By OzboyThere is a concerted effort this election for the mayor and his circle of cronies to win this council election with their hand picked candidates - Phipps, Hains, Garner and Dean. If they succeed, the mayor will then have another "rubber stamp" council like the one several years ago that allowed him to pursue his obscene and costly fantasies like the Junktion and River projects. These projects have created nearly a $100 million dollar debt for the tax payers of Ogden. It will take decades for the citizens of Ogden to dig out from under this debt. To date, all of these projects are complete losers. The Junktion alone is costing the tax payers over $700,000 per year in bond payments. The mayor and his former rubber stamp council made many and repeated promises that this would never happen. Meanwhile the things that a decent city government should be doing is not being done. The city infrastructure continues to deteriorate while the mayor and his staff blissfully continue their foolish games pretending they are great business tycoons - again all on the tax payers dime.
It is interesting that the Standard Examiner published four articles on the mayor's sham debates of a couple of weeks ago, two on the front page. The main focus of those articles were the three candidates that smelled a rat with the mayor and this shallow scam of a "debate" and did not participate. A week later the ladies of the Weber County Women's Legislative Council organization conducted a fair and above board Meet the Candidates Night. All candidates attended and the citizens were well served and informed as a result, thus putting the lie to the Standard's and the Mayor's false propaganda that the three non Godfrey candidates were playing games by not attending the first put on by the mayor. To date the Standard has conducted themselves in an extremely dishonorable manner and have not reported one word about the only legitimate debate held so far. It leads this reader to believe that the Standard Publisher is in cahoots with the mayor and his hand picked candidates and they are trying to sway this election by misleading reporting and/or stonewalling pertinent stories that would give the voters fair and balanced information on which to base their votes.
Two of the mayor's candidates - Phipps and Hains - are both in the real estate business and are receiving large contributions from out of town real estate interests that are aligned with the mayor and his cronies. Phipps in particular is receiving a large portion of his funds from mysterious out of state interests who are hiding behind acronyms in order to mask who they really are. This is a repeat of the infamous Envision Ogden/FNURE (rhymes with manure) scam that the mayor pulled last election. Large and secret amounts of money into a council race from secret donors. Why would these people find it necessary to be so secret and what is in it for them if Phipps, Hains, Garner and Dean win? Mt. Ogden Park comes to mind, it is a well known fact that the mayor and his cronies have their eyes on developing it - which if that comes to pass will go a long way toward destroying the magnificent open spaces on the east bench that all Ogden citizens enjoy.Beware of carpetbaggers and real estate interest candidates, they will represent the mayor and his cronies, not the citizens of Ogden.
