Godfrey Tries in Vain to Displace Sewer Rate Hike Blame

Boss Godfrey dons a cheesy tri-cornered hat and screeches: "The environmentalists are coming!"

By Curmudgeon

The Friday Standard Examiner leads off with a front page story headlined in bold black type only slightly smaller than might be used to announce the imminent end of the world: "Godfrey deflects sewer rate hike blame." The way the SE treats the story [from its slightly inaccurate headline ---Godfrey is trying to displace blame --- to its front page placement] raises serious questions about the editors' news judgment.

Facing mounting public payments for the Saloman Center's construction bonds [which Godfrey assured the city it would never have to pay], facing serious questions about his diverting, without authorization, money from the newly adopted Water Horizons plan to build instead a water tank located to service his friends still-dreamed of condo development partly on city and WSU property, facing eroding support in the business community and the continue revelation of his poor business judgment [costing the city and its taxpayers millions], facing community complaints about his plans to shutter programs at the Marshall White Center, Hizzonah has retreated to the time-honored tactic of Red State Republican knuckle-draggers: he's donned a tri-cornered hat, mounted an aging nag and gone screaming off across the media shouting "the environmentalists are coming! The environmentalists are coming!" And the SE news editors have enlisted in his campaign.

The Mayor's decided the way to deflect public scrutiny of his failing administration, and the consequences for us all, is to concentrate on required federal limits on copper in treated sewage, and to blame the recent increase of sewer treatment rates in Ogden on them, and of course on "the environmentalists." You have to read way way down in the story to discover that the up-grade on the sewage treatment plant will increase its capacity about 40% to accommodate population growth in the area since it was built, and anticipated population growth in the near to medium term future. [Must be all those damned environmentalists breeding like rabbits who ran the population up so the water treatment plant would have to expand. Clever bastards! Thank God Hizzonah has found them out!]

Why, a story this important --- I know I've been rendered sleepless many a night of late worrying about environmentalists and their evil scheme to force us all to breath clean air and drink [and fish in and kayak on] clean water --- the bastards! --- certainly should have been the morning-after Council meeting main story, should it not? Not the trivial one about the Marshall White Center and the Mayor's attempts to shut down key programs there, or his failure --- yet again --- to keep the Council [and public] informed about what he was doing.

And so Hizzonah's little kabuki dance designed to deflect attention from his failures continues, with an able assist from what the SE editors laughing call their "news judgment." If this fails, as it will, we'll be hearing from Hizzonah shortly about how the sewage fee hikes are the fault of "the socialists" and their evil scheme to have sewage treatment plants publicly owned.

And the SE will doubtless assist with screaming front page headlines again.

Update 6/5/09 7:48 a.m. MT: Don't miss this topically related letter to the editor, in which SE reader Andrew Checketts puts his finger on the real problem here, e.g., Boss Godfrey's fiscally imprudent 2005 diversion of BDO lease revenue to his pet financial albatross, the Junction Money Pit.