Powder Mountain Bond: Bad Reporting From Our Ogden Home-town Newspaper?

Sodden Question: Will the Standard-Examiner publish a retraction?

Tastes good - Trust me

As regular Weber County Forum readers will recall, there was a big Standard-Examiner-provoked public relations storm dust-up, going into the three-day Labor Day weekend:

• $17M Powder Mountain project could hit taxpayers

And yeah, we admit it. We naively "took the bait" on this story too.

Within Ms. Beyer's story, she "cherry picked" these 'alleged" Weber County Comptroller Dan Olsen "quotes" (so-called) and conclusions among other things:

“We borrowed enough money so that Weber County can make the bond payments for the first two years”

“In other words, the county, not Summit, will be making payments of just over $1.5 million for the next few years.”

Entirely untrue, says Mr.Weber County Comptroller Dad Olsen in a "viral" email missive which we received from yet another sharp-eyed and alert reader later in the weekend, wherein Mr. Olsen responds thusly:

Specifically, your article quotes me as saying, “We borrowed enough money so that Weber County can make the bond payments for the first two years” (emphasis added). I would never say such a thing because it’s not true.

Again you write, “In other words, the county, not Summit, will be making payments of just over $1.5 million for the next few years.” This sentence is completely false. Weber County is NOT paying any portion of the bond, nor would we have ever agreed to do so. You seem to have misunderstood how “capitalized interest” and “special assessments” work, so let me try again.

Read the Dan Olsen full email here (published with Mr. Olson's explicit permission, after our morning telephone interview):

• Daniel Olsen August 29, 2013 Email

Yep, that's right. The terms of the Weber County Commission-approved $17 million water, sewer and road infrastrucure bonding apparently comports to these terms, as set forth in the link above, wherein we've highlighted the pertinent parts: 

The first two years of bond payments come from cash that was included in the bond amount. So, of the $17.6 million bond, we put approximately $3 million into an account where it will be drawn down as bond payments come due during the first two years. Summit is then responsible for approximately $1.5 million in bond payments for the next 18 years. If we had not utilized “capitalized interest,” the bond would have been smaller, approximately $14.5 million, and Summit’s annual debt payment would have been about $1.2 million over 20 years. Either way, Summit pays the whole thing, and the County doesn’t pay a dime on the bonds.
If we had not utilized “capitalized interest,” the bond would have been smaller, approximately $14.5 million, and Summit’s annual debt payment would have been about $1.2 million over 20 years. Either way, Summit pays the whole thing, and the County doesn’t pay a dime on the bonds. [Emphasis added].

Thus we see an interesting new local story angle popping up here, and therefore ask these questions of our home-town newspaper:

1. Will the Standard-Examiner publish a retraction?
2. If so, when and where, other than some dismal backpage, which nobody will ever see? 

The moral of this story?  Weber County Forum will spend far less time henceforth scrutinizing the actions of the Weber County Commission, and far more time examining the accuracy of Mikayla Beyer stories.

Comments anyone?

Just axin', LOL!