This morning's Ace Reporter Schwebke story serves as a reminder of tonight's Emerald City Council work session, in which Boss Godfrey will unveil his laundry list of proposed expenditures, designed to empty Ogden City's $2.9 million dollar "carryover money"account, and fulfill Godfrey's latest "pet projects."
Among the items newly revealed in this morning's story is a $1.5 million allocation to The Junction's debt service:
Included in the proposal is a $1.5 million allocation, double the amount anticipated in the fiscal 2008 budget, to make an annual debt service payment for The Junction retail, residential and entertainment complex downtown.The foregoing will surely come as a shock for the faithful lemmings in the Godfrey camp, who actually believed Boss Godfrey's 2005 sales pitch, to the effect that The Junction would carry its own weight, and not become a burden upon the taxpayers of Emerald City.
The funds are needed because construction delays at The Junction have prevented the generation of anticipated tax increment.
Our own sources also reveal that Godfrey will be pitching a funds allocation toward a special Godfrey "slush fund," intended to lure more ski companies to our high-adventure town.
It also appears that the Godfrey administration has felt the political heat, and accordingly softened it posture on the $200 thousand proposed allocation toward the "Ice Tower" project. In spite of the evidence, administration officials now deny that they intend to hold Emerald City public transit funds hostage, under a Godfrey demand for a matching ice tower appropriation:
Mark Johnson, the city’s management services director, said Monday the administration isn’t seeking a “horse trade” through its recommendation and is merely attempting to provide a strategy to fund both the transit study and ice tower.Council Director Bill Cook is nevertheless sticking to his guns. According to this morning's story, it remains Cook's belief that the public transit and ice tower funds were tied together as a quid pro quo, under terms of the administration's original presentation.
“It’s not a political statement,” he said regarding the recommendation. “That’s not how it was meant to be presented.” [...]
"... a March 27 memo from Ogden Finance Manager John Arrington to the city council is less direct in describing the administration’s intentions.
The memo states the administration has suggested the use of $200,000 in UTA funds for the transit analysis and the reappropriation of that money as “additional city funding” for the ice tower.
We suppose we'll have to see what happens at tonight's meeting. If all goes according to plan, we'll have our own Weber County Forum reporter sitting in on tonight's work session, notebook in hand, to report whether Godfrey is willing to independently release, without conditions, the $231,250 in Federal Transit Administration funds which remain languishing in a UTA account. Hopefully we'll be able to publish a report within a reasonable time after tonight's session.
While we're on the subject, we're linking our council contact information web page here, for those readers who'd like to actively lobby city council members regarding tonight's work session agenda. We updated the page yesterday, with what we believe to be each council member's preferred email address. In that connection, we would appreciate those readers who make use of this Weber County Forum resource to alert us by email, in the event of any technical glitches.
Take it away, gentle readers.
10 comments:
There's been some discussion here about how well [or badly] the Junction/Salomon Center are doing. Some anecdotal accounts, and calls [by me] for hard numbers or verifiable evidence of how things are going.
I think we got our first bit of hard evidence this morning, in this morning's Standard Examiner story by Mr. Schwebke. It reports that the Godfrey Administration is asking the Council to approve paying [from unallocated funds] twice the anticipated amount for debt service on the Junction because "tax increment" revenues to the city are not coming in as they were expected to.
In plain English: Ogden will have to pony up double the interest payment on the construction bonds that it expected to have to pay this year, because city revenues from the project have fallen well short of expectations.
The full story is well worth reading. The Administration's explanation for why the city is going to have to pay double the amount it originally told the Council the city would have to pay is "construction delays." Which seem very likely to continue, at least until Mr. Harmer finds the 275 parking places he seems to have misplaced.
I think the tax increment means the extra property taxes they expected to be coming in from the Junction, not from Sal's Place. I suspect Sal's is about as big a black hole as they figured, but we don't know.
The tax increment delay means the projects around Sal's are not getting done as fast as they thought and so the expected property taxes are not coming in as fast either.
But this is only the beginning of the budgetary bad news. If they divert needed public money to the ice tower it will get much worse. It will be much more costly, and unused, than the iFly.
BTW, great work these days, Scott Schwebke.
What confuses me most is the blurring between Ogden City funds and RDA funds. The anticipated tax increment funds would have gone to the RDA, right? But the broader discussion here seems to be of city funds, not RDA funds. Whatever happened to Godfrey's campaign rhetoric about how the two are completely separate, and taxpayers aren't liable for RDA debt?
Corporate welfare is what this is all about and Godfrey is the bank on all of it. so get your hands out all the cronies and get in line.
Danny:
Right, questions have been raised about both the Junction project overall [this morning's story suggests things at that level are not going well], and the Salomon Center venues [which are a part of the overall Junction project]. This morning's story does not, as you note, indicate anything about how well the Solomon Center venues are doing.
Broken record time -
Wholesale gasoline plus tax is now $3.45 a gallon.
A fair retail price would be $3.62 to $3.80.
A prudent person would use the so called one time carry over money for more pressing items.
Such as replacemnt of aging equipment IE Fire Engines recommended by the audit, use to help with costs associated with the water and sewer projects, pay off the golf course debt.
There are many others besides committing to a ice tower that will have long term financial obligations.
Maybe even help Gadi out with his legal defense so he can pay those people he has options to develop their properties. Ha ha
Danny:
I'm ashamed to admit I will pay $3.50 a gallon; globally, that seems reasonable. Not only do I drive a late-model SUV to work (only 15 miles, both ways), I have a 1966 muscle car, which I only fuel with premium and for which I am willing to pay $5 a gallon and that which will blow away your kids in their hopped-up Hondas with the big-ass mufflers. 300 horses and fury of American power! Sorry, it just came out...
And I hope the Ice Tower bit the dust, but I'm pragmatic, as THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE said. Good Old (?) Curmudgeon: God bless you. Viktor: You lost; don't take it personally.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
the following explaination give by the city "the funds are needed because construction delays at The Junction have prevented the generation of anticipated tax increment." supports the old adage "dont count your chickens before the eggs have hatched".
the mayor bet on the come and lost our money.
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