There's not much in the way of "red meat" news in Emerald City this morning, so we thought it might be a good idea to set up an open topic thread. But first, here are a couple of "white meat" items worthy of note, hopefully to get some reader discussion going:
1) Gentle reader OgdenLover helpfully shines the spotlight on Kevin Baumgartner's online letter to the Standard-Examiner editors in a comment section down below, wherein Mr. Baumgartner calls upon Boss Godfrey "to make room for new volunteers, fresh ideas, and give everyone an opportunity to serve our community..." and to tender his resignation... as Godfrey enters his tenth year of "service" to our community:
• Mayor Godfrey has been here a long timeWhat's good for the goose is good for the gander... right? Still... we guess that we're not going to hold our breath for a man like Godfrey -- a man of highly questionable public morals and ethics -- to abide by his own self-professed principles, such as they are.
2) For those who aren't thoroughly burned out on discussion of our 2009 Emerald City election, this morning's Standard-Examiner focuses of one remaining loose end, the Ward 1 Council race. With 18 votes separating incumbent councilman Garcia and the interim top vote getter Neil Garner, this item was the headline story in the top of the "Top of Utah Section" this morning:
• Garcia not ready to concedeWe can't say we blame Garcia for his unwillingness to summarily throw in the towel. With 12 ballots still uncounted, a mere 8 more votes would force a complete recount in that Ward. And judging from the comedy of errors reportedly occurring in the Weber County election office counting room on Wednesday morning, a full recount, both on general principles, and under the particular circumstances, looks like a complete "no-brainer" to us.
In this connection a couple of tangential practical questions leap out at us:
For instance, how long would it take and how much would it cost to employ, say three human beings, to do a manual recount of 741 Ward 1 votes?
And here's something to ponder, we think: Have we as a society become over-reliant on machines? With a reported $60 thousand fee to machine-count 6,000 or so ballots for the full election, did the citizens of Ogden even come close to getting their money's worth? We're betting we could have hired May Smith's fourth grade class to have done the whole job for as little as a dime per ballot.
The obvious answers to our queries also leap out at us.
Discuss the above suggested topics, or bring up a subject all your own. It matters not what we discuss here on Weber County Forum for the rest of the day, but for heck's sake, let's get on-board and discuss something.
The near dead silence on this morning's board is getting on our nerves, dang it!
