Thoughtful letter in this morning's Standard-Examiner by Ogden resident Frank McFarland, arguing in favor of a "minimalist" solution to the Mt. Ogden Golf Course's deferred maintenance problems, and suggesting an application to the Obama administration for federal stimulus funds. We incorporate Mr. McFarland's essential paragraphs below:
This is the perfect opportunity to fall back to the proposal of Hoyle Sorenson in which he proposed doing a minimum amount of repair and upgrading to make the course more playable for the average golfer, thereby increasing income from the facility. His careful estimate was less that $400,000, as I recall.Unfortunately, as to the prospect of obtaining federal stimulus money, Ogden City is probably out of luck. In January, congress reportedly inserted language in the stimulus package bill "to prevent federal stimulus money from being used for zoos, aquariums, golf courses, swimming pools and casinos."
With the Obama administration begging for anyone to take money, I would think that $400,000 to $500,000 could be obtained from the stimulus plan if the appropriate people took action now. This would certainly be a "shovel ready" project and would provide some immediate employment for a fair number of people. Half a million dollars, at this point in the recovery plan, would be peanuts! This would prove, once and for all, whether this course can be made profitable without destroying it.
It will be years before the economy recovers sufficiently to consider Godfrey's $70 million scheme, or even any plan as presently proposed. By then, we will know if the "minimalist" plan worked and if not, proceed to plan B, whatever that might be.
The half-million dollars spent, will be long forgotten and Ogden can press forward on whatever the city council considers best for the course.
Notwithstanding the probable unavailability of federal financing however, one thing is clear. Boss Godfrey has sadly neglected the golf course throughout his nine years of governance. If the city council is to do anything at all about bringing the course back up to par, it should at least carefully consider the minimalist solution proposed my Mr. Sorenson, even in the absence of prospective federal funding.
As for Boss Godfrey's 4/9/09 Mt. Ogden Golf Course makeover boondoggle, we'll go on record in urging the council to send it back to Boss Godfrey right now, even before he makes his formal proposal, with a paste-it note attached, suggesting that hizzoner put it where the sun doesn't shine. The sheer lunacy of spending $146 million, as a highly speculative cure to a relative chump-change $200 thousand revenue shortfall, ought to be painfully obvious, even to hopelessly obsessive big-spending visionaries like Boss Godfrey. At three times the cost of The Junction project, which has been a $750 thousand/year taxpayer albatross since 2005, (despite Godfrey's earlier promises that it would never put the taxpayers "on the hook,") this plan is plainly a non-starter, good economy or bad.
As an added bonus, we'll also spotlight another reader letter appearing on the Std-Ex live website, which focuses on Godfrey's general public recreation deferred maintenance "blind spot," which is definitely not confined to the Mt. Ogden Golf Course.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
