As is typical as we approach the holiday season, local red-meat news seems to have trickled to a standstill this week. Undaunted by this, your blogmeister has scoured the northern Utah media (and other places), and dredged up at least three items worthy of Emerald City topical discussion this morning:
First, we turn to this earthtimes.org press release, which we post as a reminder of Friday's (December 7) Blockbuster Event, wherein Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be in town as the featured speaker to kick off Gadi Leshem's River Restoration Celebration Day. With the assistance of the Boss Godfrey administration, Mr. Leshem has been madly scrambling since August of 2006 to snatch up every available property within the Ogden River Project Area. Although Mr. Leshem's "actual plans" admittedly remain in the "conceptual stage" (scribbled on a cocktail napkin, perhaps?) we are sure that no Weber County Forum reader worth his or her salt will want to miss this gala event, in the hope that they'll catch some glimpse of what's in store for the northern portion of our downtown area.
Within the press release we find this interesting information:
The Ogden Riverfront Development Company [ORDC] is a real estate development firm specializing in municipal planning and urban development. The company is currently involved in projects in downtown Ogden, with the emphasis on building communities around the river.Being the curious type, we did a quick Department of Commerce search on ORDC, and came up with this filing, indicating that this company was formed only in July of 2007, and thus has no apparent history of successful real estate development. Once again the question arises: Does Gadi or his real estate development company actually have any experience with large projects of this sort?
ORDC strives to create commercial and residential neighborhoods of superior quality while capitalizing on the beauty of Ogden and solidifying the city's position as a hub for outdoor recreation industries.
Next, we'll highlight this morning's Salt Lake Tribune article, in which Cathy McKitrick reports that Utah's property tax reform movement is gaining traction. For readers following this issue, we incorporate Ms. McKitrick's lead paragraphs:
Three grass-roots organizations have banded together to lean on lawmakers to overhaul the state's property-tax system.We've added live links to the aforementioned organizations where available, for those readers who'd like to follow up on this story.
"We hope to accomplish significant tax reform, not the Band-Aid proposals that we've heard," says Donald Bell of Huntsville. "The balancing act is to assess all types of properties fairly and equitably across the board."
The new statewide coalition is called Citizens Coalition for Tax Fairness.
To form it, Bell's Weber County organization, Wingmen for Property Tax Reform, recently joined forces with Davis County's CitizensForTaxFairness.org and Washington County's Fair Property Tax Committee.
Finally, we'll direct our readers attention to yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune editorial, revealing the latest plot twist in the Build Your Own Utah World Class Resort Movement. It appears from a reading of this article, that our state legislature has, inadvertently or not, carved out a giant loophole for resort developers in Utah... a loophole which stands in dire need of being plugged. We were first alerted to this story by one of our alert readers in a lower article comments section in mid-November, BTW. A Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat to the Salt Lake Tribune for helping connect the dots.
That's it from us this morning, gentle readers. We'll rely upon you to carry the discussion from here.
