Interesting article in this morning's Standard-Examiner, reporting that the Ogden City Council is taking action to look into Boss Godfrey's policies and methods re zoning code enforcement. From this morning's Scott Schwebke story:
OGDEN — The city council is soliciting bids from consulting firms to conduct a management audit of Ogden’s code-enforcement operation. [...]We don't know whether the Std-Ex's recent stories about Ella Williams's brown lawn problem became the straw that broke the camel's back; but we will volunteer that we find it encouraging that our Council is now taking a serious look into the operations of Boss Godfrey's Emerald City Lawn Nazis.
The audit is being undertaken because the city council has received numerous complaints from residents about code-enforcement citations, said Councilwoman Dorrene Jeske. [...]
The management audit will focus on city zoning enforcement, housing enforcement and weed-abatement activities.
In fiscal 2007, the city conducted 15,781 zoning and nuisance inspections, according to information provided by the city council. Of those, 1,824 citations were issued because property owners failed to correct violations. Prosecuted in Ogden Justice Court were 89 cases.
The management audit will analyze code enforcement policies and operations. It will also evaluate rules and procedures, customer service, record management, financial practices and other functions.
The audit will include recommendations for improvement.
And once the Council's auditors set to work, we hope they'll take a good long look at the City's code enforcement (or lack thereof) in the area surrounding the Ogden River Project. An argument can be made, we think, that code enforcement should be suspended across the City, unless and until our city's code enforcement personnel have borne down hard upon Ogden City's most notorious FOM* zoning code scofflaw.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
*Friend of Matt
