Salt Lake Tribune: Former Nuisance Waterway Now a Prime Attraction in Ogden

A Weber County Forum  Tip O' The Hat this morning to Dan Schroeder, for once again setting the record straight

Turning to our back-burner Ogden City topical news queu on this, yet another uber-slow news day, the Salt Lake Tribune's Cathy McKitrick provides a little something for Ogden City residents to crow about as we stand mid-way through a long holiday weekend:

• Former nuisance waterway now a prime attraction in Ogden

In her possibly over-yeomanlike efforts to provide background to this story, Ms. McKitrick slips in this quote, from former Ogden City Mayor Boss Godfrey, who in truth, effectively paralyzed the economic health of the Ogden River project area with a heavy-handed Big Government-style "economic development" interference for many years:

Reached by phone Wednesday, Godfrey called the award "a great honor, especially from an organization that was so helpful in making it a reality."

"It was highly controversial at first," he said of the project he introduced a dozen years ago to redevelop several blocks around the Ogden River. "We never would have been able to clean up the river without cleaning up what was around it."

Fortunately SL Trib readers have sharp-eyed and alert Ogden City community activist Dan Schroeder to counteract the self-serving Boss Godfrey spin:

Controversial?

Yes, the redevelopment project on 60 acres surrounding the river was (and is) controversial. The city declared the area "blighted" and scheduled for demolition years before coming up with the money to actually carry out its intentions. The property owners naturally stopped maintaining their buildings, turning a marginally blighted area into a badly blighted one. Shady back-room deals with prospective developers and a continuing debt of several million dollars have added to the controversy.

But that's the redevelopment project--not the river restoration. The ex-mayor has it exactly backwards when he says that the former was necessary for the latter. In fact, most of the redevelopment project has still not happened, yet the river restoration is now complete. With hindsight, it would have made far more sense to carry out the river restoration before even attempting to begin any redevelopment.

There was also some controversy with the river restoration itself. Some of the money for it was illegally diverted from other projects without city council approval. Some of the contractors were hired without competitive bidding. These were unnecessary controversies, which a more grown-up mayor could easily have avoided. And finally, there's the fact that most of the cost of the restoration ultimately came from residents' utility bills, which are among the highest in the state. While I don't mind paying for projects like this, it would be wrong to spend that kind of money without a little controversy.

A Weber County Forum  Tip O' The Hat this morning to Dan Schroeder, for once again setting the record straight.