The Marshall White Center is again front page news this morning, with a pair of Standard-Examiner stories which indicate that the Godfrey administration and the city council remain on a collision course with respect to 2010 MWC fiscal year funding.
1) Contrary to the earlier representations of Boss Godfrey that negotiations with the OWCAP non-profit for a takeover of the center were proceeding smoothly, Ace Reporter Schwebke's morning story delivers this unsettling news:
OGDEN -- The Ogden-Weber Community Action Partnership will insist that the city continue to pay operational costs and employee salaries at the Marshall White Community Center before it agrees to run the facility.Notwithstanding this apparent and potentially fatal negotiations glitch, Godfrey is evidently still operating on a wing and a prayer. Rather than recognizing that the administration and OWPAC yet remain some distance from a meeting of the minds, and simply reinserting $350 thousand into the 2010 budget, Godfrey has instead carved out about $168,000 from various line items from other city departments -- about half of the funding necessary to keep the MWC doors open though the 2010 fiscal year. In classic Godfrey brinksmanship fashion, the administration appears to be keeping its fingers crossed that OWPAC will eventually enter into some kind of agreement... and succeed in obtaining grant funding later in the year. And on that subject, OWCAP's own statement on the subject isn't encouraging at all:
OWCAP is interested only in managing the center's programs and can't afford to fund the facility, said Donald Carpenter, the nonprofit organization's administrator.
As a result, the city would have to continue covering the center's expenses, he said.
"We would submit monthly bills (for the center's operational expenses to the city). There would be no other choice but to walk away (from a management contract) if they won't live up to that part of the agreement."
"We might be interested in acquiring a lease (for the center) in the future as grants come together," [Laura Traum, program manager for OWCAP] said.Time for the folks on the city council to assert themselves as the grownups in city government, we think. If Godfrey refuses to reinsert the necessary funding into the 2010 budget, the council should do so themselves.
2) In a companion story, Mr. Schwebke reports that the lumpencitizens are also forming up en masse to demand restoration of MWC funding. Read all about yesterday's NAACP rally here.
Given the current uncertain posture of Ogden City/OWCAP negotiations, we believe its unlikely that the parties will reach an agreement which is satisfactory to all involved parties and stakeholders prior to the June 26th fiscal budget approval deadline. Hopefully Boss Godfrey will take his lumps gracefully this time around.
Our compliments to Scott Schwebke this morning, by the way, for digging out and providing this most interesting material.
24 comments:
I liked the way the story pointed out the way the Godfrey Administration's story keeps changing. From Mr. Schwebke's story:
OWCAP's requirement that the city continue funding the Marshall White Center is different from an initial proposal from Godfrey that called for the facility to receive no municipal money in fiscal 2010. Earlier this month, Godfrey explained to the city council the rationale for eliminating funding for the center from his budget proposal.
As the budget was being finalized, negotiations with OWCAP for a possible takeover of the center were proceeding smoothly, Godfrey told the council. As a result, it was decided no money would be included in the budget for the center, which would lessen the amount of severe funding cuts for other departments, he told council members. Looks like Councilman Garcia's complaint that the Council was not being kept fully informed about what was going on has now been corroborated by the Standard Examiner.
As the Administration continues to change its tune on the MWC matter, we can only wonder what its story will be tomorrow.
And note, the "patch" the Administration is now retroactively willing to make --- to fund MWC operations to "the end of the year" --- would leave no, repeat no, operating funds for the center in the budget for the first six months of next fiscal year [Jan through June 2010.]. If the hoped-for grants don't come through, what's the plan? To lock the doors of the MWC on Jan. 1, 2010?
"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched" is generally good advice. But in this instance, the Godfrey Administration has not only counted a chicken not yet hatched, it hasn't even laid an egg.
Or, come to think of it, maybe it has.
It is sad that the MW Center could be operated for a whole year on just a portion of the tax payer money that goes to support the circle of empty suits that the Lord Mayor surrounds himself with. It is this same circle of incompetents that keep coming up with a dizzying array of loser projects - all of which consume large amounts of public money and none of which do anything to help the poor of Ogden. Doubly sad that there is no room in the mayor's grand schemes for the very large body of poor and dark skinned people who are also citizens of Ogden, the vast majority of whom cannot afford anything at the tax payer owned Solomon Center.
My problem with our Mayor, hey we can officially say that as we are now an official resident of Ogden, our problem is his incompetence, not his vision.
The only Godfrey project that we did not support, to our knowledge, was the urban gondola with the link to a hotel at the mouth of Taylor Canyon.
And, not because of money; but because of the kids with bb guns shooting out the windows and raping the riders; too ugly to mention
Junction: love it; cept the Reno style lighting.
Climbing tower: great idea.
Street cars: great idea.
Velodrome: great idea.
Riverwalk: great idea.
Disk Golf course: great idea.
Base jump catapult; great idea.
And then there are those poor people.
You want to help the poor of Ogden?
Sterilize the lot of them that are under 40, and send their crime-schooled kids to patriot work camps.
Note to enterprising yound MBA;
you want to make a good buck? Open and operate a Patriot Work Camp.
As for the rest of the deserving poor?
Drive them to the county line in garishly painted lowrider autos, and suggest with a baseball bat they move somewhere else, such as the Bountiful bench area, or tell them go line up at the bishops storehouse in Clearfield.
If they don't understand what you are saying, start the paperwork to deport them back to Bangkok or Lima, Nairobi or Perth.
The poor of Ogden are not our problem.
The solution is not to endlessly fund their flophouse recreation centers. The solution is a lower birthrate, and a proactive citizenry making sure that everyone who applies for an apartment has money, citizenship papers, a job you don't have to stand on a city corner to steal from a teenaged American worker, and a desire not to be poor any more.
In America only the willing are poor.
RJS:
Difficult to know where to start taking on the problems in your screed. I'll settle for this one for now. You wrote: In America only the willing are poor. Really? You are aware, I trust, that half the bankruptcies in the US today --- half --- are medical care bankruptcies. People with jobs, homes, all the virtues you presume to admire, driven into bankruptcy by having to pay medical expenses for themselves or family not covered by insurance --- if they have insurance at all.
Half.
Your assumption that the only cause of poverty in the US is that people have opted to be poor is... well, since I often preach civility in these parts, let's just say naive.
RJS You make a person long for the calm rational opinions of Bruce Edwards. I am certain that you will make sure all the gondolas run on time. What part of Germany did you live in? If you are not aware the summers in Utah are hot, I hope that you do not sweat too much while wearing your white hood and robe. If being poor is a crime how much do I have to earn to avoid breaking your law? Who are you best friends with, Peterson, Leesham or Godfrey? Was it hard to translate your rant from German into English? Are you a paranoid dsylesic, convinced that you are a leader?
No I'm "sure" everything is fine. I saw a Godfrey spokesperson on Fox 13 News last night say that the "Nay-sayers" had it all wrong and that the administration is actually working to increase funding for the center.
See - we need to stop acting like horses and start being "ya-sayers" and everything will turn out o.k.
Since I'm sure that the clean cut (religious looking man) would not have lied on public television.
Sounds like RJ Svengali is a very sad and disturbed person. Very sad that people think like that.
Curm:
And most of those medical bankruptcies are either due to lifestyle and habits-caused illnesses (fat, red meat addicted, smoking, lazy desk job, drunk, didn't take care of the spine as a young adult...or a failure to understand that as we age, we get expensive to operate and maintain.
A human get their 50 years of vigor, after that, if you become incurably sick, it is time to walk off into the mountains, get prostrate under a tree, and let your spirit go to Avalon.
When a person gets so ill of spirit and body that they begin bankrupting themselves in order to live another year, it is time to move over and go make peace with your gawd.
It is not out job to make sure people are not obese. It is not our bill.
They were not "victimized" by bad health.
They mostly did it to themselves.
And most of thatAnd to think we parsed our thoughts on this topic, so not as to offend the little people.
We repeat: people get what they deserve.
When troubles arrive, blame yourselves; it looks good on you to take ultimate responsibility for your destiny.
How very Christian of you, RJ.
Oh, please.
The Christianity mental disease/virus does not cloud our thinking.
Do xtians, as a group, have any standing to preach about morality?
Even the random neo-pagan is so much more loving and caring than those raised on this evil "Good Book" of the angry and vengeful desert gawd:
"And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead."
Your gawd killing babies of only one ethnicity in order to prove a point to a mere king of men.
What a guy; sounds weak, let alone all powerful.
Thanks be to Hastur the Inscrutable, we are infected by a different memetic set.
But, thank you for your concern.
RJS-
How do you feel about sterilization of anyone OVER 40, so they don't impregnate women half their age?
What? A man in his fourties, seeking companionship with college women?
Scandalous! And as common as mud.
Or, are you referring to our "just out of high school" wife?
If a man in their 40s can display enough tokens of desire so that a young lass would find him to be a biologically attractive mate, well, taint no ones bidness.
If an offspring occurs because of the tryst, an old man who can attract a 20 year old is more likely to be a good provider than a 19 year old with a day job at the factory.
Seems the old adage was "half plus 7", when discerning what was acceptable for polite company.
We are so impolite; impolite by bout 8 years.
Rafiki:
I'd took those Patterson radio comments spin as evidence that Hizzonah is feeling the heat, and beginning to scramble around looking for a way out. Blaming it all on "naysayers" is generally a sign that the Godfreyistas have screwed up --- again --- and are looking for ways to divert the heat. And the light.
Great theater Sven, even tho the dark stuff about our poor and disenfranchised brothers and sisters is pretty ugly and naive - in my humble opinion.
Maybe its just me, but after a significant number of decades under my belt and a generous number of zeros on my financial statement, I have come to the conclusion that compassion and empathy for the poor, the lame and the handicapped - my fellow travelers - is much more important and rewarding than most things I could pursue.
However, I do hear your basic premise that people bring on their own condition by their own actions. I think a big part of that is most people are not blessed with the mental facilities of the five percenters that can figure stuff like this out in advance and take corrective actions. Bottom line is that nature makes a lot more "losers" than it does "winners". True incidentally throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. So although you may be correct that people are responsible for their own situation in life, it is also correct that a lot of them are pre-destined to not be as previledged as you and me. Therefore, I think the only logical course for a thinking and feeling human is to have compassion and empathy for the less fortunate. It's one of the things that sets us apart from the rest of the animals on earth.
I do enjoy your posts, like I said - great theater.
All less fortunate? All of the time? Should my compassion be bound in negative regression per mile away? Should the fact that I can see carnage live from Berzerkistan make those people as compassion worthy and empathy compelling as Joe runs the light and runs over the missionaries down the street?
Or the kids who have to play in the grassy fields, like half of the rest of the world, instead of a fenced in grass fantasyland?
If I feel compassion for these teaming hordes, am I not bound then to act?
As a person who is also a heroic figure, am I not bound to action commensurate with the gravity of the situation?
And, look at the situation!
Fools, hypocrites, and murderous both, driving the planet into an early grave, while talking heads on the box speak of yeilds per point and britteny per paris.
How can one ride on a couch with wheels to an air conditioned office, to do work the likes that allows profligate internet and Friday donuts time?
Not that we do, but how would we?
When I see a human suffer horribly, I say, "poor bastard". Is that what you need to hear?
I don't really need a "good guy badge" a self-congratulatory secret slap on the back, the false feeling that I did something, when in reality my material body just had a natural bio chem response to knowledge and fear of my own supposed impending doom.
I cannot save the world from its fools. I can only push you out of the way of a speeding bus, which I will gladly do, gratis. ;>
We have always been of the mind that "pre-destined by nature to fail or not be as privileged" misses the point: happiness and success slip fleeting and transitory for all humans, king and pauper.
It is the self willed spark, the courage to succeed, that is not taught or genetically acquired or bought or slathered with:
As Curly would say, "that one thing".
Something I was wondering about tonight as I rode my Mtn. bike on the high trail from 22nd to 36th+.
I think I remember hearing Mr. Godfrey claim that he uses the trail a lot. In fact I think he said something like "there are not many in this room who are up there more than myself". During his re-election campaign.
Alright, So I've been riding this area since it was dry enought to do so this spring and Godfrey and myself have not crossed paths once. Pretty weird to not see somebody up there who claims to be up there "all the time"
Anyway my real thought was to share just how amazing the trail is from Taylors to Waterfall. Everything about this section is amazing. I think that a lot of this has to do with the open space that the golf course provides thus making the views unique.
Pretty amazing location - this place they call Ogden.
Cheers,
RJS
I'm sure you think of yourself as quite brilliant what with all your nonsensical babble, but I for one think you're full of crap. Silly word games do not make an intelligent individual but rather an effete buffoon. That is you. Hopefully with some age you will mature out of this phase. Unfortunately some people with your affliction never do grow out of it but instead just morph from a young fool into an old one.
Yeah, buffoon. Yeah, full of crap. Yeah, old fool, yeah.
Wow.
It always amuses when those who sit at our feet, or hover by our table express hatefull feeling thus.
What did we do you you, little one?
Why do people with less than half the educational years, less than half the world-travel experience, those who have never performed dangerous work, those who have never strode the big stage under the hot lights, those who have not fought in wars or...
well those whop basically sat home and did what they were told: why do they not just bring us a drink or offer to rub our feet?
We wish we could shave 40 or 50 IQ points off our towering intellect, so we could understand really what you are feeling, so we could understand your own hopes a dreams, the yearning of the people.
Aint a gunna happen.
Hey RJ, you may want to check the location of your silver spoon, it may be stuck in the wrong orifice.
Did your daddy put it there or did you do it all by yourself?
Our father was borne in a dirt floor mining shack outside of Helper Utah, in 1927. His father was not the hardest worker in the Welsh section of the mining area, and the family suffered accordingly.
Our father lied about his age at 16, and enlisted in the Merchant Marines at the beginning of the pacific war.
Later, he gravitated towards intelligence corps, post war he completed his service at the pentagon.
He used his GI bill to pay for art school, later becoming a top illustrator in the nuclear submarine program. His art hangs in military museums and at the pentagon.
He was one of the most thrift-wise people I ever met; he raised 5 children in a semi-affluent neighborhood outside Los Angeles on a artists salary.
Were it not for his innate money sense, and buying in the right part of so cal at the right time, we could have afforded to perhaps live in Clearfield.
We left home well before our 17th birthday, playing rock drums on the road.
Our father, now retired, paints with oil for personal satisfaction, having moved back close to his childhood roots.
He recently remarried; taking as his bride a successful and smoking hot young widow of 67.
Love you, dad.
Yes... Everyone in Ogden knows that your broke-ass "daddy" married well.
The whole town's standing around with arched eyebrows, making book on how quickly you'll piss off Grampa's estate.
You have got to be kidding: you don't care enough to listen well.
We pissed of half a continent, a long time ago; we encourage our father to spend every cent before he rends open the final gate in a terrific gesture of cosmic absurdity.
We could care less about money, as anyone would tell you.
We live for experiences, not fortune.
Duh.
Money, talk aquisition, lust greed...,
none of this interests us in the slightest.
We are the poorest person finacially that we know.
But, the oh the places we have been. :)
Yo Svengali
How come you have a picture of Gordon Liddy on your blog spot? Are you Gordon?
GG and ourselves disagree on nearly every voguish topic, in some instances to the point of revilement; this said, we however stand in awe at the immense wake that Mr. Liddy's actions created; we enjoy watching self-actualizing humans stride the stage boldly.
This gives us entertainment.
See, to us, GG is a magickian of some note.
Why?
Magick is an assault on normative belief patterns, an attack on the mind’s status quo, guerrilla war on the careful considerations of consciousness.
Magick focuses on the mechanism of belief, and suggests that the process of belief rather than the object of belief is the critical element in creating future freedom action. This orientation, which stresses adaptability as a prime asset and greets change as an accurate reflection of the true nature of reality, can be unnerving for individuals whose sense of personal identity requires that the universe be perceived as an ordered and meaningful place.
Rooted in the realization that ideas are not reality, although they may influence the perception of reality, magick does not discriminate between evil and good, between right and wrong. Consequently magick is probably not for those who have not internalized a personal moral or ethical code.
Magick is not for the squeamish, nor for those who wish to argue points of ethics, nor for those obsessed with establishing varieties of social order.
Magick is concerned with developing magick that works, that have specific effects, that create change in conformity with the will of the magician, that are testable and can be replicated, that affect the magician’s deep self in sometimes catastrophic ways, that are non-judgmental, non-hierarchical and ofttimes devious.
Since magick is designed to deconstruct belief, dearly held opinions, the stories we tell ourselves to lull ourselves into a sense of security will tend to fray and unravel.
Fundamentally, magick is
not about discovering one’s True Will, nor communing with the Mother Goddess, nor even associating with demons, but with the direct, startling apprehension that one can wake up in the morning and have a completely different life by sundown.
And, on most of this, GG Liddy and ourselves are in complete agreement.
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