godfrey's explanation: "We were trying to connect UTA with vendors to get information that UTA wanted," he insists. "A lot of the background work has been done" by Peterson's vendors, so having UTA reimburse these vendors will "save money for UTA" -- in the words of the mayor.
That's right, folks: According to our mayor, the way for UTA to save money is to give the money to Peterson. I really have to congratulate Godfrey for this one. He's an absolute genius. This method of saving taxpayer money never would have occurred to me in a million years.
Presumably, we can also infer that this valuable information from Peterson's vendors will now not be made available to UTA or to the public, since UTA is unwilling to pay Peterson for it. Any studies that Peterson has already commissioned will be kept secret from UTA and from the public.
Peterson, once again, did not respond to an email from the Std-Ex seeking comment.
Of course, the mayor's response is also an admission that he was fully aware of the plan to ask UTA to reimburse Peterson. If I had to guess, I'd say he's probably the one who thought up the plan.
Pure genius.
Ed. Note: A hearty Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat to both Dan Schroeder and Scott Schwebke for their tireless efforts in bringing this important information to the public forefront.
69 comments:
Just like to add here a nod to the SE's news judgment on breaking the coverage of the GRAMA emails into two stories, one dealing with payment of the company that did the Peterson Plan financial analysis for the city [retroactive waiver of the city's competitive bidding rules, attempts to get UTA to waive its own procedures to pay for the analysis the city ordered, etc.] and a second dealing with the city's attempts to have UTA devote nearly a quarter of a million dollars in public money --- federal this time --- to reimburse the Mayor's... well, let's just say "associate"... Mr. Chris Peterson for the money he'd unwisely spent in prep work for a project the Mayor now concedes was not feasible from the start.
Cramming all of that into a single story would have created a very long and very complex story, which would have had to weave two already complex matters together. Or, if the same amount of space was devoted to it as the SE devoted to the first story it ran, it would have resulted in a story that was pretty thin on detail and that merely lightly skipped over the surface of two [I think] important matters.
The SE's news judgment was sound in separating the two matters into two stories to run on different days. I think the complaining here when the first story appeared about is having omitted the Peterson reimbursement matter [some of which came from me] was not justified. This time, the SE got it right.
And kudoes to the UTA for sticking to its guns and refusing to funnel a quarter of a million in public funds to cover what Mr. Peterson spent on what turned out to be his bad business judgment.
Oh, and by the way [just back from the SL Trib website for today's issue], still nary a word there about either matter. Not word one.
So, according to Godfrey Peterson has conducted over $200,000 worth of transit studies on the urban gondola? I find that hard to believe. Or is Godfrey seeking to have the Utah Transit Authority pay Peterson for things related to his plan to purchase Mt Ogden golf course and surrounding park land, redesign the course and cram several hundred homes onto the rest of the land, etc.? It would be nice to know what specific work Peterson has hired people to do that Godfrey thinks should be reimbursed by funds from the UTA. Of course, we'll never know will we.
Just who are Peterson's "vendors"?
And what a twist on the definition. Vendor, as a term, refers primarily to a merchant who buys and sells goods. Using that term for consultants, engineers, planners, gondola builders, etc. etc. reveals both Godfrey's poor command of the language and his attempt to smudge over his debacle.
There was never anything indicative of professional assistance in all of Peterson's presentations unless you count marketing and promotional material. Those contracts would hardly qualify as "vendors" hired to determine the feasibility of his non-proposal. Peterson never hired anyone of any substance or trade with expertise on ski area development. All of those people have knopwn long ago what areas of the Wasatch would make a good resort and it ain't Malan's basin. He bought a white elephant, tough luck CP.
Boy oh Boy!
Does this have conspearicy to commit fraud all over it, or what. I thought this would be against federal law. Maybe a grand jury should look at this.
curm: I agree completely that the S-E did the right thing in breaking this into two stories. Let's hope there'll be at least one more, on Ken Lee's apparent ongoing lobbying efforts on Peterson's behalf. As for the Trib, I'm guessing that Kristen Moulton is on vacation.
cato: Just as the LYRB study (which UTA does intend to pay for) had little to do with the urban gondola and a lot to do with the other elements of the Peterson proposal, I would assume that the vast majority of these unspecified expenses of Peterson's are for studies pertaining to the golf course, foothill developments, Malan's Basin, etc. For one thing, the city has already done two studies of the urban gondola, so of all the elements of the proposal, the urban gondola is the one least in need of study.
tec: I think it's standard practice among these bureaucrats to refer to any contractor as a "vendor", even if the contractor delivers services or information rather than goods. And I would assume that most of Peterson's contractors were hired after his series of dog-and-pony shows ended last June, not before. We know that he developed further versions of the foothill plan and golf course layout; we know that he hired a bunch of helicopter flights and a topographic survey of Malan's Basin; and we know that he retained a rather expensive attorney. Who knows what all the city was hoping to reimburse him for? The emails refer to what sounds like an itemized budget, but I wasn't given a copy of this budget. I'm currently trying to get it, as well as other documents that the city claims it doesn't have to provide.
Think:
Sorry, but I don't see criminal fraud in what the SE reported this morning. The Mayor asked the UTA to "buy" [i.e. pay for], presumably feasibility studies, cost studies, engineering studies [some of the above, all of the above? None of the above? As Cato notes, who knows?] Mr. Peterson had done to prep for elements of the famous but never revealed "Peterson Proposal." UTA said no.
The Mayor's actions raise ethical questions, certainly --- why, for example, does the Mayor think the taxpayers should reimburse a businessman for what he spent investigating a development that was not feasible in the first place, but that would [he thought] have netted him millions in profit if it had succeeded?
The question I hope voters are starting to ask themselves is this: in whose interest is Mayor Godfrey making decisions as Mayor? The interests of Ogden City residents as a whole, or in the interests of the few, the well-connected, the insiders... his cronies? This morning's SE story goes a long way toward answering that question, I think.
And the story helps explain the Godfrey administration's almost pathological opposition to open government, its preference for operating in secret. It was doing things it didn't want the press and the public to know about.
And it seems it may be at it still. The State Auditor has opened an investigation into the way the Administration handled state grant money for the American Can building, and the Ogden City Foundation's role in all that. The Board minutes of the Foundation have still not been made public. [The Mayor claims the Foundation is a private body, not a public one, and so its minutes are not public records. Despite the fact that the Mayor's office is listed as the Foundation's address, that it held board meetings in City Hall, that its members, at the start, consisted of the Mayor and (except for one member) officials in his administration, and now it's rumored that minutes of Foundation Board meetings were taken by staff from the City Recorder's office. (Note: I've not been able to confirm that last point yet. So its status is still "rumor.")]
Why can't the press and public see the minutes of the Ogden City Foundation Board meetings? What is in them that the Board, which includes the Mayor, doesn't want us to know? If the answer is, as he insists it is, "nothing --- the Foundation acted properly" then I'm hard put to understand why the Board minutes haven't been made public. If the minutes will prove, as the Mayor suggests, that nothing untoward was done, what possible reason could there be for keeping them secret?
Ogden needs --- badly --- a mayor who is committed to open government, public scrutiny and full accountability as a matter of strongly held principle . Sadly, I think it is beyond dispute that we do not have such a mayor now.
Is it really possible that Mayor Godfrey does not understand the facts re his own actions when he says having taxpayers pay $247,000.00, which was a legitimate Federal Grant to buy a bus for the Ogden/Roy route, to UTA would save UTA money.
Incredible that the Mayor does not know the difference between lying and or telling the truth if he could not figure out that his buddy Cris Peterson was the one he was really helping.
This thinking goes a long way to explain some of the other stupid things he has been advocating.
The bottom line is that he very deliberately - and with malice aforethought - did lie to keep his own City Council in the dark about the gondola study that had not been legally authorized.
And that's a fact because he did not sign the waiver for the required bid process until long after the study was commissioned.
curmudgeon -
Criminal activity comes into play when there is collusion between one or more parties to deceive the Ogden City Council.
The e-mails prove there definitely was an effort by several of Ogden City's top employees in conjunction with the Mayor to act in a criminal manner.
I wonder if the lion's share of this(perterson's supposed expenditure) was for Ellison's strategy and zoning work. lying little matty and his uncle gregory peccary montgomery have worked overtime trying to accomplish Ellison's demands in this area.
I don't doubt that from, the patagonia vest's point of view, the city should pay Ellison for doing montgomery's job.
Bill,
Did you know that when a vest says "Patagonia" it reveals that the wearer(bearer) chooses to pay 3 times or more the real value of such garment for the privilege of touting his taste. I cannot tell the difference between a Pata-gucci vest and a generic fleece vest selling for 10 bucks at any given chinese import "vendor".
Maybe the 250g was for Peterson's vestiture collection. I'll bet he has a closetful of identical blue jeans, white shirts, and black Pata-groupie fleecies. Some guys are most comfortable in uniform of their own design.
I seem to recall, when the City Council first got wind of this fed money, lying little matty was quoted in the paper saying something like "this money is for putting together the proposal". This leads one to believe the money has not been spent.
There was alot of helicopter activity during the past spring, it appears that the HIGH ADVENTURE RECREATION promoters have an avesion to walking or hiking.
I still can't see $ 231,000 in expenditures, but I've never hired a lawyer to orchestrate such a clandestine crooked and complex theft of public property.
Might have been the vests.
Do you naysayers not know how expensive it is to hire, train, staff, outfit with Patagonia vests and onion-roll feed a famed Squirrel Patrol?
What an insight Jason, I wonder if peterson hasn't been in contact with the Dick Cheney, trying to purchase weapons of mass squirrel eradication.
Peterson said something to the city council in late June of last year, to the effect that he would have to spend $100,000 to put together a formal proposal.
The emails from the city refer to a total budget of over $600,000, and Harmer explains that Peterson himself will have to pick up the difference between the UTA reimbursement and the total.
How much of that $600,000 has actually been spent, I have no idea.
The mayor refers to "final engineering work UTA is after," but concedes that this work hasn't been completed. So I guess the idea was to use up all UTA's money paying Peterson for his preliminary work, then wait around for Peterson to do the final engineering at his own expense? Yeah, right. I wonder if Ken Lee is lobbying right now for another earmark to pay for the rest of the $600,000.
TEC:
Well, I have to confess I like Patagonia designs, or at least some of them. Though they are currently beyond the reach of the Curmudgeon family budget, once I win the Powerball --- which I plan to do shortly --- I expect I'll become a regular customer.
False pretenses (Crime)
Attempt (Acts in perpetration of a crime)
Curm and Tec, a true yuppie would only be seen in something more akin to Royal Robbins, but I must admit to having some of their apparrel.
Thanks google boy, send that to Mark Shurtliff.
In the final analysis it is all about Hubris, cronyism, self dealing and a morally bankrupt cabal in control of city hall.
I can see nowhere in all of this fiasco where UTA has ever initiated anything to do with the Gondola idea. All the documents that have come to light so far indicate that they have only been reacting to the Godfreyite's efforts to get them involved.
Yet Godfrey tell one more lie, presumably with a straight face, this one that it is UTA that is wanting these "studies" done.
Like I said, it's all about Hubris.
This may come as a surprise to many of you, but, both the mayor and city council routinely keep secrets from each other. Also, the council and mayor rarely ask each other for permission to exercise their respective powers. Finally, both the mayor and council often contact outside government agencies unilaterally to persuade them to take a desired action on the City's behalf. There is a true separation of powers at Ogden City, like the U.S. President and Congress, who also rarely ask each other for permission. Finally, most development conscious cities and states offer incentives to developers who are in a position to benefit the city or state by theri development. Such actions hardly meet the defintion of criminal fraud or collusion.
This "aha!" moment that many of you seem to be having--that the mayor must be a criminal because he failed to get the council's permission before he approached the UTA to promote a development project--is silly. You may be politically opposed to it, but it is hardly criminal.
Conspiracy (crime)
Mr. fact finder, rather than argue with you statement which much of it I won't, I'll point out that it's completely based on false premise, and can only be relavent if one were to believe your original assumtion to be correct.
In other words, nice try.
With all these allegations of criminal conduct flying around, keep in mind that indictments are are only brought by prosecutors. So let's go down the list of available prosecutors.
1. Weber County. I don't think DeCaria would get involved unless there was more blatant criminal conduct that what we've seen. I'm sure DeCaria and his staff are keeping an eye on this one, however. A very peripheral eye. And one or two of them probably read this blog too.
2. State of Utah. I don't know about Shurtliff. Would they pay attention to this case because UTA is involved? I'm not sure the State sticks up for UTA that much. Isn't UTA a sort of quasi-private entity? I would think if UTA were defrauded, they would file suit in a civil court. But UTA hasn't really been defrauded in this instance. Am I missing something on this one?
3. Federal Attorney. I think this is where the investigation and future indictments are most likely to come from, if allegations of criminal conduct prove founded. Federal transportation money was involved, and I think the Feds are still investigating "misunderstandings" involving Business Depot Ogden (BDO). So they already have eyes on the Ogden City Administration.
I wonder if someone has any connections with any of the above agencies and enlighten us as to any ongoing investigations? I'd call myself, but I must remain incognito, which is as lame for me as it is for you.
oz: You're right; UTA has never initiated anything to do with the gondola. And in fact, I've never seen anything from UTA that says they require "final" engineering work.
The mayor's reference is probably to this letter, which states that UTA would have to see a "risk analysis" and "financial plan" before it could consider the mayor's $8 million request for the gondola. The financial plan would require enough engineering work to arrive at an accurate cost estimate. How close that is to "final", I'm not sure.
Of course, the mayor says he has since withdrawn that particular request, but presumably if the gondola were built there would have to be some degree of cooperation with UTA over passes and transfers and operating expenses, so it's still probably correct to say that UTA is asking the city to provide the financial and risk information before it can enter into any agreement. The letter, of course, also suggests that the $247,500 federal earmark could be traded for UTA money that could help fund studies to obtain the financial and risk information.
I thought Godfrey's quote yesterday was that when he signed the competition waiver he didn't remember what was going on at the time. Today he claims he knew all about this scheme and was trying to save the taxpayers' money by channeling money directly to his crony. He doesn't remember, or he does. Which is it?
My favorite quote was UTA saying from now on they will do the hiring of vendors and will not let Ogden City do it anymore. It appears they no longer trust the "most honest man in the room."
One wonders how many voters still trust him. What do you say, Curt? (Oh, I forgot, the tiny men in bowl haircuts have silenced Curt and Bobby, while they consider yanking them out of town altogether.)
Kudos to Schwebke, the SE, and especially, Dan S. for digging in this very rich soil. I suspect there is so much more still to be found.
FactFinder:
Agreed... but with a caveat. Much of the secrecy and disembling the Mayor appears to have engaged in has largely hurt, seems to me, him and his administration and their ability to govern effectively. For example, refusing to tell the Council-as-RDA-Board who the-Mayor-as-RDA-head wanted to sell the "Bootjack" property to. Much of the secrecy and dissembling seems to have ended up with the Administration shooting itself in the foot. I don't see any way the recent revelations in the SE about "retroactive" waivers of the city bid laws and about efforts to disguise the Administration's role in commissioning and arranging payment for the financial analysis of the Peterson Proposal, and about its attempt to have UTA violate its own procedures to keep the Council from learning what it was up to, helped the Administration. Quite the opposite, seems to me.
So, while I agree that so far nothing criminal has been revealed, I think a great deal that was ethically doubtful [to be polite about it] and downright tactically dumb has been uncovered.
Have to admit, though, I'm continually astonished at the willingness, even eagerness, of folks in these parts to charge public officials and others with criminal conduct on the basis of, at best, extremely thin evidence. Never quite seen the like of it elsewhere.
Curm:
I agree that much of the mayor's actions have been successfully capitalized upon by his political opponents, whether fairly or unfairly. I'm not here to argue politics. I was just offering a reality check on the irresponsible allegations of criminal conduct, and in this we seem to agree.
Fact Finder: I agree with Curm, and I would go on to say that there's a very wide gray area between "legal" and "criminal". To give just one example: The federal earmark was for Ogden, and the City Council is supposed to control Ogden's budget. But the administration tried (and partly succeeded) to take control of this money without council involvement. Nobody's going to go to prison for that, but it was hardly consistent with the law.
I would also point out that the separation between the branches of government at the local level isn't nearly as complete as at the federal level. For example, local justice court judges can, I believe, be fired by the mayor at any time. And relevant to the topic at hand, the Ogden City Council depends heavily on the administration to draft legislation and to provide legal advice (unlike Congress which has its own staff to do these things). So there needs to be a lot of cooperation between branches for the government to function.
I agree with Dan and Curm that these actions are not illegal. They are so extremely unethical that they make me taste metal, but that's not illegal — yet.
The retroactive sole source waiver that Mayor Godfrey signed — apparently he signs dozens such unethical memoranda each day — is the closest you can come to an illegal action; in these cases, the punishment is usually to pay the money back to the Feds, not to go to jail. Sorry, playa hatas.
I want to see Mayor Godfrey defrocked more than anything else in the world right now. Still, I think we need to do that at the ballot box on Sept 11 (and if that fails, then we'll have another crack at him Nov 6).
Once he's gone, being an FOM has no value at all and we can go back to making Ogden an even better city to live in.
Continuing with my response to Fact Finder...
Every insider I've talked to seems to agree that the Godfrey administration has been gradually taking control away from the City Council for the last 8 years, keeping more and more information from them. It's been a gradual process because it's taken time for Godfrey to fill all the high-level staff positions with his own appointees. Patterson has been a key player, and he's been in the CAO position for only two years. Patterson exerts tight control over people at the next level down, like Arrington and Montgomery, coercing them do unethical things that they wouldn't otherwise do. This is really apparent in some of the emails.
Godfrey didn't invent the game of keeping the council in the dark. I could give examples of when Mecham behaved similarly. But under Godfrey this treatment has become the rule rather than the exception.
Here's another example of something that's illegal but not criminal.
Last December I submitted a GRAMA request for, among other things, all records of communication between the city and Chris Peterson. In response, the city provided nothing that mentioned the secret gondola study.
But now, in response to my recent request, the city has provided several emails to and from Peterson concerning the study. These emails are from prior to December, so they should have been provided in response to my earlier request. If I'd gotten them then, we would have learned about the secret study five months earlier. (Ironically, this might have been better for Godfrey because the scandal might have died down before the election season.)
Was it illegal for the city to withhold those emails from me in December? Absolutely. Was it criminal? Unfortunately, no. I've consulted an attorney who's an expert on GRAMA and he informs me that there are no criminal sanctions for failure to comply with a GRAMA request. I can take them to court to force them to provide a record (after exhausting my administrative appeals), and I can even recover my attorney fees for doing so, but otherwise I can't do anything to teach them a lesson.
Fact:
You triggered [for me] an interesting conversation. I'd add only one point: you said you were not here to discuss politics. I understand your point, and what you wanted to achieve in your post, but this notion --- very widespread these days, particularly among my students [which I find really worrisome] --- that discussing an elected official's effectiveness in office is "just politics" [by which students generally mean is motivated by something other than an interest in achieving the public good] is unfortunate. And often, probably most of the time, inaccurate.
Ogden --- any city --- needs to be governed effectively to prosper. And so, for me, raising questions about a mayor's --- any mayor's --- judgment and effectiveness in office seems to me to involve a lot more than what most people mean when they say "that's just politics." Saying that a mayor --- again, any mayor --- has handled matters so badly as to seriously inhibit his continued ability to govern effectively is, for me, to raise a substantive question about city governance that goes well beyond what most people mean by "just politics. "
[Note: I'm not necessarily attributing that all-inclusive dismissive meaning of "just politics" to your post. It's just that it got me thinking about what many people, and most of my students, mean when they use that term.]
Elder Godfrey avers that "UTA wanted these studies done." That's on par with Condoleezza Rice's saying Iraq "wants us to be there."
Here's a question for everyone, but especially Curmudgeon who has lived all over: Have you ever seen such a thing as an honest mayor?
Please don't overlook the totally wrong assumtion of mr. fact finders', the lobbyist lying little matty has coerced the Council into paying ( under fale pretense) has in fact not been working for the city. These E-mails make that abundantly clear. This guy is working for peterson, this is more than a major deceit.
lying little matty is trying to hide behind UTA for directly channeling city tax revenues to peterson. How much has he paid this lobbyist?
Dan S.
I doubt you intended to mislead, but your statement that the mayor controls a justice court judge by being able to fire him at will is myth worhty of correction. Actually, a justice court judge is appointed for a fixed term. At the end of the term, the city is required to reappoint him/her for a new term unless there is good cause for removal. If the mayor claims good cause for removal, the judge has a right to a hiring in front of the city council to show lack of cause for removal. See state law 78-5-135. (I may not be an attorney, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night)
Justice court judges, contrary to common belief, actually enjoy quite a bit of independence.
Utah Code § 78-5-135
And Justice for All
One fed-up attorney argues that the whole of Utah's justice court system is out of order
Correction: 78-5-134
Utah Code §78-5-134
And just how in the hell is a Squirrel Patroling father of five -- the patriarchal Lilliputian being the sole breadwinner, making $78K a year -- affording jaunts to Gay Old Paree with suspected insurance fraud perpetrators and without his European traveling pal, benefactor and possible gay lover, Wayne? Are there many squirrels in metropolitan France? In addition to smoking, stinking and a Geigerian affection for onions, do the French really, really, really like gondolas (the circus ride kind)? Whose fault is it that I am writing about squirrel-hating, gondola-loving, Patagonia-vest-wearing freaks, whose collective intellect is at the seventh-grade level? All of ours. Oust Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey on September 11.
A vote for Godfrey is a vote for our personal savior, Blessed Chris Peterson, son-in-law of Billionaire Earl Holding.
"May Earl Holding soon slip on a bananna peel..."
Peterson and the Godfreyites say...
An improvement in Ogden... small, but welcome.
Anyone who rides the UTA bus routes along Harrison much knows that at many bus stops, trash accumulates more or less constantly. [Bottles, beer cans, juice containers, cups from Seven Eleven or Grounds, various wrappers, etc.] Ground very often littered, and the stuff blows with the wind. Looks shabby.
This morning, at a stop on Harrison, waiting on the 603, two guys in safety orange vests and a utility truck with trailer pulled up. Began offloading a heavy [my guess north of 200 pounds] concrete trash container for the stop. I asked if they were City or UTA. UTA they said.
So, kudoes to UTA. A small thing, but it should cut the roadside trash on Harrison some. And I don't mind policing a bus stop or two while waiting for a bus so long as there's a trash can there to put the stuff in.
Monumental press-conference worthy improvement? Of course not. But a nice one, none the less. Sometimes, little things matter. Good work, UTA.
jason w.-
That was awesome! You just alleged that Matt Godfrey and Wayne (Chris?) Peterson are gay lovers and they went to Paris together. That would be so salacious if it were true. Think about that, it would rock the print all up and down the Wasatch!
And could someone please tell me if Wayne and Chris (Peterson) are the same person?
Well, Native, you may think that kind of salacious and wholly unsupported allegation is worthwhile comment on public policy and government. I don't.
Native,
Regarding the allegations that the mayor shows an unnatural interest in Chris Peterson – Curm is right. This kind of sad, unsupported allegation has no proper place in political dialog.
Unfortunately however, it has already surfaced previously, in a leading journal of American political thought.
The link is here.
As you read it, note that even our good president has not escaped scrutiny, with private, personal pictures from his ranch flagrantly cited.
Weber's Property Valuation and Tax Changes notices have been mailed out. At first blush I'm pleased to see 2007's tax even without any budget change is slightly less than in '06. But if the "proposed" budget is adopted, it will be markedly less than in '06.
But there's a time and season to everything. Is this some kind of election year ploy?
Schnozzboy:
On my bill, most of the taxes seem to have gone up incrementally, except for the school tax, the anticipated decline of which seems to account for the bulk of the decline in the overall tax bill if the new budget is adopted. My overall bill will still go up, but only by about a third of the amount it will go up if the new budget is not adopted. I have no idea what's behind the particular taxes item by item.
No, Native, I "alluded" to the remote possibility that Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey and Wayne may have been "really close" and "affectionate" when they went to Europe 18 months ago to study silly gondolas and eradicate squirrel nut caches in Austria. I am still curious who paid for Little Matty's trip to Gay Old Paree, since the Leshem family referenced his getaway in one of the recently revealed emails, re: UTA. And of course Good Old (?) Curmudgeon doesn't think such childishness has any place, anywhere, any time. Because he is a god. A god, I say!
Talking about Gadi Leshem, the e-mail that jason w alluded to, the very last one listed amoung the grama requests, sure made it sound like the mayor is just about to give Gadi a sweet heart deal involving the development of the UTA train depot and surrounding property.
The city council should look into this especially since Gadi is also the man buying up (with what appears to be the help of the city development department) all of the land that is slated to be the river project.
Godfrey has two buddies, Peterson and (facing criminal charges)Gadi. So far neither of these guys seem to be the types of people that I would want to see having a major influence on our city.
I'll personally vouch for them. Chris, Gadi and Matthew are not crooks.
Paris Hilton, Bugsy Segaland Kingfish wannabes, Vest, accused fraud and lying little matty gondola peccary gogfrey, do nothin, hope they see nothing and frankly I don't give a damn.
A PECCARY IS A SMALL PIG, WITH A WHITE COLLAR.
pick better friends:
When I read that email from the Leshems to the mayor, I thought the same thing: that it was talking about the property around the intermodal hub. But to check, I called Art Bowen of UTA (whose phone number was right there on the email) and asked him. Turns out that they were actually talking about a portion of UTA's property farther north, along the river. Bowen also told me that UTA has informed the mayor they are not interested in selling or leasing any of their property, to the Leshems or anyone else.
Note to lying little matty gondola godfrey, I am not sure the big pigs in D.C. would welcome or tolerate such a small peccary, despite your lovely white collar, feeding at their trough. Notice how they teased you by allowing you to think you gained something, just to take it back thru some good old fashion D.C. red tape.
Damn those Federal Regulations and damn those UTA guys insisting things be proper. Don't they know lying little matty does what ever he pleases. The nerve of those guys.
Hey Tec, CALL ANY VEGETABLE CALL IT BY NAME..............THE VEGETABLE WILL RESPOND TO YOU.
GOODNITE BOYS AND GIRLS.
Jason W:
You wrote: I am still curious who paid for Little Matty's trip to Gay Old Paree, since the Leshem family referenced his getaway in one of the recently revealed emails, re: UTA. And of course Good Old (?) Curmudgeon doesn't think such childishness has any place, anywhere, any time.
Asking whether an elected official made a trip to Europe on the public's nickel and whether it wa appropriate that he did so is not in any way a childish question and is always an appropriate question to ask about traveling officials... whether they're Utah Republican legislative leaders bound for a week of being wined and dined in the People's Republic of China, or the Mayor of Ogden city bound for Europe to look at gondola systems.
In the Mayor's case, though, to put the question fairly, you'd have to be willing to accept the possibility that the trip may have been entirely on his own nickel, or that if it was funded in whole or part by the taxpayers, that it may have been a legitimate expenditure.
yea, like the mayor of Ogden has some important city business that he has to go to Paris for!
Jeeze Curm, you really push this fairness envelope sometimes.
If he went to Paris on his own dime, then fair enough, just too bad such a beautiful city would be defiled by such a guy as Godfrey.
If he went on the tax payer's dime, or on Gadi's credit card, then that would certainly raise some eye brows, don't you think?
O.K. I can't resist. Curm, now that you've brought the discussion to the Paris trip, and keeping with Natives desire for relavance, here's something to chew on.
lying little matty goes to Paris under the guise of the secret UTA gondola study. It's a well known fact that Parisians have the worlds largest most efficient lightning rod, the big tower. It is also well documented that they hate urban gondolas because they would compete for HIGH VOLTAGE.(not to be confused with high Adventure) Now here's the genious in lying little mattys' scheme.
Some neighborhoods in this French city have no underground sewer, they're remote and very unaccessable, providing proper infrastructure is cost prohibitive,if not impossible.
As a viable alternative the French employ illegal Moroccan immigrants to physically carry the dried excrement from the process facility,(like the one chris peterson said he'd put in Malans Basin) up to 3 miles, to a suitable dummping area.
lying little matty went to Paris to conduct a transportation study, the transportation of excrement, that will conclude that an urban/mountain gondola is a much more cost effective means of transporting dried excrement when compared to the use of ILLEGAL MOROCCAN IMMIGRANTS.
This is one of the engineering studies that lying little matty insists UTA is requiring. And since peterson didn't go this trip, lying little matty feels he shouldn't have to pay for it.
My hell, Mr. Curmudgeon, I didn't make the insinuation, jason w. did. I just repeated it. And yes, I repeated it for effect, and it obviously rippled with you.
Look, I was being facetious, as the word "awesome" often predicates such facetiousness. Geez.
Oh wait, were you being facetious too? Ahhh... ya got me!
Crum:
I admire you, but you’re dead wrong.
The S E didn’t get the story right. It’s soft on Godfrey, because of all the tax breaks and government handouts that have been given to the S E over the years. Why don’t you investigate that?
Stop defending Godfrey! Godfrey tried embezzling tax money to give to Peterson. You can’t take money from the poor and give it to the rich; because you’re trying to “save the taxpayers money.”
Crum stop giving into this legalized corruption. It’s “legalized embezzlement, secret combinations.” It’s legal until someone points it out. And you’re defending Godfrey by saying, that it is legal, but unethical.
You’re dead wrong. It’s legal until someone prosecutes him. Where the hell is Utah’s Attorney General? Where the hell is Weber County’s Attorney?
I guess their hanging out with the S E!
I was dealing drugs to save taxpayers money!
Shocks the conscience
That's right, folks: According to our mayor, the way for UTA to save money is to give the money to Peterson.
When I hear that this is legal, it sends chills through my spine. The reason this is legal is the same reason, driving under the influence of alcohol was legal, until a couple of decades ago. It wasn’t until outspoken citizens raised the level of awareness. Then politicians wrote laws to say this shocks the conscience. Then Law Enforcement stepped in.
The time is now to stop Godfrey and all politicians from any political party to use taxpayer’s money to give to their so-called (vendors, consultants, or lobbyist).
This should shock everybody’s conscience!
just a cop:
Excellent point. When we see behavior we consider unethical and then learn that it's probably legal, or at least, that there's no punishment for doing it, we should seriously consider changing the law.
I'd very much like to see a law making it criminal for a government official to intentionally fail to comply with a GRAMA request. (Note: Complying with the request doesn't always mean providing the record, since there are valid reasons to protect some records. But even then, the existence of the protected record must be disclosed. It should be criminal to attempt to completely conceal the existence of a record, or to try to protect it for fabricated reasons.)
Some might object that it would be extremely hard to prove intent in these cases; the accused could always claim that the omission was a mere oversight. But once in a while this excuse wouldn't hold up in court, and the very threat of criminal sanctions should be enough to seriously cut down on the number of times officials fail to comply with the law. (In the example that I described above (at 11:55 am), I certainly can't prove intent. But it would be fun to put some people on the witness stand!)
The retroactive waiver of competitive bidding could be another example. I don't know whether this was legal or not, but if it was, then the law needs to be fixed.
License:
I don't see how any reasonable reader could think the SE's recent story about the Mayor's trying to [secretly] arrange for UTA to pay off Mr. Peterson's prep costs for the now [the Mayor says] abandoned Peterson Proposal constitutes being "soft on Godfrey." Nor do I see how, in that story, the SE "got it wrong."
You wrote: "Stop defending Godfrey! " Hard put to see how what I've been posting on WCF for a considerable time now adds up to "defending Godfrey." I can assure you the Mayor's supporters don't think I have been doing that.
You wrote: "Godfrey tried embezzling tax money to give to Peterson." Embezzling is a crime, defined by statute. Sorry, but I don't think the Mayor's attempts to convince UTA to devote federal grant money to reimburse Peterson comes within shouting distance of embezzlement. Unwise, not in the public interest, not permitted by UTAs own procedures and regulations, sure. But embezzlement? I don't think so.
You wrote: "Crum stop giving into this legalized corruption. It’s “legalized embezzlement, secret combinations.” It’s legal until someone points it out. And you’re defending Godfrey by saying, that it is legal, but unethical."
See above. You may think it should be illegal, his trying to convince UTA to spend the federal grant money to reimburse Peterson. But wishin' doesn't make it so. And saying what plainly seems to be the case... that, based on what we know so far, the Mayor was not engaged in criminal conduct --- doesn't seem to me to add up to "defending him." [Note that even you called it "legalized" corruption --- which suggests rather strongly that you know it's not illegal.]
I'm consistently critical of the Mayor and how he has conducted himself in office. But for those criticisms to be credible, I think I also have to disagree when I think he's being criticized unfairly or accused of committing crimes for which he has not been charged... accusations based largely it seems to me on the chargers believing what he did should be a crime. Hell, I think voting Republican is a "crime". But they can't put people in jail for it.
And, to be fair and to make my critique of the Mayor's conduct in office credible, I also am required to congratulate him when he does something right, something that benefits [in my view] Ogden City.
But again, I don't think any reasonable person can have read my postings on the Godfrey Administration over the past couple of years here, and conclude that I am a supporter of his administration, or that I am one of his "defenders."
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, License.
Now, now, Native, I did not make any "insinuation." It's obvious from my tone and context that raising the mere possibility that Wayne and Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey may have consummated a really "special" relationship while in Europe on the taxpayers' and gondola-makers' dime together was done in jest, just as your response to my silliness was sarcastic. I tend to think maybe you were trying to bait me, and that perhaps you are a covert member of Wayne Peterson's famed Squirrel Patrol, who will unfurl a shocking tapestry of vindictive and childish Internet-based accusations against our bold, gondola-freak, teeny mayor, who stands (for lack of a better phrase) strongly in the face of such scurrilous nonsense, and who was going to save us all with a silly gondola to nowhere, a fairy-tale castle serviced by gondola cars with attached shit orbs, until he found out he'd been duped by your own Squirrel Patrol. Of course, this may not even be me; anyone can master my schtick in two minutes: Type something about Matty being small, then write "possible gay lover," then talk about the Squirrel Patrol, then puke up some blather about how dumb gondolas and the freaks who love them are, add THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE and you're done! Maybe you're a local lawyer and real estate entrepreneur, or perhaps you're an editorial employee of the Stand-Ex (which is my best guess; don't let Squirrel Patroler Carter find out!), or maybe you're simply a stick in the mud, ala Curmudgeon. Whatever the case may be, it's certainly more entertaining than reading an italics-laden screed on the difference between illegalities, and unethical behavior, composed entirely in the passive voice and ridden with double negatives (It's not not illegal). THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE.
Curmudgeon
In a perfect world it would be a jailing offence to vote Republican.
Alas, we live in an imperfect world and the bastards are even ruining that with their greed and arrogance.
fact finder:
Thanks for the information about justice court judges. Obviously I was wrong to say that the mayor can simply fire them. However, I've heard anecdotally that mayors still have a great deal of control over justice courts. This information comes from another city in Utah (not Ogden). I'll have to check my source before I can comment on the specifics.
fact finder:
Ok, I checked with my source, who assures me that while a mayor cannot technically fire a justice court judge, the mayor has the power to make the judge's life miserable. This is because the mayor controls the judge's salary, staff, and other resources. (The City Council also plays a role in setting the budget, but it can't force the mayor to actually spend the money allocated.) So in practice, it turns out that justice court judges pretty much serve at the mayor's pleasure.
Post a Comment