The Standard-Examiner reports this morning that Ogden City Landmarks Commission Chair Sue "G-train" Wilkerson continues pushing the administration's effort to broadly modify the zoning ordinance pertaining to Ogden City's Historic 25th Street District. From this morning's Scott Schwebke story:
OGDEN — An Ogden Landmarks Commission member is asking the city council to reconsider its decision to reject an amendment that would have allowed exemptions to a 45-foot height restriction ordinance for Historic 25th Street buildings.The prescribed process for bringing up a council decision for reconsideration is provided by Section 16 of the Ogden City Council Rules of Procedure:
Sue Wilkerson, who has served on the Landmarks Commission for 3 1 /2 years, said Monday the council’s Sept. 23 decision should be revisited because it was based on flawed information.
16. ReconsiderationWhether any of the five prevailing council members on last Tuesday's "nay" vote (Wicks, Garcia, Gochnour, Jeske & Stevens) will succumb to Wilkerson's lobbying pressure is something, of course, that can't be predicted with absolute certainty.
A. Any Council member who has voted with the prevailing side of a question may move at the same meeting to reconsider the question at the same meeting, or at the next available Council meeting. If a question has failed by a tie vote, members who voted against the question shall be considered to be on the prevailing side. [Emphasis added]
One thing is clear however, in our view. Wilkerson and her fellow Godfreyites have missed the main issue here. Although they trot out several dilatory and peripheral issues, such as whether the council's decision to reject Boss Godfrey's proposed ordinance may have been (hypothetically) founded in some part upon flawed information, they nevertheless continue to overlook the single pivotal issue in this matter, i.e., the broad wording of the now defeated ordinance amendment, which would have stripped the council of zoning approval power, and ceded it to a pair of unelected volunteer advisory commissions.
Unless and until the Godfreyites are prepared to offer a more narrowly drafted ordinance, which would preserve the council's zoning approval authority, we believe it's unlikely that anyone within the prevailing majority of the city council will be willing to take a second look at Windsor Hotel re-zoning.
As it stands, Wilkerson and her fellow Godfreyites are "barking up the wrong tree," in other words, we think.
Before closing, we'll also link (without our own editorial comment) the latest Godfreyite anti-council smear letter, appearing in this morning's Std-Ex:
Ogden should make inner city upscale
The fun never ends in Ogden City politics.
We'll leave it to our gentle readers to enlighten the blogosphere about the true meaning of all this.
