This Morning's Std-Ex Article Fails to Consider All the Facts

A further examination of Mayor Godfrey's misplaced priorities

By George K.

Today’s Standard-Examiner article, “Council teeters over $2.2M in recreation funding” is misleading and written from Godfrey’s point of view. Both Godfrey and Schwebke seem to forget that the Council has the final say on the FY2010 budget; and I have confidence in Wicks, Gochnour, Garcia and Jeske to use their usual good common sense when the vote is taken – they’ve always voted in favor of the Ogden taxpayers.

The Godfrey quote: “’This fits the council’s strategic plan as well as that of the administration,’ he said,” is also misleading because the administration and the council have not reached a consensus on joint goals for the City. As far as the Capital Improvement Plan goes, there are a number of projects that are listed for a five-year period so that they aren’t overlooked. Godfrey has placed his “toys” list ahead of many other important projects, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the funding is there for them – it really is only a “wish” list, according to an explanation of the CIP list that I was told.

Apparently, Schwebke ignored the voting results of the Council’s ranking the first time of the Capital Improvement Plan that did not include Jeske’s vote. Even that ranking placed the velodrome, the BMX track, skate park, and the equestrian trail behind general road projects, curb/gutter/sidewalk replacement, trail development, dedicated bicycyle lanes, etc. The projects that lost out to “Godfrey’s ‘toys’" were the urban riverway enhancements, trees, street marking enhancements (striping – a safety issue), tennis court resurfacing, traffic sign improvements (also another safety issue, which makes one wonder where the priorities are of the Father of the City -- Godfrey -- and his three stooges on the Council. Thank goodness for the four level-headed members of the Council.

In a smart aleck response to a taxpayer’s email, Godfrey asked him for his suggestion(s) to revitalize downtown Ogden (one of the Council members showed me the mayor’s email). My response to Godfrey is this:

Maybe others would have some confidence in your immature decisions and questionable support of questionable types: (Val Southwick and Gadi Leshem), if there was some evidence that you ever finished project such as The Junction and the River Project. Finishing those projects would revitalize downtown. Those projects are 8 to 10 years old and never were completed, even when the economy was booming. Why should we think that your latest list of "toys" will revitalize downtown Ogden during a recession/depression? How about making Gadi Leshem finish his project or break it up into doable-sized projects for other developers? You've started these projects; finish them, before you ask for other "revitalization projects."

Reader comments are invited, as always.