Standard-Examiner: Goals Set to Make Mt. Ogden Course More Playable, Profitable

Will it be necessary for the council to invoke its statutory "policy making power" once again this year, with respect to the Mount Ogden Golf Course budget?

There's semi-encouraging news from the Standard-Examiner this morning, with the following Scott Schwebke story, which reports that our City Council has reached some kind of consensus with respect to improvements and debt paydown for the Mt. Ogden Golf Course (MOGC):

• Goals set to make Mt. Ogden course more playable, profitable

(The headline in today's SE print edition is slightly more tentative however, and ends with a question mark: "Pay-as-you-go flaw fixes ahead?")

If it is true that a majority of the council has at least informally agreed to avoid massive borrowing, fix up the course and pay down current golf course debt, that's good news indeed for the taxpayers of Ogden City, we believe. Yet today's story does contain a statement from Ogden City CAO John "Pureheart" Patterson which does cause us some heartburn (justifiably, we believe):

Patterson said he appreciates the city council's desire to make needed improvements at the course without borrowing more money. However, the city has only a limited amount of funds for a variety of pressing projects, he said."
There are many priorities for available financial resources," he said. "Many (of those projects) stand in front of the golf course."

Reading between the lines, we'll take Patterson's comment as an early indication that the administration may be preparing to drag its feet, or stonewall a council-backed "pay-as-you-go" plan altogether.

Thus we'll be watching closely as the Council and Administration move forward on the FY2011 "budget setting" process over the next 3 months, in wary anticipation of another possible Council-Administration battle royal over MOGC funding, reminiscent of the knock-down, drag-out Marshall White budget slug-out of last spring and summer.

Will it be necessary for the council to invoke its statutory "policy making power" once again this year, and instruct Boss Godfrey to get onboard the Council's percipient "pay-as-you go" plan, by way of another budget ordinance "policy statement?"

One thing we do know about Boss Godfrey: He's stubborn as hell. So we do hope the Council is ready for battle this year.

There are also two other items we've found this morning which relate to the pending 2011 fiscal year MOGC budget setting process and plans for the MOGC in general, so we'll throw them out to expand the discussion:

1) Ogden City activist David Smith provides a letter to the editor on the SE website which ought to remind everyone, that despite any MOGC consensus which the Council "thinks" it may have reached, the ever-conniving Boss Godfrey still has a whole set of plans all his own:

• Godfrey to turn virgin east bench in mini-mansion-ville

2) And please don't neglect to check out the savvy SE reader comment linked below, wherein SE board regular "Ole" urges a full accounting of the MOGC books, as a preliminary prerequisite to ANY further Council action:

• Is this another Godfrey scam?

We haven't talked about the MOGC situation in quite a long while here at Weber County Forum; although we all knew a new discussion would be coming up soon.

So who will be the first to comment about these latest new developments, now that the MOGC topic is finally back on the Emerald City news front-burner?