To kick off the new week, we'll start off by briefly highlighting several letters appearing in yesterday's Standard-Examiner. Each relates to issues fundamental to next week's 2007 municipal election:
First, Lynette Belka identifies "mistrust" as an overriding issue regarding the candidacies of Boss Godfrey, Johnson, Petersen and Eccles. As Ms. Belka aptly notes, both Peterson and Eccles are already demonstrating a troubling pattern of "duplicity" regarding their earlier endorsements of Boss Godfrey's now "defunct" Chris Peterson Landgrab proposal. Imagine people, four more years of governance under the crafty and dodgy "pod people".
Next, we'll highlight yesterday's Dirk Youngberg letter, in which the esteemed former firefighter zeros in on an issue that's cropped up twice in candidate forums during the past two weeks. Specifically, Boss Godfrey continues to argue that the civil service commission is an obstacle to the hiring of more police officers. This is of course an issue that's been previously discussed in this forum; and we've expressed our own differences of opinion regarding Godfrey's true motivations. We strongly urge our readers to check out Mr. Youngberg's letter, in which he sets forth the truth about this issue, briefly and concisely.
Today's Ace Reporter Schwebke front page story deals with another issue which has plagued Emerald City for the entirety of Boss Godfrey's administration: culinary water that has the taste and smell of a poorly maintained fish tank. Ace Reporter Schwebke reports that the city council continues its initiative to address this problem. Infrastructure problems like water and sewer are of course not "cool and sexy" like everything Boss Godfrey prefers to address, however. Thus the council pursues this project without dear leader's cooperation. And as the situation develops, and the taxpayers of Ogden start bracing themselves for the inevitable water rate increase, we hope that more than a few of the lumpencitizens will ponder the wisdom of the "visionary" Boss Godfrey, who diverted Business Depot Ogden lease revenue (which had been earlier earmarked for water and sewer repair and improvement,) to his doomed-to-failure Penny Arcade/Bowling Alley Project.
Finally we turn to this morning's Victoria Johnson story, in which this relatively new face on the Std-Ex staff delivers a remarkably robust and fact-filled examination of "Gunplay in Ogden."
Gunplay is on the upswing in Ogden, if you believe the reported statistics. Of course adminstration spokemen assure us you can't actually rely on the statistics, inasmuch as they've been "tweaked," and are admitted by Chief Greiner to be bogus. For example, if shots are fired by a gang-banger with a revolver, the report will be considered unsubstantiated, because no spent cartridges can be found. And then there's this... as Ms. Johnson reports, victims who have actually been shot... won't find their reports among the "shots fired" category:
However, a shooting where someone is hit will usually be classified by dispatch workers as an assault or something else, potentially taking the most serious shootings out of the “shots fired” pool, meaning the number is actually higher than that given by police.Hooboy. Read the article. We swear we did not make this up.
Such was the case in September, when Jesus Aparicio, 22, was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Phillips Kicks 66 at 30th Street and Washington Boulevard. The report was classified in the dispatch center as “call type not found,” instead of a “shots fired” call.
For more analysis on this latter story, be sure to read Gentle Curmudgeon's expanded comments, which we've uploaded to one of our archive pages.
You're on, gentle readers. If you need to blow out the weekend cobwebs, don't hesitate to do it here.
