We find three interesting WCF-topical articles in this morning's northern Utah newspapers.
First, we'll shine the spotlight on this Standard-Examiner piece, in which Ace Reporter Schwebke informs us that the current city council has apparently passed the transit corridor selection baton to the newly elected city council:
OGDEN — Prioritization of potential transit corridors in Ogden may occur in January after two new city council members take office, says John Patterson, the city’s chief administrative officer.The article reports that the corridor selection process remains bogged down, with eight purported corridor options proposed by Boss Godfrey in October:
Newly elected council members Caitlin Gochnour and Blain Johnson will likely want to have a say in which corridors should be addressed, Patterson said.
“It will give them a chance to get on board.”
In October, Godfrey presented the city council with a proposal detailing eight possible transit-corridor destinations that could be linked with the city’s intermodal transit hub at 23rd Street and Wall Avenue, scheduled to be served by the Front-Runner commuter rail system.The eight purported corridor options were earlier set forth in an October 18 Std-Ex article; and we subsequently had a fairly robust blog comments discussion here on WCF re this topic on the same date.
That list will likely be whittled down to three destinations to be considered by the city council and administration, Godfrey has said.
With a little under six weeks lead time, we think it's time for all of us to bone up on the facts, and to begin preparing our persuasive arguments against those "options" which are plainly bogus, and in favor of the single one that's not.
In that connection we link a Smart Growth Ogden webpage on transit options. This page also has a link to the Baker Study, which we deem to contain the only reliable and non-speculative data on the subject.
We'll also direct our readers' attention to this morning's Std-Ex story, in which Sam Cooper reports that the city council has recommended securing the final link-ups for our trails system. Rather than spending money paving existing trails piecemeal, the council seems committed (wisely we think) to obtaining necessary easements and rights of way first.
Finally, we note this Deseret News article, wherein reporters Joseph M. Dougherty and Amy Choate-Nielsen report on the most recently publcized legislative effort to take the anger and angst out of the ongoing Ogden Valley Property Tax Revolt. As many of our readers are aware, our Weber County neighbors to the east (and select other places in Utah) were clobbered this year with massive property tax increases, resulting in large part from the sudden "gentrification" of that formerly semi-rural area. Although residents of Emerald City have so far been spared most of the pain that comes with sudden leaps in appraised property valuations, we think we all need to keep our eyes on this story, as Boss Godfrey continues to build-out our town, in his manic pro-development fervor. We believe property tax reform will be one of the biggest stories of the 2008 legislative session, and that every property owner in Utah needs to pay careful attention to property tax reform. We'll therefore definitely be closely following this story in the months to come.
That's it for this relatively slow news Sunday, gentle readers. Your ever-brilliant comments are encouraged, as always.
