Just as
It's evidently driving the mayor nuts that Emerald City's Crown Jewel Park is running negative revenue, and by gum, Godfrey intends to do something about that -- right now. Whereas he'd earlier vowed to schedule a public meeting "within the next few weeks," he's now put the matter on the front burner, with a town meeting set for Wednesday, March 19, 2008. After many years of purported losses, we're wondering "what's the sudden rush?"
Mr. Schwebke also reports the "unveiling" of four possible options for the golf course:
1) Put the matter on the ballot and let the public decide whether to continue subsidising the course through a blanket tax increase,Today's story also reports the calendering of a work session with the city council on March 18.
2) Ask the public to approve $6 million in bonding to redesign the course to make it more "playable."
3) Forget the whole thing and let it go back to "seed."
4) Impose a punitive Special Assessment District on the naysayer Mt. Ogden neighbors whose collective political action forced Boss Godfrey on the eve of the last election to abandon his scheme to sell the park to his crony Chris Peterson.
As to the council work session, now that Godfrey is dropping the issue in the council's lap, it would seem to be the ideal time for council leadership to demonstrate true leadership, and to set the tone for Mayor-Council relations for the next two years. We believe that the council should take the initiative on this issue, demand a full accounting of golf course income and expenses from the time of the course's original opening in 1984, including scrutiny of the amortization of the "loan" which golf course management ought to have been paying down over the past 24 years. This is something that should be done prior to considering any of the "options" now being put on the table by Mr. Godfrey.
All of the above option scenarios, all of which are quite drastic, depend upon Godfrey's assertion that the golf course is losing money at the rate he says it is. Although we'd like to be able to take Godfrey's word for it, past history demonstrates that we can't.
We hope every interested Emerald City citizen will attend Wednesday's town hall event, and press the administration and council for a full accounting. Likewise we call upon the council to order a full accounting, preferably from an independent auditor. Addressing any of Godfrey's proposed options would be "premature" at best, we believe, until we have numbers "on the table" upon which we can rely with confidence.
This, by the way, is the same approach that has been urged as a constant, here at Weber County Forum: Obtain and study the facts first -- then undertake action, if necessary.
The floor is open for reader comments.
