This morning's Standard-Examiner provides a brief update on Boss Godfrey latest management fetish: staunching the purported financial bleeding at Emerald City's Mt. Ogden Golf Course. Among other things, today's Ace Reporter Schwebke article provides an interim tally of suggestions heretofore submitted by various community-minded lumpencitizens. Interestingly, letting the course "go to seed" reportedly drew a plurality of the ersatz "votes."
There was however one creative solution which appears to have particularly caught our "can do" mayor's eye -- one that we agree ought to be thoroughly explored. We provide the gist from Scott Schwebke's opening 'graphs:
OGDEN — Mayor Matthew Godfrey says he will look into a recommendation that a not-for-profit organization be allowed to manage financially troubled Mount Ogden Golf Course.Leaving aside the still unresolved question, whether the MOGC would be running at a "break-even" if not recently saddled by Godfrey bean-counters with "repayment" of a debt arising from the course's original construction (a debt repayment obligation apparently NOT originally contemplated by previous Ogden City administration officials,) we agree that it might be fruitful for the Godfrey and his well-paid "suits" to aggressively explore private management options.
The recommendation was the most intriguing by far arising from a March open house to gather public suggestions to resolve the golf course’s money woes, said John Patterson, the city’s chief administrative officer.
Privatization -- the neoCON dream.
A quick Google search reveals no shortage of golf course management companies who might be solicited to bring MOGC operations to a new level of operational efficiency.
We say it's time for Boss Godfrey to get moving on this. Soliciting bids for competent golf course management would be an ideal diversionary summer project for Godfrey and his "A-Team," we think, while some of Godfrey's other projects and schemes (Larry Mylar and Gadi Leshem, anyone?) continue to flounder into the summer. And who knows? If Godfrey were to pursue the resuscitation of our MOGC with the same level of obsession demonstrated with respect to his gondola delusion over the past three years, a highly persuasive (and charming) visionary like Godfrey would surely succeed in luring a golf course manager/developer who's actually willing to bring some of his own cash to the table -- right?
Well...?
