Another humdinger of a reportorial expose' from Standard-Examiner Ace Reporter Schwebke this morning, with this front page story, reporting that Boss Godfrey is shaking down the city council for $200 thousand, to be applied to Godfrey's crackpot "Fortress of Mayoral Ego Project." We provide Mr. Schwebke's opening paragraphs below:
OGDEN — Mayor Matthew Godfrey will use $200,000 in Utah Transit Authority funds to analyze local mass transportation options only if the city council allocates an equal amount for a proposed ice climbing tower, according to a report from the council’s staff.Despite Godfrey's lame attempt to soft-pedal the situation, we believe the Std-Ex gets the essence of the story just right in the article subtitle, which blares: "Godfrey’s deal? Funds for UTA study if ice climbing tower gets money". Frankly, it actually looks a tad like extortion to us. It has that "do this or else" flavor to it, don't you think?
The voluminous report briefly mentions the funding swap as part of an overall proposal to allocate $2.9 million in fiscal 2007 carryover money and Business Depot Ogden lease revenues to finance a variety of projects.
“It appears that the mayor is willing to use the UTA federal funds for the transportation alternatives analysis but only if $200,000 is appropriated for the ice climbing tower,” says the report that will be discussed during a city council work session Tuesday night.
Godfrey said he hasn’t reviewed the report, but he downplayed its mention of trading UTA funds for ice tower money.
“I wouldn’t word it that strong,” he said.
And get this. Godfrey contends, with a completely straight face, that the city council is 100% behind the Ice Tower Boondoggle:
The mayor also said the administration and city council have agreed that a mass transit study and yearround ice tower are vital to the city.It's evident thay your blogmeister isn't the only person whose B.S. Meter jumped completely off-scale upon hearing the details of Godfrey's latest proposed "horse-trade." This morning's story also offers these wonderful observations and comments from Council Chair Amy Wicks:
“We have wanted to study transit corridors,” he said. “We also feel strongly that the ice climbing tower is important to the vision of Ogden.”
However, City Council Chairwoman Amy Wicks said the council hasn’t discussed whether to financially support the tower that would be built at the corner of 25th Street and Kiesel Avenue.We think Amy was just being nice. Loony would be a more accurate description, in our ever-humble view.
She also noted the ice tower didn’t receive Weber County RAMP tax funding earlier this year and questions whether there is enough demand for the structure.
“My concern is, do we spend public dollars on something that has limited interest?” Wicks asked. [...].
Wicks also finds it odd that Godfrey wants to use taxpayer supported UTA funds earmarked for local transportation studies as a bargaining chip to get money from the city council for the ice tower.
“It’s crazy for it (UTA funds) to be used as a negotiation tool,” she said. [Emphasis added.]
And let's not forget that this whole brouhaha is occurring in a greater context. The $200 thousand that Godfrey will be demanding for the ice tower during Tuesday night's work session is only chump-change, compared to the $2.9 million in city funds languishing unspent (and presumably drawing interest) in some Ogden City treasury account. We haven't seen the list of other items on Godfrey's Tuesday night shopping list, but for a Big Spending government bureaucrat like Godfrey, the whole idea of having an unintended reserve fund sitting idly must be driving the poor little guy even more nuts than he already is.
For newcomers to Weber County Forum we also link this interesting article collection, which traces the source of the $200 thousand-plus in UTA funds mentioned in Mr. Schwebke's most excellent morning story.
Nice work, Mr. Schwebke, by the way. Please add another Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat to your rapidly-filling hat rack.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
25 comments:
Everyone agrees that an ice tower is vital to the vision of Ogden, that being a jackassed, blighted sack o' shit littered with amusement park rides and aholes who work for "ski" brands who love, love, love, love GONDOLAs. It may be callous to launch ad hominem attacks on this jackass Jeff Lowe, but it rings true; he is no better than Wayne Peterson and his Famed Squirrel Patrol: he seeks to rob us of our funds to build something ridiculous that no one will ever use (or ride). Who on God's Green Earth will drive down to 25th on a hot August Saturday and climb a stupid-ass icecicle? Bob "Hair Regeneration" Geiger? THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE? Tom Cavendish Moore? Blake McCarthy Fowers (and what's with the Squirrel Patrol being comprised entirely of short-man's-complexed dorks)? Much like: Who will ride THE GONDOLA from Wall Avenue to 23rd and Harrison? Who will ride it from 23rd to WSU, an institution that doesn't even desire a circus ride? How many GONDOLA freaks does it take to change a lightbulb? Who is afraid of Virginia Wolf?
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
$200,000 for an ice tower. But not for Mt Ogden golf course?
Golfer:
Good point. Have to wonder why those unspent reserve funds could not be used to free the golf course of its debt [and so of its interest payments on that debt] and thus substantially reduce its break-even point. In terms of benefit to the greatest number of people, preserving the golf course beats the ice tower hands down.
Mayor Godfrey intends to hold up $200,000 UTA's John Inglish arranged for the City to use for a transit study unless the City Council agrees to pony up $200,000 for the ice tower. Quid pro quo. No ice tower money, no using the UTA quarter million for a transit study. The allegation appears in a "voluminous report" by the Council's staff, and will be discussed at a City Council work session Tuesday night.
Mayor Godfrey "downplayed" the connection between spending the UTA money and demanding 200K for the ice tower. He didn't exactly deny that he was using the UTA money to leverage money for the tower, but, he said, he wouldn't "word" the connection that strongly.
The Mayor claimed that he and the Council had already agreed that the ice tower was important for Ogden's future and should be funded. Council Chair Amy Wicks, however, denied that any such agreement had been reached.
There are two ways to interpret the Mayor's claim that he already has the Council in his pocket on the Ice Tower matter, and Councilwoman Wicks' denial that he does. One, that the Mayor is trying to build the idea that it's already a done deal [same tactic he used, with little success, on the old unlamented "Peterson Proposal."] The other possibility is that he has already lined up four votes in the private one-on-one meetings that he likes to hold with Council members out of the public eye, meetings and agreements of which Councilwoman Wicks [and the public] were and are unaware.
It is time, I think, for the Council, and perhaps Ogden's representatives in the state legislature, to have another little chat with Mr. Inglish, head of UTA, who signed the transit study deal with the Mayor about whether the Mayor's threat to hold up spending the UTA funds violates UTA's agreement with Ogden City.
Here's the question: If Godfrey is willing to not spend the UTA transit study funds UTA made available to him unless he gets his way on funding for a project wholly unconnected with transit [the ice tower], does that violate the terms of his agreement with UTA? If Mr. Inglish thinks having Mayor Godfrey not spend UTA transit study funds unless he gets his ice tower money is not a problem for UTA, I would very much like to hear him explain why he thinks that. I suspect a lot of the SE's readers would like to hear Mr. Inglish explain that too.
Welome to Bizarro World...Ogden takes it. Best damn snowboarding in the world and hardly anyone local rides...Most Beautiful city tucked close to a huge mountain and our mayor wants to dump our foothil golf course and barely a local whimper...A friggin ICE TOWER outdoors downtown with attendant refrigeration chugging away leaving a massive carbon footprint. In this day of higher energy costs, does Jeff Lowe and Green Godfrey have a clue as to the absurdity and the arrogance of such a, energy hog. SO even if a dozen climbers use it daily (doubtful) it will require 24/7 refrigeration. Has ANYONE canculated the energy cost to keep this massive dildo hard. Viagra in the form of kilowatts.
I will state clearly for the world to see...
Jeff Lowe and Matt Godfrey, you are now criminal wasters of fossil fuel energy. The world will look down at Ogden and Lowe with scorn in a few short years when we will be allocating energy resources based on priorities like SURVIVAL.
Jeff Lowe, get a clue, your legacy will be smeared by this sculpture. Your hard earned reputation destroyed by an obsession. While Matt Godfrey is simply a politician(follitician) whose legacy will be quickly forgotten...gladly. your name will be etched into this monstrosity and when it is dismantled in less than five years your name will forever be attached to this debacle and your climbing achievements long forgotten. Is that how you want to be remembered? It pains me to have to say it like this, Jeff.
Tec, Tec, Tec... you just refuse to think outside the box....
Outdoor ice climbing in Ogden in July is just the beginning. Just think of the possibilities! Next, a two story high, half a block square outdoor warm water scuba diving grotto. Just think of it! People could go scuba diving in an artificially heated outdoor warm springs grotto in Ogden in the dead of winter, and go ice climbing in Ogden in heat of summer! Now where else can you do that?
Such a naysayer, you are, Tec. Think outside the box, man...
[By the way, its been quite a while since I heard anything about Ogden's much ballyhooed when announced indoor year round wading pool water park. Anyone heard anything new? Or is that too hung up waiting for Mr. Harmer to find the 275 parking places he promised to the Gondola Towers Five Star Hotel, but then misplaced?]
In fact, it will likely never be dismantled, as the funds for dismantling will never be available. It will cost more to dismantle than to build with the rising cost of any construction activity. So, you see, Jeff, this albatross will stand idle downtown for many years...with your name prominently displayed. I pity the fool...So sad when older men have nothing to cling to than the accomplishments of their youth. When they struggle to maintain a legacy that most have forgotten. Why are men so weak that they need this kind of trophy.
It's 4:20 folks...you know what that means. If you don't, you better ask somebody. Spark one for freedom. Express your independence from the corporate pill-popping mentality. Cannabis is the god-given healer of the nations. Heal thyselves with the fragrant herb. Wake n Bake
Right now, Curm I am thinking outside the dome, the skull, la cabeza. So sad that an abstract set of laws keeps good folks like most out there from enjoying the fruits of the earth placed here by a creator or evolution for the most crucial of needs...clarity of thought. Governments know that when people are using cannabis they will take time to reflect. As long as people are busy and encumbered by credit and the costs of living they will vote for security over freedom. Little time for reflection.
Act with action, suppress reaction. Know the difference.
It is the nature of the governmental beast to reactive. Governments are incapable of thought and of acting on current parameters. They have a structure that builds in a predictable reaction to stimuli, much like a machine. Humans have the capability to respond to stimuli based on the unique circumstances in time. If you are reacting to things you give up free will to respond, so if the current conditions have changed from the conditions when the response was learned and now a reaction that reaction will likely be inappropriate for the current circumstance.
That's why politics is so shallow, as candidates must never waver from a stance on an issue, when that is exactly the character that should be discouraged in a candidate. Fresh criteria accumulates daily in a fast paced modern world. Yesterdays ideas are now old. The pace of technology assures that the equipment or project that gets planned last year, funded now, and contracted for completion in a year or two, will be obsolete.
The one thing we should be doing now is funding transit infrastructure. Unless teleportation somehow comes into reality within 20 years, people still need to get around without dependence on an automobile.
We need transit now. Ice towers???? Get real. Godfrey just can't get past making stupid proposals that he will forever own. His flaw is that once he has an idea it cannot be shaped or scuttled. He owns it and he reacts to any suggestion that it lacks practicality. He will reinvigorate his dumb ideas like the gondola and Malan's Resort even when the public briefly forgot about it and would even have forgiven his lameness. He seems now to be devoting his current term to laying elaborate groundwork for just those obsessions. His manufactured golf course crisis, requires emergency action which includes moving clubhouse to potential gondola base. Transit study traded for icetower, linked to high-adventure status, linked to gondola symbolism as ski town, ...He will hijack and stack and transit study to include an urban gondola and go so far as to include the symbolism of a gondola as critical to our image thus justifying it's legitimacy as a transit conveyance much like a antique trolley could be preserved as transit vehicle even though there are more modern and efficient alternatives.
How the hell can an ice climbing tower ever be considered in the same context as important to a city as transit. Welcome to Matt Godfrey's bizarro world.
I've never understood why we need yet another transit alternative study except that Godfrey doesn't like the 2005 conclusions (streetcar downtown and south on Harrison).
If we have a large surplus left over from fiscal 2007 why isn't it used to offset REAL needs, like water/sewer, police and firefighters' salaries, repainting non-invisible lines on the streets, repairing potholes, etc.
I thought BDO income was supposed to offset existing debts anyway, not become another part of the Mayor's Ponzi scheme for running the city.
We need the ice tower the same way we need the money-pit called the Salomon Center. Actually we need it even less. If one were to imagine the stupidest way to waste money in light of our present energy and climate situation, that would be a real winner.
And while I'm on a roll this quiet Sunday morning, let me be the first - Amy for Mayor"
I just figured out the deal on the ice tower. It's where the gondolists will store their Kool-Aide during the hot summer months.
There was a statement in the freebie mag I got Friday that I hadn't seen when I originally posted.
I went back and re-read the article, found this, and it concerned me. I didn't say anything then, because it looked like we had moved on to other things.
The sentence is this:
Jeff Lowe, the tower's creator [,] says he's designed the world's largest refrigerator..."
Now, in today's S-E, I see this:
Architectural, engineering and refrigeration designs for the tower have been completed. [Emphasis mine.]
I would ask the city council to carefully examine said "completed designs".
I know I've not been attending the "world's largest refrigerator" conferences for the last 35 years, but I'm willing to bet that neither has Jeff Lowe. Exactly what qualifies him to design a refrigerator? Let's assume the Sports Guide article is wrong about the designer. Then, who did the (ahem) feasibility studies and computer modeling necessary to show that this design will actually work? I can design the world's largest brain (not being a refrigerator expert), but I'm pretty damn sure it wouldn't work the first time I fired it up.
Perfect song for today that I just happened to be downloading when I was reading Tec's post. The Bellamy Brothers - Old Hippie.
I designed the world's largest douche ... ooops, God beat me to it and He named it Robert "Plugs" Geiger and THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE, forever onion-reeking champions of GONDOLAs and Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey. Then again, my opinion is not valid because I have never attended a crime conference in all my many years of being a gin sot.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
Ogdenlover
You wrote: I've never understood why we need yet another transit alternative study.
The "alternatives analysis" is the next, necessary step in the process of applying for federal funds for transit projects. It is not the same thing as the Wasatch Front Regional Council's study. The "alternatives analysis" is what the City Council wants the UTA money used for... the AA will cost must more, though. But without it as the next step in the process, no fed funds for the project.
Mono, I'm quite amazed that you, being such a devout follower of crime conferences and forensic investigations, missed the connection to breakthrough refrigeration technology recently discovered by Lowe, and revealed in the photo of the housing structure pictured in a previous thread.
Many were distracted by the incorporation of the word "tit", they failed to notice that on top of the proposed high adventure, high tech housing structure sits the secret to the newest advancement in high adventure refrigeration, a three sided pyramid.
Yes, dear mono, Lowe has come up with a means to harness the power of the pyramid and use that great, heretofore un-acknowleged by any at the WSU physics department, power for the creation and preservation of ice.
The story is that while attending a joint seminar hosted by Tony Robbins and Depok Chopra in Wells, Nevada, with lying little matty, potato nose and gadi, peterson not in attendance due to thorazine induced lack of cognizance, on how to get whatever your greedy heart desires and suffer no guilty remorse, Lowe slipped into another competing seminar hosted by Peter "pyramid" Potter, a world renouned metaphysical guru, who's still collecting disability checks from an industrial accident at the well known Area 51. While sipping tea after the seminar, which was prepared by setting the cups under a three sided small portable pyramid model, Peter revealed to Lowe all the unknown and yet to be discovered secrets of refrigeration technology.
Now with a pending patent, lying little matty is proclaiming that Ogden must have this giant icecicle because this is the first attempt at using this technology on an industrial scale. They formed a LLC and stand to make a windfall of cash proceeds. This will do more for Ogden, than Farnsworth's TV invention did for St. Anthony, ID.
I have a better idea than an ice tower... cheaper for the taxpayers and more fun for the tourists!
A Proven Design!
The climbing structure for the 21st Century!!!
Greased Pole Climbing!!!
Where do I sign up for my free subsidy?
Satrt e-mailing all of the members of the city council if you cannot attend Tuesday's meeting. Let them know that we are still watching where the city funds are going, since all of our water bill have gone up to pay for city services that were supposed to be covered by BDO income, not to pay debit service on the Rec Center or other private enterprises.
The Ice Tower fiasco is especially strange when you consider the pre-election "Green" programs the Mayor was touting.
A quick search of the Ogden City website for "environment" produces the following:
Ogden City Proclaims October as “Energy Awareness Month”
Ogden City Celebrates Sustainability Successes with Business Community
Ogden Blue Sky Community Challenge
Where has our environmentally-conscious leader gone? Don't bother, that was rhetorical.
Og:
I've never seen anywhere an estimate of what it will cost to operate the Ice Tower presuming it is built. Part of that estimate would have to include estimated power bills at current and anticipated rates, and anticipated revenue sources. Maybe one exists, but I don't recall reading about it. I imagine estimates would have to be included in material provided to the Council. Maybe we'll get a look at them Tuesday night.
Wicks for Mayor.
This must be why the mayor won't let a fire engine stop for food anymore, even if we are driving past the store on the way back from a call.
FYI-Kier also got the bid for the remodel of the station on Harrison, the one the engineer told them to tear down and start over.
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