Okay -- Emerald City is Only $93 Million in Debt

The bright side... We have the Salomon Center

We'll launch our Friday morning weekend kick-off thread with two Godfreyite letters appearing on today's Standard-Examiner editorials page. As to these letters, Boss Godfrey's preposterous "Debt is not Debt" meme is today's major Std-Ex theme of the day. What's common to both these letters is that the authors are hell-bent to rebut any assertion that Ogden City is burdened with $100 million in debt.

Timm (sic) Thorn's letter, a reply to earlier letters from Tom Owens and Dorothy Littrell, accuses these authors of disseminating false information and distorted facts; and yet Mr. Thorn's letter suffers heavily from exactly the same shortcomings. The author even gets into a little mind-reading along the way:

"...both of whom have revealed their motives in attacking the mayor... Neither of these individuals lives in Ogden...both these individuals know the truth about these matters but have chosen to distort facts... we find a series of letters filled with distortions because of their personal hatred..."

You get the drift. We especially loved the mind-reading aspects. This kid not only knows what Tom and Dorothy say, he intuits their very motivations and secret thoughts. The kid is obviously the second coming of Kreskin. We're assuming this guy is a kid, BTW; no adult could possibly write something so lame.

Contrary to Mr. Thorn's assertions, BTW, and just to set the true facts straight, we'd like to inform Mr. Thorn that Ms. Littrell is both an Ogden City property owner and a resident of our city, as anyone who's been paying attention over the last several years knows. And Mr. Owens is of course also a tax-paying property owner in Ogden (and a native Ogden "home-boy") too, which we think gives Mr. Owens adequate standing to complain about our bumbling excuse for a mayor any danged time he wants.

And then there's Mark Johnson's letter, a rambling and incoherent quasi-explanation of RDA bonding and tax increment financing, which can be summed up in four words buried midway through Mr. Johnson's text: "It is not city debt."

Well we have news for Mr. Johnson this morning; in which we invite him to examine Ogden city's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Scrolling down to page 120 we find this entry: Total Outstanding Government (City) Debt - $93,029,566.

Okay... Tim and Mark were partly right. We'll give them due credit for that. Our city's outstanding debt was only a hair over $93 million (as of June 2006,) and not the $100 million that some have suggested.

We'll also highlight this morning's Dan Schroeder letter, in which Dan persistently asks Boss Godfrey which particular foothill areas Godfrey considers "open" for gondola and residential construction.

For the full version of Dan's letter, complete with footnotes, be sure to check out this Ogden Sierra Club link.

And as an added bonus this morning we provide a link to our archive site sound files, where our readers can hear with their very own ears the quite petulant and snarky Boss Godfrey calling the WSU decision process "a farce."

And for those who haven't already heard about it, Ernest Health is coming to town.

That's all folks.

Let's hear it from our always-gentle readers.

Update 9/7/07 3:50 p.m. MT: Dan S. has graciously sent us a report on last night's city council work session, during which the council's main agenda was a discussion of the Mt. Ogden Community Plan. We've uploaded this document to an archive page, which can be viewed here.