We took the day off yesterday, but for the sake of archival consistency we'll make note of yesterday's Standard-Examiner story, wherein Scott Schwebke reports the latest angle on the Administration's plan to demolish the forty or so abandoned and derelict residential residential structures within the Leshemville fire trap (River Project):
• Fire chief proposes burning vacant Ogden homesNotably, even in a scenario where it's proposed that the Ogden Fire Department may do the initial demolition by fire, the projected price tag keeps going up. Even as late as June of this year, Economic and Community Development Department manager Richard McConkie estimated this demolition and site prep could cost as much as $500,000. The projected price tag now: $564,000. Even that figure is "fuzzy" however, inasmuch as "the cost of debris removal won't be known until after the homes are burned," says Chief Mathieu.
Seems to us that the cost of hauling the rubble from this demolition ought to be readily calculable, assuming there's somebody in Ogden City government who can do the relatively simple math. The volume of material could be easily calculated for each of the residential structures. The price list for landfill dumping is available online. Surely there's somebody in the Ogden City Public Works Department who'd be able to calculate labor costs, assuming the job would be done by the city in-house. Same with fuel expenses. Same with Fire Department labor expense. Surely Ogden City already has the equipment, bulldozers and large end dumps, so equipment costs would be relatively negligible.
Although we're concerned that Chief Mathieu's plan may raise air quality issues which haven't been anticipated by what appears to be a highly compliant Utah Division of Air Quality, we also believe this project is of sufficient importance that it should be right there "on the front burner," so to speak.
Our suggestion to Boss Godfrey: Put those worthless drones in the overly-bloated economic Development Department to work on this right now. Tell 'em to drag out their calculators, get together with OFD and City Engineers and Public Works and crunch the numbers. We're sure the city council will be delighted to allocate the funds to complete this long overdue project post-haste, once relatively firm numbers have been ascertained.
It's time to quit shooting the bull on this. It's time to accomplish something useful for once.
That's our take and we're stickin' with it.
So what say our gentle readers about all this?
