This morning's Scott Schwebke article should serve as a reminder of tonight's council work session, and and tomorrow's town meeting, during which Boss Godfrey will begin his full-court press to address purported loan arrearages and revenue shortfalls related to the Mt. Ogden Golf Course. We provide here the story's opening paragraphs:
OGDEN — The city would have to spend $4.3 million over the next decade to cover anticipated revenue shortfalls and eliminate existing debt at Mount Ogden Golf Course, according to a scenario proposed by Mayor Matthew Godfrey.Although we believe that today's article probably represents a good faith effort on the part of the Standard-Examiner to provide its readership a detailed explanation of the financial condition of the Mt. Ogden Golf Course, we also believe the data in today's article and graphic table is deficient, inasmuch as it comes from the Godfrey administration alone, and not from an independent audit, of the type we called for in our article of March 13. The net result, of course, is that the Std-Ex has regurgitated Godfrey administration figures, splashed them all over the front page, with little or no attempt to verify their accuracy or reliability. Notably, Ace Reporter Schwebke mentions a negatively-amortizing "loan," relating back to the time of the original 1984 course construction, but fails to mention that no original loan documents exist to either prove the existence of any such loan, or to reveal that such loan, if it indeed exists, would have been a loan from the city to the city.
The proposed payment plan to address the facility’s lingering financial problems was one of four outlined in a memo Godfrey sent to city council members last week.
Godfrey said the $4.3 million payment plan calls for a tax increase, which would allow operations at Mount Ogden Golf Course to remain unchanged.
He will discuss the options with the city council during a work session tonight and will hold a town meeting from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday in the council chambers on the third floor of the Municipal Building, 2549 Washington Blvd.
We believe it would be foolhardy to take drastic action on the future of the golf course until independently obtained figures are available for analysis; and we urge the Emerald City lumpencitizens to attend each of these events (torches and pitchforks in hand) to urge city council restraint, until we have a true and reliable picture of the financial posture of our crown jewel championship-quality golf course.
We'll also extend an invitation to anyone who might wish to submit a report on the events occurring in tonight's council session, either by way of our comments section or via a full article.
We're on a tight schedule today; so we'll leave the microanalysis to our gentle readers. Who will be the first to comment on the several red flags and outright errors appearing in this morning's Std-Ex article?
