Tantalizing headline on the Standard-Examiner front page this morning: "Junction exceeds funding," the headline says. As a convenience for those readers who across the nation who are not Std-Ex hard-copy subscribers, we provide a link to the full story, together with Scott Schwebke's pertinent paragraphs:
OGDEN — Cost overruns for The Junction, an entertainment, residential and retail complex being built downtown, are expected to total at least $774,890, according to a report from a city official.That's right, folks, it seems that administration officials have taken the easy way out in reporting today's figures, netting cost overruns to date against funding sources for the entire junction project. While we'd have preferred to have been presented with calculations comparing expenses and funding sources element by element (netting expenses and funding sources for the Salomon Center, for example), that's not what we got from this morning's Std-Ex story.
Dave Harmer, community and economic development director, will present the report during tonight’s work session with the Ogden Redevelopment Agency Board, made up of the city council.
The board has asked Harmer to provide monthly financial updates on The Junction.
The projected overuns at the development were derived by subtracting expenses from funding sources totaling about $45.5 million, according to Harmer’s report that covers activity through the end of 2007. [...]
The projected overruns at The Junction are expected to exceed funding by about 1.7 percent.
We'll also note in passing our great delight to read that our Ogden City RDA Board is now at least monitoring the Junction project, as is more particularly set forth in these encouraging paragraphs:
Harmer’s report should help the RDA board get a handle on funding and costs at The Junction, said City Councilman Jesse Garcia.Let's just say that former RDA Board Chairman Garcia is a very patient man. Our insider sources inform us, by the way, that the RDA Board has been demanding financial updates from the Godfrey administration for the past 15 months, to no avail, until now.
“We just want to see what’s going on with funding at The Junction,” he said. “I don’t anticipate any problems, but when we have a question, we would like to have an answer.”
Perhaps the RDA Board will be able to squeeze out more detail about individual project elements, item by item, at tonight's work session. And from here on out, we hope that the RDA Board will insist upon timely updated administration financials, on at least a quarterly basis, at the VERY least. Without access to this most basic ongoing financial information, the RDA Board has been flying financially blind since last summer. That's not a good position to be in, we think, for an elected board of public fiduciaries.
We have a busy calender this afternoon, so we'll resist the temptation to indulge in our usual microanalysis, and rely upon our gentle readers to provide that instead.
Please consider this an invitation to crunch the numbers that ARE provided in today's Ace Reporter Schwebke story. The floor is now open on this topic. Perhaps a few of our gentle readers can help us make some sense of all this.
That's it for now, gentle readers. Time for y'all all to let 'er rip.
