One gentle reader questions the rush to judgment in re the latest Ogden City corporate giveaway
By Disgusted
I was disgusted with the Saturday Standard-Examiner editorial that supported the mayor's decision to give away the parking facility to the landowner of the building that Marketstar leases. The editorial basically reiterated the story by Scott Schwebke and provided no new or better logic for the decision.
I am now clearly concerned as to what we have inherited in the way of a newspaper editor.
And what say our gentle readers about this?
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10 comments:
If the new owners pay taxes on the building that will be a good thing. If they rushed into it as a sweatheart deal and the Perry or the convention center can't use it during the day then it will inhibit downtown use.
Lots of questions and no real answers. I hope whoever writes this exchange contract has the cities best interest rather than a giveaway for future programs that cost the taxpeyers in the end.
I am not surprised at the editorial. The Standard is not about to fail to support Godfrey's giveaways.
Don't ever forget that they traded their property in Ogden worth several hundred thousand in a tax-free exchange for their present location worth millions.
This was done on a Friday morning in Godfrey's office with little or no publicity.
Do not ever expect anything negative about Godfrey or his Administration from the Ogden Standard.
I knew this new editor would be a disappointment after having read his personal articles over the months.
Comment promoted to the front page
Who did the capitalization and punctuation in this article? Did Rudi, as moderator and editor, add it in?
I am even more disgusted and disappointed in the editorial editor than "Disgusted." I was thinking of writing a post on the Saturday editorial. I have read only a couple of editorials that were as mindless with no new concepts presented than what appeared in the news story. It appears to me that the new editorial editor, Doug Gibson, is as narrow minded, closed minded as the Mayor and his administration, and the four members of the council who voted for it without asking questions and receiving viable answers instead of the Mayor's usual put down replies. "It's a no-brainer" is not a viable answer!
Questions as to where are patrons of the conferences/conventions held at the Conference Center to park during the day should have been asked. How much harm will be done to the Conference Center's ability to book events when there is no parking available?
It seems to me that we have idiots running the city and idiots who back up all the mayor's idiotic decisions reporting and editorializing about those decisions.
The editorial simply repeats Schwebke's article with some misinformation thrown in.
The annual support the city provides is about $50,000 after parking receipts. This is an insignificant amount of money to justify a $3 million giveaway.
The editorial says the giveaway "provides room for a healthy, growing business." On the contrary, the "room" is already there, paid for by the taxpayers. Godfrey's deal simply gave the "room" to one of his big campaign contributors for FREE.
The question is, why didn't the city SELL the garage? The airheads at the paper never asked that simple, obvious, and most important question. Neither did four council members, apparently. I would like to know why.
brett
spot on! we now dont have the close proximity parking for the conference center nor the egyptian theater. any day time events will need to find less convienent parking. a real selling point to booking conventions and a real contribution to making ogden more pedestrian friendly. that parking facility was central to the amphitheather 25th street the rec center besides those mentioned above.
the city administration according to the second article on the subject sale now say they need to develop new parking facility in the downtown area. guess whos going to pay for that and ill bet it will cost alot more than 3.3 mil to build. we could have used the proceeds from the sale to finance a new parking facility if that was really their intent.
but by using reason what the city should have done was keep the parking facility on the city books and contributed so many parking stalls to the marketstar expansion at a reasonable price per stall. the asset would have still been on the city books and if the downtown area does get off the ground it would have been about the most versitile location to park.
to me the most perplexing question is how did the free transfer of the facility to the building owner who is not marketstar help convince marketstar to stay and expand in ogden. i think this is the most grievous question that needs to be answered and i dont think any of us are going to like the answer because i dont think there is a good answer.
this was a really bad call by the administration and almost criminal. the city council should be ashamed for not reviewing this transaction in more detail before they voted.
from my pov the council just gave away 3 million dollars of city assets for nothing based on the urging of the administration.
Aren't we giving away $1.5 million a year to subsidize the Junction, kiddyland, gym and bowling. This administration seems to have an unlimited budget to hire friends and family, make the taxpayers fund the mayors ideas, and yet the streets are clogged with leaves since it was too expensive for the city to clean up our streets spring and fall.
Sounds like a bad novel but it is real non-fiction. I guess I belong to the wrong ward.
Curious 1,
Only in Ogden! Incredible and only in Ogden!
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