Report on City Council Work Session, Tuesday, 18 March 08
By Curmudgeon
[Prelude]: During the public comments time at the Council meeting that preceded the work session, Mr. Bill C., speaking on behalf of the Mt. Ogden Golf Course Mens' Association, told the Council that the hastily called public meeting for Wednesday night had not given his group enough time to prepare statements and alternative plans for the golf course. He and his group did not understand the perceived “urgency” [as Mayor Godfrey put it] of the situation. He told the Council that the Mt. Ogden Golf Course Men’s Association was preparing alternatives to the four outlined by the Mayor, alternatives that would not leave winners and losers in their wake, but would make everyone involved with the golf course a winner. He urged the Council not to rush to judgment but to wait for the Men’s Association to complete its recommendations, which he said would be done within a week. He said he did not intend to challenge the Mayor’s figures regarding the golf course’s income and costs — “They are what they are” he said. But the Association would be talking about how original mistakes that were made in funding the course, about the origins of the current debt, as well as how to deal with it. He insisted the recommendations the Association would make would “not divide” the community but would unite it.
The Work Session convened following the close of the Council Meeting. Mayor Godfrey began by congratulating the management of Mt. Ogden Golf Course [MOGC] for all they had done over the previous four years to turn things around, to increase the number of rounds played so that the course at least broke even. But, he said, it hadn’t worked, and the course was still losing in the area of a quarter of a million dollars a year. Rounds played would have to increase by about 30K a year over what they were not before that would change, he said. [...]
Read Curmudgeon's full article here.
Comments are invited, as always.
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16 comments:
Curm, thanks for taking the time to attend last nights' meeting and giving us slackers a good report.
You're welcome, Birdie.
There are also write ups on the work session in this morning's SE [by Scott Schwebke, link here]
and in the SL Trib [by Kristin Moulton, link here. ]
Setting up a citizen's committee is the right approach, and the single outcome I both hoped and believed the council would take. If Bill C. is involved at least we can have accurate info. Bill, be forthright.
I hasten to point out that out of Godfrey's four choices, one is for bonding, to spend even more money on his developer cronies, i.e. campaign cash cows of the ilk of Orluff Opheikens, Steve Kier, and Dave Wadman, who to date have proven that nothing they ever do with public money ever breaks even. Great idea, mayor.
Two more of Godfrey's ideas are tax increases that would raise exactly the amount of money ($2.4 million) he needs to build Jeff Lowe's tombstone monument to himself, aka "ice wall", which will be as about as popular as Jeff's otherwise conventional gravesite. Having failed to raise a nickel of public money for this white elephant, we now all of a sudden need a tax increase for "the golf course" of exactly the same amount.
Coincidence? I don't think so. If Jeff's life needs to be remembered, I'll kick in fifty bucks toward his headstone. But don't pick my pocket then tell me it's for the golf course.
This is government SOP: say you need money for something popular (golf course) when you really need money for something unpopular (monument).
Yet, it is perhaps my hopeless and continual naiveté that makes me believe the mayor is perhaps looking for input and wanting to address an issue by involving the public for a change. If so, mayor we appreciate it.
Folks, I hate meetings, but if you need any help on this golf course thing give me a call. Either way, be strong.
The mayor is reported to have said:
"Writing off the loans, issuing new bonds, or continuing funneling tax money to MOGC was something “taxpayers need to sign up for.” This in reference to a million or so bucks of alleged debt the city owes itself.
Great idea, however it makes me wonder why he didn't afford the tax payers of Ogden the same right when it came to him squandering $20 million on his high tech penny arcade, or the many thousands he secretly spent pursuing the idiotic Gondola/Peterson welfare project, or any other number of goof ball deals he and his million dollar loser dream team have cooked up over the last few years.
Talk about talking out of both sides of his lyin mouth!
Another telling statement of the liar was the one about "RDA debt did not, in short, represent "real money"" That one about made me gag, and just proved what some of us here have stated all along - he considers this very real RDA debt as monopoly money. When these outrageous RDA TIF bonds start getting paid out of "real taxpayer money", like the income from BDO, after the penney arcade goes bust, what lie is he going to tell us then? Are those bond holders going to accept Monopoly money in payment?
Any thing he says is highly suspect, and everything he does has a secret agenda attached. Nothing changes with this disingenuous punk but the date on the calender.
From Curmudgeon's much-appreciated report:
"He said the redesign necessary to make the course popular and financially successful would cost an estimated $6 million, that number coming from course design professionals who had made recommendations to the city.... Mayor Godfrey said some of the best golf course designers in the nation had looked at the course “pro bono” and all of them made the same suggestions regarding making it financially successful: it had to be made easier, fairways widened, layout changed. And all said the club house should be moved to a site easier for the public to access."
It would be very interesting to see documentation of these hearsay statements about professionals' opinions.
Last July I submitted a GRAMA request asking for all records of communication between the city and professional golf course designers. After a lengthy delay, I received a response in mid-September. Only one such record was provided: an unsolicited letter from a golf course designer, merely offering his services. The city claimed repeatedly that no other records responsive to this request existed.
This leaves us with three possibilities:
(1) The golf course professionals referred to by the mayor provided their opinions entirely by word of mouth, and no written record of their advice was kept; or
(2) These golf course professionals were all consulted since the middle of last September; or
(3) The city illegally withheld records that it should have provided in response to my GRAMA request.
Perhaps we'll learn tonight which of these explanations is the correct one.
Like Oz said Dan, the little dude is a liar. Most everyone that knows about him knows that.
What depresses me (and perhaps others as well) is that people know he's lying, but for whatever reason, they don't seem to care.
Did anyone see the sign up on Darling and Taylor. I think that it is sending Godfrey a message, that he should advertise the Golf Course as a high adventure course with some Christmas lights around it and people from all over the world will play there.
Yea, just like down town. That would be so neat and cool and sexy.
If he puts too many lights up at the golf course, it will look like the whore house that he built called the high adventure recreation center.
Per Godfrey "That RDA debt did not, in short, represent “real money.” Give me a break, he borrowed that money from the city general fund and that's what he doesn't want to pay back. It is real money.
If Godfrey is so worried about money, can he explain why we pay $200,000 in interest per month for the Rec center while only collecting $55,000 per month in rent? In less than two months the Rec center loses more money than the golf course does in an entire year. Seems to me his focus is on the wrong hole in the bucket.
Public input, my butt, no public presentation and no oral public comments. The presentation was simply 5 poster boards (oh and the gieger twins promoting the gondola and housing development potential surrounding the new design again)and if you wanted to comment, you had to write those comments down on a piece of paper because Godfrey didn't want to listen to the mass of people opposed to his 4 options, (no telling which suggestions would be actually made available to the public or the over riding feeling of the public, i.e. another hide the true feeling of the public from the public agenda).
We need a public steering committee formed to come up with a recommendation to the city. A committee that lets the city know what the residents want.
Wow Curm, do I detect a little hostility? Most rightfully so. The Geigers are involved? Here comes the Gondola, and more housing on our public lands. Holey Shit.
Is it time to get out the tar and feathers, pitch forks and torches? It's business as usual in the land of Godfrey and Allen and Geiger.
If you want wider fairways at Mt Ogden, cut down the trees and make the fairways wider. Hell, light a fire and they'll burn down, with the air quality who would know the difference. That doens't cost 6 Million. They have already done that on a few holes. The fairways at Schneiter's Riverside in Riverdale aren't any wider than they are at Mt. Ogden, but Mr. Schneiter has players coming out his ears. True there are a couple of holes that have much wider fairways, but overall they are about the same. He doesn't have a massive club house either, but they book tons of tournaments. There has to be alot to say about marketing and promotions. Go take a look at the golf course up Parley's Canyon called Mountain Dell, also owned by a municipality. Their fairways are wider, but they also have a lot of play.
I would be careful in listening to what Mr. Brenkman is saying, especially when his boss, Mayor Godfrey is around. Godfrey's argument that comparing figures from prior to the last four years to now is comparing apples to oranges is BS. Back in the day, part of a golf course pro's pay was the concessions such as revenues from cart rentals, and the snack bar. The former pro of Mt. Ogden, Steve Wathen was compensated that way. I want to see the revenue number from when he was the pro because he was taking part of, if not all of the revenues generated by golf cart rentals and the snack bar as part of his compensation. That would mean that that revenue was not being sent on to Ogden City. So if revenues were higher back then, then there is a different problem. Ken Pettingill, the head pro at Valley View is compensated in this same way.
Godfrey also claims that money was borrowed from other city entities for the golf course and forgiving that would cause delay in projects for the sewer. Well, didn't he do the same thing when he needed more money for the junction's parking lot? It's ok to do it for his projects, but we can't do it for others. What a crop of crap.
To say that RDA debt is a hope that it will be paid back and that it isn't real money is a great example of how he works. Let's put all this money out on the hope that it will be paid back, but we don't really expect it to be paid back. That RDA money that was used to build the junction, I'm pretty sure that some contractor took a real check to the bank and turned it into real money. I'm not aware of many companies that will do work for money that isn't real.
Again, this is just another ploy by Godfrey to give the golf course to one of his cronies.
Hell, if I had the money I'd buy the course and run it. I couldn't do much worse than Godfrey.
If the Geigers were there promoting the highest cost, most bulldozing option, then it would appear this is the mayor's actual preferred option.
How come the Geigers got to speak, and present, and nobody else did?
Once again it falls to the council to implement a true public process.
Mayor, it is for reasons such as these that we are tempted to feel, time and again, that you are a fraud. Mayor, what would you think in our position?
If so, how do Presidents Richards, Schade, and Scott justify your temple recommend? Last I heard, you're supposed to be honest to get one.
You knew it:
Be obliged if you pointed out what you think was hostile in the Work Session report. The only substantive aside I made during it was to point out that Mayor Godfrey, when he said he'd tried to sell the course to a private operator who promised to keep it open to the public but that he failed to generate public support for that, he somehow failed to mention that part of that plan involved building hundreds of upscale vacation villas in a limited-access gated community on the course. As I recall, that element of his plan generated as much if not more opposition than merely sale of the course to a private operator.
I could have added, but didn't, that we now have had from the Mayor three different stories as to why he dropped the idea of selling the golf course to Mr. Peterson for real estate development: (a) during the campaign, the Mayor said he was taking the golf course sale "off the table" because he realized the land involved was too steep to successfully develop as a residential housing project (b) last week, the Mayor said he took the golf course sale off the table to preserve hiking trails in the area (c) and now, he says he dropped the plan because he failed to generate public support for it.
Part of the Mayor's problem, seems to me, is that his stories morph and change to suit his needs at any particular moment. None of that helps build confidence that Hizzonah is a plain-speaker and truth-teller. If he mastered the ability, post election, of reaching out to those who opposed him, of at least finding areas of agreement between him and them on which they could cooperate for the good of the city, he'd be a much more effective Mayor. Instead, he opted for pay-back. [E.g. the purging of the Trails committee for example.]
We have had a recent example of another elected executive who squeaked through a re-election campaign by the skin of his teeth, and yet tried to treat it as a broad mandate to dismantle popular programs. His name was G. Bush. And we all know how that turned out. I had hoped that Hizzonah's re-election would have prompted in him a move away from partisanship and toward building, in so far as is possible, cooperative relationships with those who opposed his election, for the good of the city. It seems, now, that that is unlikely to happen. A shame, really. Not good for Ogden City, and not good for Hizzonah either, though he seems not to understand that.
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