Okay -- Emerald City is Only $93 Million in Debt

The bright side... We have the Salomon Center

We'll launch our Friday morning weekend kick-off thread with two Godfreyite letters appearing on today's Standard-Examiner editorials page. As to these letters, Boss Godfrey's preposterous "Debt is not Debt" meme is today's major Std-Ex theme of the day. What's common to both these letters is that the authors are hell-bent to rebut any assertion that Ogden City is burdened with $100 million in debt.

Timm (sic) Thorn's letter, a reply to earlier letters from Tom Owens and Dorothy Littrell, accuses these authors of disseminating false information and distorted facts; and yet Mr. Thorn's letter suffers heavily from exactly the same shortcomings. The author even gets into a little mind-reading along the way:

"...both of whom have revealed their motives in attacking the mayor... Neither of these individuals lives in Ogden...both these individuals know the truth about these matters but have chosen to distort facts... we find a series of letters filled with distortions because of their personal hatred..."

You get the drift. We especially loved the mind-reading aspects. This kid not only knows what Tom and Dorothy say, he intuits their very motivations and secret thoughts. The kid is obviously the second coming of Kreskin. We're assuming this guy is a kid, BTW; no adult could possibly write something so lame.

Contrary to Mr. Thorn's assertions, BTW, and just to set the true facts straight, we'd like to inform Mr. Thorn that Ms. Littrell is both an Ogden City property owner and a resident of our city, as anyone who's been paying attention over the last several years knows. And Mr. Owens is of course also a tax-paying property owner in Ogden (and a native Ogden "home-boy") too, which we think gives Mr. Owens adequate standing to complain about our bumbling excuse for a mayor any danged time he wants.

And then there's Mark Johnson's letter, a rambling and incoherent quasi-explanation of RDA bonding and tax increment financing, which can be summed up in four words buried midway through Mr. Johnson's text: "It is not city debt."

Well we have news for Mr. Johnson this morning; in which we invite him to examine Ogden city's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Scrolling down to page 120 we find this entry: Total Outstanding Government (City) Debt - $93,029,566.

Okay... Tim and Mark were partly right. We'll give them due credit for that. Our city's outstanding debt was only a hair over $93 million (as of June 2006,) and not the $100 million that some have suggested.

We'll also highlight this morning's Dan Schroeder letter, in which Dan persistently asks Boss Godfrey which particular foothill areas Godfrey considers "open" for gondola and residential construction.

For the full version of Dan's letter, complete with footnotes, be sure to check out this Ogden Sierra Club link.

And as an added bonus this morning we provide a link to our archive site sound files, where our readers can hear with their very own ears the quite petulant and snarky Boss Godfrey calling the WSU decision process "a farce."

And for those who haven't already heard about it, Ernest Health is coming to town.

That's all folks.

Let's hear it from our always-gentle readers.

Update 9/7/07 3:50 p.m. MT: Dan S. has graciously sent us a report on last night's city council work session, during which the council's main agenda was a discussion of the Mt. Ogden Community Plan. We've uploaded this document to an archive page, which can be viewed here.

Thursday Morning Chewies at the WCF Smorgasboard

Lots of stuff to munch on this morning

We find a virtual smorgasbord of discussion-worthy items in this morning's Standard-Examiner -- so many in fact that we hardly know where to start. Well what the hell... maybe we'll just start out here:

We received this wonderful missive in last night's email, along with this amusing pdf attachment:

I think this would make an interesting news item.

Mayoral candidate in charge of hundreds of millions can't add and subtract and fill out his own candidate form.

Dorothy Littrell

Remember folks, Boss Godfrey is not only Emerald City's #1 screw up, but he also purportedly holds a WSU masters degree in... get this... PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTING!

And speaking of basic incompetence, we would like to direct our readers' attention to a letter this morning, wherein one Godfreyite Standard-Examiner reader takes a unique approach to promoting Boss Godfrey's re-election. Putting the focus on the resumes of the top screw ups in Godfrey's A-team, Emerald City business newcomer Rufus Lohmueller sheds light on the job histories of some of the clowns who've been bungling Ogden City affairs since the very beginning of the Little Emperor's reign. Some of these guys have evidently been booted from jobs all over the globe. We're glad Mr. Lohmueller was kind enough to put the spotlight on this heretofore unknown information, although its effect (at least for us) probably wasn't exactly what the author intended.

In our ever-humble opinion, such a motley collection of job-hoppers has seldom been seen in any municipal government or corporation. When Godfrey is dethroned in January of '08, we'll all be able to breathe a sigh of relief, as this gang of itinerant nincompoops once again seeks new employment opportunities -- elsewhere.

And speaking of spotlights, we now segue into this morning's most articulate Deb Badger letter to the editor, wherein she advocates (what else?) "voting for officials who thrive in the light."

We particularly appreciated Ms. Badger's reference to that heart-warming day in January 2006, when Councilwoman Jeske handed out flashlights to her fellow council-members, symbolizing her hope that Ogden City government would henceforth "thrive in the light."

Ms. Badger does make a good case for the election of candidates Wicks and Van Hooser, by the way, although the same argument, we think, could also be applied to several other candidates as well.

We'll also zero in on Rosemary Hoffman's letter of this morning, wherein she accurately and succinctly draws a bead on the mayoral incumbent's bogus "Godfrey the Crime-fighter" theme. We do hope that this letter will penetrate the consciousness of Emerald City voters prior to the election. God knows the Standard-Examiner hasn't lifted a finger to enlighten its readership about the lies that Godfrey tells us. Hopefully, Rosemary's letter will help in that endeavor, at least with those readers who haven't had the advantage of reading this.

We got a couple of good chuckles reading this Godfreyite letter, wherein a very deluded Stephanie Moore starts out by making the absurd comparison of the methods of the little guy who can't even properly fill out his financial disclosure form, with those of American banking giant (and Ogden home-boy) Marriner Eccles. Then she inaccurately characterises Godfrey's reckless borrowing and spending as "managed debt." After that, Ms. Moore inexplicably launches into an odd manifesto-style rant, accusing Godfrey opponents of carrying "a black banner." We'll go easy on Ms. Moore for now however, and leave it to our gentle readers to rip her letter to shreds.

And last but not least, we were pleased to learn this morning that three new eateries will be arriving at The Junction project. We've been to Iggy's Sports Grill in Salt Lake City, and we're very pleased to find out that this class-act sports bar will be a short bus ride from our own front porch. Located outside the sacred and holy walls of the Salomon Center we suspect it'll be "a happening place" for sports and beer enthusiasts from all over the valley -- especially on Sundays -- when the Rec Center is closed for religious observances. We suspect the Irish pub joint has its possibilities too, although we're slightly puzzled about the whole concept of "Irish Cuisine." A Guinness and a potato, yes?

Whew!

Take it away, O Gentle Ones.

Lawn Sign Wars Update; and a Look at Campaign Finance

We have two items which we believe to be worthy of discussion this morning, both involving our ongoing 2007 municipal election:

1) Lawn Sign Wars. Aggressive campaign sign vandalism is developing into one of the more intriguing features of Emerald City election 2007; and we have more to report on that topic this morning. We'll do a quick review of past incidents first, just to bring everybody up to speed on where this story stands to date:

On August 24 we reported an incident wherein mayoral candidate Neil Hansen caught Boss Godfrey Sturmabteilung Bob Geiger red-handed, in the pre-midnight darkness of August 23, in the act of switching Godfrey signs for those of Hansen. This event was also the subject of a Salt Lake Tribune write-up on August 30.

On the first of September we briefly mentioned a truly odd and interesting twist to this story: that Little Bobby had again been involved in yet another lawn sign interference incident, and was once more caught in flagrante delicto, this time with a Godfrey opposition council candidate's sign in his hand.

This morning we have more to add to the facts concerning the latter event. We now have a report of the incident from the candidate/witness herself, the Hon. Councilwoman Amy Wicks. Ms. Wicks yesterday decided to go public with the story, and provided us a brief written statement. Here's what allegedly happened on the afternoon of September 1, according to Councilwoman Wicks.

We've been involved in lots of municipal election campaigns over the years, and have become aware at various times of incidences where overzealous candidates (or their agents) have been caught (and sometimes prosecuted) for interfering with opponent's campaign signs. Never once however, in thirty years campaign experience, have we ever seen an agent for any political candidate who is actually so dumb as to get caught doing it twice.

We don't know what's going on with Little Bobby. Perhaps he's just a slow learner. We would of course be curious to know what our gentle readers think about all this. And consider the odds of not just one, but two, candidates catching the same fellow interfering with their signs, within a little over one week's time. We know that Emerald City is a fairly small town, but the probability of the near simultaneous convergence of these events borders on the ridiculous.

2) Campaign Finance. Toward this topic, we turn again to our earlier cited September 1 WCF article, in which gentle reader Danny shared his thoughts concerning this Salt Lake Tribune story, reporting on the August 31 campaign finance disclosure statements filed by each of the Emerald City mayoral candidates. In the course of the ensuing reader comment discussion, at least one reader queried whether it might be possible for your blogmeister to obtain and post complete information on those misguided souls who have contributed their hard-earned dollars to inflate Boss Godfrey's bloated campaign war chest to the truly-obscene level of $100,000 -- and to that gentle reader we happily say the answer is "Yes."

In that connection we have uploaded to our storage site a pdf file, composed of the following items:

1) Matthew Godfrey's August 31 campaign finance disclosure statement, consisting of pages 1 through 8; and,

2) A one-page excerpt from Mayor Godfrey's 2004 final report of campaign contributions and expenditures for his successful 2003 campaign, consisting of page 9 of this pdf file.

As to the first eight pages, we recommend that you read attentively, folks. Within these pages you'll find a list of the names of those those sodden souls who don't give a hoot for honest and ethical government. Although we're sure that some of these folks are simply ignorant of Boss Godfrey's methods and mis-deeds, we also find the names of a whole boatload of dyed-in-the-wool Friends of Matt (FOM) who are well aware of what Boss Godfrey's mode of operations, and plainly beholden to him for his many "favors."

And to expand the discussion on this topic for the benefit of those readers with an eye for detail, we direct our detail-oriented readers to page 9 of this pdf file, which shows the balance of monies remaining in Godfrey's campaign coffers upon the conclusion of the legally mandated 2003 campaign finance reporting period. At line 6 of this document you'll see a calculated figure of $37,788.02, which represents the account balance carried forward upon conclusion of his 2003 campaign.

Examining Mayor Godfrey's 2007 filing (pages 1-8,) we find no reference to this amount. Boss Godfrey's 2003 campaign carryover fund has thus vanished into thin air, in an accounting sense.

Although Utah campaign law imposes no restrictions as to the disposition of these moneys, we believe that applicable statutes do impose upon Boss Godfrey the obligation to account for these moneys. Although it would be perfectly lawful for Godfrey to blow this sum on a trip to Paris, or a wild weekend in Vegas, we believe that Utah campaign finance law nevertheless imposes upon repeatedly-elected officials an obligation to donors and the members of the general public alike, to explain how campaign donations have been spent.

At the moment, we believe Boss Godfrey may be in technical noncompliance with Utah campaign financial disclosure requirements, in other words.

We'll do a little further research on this, and do an update if we find any substantive information on the subject. Right now we're just "shooting from the hip" on this.

In the meantime the floor is open. We're dying to hear what's on our reader's minds this morning.

Mayor, You Lied

Third Article in a Series Demolishing Boss Godfrey's Bogus Crime-fighter Theme

By Monotreme

Thanks to a tip from reporter Lee Davidson at the Deseret News, I’ve finally managed to find a reliable source for crime statistics for Ogden City from the year 2006.

As you might recall, this datapoint was important in order to critically examine Mayor Godfrey’s repeated claim, in both his campaign literature and in his taxpayer-funded advertisement in the Thursday, August 30, 2007 Standard-Examiner, that

“Crime has dropped more than 23% since Matthew Godfrey became Mayor, including a drop in violent crimes of 43% compared with an increase of 21% during the 7 years before he took office.” [http://www.votematthew.com/about.html]

“[V]iolent crimes recorded in 1999 were 6.7 compared to 3.8 reported last year — in other words, violent crime in Ogden is down by 43 percent.” [Advertising supplement, Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, Weber Plus section, p. 9D]

These statements are not misinterpretations. They are both, in fact, blatant lies. Mayor Matthew Godfrey is a liar.

I am not making an unsupported allegation. Rather, I’m basing my statement on the facts. Here are the sources of my information:

1) An undated report signed by Chief Greiner, apparently from 2004, available as an Acrobat version of a Powerpoint presentation on the Ogden City website. Click on the “12-Year Crime Report” link. (Greiner 2004).

2) The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report, published annually with data breakdowns for all cities, states and regions (FBI UCR).

3) Mayor Godfrey’s personal advertising space, under the guise of an Ogden City communication with its citizens, published in the Thursday, August 30, 2007 Standard-Examiner (Godfrey 2007).

4) The State of Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Crime in Utah annual report, available online (Utah BCI). Thanks to Lee Davidson of the Deseret News for this link.

Two independent editorial sources have also published articles that directly or indirectly refute Mayor Godfrey’s claims and directly support the claims made in my present article. Mr. Davidson and Pat Reavy of the Deseret News wrote an excellent article, “Prime for Crime?” published in the August 26 2007 Deseret News. I recommend this article for its discussion of the pitfalls of the type of crime analysis we’re engaging in here.

“South Salt Lake, a city with a relatively small population but a big industrial area, suffers the highest per-person crime rates — by far — in many categories.
In the period analyzed, the city had an average annual rate of 86 violent crimes per 10,000 residents.

That is three times higher than the state average — and even 17 percent higher than second-place Salt Lake City, and 46 percent higher than third-place Ogden.” [Davidson and Reavy, Deseret News, August 26, 2007]

(If my math is correct, this gives an average of 5.9 violent crimes per thousand in Ogden for the period under analysis, 2002 to 2006. My analysis gives 5.2 violent crimes per thousand. Mayor Godfrey says it’s 4.4 in his recent agitprop. More about this later.)

Over at the Salt Lake Tribune, Kristen Moulton provides the corrected figures for the “precipitous decline” [Matthew Godfrey, Salt Lake Tribune, August 8, 2007] in Ogden’s crime: 12.8 percent in total crime (less than the drop in the state as a whole) and a whopping, precipitous 5.1 percent in violent crime.

Mayor Godfrey must read the papers. (I’ll remain silent on the issue of whether he reads WCF.) He must know that his figures are wrong. Yet, he has not corrected them. Therefore, he’s a liar.

Here is a graph comparing violent crime rates (per 1000 citizens) for the years 1995 to 2006, updated to include the Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigation figures:


Note that three of the four sources of data are in good general agreement: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (last year available, 2005); Chief Greiner’s undated report, presumed to be from 2004; and the Utah BCI reports.

The only data source that seems to be completely faulty, to the point of being fabricated from whole cloth, is Mayor Godfrey’s published numbers on which he bases his “precipitous 43% drop” claim.

In fact, the Mayor has artificially inflated his pre-Louis XV baseline (“Avant moi, le déluge”, says our own not-so-Sunny King). He actually reported 2000 and 2001 statistics accurately, and he’s pretty close on 2003 and 2004. He replicates Greiner’s erroneous 2002, artificially low numbers.

But where he really goes to town with the falsehoods is in the 2005 and 2006 statistics. He has dropped both numbers by more than a third in order to substantiate his false claim of a “precipitous 43% drop” in violent crime.

The 2005 violent crime rate per thousand people is 3.2 according to Matthew Godfrey and 4.9 according to the State of Utah. The 2006 violent crime rate per thousand people is 3.8 according to Mayor Godfrey and 6.0 according to the State of Utah. Who’re you gonna believe?

In fact, according to last year’s State of Utah BCI statistics, violent crime rates in the last year of Godfrey’s reign (6.0 per thousand) are above those of his first year in office (5.7 per thousand). Using his own faulty math skills (especially unforgiveable in a Master of Accounting) and hyperbolic phrasing, violent crime has suffered a precipitous increase during Mayor Godfrey’s administration.

The lies he tells about total crime are small only in comparison to the Big Lie (“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed…”, Orwell G, 1984).


Once again, the pre-Godfrey 1999 number is mysteriously inflated, and the 2006 number is artificially deflated. This makes the drop seem more “precipitous” than it actually is, and as has been noted earlier by Kristen Moulton and by me, the drop is still smaller than for the state of Utah as a whole over the same time period.

In fact, once again borrowing his phrasing, total crime is up precipitously from the first year of Mayor Godfrey’s administration to the last.

For those of you who have made it this far, some methodological notes. First, while reviewing my previous articles for accuracy, I was troubled by a discrepancy between sources in the 2000 data. I found a faulty population statistic in the FBI Uniform Crime Report data for 2000; they had used a previous census estimate rather than the official 2000 census figure for that year. As you can see in these graphs, when I corrected the denominator, all four data sources were in perfect agreement.

A second methodological note: the 2006 Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigation data are clearly marked as “preliminary”. However, it’s hard for me to imagine that the number of crimes reported in Ogden in 2006 will be revised downward from 474 crimes (two homicides, 42 forcible rapes, 132 robberies, and 298 aggravated assaults) to 301, which would be the number required to achieve Mayor Godfrey’s stated rate of 3.8 per thousand. (A total of 301 violent crimes divided by 79 thousand people gives 3.8 per thousand. A total of 474 violent crimes divided by 79 thousand people gives 6.0 per thousand.)

Third, I’ve had to estimate Ogden’s population for 2006. The US Census bureau estimates only run to July 2005: they have a population of 78,309. From 2000 to 2003, the population of Ogden rose by 1.4%. I applied the same rate of growth to 2003 to 2006 to get an estimated population of 79,389, even though Ogden’s estimated population peaked at 78,510 in 2002, according to the Census Bureau.

Using the larger population is favorable to Mayor Godfrey, and I’m a fair, albeit spiny, echidna.

Using the higher population estimate produces a violent crime rate of 5.97 per thousand citizens, as opposed to 6.05 per thousand with the official 2005 population estimate. Again, note that Ogden’s population would have to increase to 124,736 — catapulting Ogden’s population, currently seventh in the state, well above West Valley City and Provo, and making it second in size only to Salt Lake City in Utah — in order to get 474 violent crimes divided by 125 thousand population, or 3.8 violent crimes per thousand as Mayor Godfrey claims. Readers should also note that Provo's rate of violent crime is 1.4 per thousand for a city slightly larger than Ogden. (Source: Davidson and Reavy, DesNews article previously cited.) If Ogden could match Provo's violent crime rate, that would indeed be a "precipitous" drop in violent crime.

Or, as Occam’s Razor tells us, the simplest explanation is the most likely: Mayor Godfrey is a liar.

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Four Monday Morning Hat-tips!

UPDATED: A trio of prominent local figures and one intrepid SL Trib reporter demonstrate they know how to use their noggins

Over the course of the past week, there have appeared several election news pieces in the northern Utah print media, consisting of relatively shallow overviews of 2007 mayoral and council candidates and their respective campaign platforms. All of these have been tangentially discussed in lower article comments. However we have previously chosen not to spotlight them, mainly because they came up "short" -- both in length and useful content. If our gentle readers would nevertheless like to peruse these articles, we've made them available in our "Elections Module" in the right sidebar.

This morning however, the Salt Lake Tribune's Kristen Moulton offers us an article with a little more reportorial depth. This morning's report, offering a more fleshed-out view of our 2007 mayoral candidates than in previous articles, goes beyond mere press-release journalism, and actually provides Kristen's own canny and independent analysis.

Among other things, Ms. Moulton implicitly rejects Boss Godfrey's recent claims that his policies have "reduced Ogden City's overall crime rate by 23%, and violent crime by 43%." We thus incorporate below the pertinent parts of Ms. Moulton's text concerning this topic, for our ever-gentle readers' attention:

Matthew Godfrey

Godfrey said the fruits of his eight years in office are becoming more evident - safer neighborhoods, more jobs and a revitalizing downtown - and voters can expect more good news if he's re-elected.

Eighteen police officers have been added, and it's having an effect on crime, Godfrey said.

Ogden's total crime dropped 12.8 percent and violent crime dropped 5.1 percent between the two six-year periods of 1994-1999 (before Godfrey took office) and 2000-2005 (the six years after), paralleling a trend in the rest of the state, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.

It is our understanding that Ms. Moulton received last week a press release transmitted from Boss Godfrey's campaign office, touting the unsubstantiated figures which have appeared on Godfrey's campaign website, and in Thursday's Standard Examiner. Notably Ms. Moulton apparently rejected the suspiciously "outlying" figures presented by Boss Godfrey, and instead did her own calculations, relying on statistical data contained in the FBI's usually-reliable Uniform Crime Reports. And equally notably, we find that Ms. Moulton's calculations reveal disparity in Godfrey's figures even more striking than those presented by gentle reader Monotreme in two earlier articles previously published here and here on this very blog.

Ms. Moulton also makes note that the reduced crime rate which is manifest in Ogden, during the course of Boss Godfrey's mayoral tenure, is nothing particularly remarkable, inasmuch it reflects the same decline in crime rate which has been documented all across the entire Beehive State.

The balance of the article is likewise informative as to the other mayoral candidates, and is the first news article during the 2007 election season which in any way differentiates the "pack" of Emerald City mayoral challengers and their views. It's an interesting article, we think; and we thus recommend that our election-minded readers take a close look.

As a second matter of business, we would like to highlight two Standard-Examiner letters to the editor which appeared during the past several days, but which got crowded off the WCF front page due to other competing news and information. In this connection we refer to yesterday's letter by David Smith, and Saturday's letter by Tom Owens.

Each of these letters is a cogent and rational response to earlier letters by Godfreyites Thomas, Cameron, and Justin, three hopelessly-deluded (but entertaining and lovable) Godfrey lemmings who apparently compared notes and concluded that Ogden City is not actually a mid-sized Wasatch Front city at all, but rather a giant corporate megalith, which can only be successfully managed by by a political tyrant whose most recent previous long-term paying gigs were Ogden City slumlord and pizza delivery boy.

Three Weber County Forum Tips O' the Hat go out this morning -- to Kristen Moulton, David Smith and Tom Owens -- three dedicated local folks with obviously well-functioning gray-matter.

And stand by, gentle readers. We expect more fine number crunching on the "Godfrey the Crimefighter" topic from gentle monotreme in the early days to come.

Update 9/3/07 1:54 p.m. MT: It has come to our belated attention that we failed to spot a third letter appearing in the August 31 Std-Ex edition. A special Hat Tip to Ogden's Dorothy Littrell for yet another editorial page appearance. We swear that after Boss Godfrey is kicked to the curb in January 2008, Dorothy deserves her own ticker-tape parade for all her many contributions to honest and citizen-friendly government!

Keep those mails rolling in to Don Porter. The pre-primary letter deadline is September 4.

How Many Boss Godfrey Lawn Signs Will 100 Grand Getcha?

By Gentle Reader Danny

I've mentioned the Godfrey Ring, the corrupt group consisting of the mayor and certain connected business cronies who are looting this city. Now, thanks to Kristen Moulton, we know some of their names.

Matt Godfrey - Ring Leader with $100,000 in kickbacks in his pockets.

Where some of it came from:
Staker Parson Cos., $10,000
Homer Cutrubus, $6,000
The Boyer Co., $6,000
Cottonwood Partners, $5,000
Fresenius Medical Care, $5,000
Dave Wadman, $5,000
Larry H. Miller, $5,000
Petersen Advantage, $5,000
Weber-North Davis Association of Realtors, $5,000

Gee, I wonder why these people would give thousands of dollars to see a small town mayor re-elected?

All of these CORRUPT SOBs have their snouts in the trough of PUBLIC LARGESSE, courtesy of Godfrey.

And now, on cue, they give some back.

Let me be the first to say it. Giving those kinds of sums to Godfrey paints each of these sleaze bags "supporters" in their true colors, showing them for what they really are.

Tell me, you remaining supporters of Godfrey whoever and wherever you are - In which gutter are you washing your dirty morality today?

Lawn Sign Wars Update: In another bit of Emerald City election news, Godfreyite Lawn Sign Campaign "Brownshirt," "little" Bobby Geiger, (Official slogan: "sieg heil Boss Godfrey") reportedly got caught red-handed again today by a council candidate with this particular soon-to-be-named aggrieved candidate's lawn sign in "Little Bobby's" grubby mitts. Oops! Film at eleven.

It's a Crime

Second article in a series demolishing Boss Godfrey's bogus crime-fighter theme

By Monotreme

Mayor Godfrey has made his effectiveness as a crimefighter a centerpiece of his mayoral re-election campaign. Yesterday, our household received a glossy mailing that touted his crimefighting skills, his fecundity and his ability to read bedtime stories to his daughter. All good qualities for a mayor, I suppose, but personally I find the only relevant or useful part of the mailing to be his claims regarding his crimefighting skills.

An earlier WCF article examined the problems with this claim, including his unprovoked mugging of the rules of logic and argument (the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy) and some chicanery with numbers.

In Mayor Godfrey’s latest fusillade against logic and reason, he finally reveals the “raw” data underlying his startling campaign claims: a 23 percent reduction in overall crimes from 1999 to 2006, and a 43 percent reduction in violent crimes over the same period.

Let’s set aside for a moment the questionable ethics of using taxpayer money to buy a full-page ad in the Ogden Standard-Examiner for what is essentially a campaign document. We’ll also not beat a dead horse on the post hoc logical fallacy, even though it still casts doubt on his claims of crimefighting prowess.

What I want to talk about today is the fact that he is guilty of depraved indifference to the truth. Either he has negligently failed to check the data underlying his claim, or he is a liar who fabricated numbers to make himself look good.

There are three sources of data which I’ve used for this analysis.

1) An undated report signed by Chief Greiner, apparently from 2004, available as an Acrobat version of a Powerpoint presentation on the Ogden City website. Click on the “12-Year Crime Report” link. (Greiner 2004).

2) The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report, published annually with data breakdowns for all cities, states and regions (FBI UCR).

3) Mayor Godfrey’s personal advertising space, under the guise of an Ogden City communication with its citizens, published in the Thursday, August 30, 2007 Standard-Examiner (Godfrey 2007).

The Ogden City advertisement repeats exactly, almost verbatim, the claims contained in Mayor Godfrey’s campaign material:

“Over the last eight years, since Matthew Godfrey became mayor, Ogden has hired 18 new police officers and crime has dropped more than 23% — including a drop in violent crimes of 43%. That’s no coincidence.” [Campaign mailing, paid for by the People to Re-elect Matthew Godfrey]

“According to statistics from the Ogden Police Department, the overall crime rate in Ogden has dropped by 23 percent in the last eight years. Non-violent crimes are down by 21 percent, and data on violent crimes proves even more significant.

“In a report calculating incidents based upon crimes per thousand population, violent crimes recorded in 1999 were 6.7 compared to 3.8 reported last year — in other words, violent crime in Ogden is down by 43 percent.

…“[There is a] remarkable drop in crime that is already evident in Ogden” [Ogden City advertisement, paid for by the People who May or May Not Want to Re-elect Matthew Godfrey But Who Must, By Law, Pay Taxes to Publish This Unadulterated Nonsense]

I’ve taken the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report statistics and converted them to the same basis used in the Greiner and Godfrey reports (crimes per 1,000 population): I divided by 100 the FBI metric (number of crimes per 100,000). I dropped the 2003 data from the Greiner report because it was marked “projected” and therefore I did not think that Chief Greiner should be held accountable for its veracity.

The Godfrey and Greiner numbers (red and blue) are in general agreement, except for a troubling increase in 1999 crime in Godfrey’s data which is not shown in Greiner’s data. The Godfrey and FBI UCR data are also in good general agreement, except for that same spike in 1999 which Godfrey claims (and which he uses as a baseline for his “23% drop” claim) but which is not reflected in the federal reports.

I’ve already discussed in my previous article why the apparent drop in total crime is not so startling, since total crimes in Utah dropped at an greater rate over the same period, probably due to demographic changes.

Here’s a comparison for the “remarkable” drop in violent crime during Mayor Godfrey’s administration:


Evidence of data manipulation is manifest here. The 1999 number is far higher than we’d expect from either the FBI Uniform Crime Report or from the Ogden City Police Department’s own published report, and the 2005 number is far lower. The 2002 spike in the FBI data for violent crimes is inexplicably absent in both Greiner’s and Godfrey’s data. The 2000, 2003 and 2004 data are in good general agreement, and the 2001 number is identical in all three reports. The 2002 spike is probably a statistical aberration, as is the 2001 dip, since they both lie away from the trend line. Still, Godfrey’s and Greiner’s data preserve the artificially low 2001 figure but “shave off” the artificially high 2002 figure.

As far as I’m aware, the Ogden City Police Department is legally obligated to provide accurate data to the FBI for their Uniform Crime Report. They seem to have done a good job doing so; there are minor discrepancies in the data which may be explained by methodological differences (such as different population estimates, different types of crimes included, and the like).

But how in the world can we possibly explain an artificially inflated total crime rate in 1999, before Mayor Godfrey was elected?

How can we possibly explain an artificially inflated violent crime rate in 1999, and an artificially low violent crime rate in 2002 and in 2005, the last year for which we can compare publicly available data? Isn’t it odd that the “43% drop in violent crime” claim simply reflects a comparison of two faulty datapoints (1999 and 2005)? How odd that the faulty data is in exactly the direction that makes Mayor Godfrey look more effective at reducing crime than he actually is.

(A full version, including city-by-city breakdown, of the 2006 FBI UCR data has not been released yet, so I did not include the Mayor’s claim for 2006 data of a rate of 3.8 violent crimes per 1000 population. His “43% drop” claim is apparently based on comparison of the bogus 1999 datapoint, 6.7 per 1000, versus the unverifiable 2006 datapoint, 3.8 per 1000. 3.8/6.7 is 57%, and 100% minus 57% is a drop of 43%.)

The real drop, using real, verifiable statistics, is 13%, as I’ve argued earlier. There is a lot of year-to-year fluctuation, so I took the average of the pre-Godfrey years for which FBI UCR data were available (1995-1999) and compared them to the average of the Godfrey years (2000-2005). I think it’s disingenuous to use only two favorable datapoints in making comparisons when you have yearly data for an eight-year mayoral administration.

To get a 43% drop in violent crime, the author of these statistics had to artificially inflate the 1999 number and artificially deflate the 2005 number.

Last year Mayor Godfrey explained to me that we were in a Republic, not a Democracy. This year, based on the letters generated by his toadies, it appears we are employees (or maybe stockholders, I’m not sure) of the Ogden City Corporation, which like all corporations is looking out for the commonweal, like water and sewer and parkland and police services.

It seems to me that the CEO of a $120 million corporation, a Captain of Industry, what Tom Wolfe would have called a Master of the Universe, would want to have accurate data in order to make his Important Corporate Decisions that we mere mortals could not possibly understand.

It seems to me that the CEO of a $120 million corporation would be tarred and feathered by either his board or the stockholders if he were found to have fabricated accounting data in order to make it appear the corporation was more successful than it actually was.

Was this done by Mayor Godfrey, or was it done by one of his employees?

Will the theft of lawn signs be included in next year’s statistics?

Update 9/1/07 11:09 a.m. MT: At the request of one of our readers, we have created a printer-friendly page for readers who would like a hard-copy printout of this article. The page can be found here. Simply navigate to the page, and send the document to your printer.

Mid-week Media Morsels

A one-day respite from our usual WCF political red meat menu

By Curmudgeon

There are reports in this morning's Standard-Examiner and today's Salt Lake Tribune on the public water meeting held by the city council in Ogden last night.

The Std-Ex's story, by Charles Trentelman, can be found here.

The Trib's story, by Kristin Moulton, is here.

It would be interesting, we think, to hear from any of our readers who attended last night's meeting, just to flesh out the information in the above news stories.

And finally, on another topic, the Standard Examiner is trolling for political ads. Running an ad selling the paper as the best way to reach local voters. It's an interesting read, the general theme of which is "all politics is local" and nobody covers local politics like newspapers. It claims particularly that newspapers in general, and the Std-Ex in particular, deliver "credibility that is unmatched" in local political coverage.

I'd think the Std-Ex's failure, so far, to print, even as a news brief, Rep. Hansen's filing a complaint with the OPD naming names of those caught in the act removing his lawn signs and replacing them with Godfrey signs, might raise a question or two, at the least, about both the range and credibility of the Std-Ex's coverage, que no?

More Drivel From the Godfreyite Cheerleaders

Justin Eccles puts in a subtle plug for his council candidate neoCON kid

The Boss Godfrey Campaign Letter Mill is again churning full steam, with two more Godfrey rah-rah letters in this morning's Standard-Examiner. Godfreyite Justin Eccles (proud papa of council candidate Royal "Pain" Eccles) touts Boss Godfrey's "successful record" here; and Godfreyite letters-to-the-editor regular Bob Ballantyne spews his usual bone-headed drivel here (yawn).

Both letters propound what we assume will be the general major theme of Boss Godfrey's 2007 campaign: Boss Godfrey is responsible for everything good that's happening in our formerly pleasant and somewhat sleepy town.

The claim that Godfrey is solely responsible for economic revival in Ogden is nearly identical to another keystone claim in the Boss Godfrey re-election arsenal: that Boss Godfrey is responsible for lowering the crime rate in Ogden. Of course that theme was thoroughly demolished last Tuesday on this very blog.

In that connection, we ask the question: Is the "Boss Godfrey the Economic Savior" theme susceptible to the same method of analysis as the now debunked "Godfrey the Crime-fighter" theme? The answer, we think, is "yes."

First, this latest self-serving Boss Godfrey claim is likewise founded upon the same post hoc logical fallacy. The fact that our town's seeming renaissance is happening during Godfrey's watch actually permits no logical inference re causation at all.

And looking toward broad economic circumstances, we find that the "rising tide" of economic revival is actually a phenomenon that's being experienced all across the state, not merely in Ogden City. Although we don't have data specific to Ogden, we'll speculate, reasonably we think, that the figures reflecting "boom times" in Ogden would be quite similar to those demonstrated elsewhere in Utah. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all.

Would Boss Godfrey claim full credit for economic circumstances plainly not of his own making? Isn't he the guy with more integrity than anyone in the room?

Never mind. We already know the answer to that.

Before we turn over the floor, we'll raise a few sub-issues, just to get the discussion ball rolling:

1) Unlike most cities in Utah which are reaping the benefits of Utah's booming economy, Boss Godfrey has been simultaneously creating public debt like a madman. Whereas other Utah communities will be reaping the benefits of a hot Utah economy without the burdens of massively-increased public debt, Emerald City will be paying off bonds into our grand kids' generation. Will Boss Godfrey's recent massive public expenditures for risky projects like the rec center pay off during the lifetime of the supporting debt instruments? Or will the taxpayers of Ogden ultimately be "on the hook," when the "boom times" turn to "slack times" (as they inevitably do)? How long into the 20-year bonding pay-down term, we ask, will Salomon Center patrons remain interested in novelty gimmicks like this?

2) We grow weary of the continuing claims of elements within the Godfreyite faction (like Mr. Ballantyne) that our current city council is in any way "obstructionist" with respect to Boss Godfrey's "pet projects." From our point of view, there is little difference between our last city council, which quietly "rubber-stamped" everything that Boss Godfrey brought to the table, and the current council, which usually approves virtually everything Godfrey wants. The current council makes a little more noise than the previous council in the process, but ultimately "rolls over" and delivers in a manner similar to the last council, in our view.

3) Isn't it about time "certain people" abandoned Mr. Eccles's right wing-socialist (neoCON) notion that a "municipal government" is, or should be regarded as a "business?" The differences in form and function between "government" and "private business" are stark and palpable. We believe it's high time for our city government to get out of the real estate development business, and all other businesses which compete with private enterprise. We also suggest that Mr. Eccles's ludicrous business analogy be summarily tossed into the dumpster -- along with his thoroughly-botched Godfreyite kid.

And what say you, gentle readers?

Talk about whatever floats your boat.

A Few Questions for Aspiring Elective Municipal Officials

The Ogden Sierra Club leads the way in "culling" the candidate herd

According to the 2007 Election Countdown Clock which relentlessly "ticks" within our right sidebar, the Emerald City elections loom two weeks from today. And it's in that connection that we are pleased this morning to provide a link to the first set of candidate questionnaire responses to have surfaced in advance of our upcoming elections. Over the weekend, a representative from the Ogden Sierra Club transmitted to us a helpful link to the newly-completed questionnaire which they've uploaded to their website. We incorporate the questionnaire's prefacatory paragraphs here:

To help educate voters about candidates' positions on environmental issues, the Ogden Sierra Club has prepared a candidate questionnaire and sent it to each of Ogden's candidates for mayor and city council. We have posted the candidates' responses in full, linked from their names below. Names without links indicate candidates who have not yet responded. We sincerely thank all of the candidates who have taken the time to answer these detailed questions.

We accordingly invite our readers to take a good long look.

We won't comment on the merits of individual responses, at least not at this time. We will however offer our observation, that questionnaires of this type are "useful" in a very broad sense of the word, to a concerned and thinking electorate. Not only do candidate questionnaire responses indicate positions on particular issues, they also provide key insight into the level of public responsiveness which can be expected of aspirants to political office, once responding candidates have successfully ascended to their elective positions. If one mayoral candidate (the usual suspect) for instance, doesn't even demonstrate the interest to respond to nine simple citizen-propounded questions, how much effort will such a candidate be predicted to expend within the upcoming four years, responding to citizen concerns? In the case of mayoral aspirant Boss Godfrey, of course, we already have the answer to the question -- NOT MUCH!

And on the same tangent we take note that there are several council hopefuls who have likewise failed or refused to respond at all. And within the group of those candidates who have responded, several candidates' responses, we believe, reflect perfunctory haste and inattention. Whether they know it or not, even some of those who did respond provided enough information to help us "cull the herd," irrespective of their stated positions on particular issues.

As our readers peruse the several candidate responses, we hope our readers will keep in mind that it's these people with whom we lumpencitizens will be trying to communicate for the next four years.

It's these folks who will be running our town until the year 2012, under a no cut contract with the voters of Ogden.

We would also like to thank the people at the Ogden Sierra Club for preparing the questionnaire, compiling the candidate responses and sending us the link. We did one of these in advance of the 2005 primary election, and we know such a project entails lots of work.

We would also like to again direct our readers' attention to the 2007 election module in our right sidebar. It's been substantially augmented since we last mentioned it here, as candidates have continued to send us their data and website links. Please note that we've also added the above questionnaire to the already-existing links.

So let's open the discussion with the subject matter of the Sierra Club questionnaire, and see where this topic leads us.

Lawn Sign Wars and Other Important Matters

Pre-weekend bits and pieces -- UPDATED

Right on schedule, Friday morning has rolled around once again, so we thought we'd launch a weekend kickoff discussion by devoting the top paragraphs of this space to a couple of items that have been simmering on the Weber County Forum back-burner since early this week.

Lawn Sign Wars. We've had a few comments in earlier comments sections about the mysterious disappearance of non Godfrey-branded 2007 election candidate lawn signs, and the sudden proliferation of the veritable dandelion patch of those gawdawful Boss Godfrey signs, which are suddenly blooming throughout the East Bench neighborhoods of our beloved Emerald City. Lawn sign vandalism is nothing new in Emerald City of course. We get reports of instances of it during every election season. Earlier this week however we received a report with a unique twist. As you'll read below, one mayoral candidate, Neil Hansen, seems to have possibly caught a perpetrator red-handed:

In that connection, we obtained an interesting public document earlier this week. We post it without further editorial comment, except to say that we think it may shed some light on the above-mentioned "lawn sign disappearance mystery."

It will be interesting to follow this story, as it winds its way into the courts system. Indeed, it will be interesting to see whether it winds up in the court system at all.

Best Ogden Lawn Signs. Secondly -- and sticking to the lawn sign topic for the moment -- we include to the right a less than perfect photo image of a most excellent mayoral campaign lawn sign, planted smack dab in the middle one Emerald City citizen-activist's front yard. Our crack Weber County Forum team of award-winning photojournalists (we gave ourself an award this morning, just as the Std-Ex does) captured the image yesterday, while prowling the Emerald City east bench like Diogenes the Cynic, searching in vain for a lawn sign of a candidate other than Boss Godfrey, Royal Eccles and Kent Petersen. We'll also offer that we agree in substance with the political message expressed in this very creative use of a white bed sheet. "Anybody but Godfrey" is one danged fine political motto, we think.

Tourist Trap Hot-spot. We also spotlight here a front page article appearing in this morning's Standard-Examiner, reporting that Emerald City is now an "officially recognized" tourist hot spot. Hotel receipts and tax revenues are up for the year, thanks in part to a new "transient tax" -- and aggressive room rate gouging, of course. We suppose this story is good news for Ogden however, now that we're hustling marketing our formerly bucolic city as a bona fide destination tourist trap.

Godfrey-lemming Endorsement. We'll also direct our readers' attention to the latest Godfrey Letter Mill candidate endorsement letter, which points to the website of Royal "Pain" Eccles, Blessed Boss Godfrey's personally-ordained candidate for the open At-large Council Seat "C." This one's a true work of art. In apparent awareness of the Std-Ex policy against publication of candidate endorsement letters, this "masterpiece" of Godfreyite misdirection is cunningly framed as a candidacy withdrawal announcement. "What's the matter with these Godfreyites anyway," we ask. Don't they realize that this particular Std-Ex policy is regularly ignored by Std-Ex editors, and honored most often in its breach? Like all Godfreyites, these guys don't get out much, except for the Gondola Cult meetings, that is.

Community Bitch Session. And as a demonstration of our WCF community-mindedness we link below notice of a public meeting which will be held next week. Emerald City residents who've grown accustomed to having gravel and chunks of rusty metal dribbling out their culinary watertaps have been graciously offered an invitation to gather together with selected Emerald City officials to "spout off" about the condition of our water system. Lumpencitizens who believe that Boss Godfrey has completely dropped the ball in re our city water infrastructure should definitely put this one on their calendars and plan to attend. Don't forget your pitchforks and torches.

That's it for today, gentle readers.

Time for Weber County Forum's own to blow off some pre-weekend steam.

Update 8/25/07 7:32 a.m. MT: Emerald City Council communications specialist Chad Phares has transmitted to us a FAQ sheet PDF , concerning the August 28 town meeting mentioned in yesterday's above article. Our perusal of this informational document reveals that the city administration is indeed apparently on the verge of implementing a wholesale fee increase in monthly Emerald City water rates. Having since the year 2005 frittered away (to the Salomon Center Project) BDO revenue which had been previously and prudently earmarked for water and sewer infrastructure improvements, Boss Godfrey now evidently intends to play "catch-up," and impose substantial new taxes upon the citizens of our city, under the mendacious label - increased water rates. So much for Godfrey's "no new taxes" claim. If the citizens desire a properly-functioning water & sewer infrastructure they'll pay extra. Godfrey will blame it all on the council, of course.

Wednesday Morning "Chewables"

Worthy topics carved out from this morning's news

Although Councilwoman Jeske gave us our first heads-up on this story last night in the lower article comments section, there's a same-topic article on the Standard-Examiner front page this morning which deserves a front page spotlight. Specifically, Ace Reporter Schwebke reports that the Emerald City Council rolled over yet again at last night's meeting, and approved a $288,000 handout to another set of "Friends of Matt Godfrey" ("FOM").

It's unclear from our reading of this article what portion of these public funds are outright "grants" (the terminology used in the article), and what part will be derived from loans, funded by means of city-issued debt securities (revenue bonds), or other similar debt instruments. Weber County residents should take note: What is clear is that at least the reported tax increment financing portion of this latest FOM welfare scheme will divert tax dollars from the revenue stream of the various taxing authorities within Weber County. If you're complaining about Weber County property tax increases, folks, and looking for somebody to blame, you need look no further than Ogden City government to find a few of the culprits.

Regardless of what the financial "structuring" may be however in this instance, we yet again observe the action of a city council which behaves as if it's still absolutely necessary to pay investors to invest in Emerald City -- a council which slavishly bends over backwards for any FOM who arrives in town looking for a handout.

And to those hopelessly uninformed individuals who wax on in the Std-Ex letters section about our current city council's "business unfriendliness," we submit that last night's welfare-for-the-rich vote is merely just the latest example (in a long line of examples) of a city legislature whose "pro-business" attitude toward FOM's borders upon "fawning" and "slavish".

In another item, Std-Ex correspondent Tanna Woods reports that the City of Clearfield is moving full speed ahead to emulate the right wing socialist policies of the mayoral administration here in MattGodfreyWorld. Our old favorites Lewis, Young, Robertson & Burningham have been retained by that city to prepare a study, with the goal of imposing universal residential-rental business licenses and a mandatory "good landlord" program upon the lumpenlandlords of our neighboring city. In the brave new world of the neoCONS, property owners are considered unfit to manage their own properties, without the benevolent guiding hand of nanny government. Move over Matt Godfrey. It seems the city administration of Clearfield has thrown its hat into the ring for top honors in the "Joe Stalin Lookalike Contest."

And quite predictably, we find another Boss Godfrey endorsement letter arriving within the pages of the Standard-Examiner, via the Boss Godfrey Re-election Letter Mill. The latest set of dumb pro-Godfrey rationalizations come from former Godfrey council supplicant Fasi Filiaga. Among the list of reasons that Councilman Filiaga supports Boss Godfrey is Emerald City's purportedly "lowered crime rate." That factually-unsupported Godfrey "whopper" was of course thoroughly demolished yesterday on this very blog.

Mr. Filiaga also takes a not-so-subtle "cheap shot" at mayoral candidate Neil Hansen, for failing to show up at a recent Boss Godfrey campaign pep rally at the state capitol (Gov. Huntsman didn't show up either). It was at this contrived "meeting" that Boss Godfrey - for the very first time that we're aware - expressed interest in securing state funding for the long-sought Ogden Veteran's Home. What Mr. Filiaga fails to mention however is the Neil Hansen wasn't invited to the aforementioned "Godfreyites only" political sideshow/stunt. Moreover, Mr. Filiaga seems unaware of the basic truth: The idea of using state funds for the construction of a Veterans' Home was Representative Hansen's idea in the first place.

Sheesh!

We're not going to be too hard on councilman Filiaga however. As we all know, he hasn't been at his best lately, so to speak, if you know what we mean (and we think you do.)

Have at it gentle readers.

Mayor Matthew Godfrey: Ogden’s Answer to Commissioner Gordon?

One gentle reader examines Boss Godfrey's "crime-fighter" claim

By Monotreme

Is Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey responsible for a sharp reduction in Ogden’s crime rate? His campaign webpage says he is:

Crime has dropped more than 23% since Matthew Godfrey became Mayor, including a drop in violent crimes of 43% compared with an increase of 21% during the 7 years before he took office. Moreover, the Mayor has put in place a zero-tolerance policy for gang-related crimes. He’s even asked for more immigration officers to come to Ogden to deport criminals that are caught here illegally. Without a doubt, Mayor Matthew Godfrey is tough on crime.

“I’m thrilled with the 23% reduction in crime but I know we can achieve more. And as your mayor, I will continue to work hard to make your neighborhood even safer.” – Matthew Godfrey

Source: Ogden Police Department, Uniform Crime Report Statistics measured in crimes per 1,000 residents

Mayor Godfrey has claimed this reduction in crime during his administration several other places as well. For example, in the August 8, 2007 Standard-Examiner, announcing his gang crime measures, he’s quoted as saying, “We’ve had a precipitous decline in crime for the last eight years, and we’re not giving that up.”

There are several problems with this claim.

The first, and most obvious, is an example of the logical fallacy called, in Latin, post hoc ergo propter hoc — in English, “it happened, so (insert explanation here) must have caused it to happen”. Another way of saying this is the famous statistician’s phrase: “correlation doesn’t imply causality”.

Just because two things happen at the same time (in this case, Mayor Godfrey’s administration and a reduction in Ogden’s crime rate) doesn’t mean one led to the other.

Many students of criminal justice have argued that the crime rate has a lot more to do with demographic trends than with crime-fighting efforts. For example, the crime rate rises and falls with the number of males age 14 to 24 in the population, since almost all crimes are committed by males in that age group.

Did Mayor Godfrey’s efforts reduce crime in Ogden? One way of asking this question is, “did the reduction in crime fit the pattern of change in a different or larger population?” How does the crime rate in Ogden compare to the crime rate in the entire state of Utah?

As Mayor Godfrey’s web page indicates, these data are compiled in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), issued annually. They’re available online at www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm. The last year with full data available is 2005.

The FBI breaks down these statistics into violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson). In Ogden, and in Utah, as in the rest of the country, the overwhelming majority of crimes committed are property crimes.

Obviously, many more crimes are committed when lots of people are around. So, the UCR system levels this data for different places of different sizes by calculating the number of crimes per 100,000 population. (Not, as Mayor Godfrey’s web page asserts, per 1,000 population, but that’s a minor quibble.) To get the crime rate per 100,000 people, we simply divide the number of crimes by the population and multiply by 100,000. For example, for 1995, there were 422 violent crimes in Ogden and 69,290 people. 422 / 69,290 = 0.00609. 0.00609 x 100,000 = 609.0, the rate of violent crimes per 100,000 people.

The table below presents these data for the period 1995-2005:


Now, here’s the analysis of the data.

I can’t seem to reproduce Mayor Godfrey’s assertion that crime has been reduced in Ogden by 23% during his administration. In fact, comparing the years for which data are available (1995-1999, five years before Matthew Godfrey was mayor vs. 2000-2005, six years during which Godfrey was mayor), there appears to be a 28.5% reduction in the total crime rate (comparing the average of 8939.2, 9058.1, 9007.9, 8908.7, and 7989.9 vs. the average of 7726.6, 6678.4, 6656.8, 6488.3, 6911.9 and 6547.1). By this estimate, Mayor Godfrey is being modest.

However, for the entire state, there is a 31.7% reduction in crime comparing the same range of years. Ogden’s crime rate has dropped slightly more slowly than that for the entire state while Matthew Godfrey has been mayor.

Here’s the data as a graph:


Note that the crime rate for Ogden is higher than for the state as a whole. That’s expected, because Ogden is an urban area and much of the state is rural. It’s well known that crime rates are higher in urban areas.

What about that 43% drop in violent crimes?


It’s difficult to see any support for Mayor Godfrey’s assertion of a 43% drop in violent crime during his administration. There appears to be a slight reduction, 13% by my calculation, when comparing 1995-1999 data to 2000-2005 data. The comparable drop for the State of Utah over the same period is 24%.

There are several possible interpretations of the data shown here.

1. As he asserts on his campaign web page, Mayor Matthew Godfrey’s election reduced crime in Ogden.

2. Mayor Matthew Godfrey’s crimefighting skills are so strong, his election as Mayor of Ogden City didn’t just reduce crime in Ogden, but in the entire State of Utah.

3. The reduction in the number of crimes in Ogden had nothing to do with Mayor Godfrey’s administration.

Other, alternative, explanations are possible. I invite you to supply your own.

Mayor Matthew Godfrey may be “tough on crime”, as his web page asserts, but the data don’t support (or refute) that conclusion.

Alternate Reality Department

Godfrey lackey admonishes the lumpencitizens to "just shut up," hold their noses and re-elect Boss Godfrey

We find a couple of items of interest in this morning's Standard-Examiner, each of which relates in one way or another to Emerald City's September 11 primary, which looms a few hours shy of three weeks from today.

The first of these is a letter to the editor by one Thomas Moore, Sr., sternly lecturing we lumpentownsfolk about the vast importance of electing scammers and schemers like Boss Godfrey, to prey upon the citizens of Ogden city for yet another four years.

Emerald City isn't really a city, Mr. Moore suggests. It's actually a giant real estate development company, which can only be properly managed by fine intellects like Boss Godfrey, Royal Eccles, Kent Petersen, etc. -- Lift Ogden hustlers and gondolist airheads -- in other words. Never mind the rampant corruption, graft and cronyism. People like Boss Godfrey and his ilk still have serious fish to fry. They're not done screwing us over yet.

Mr. Moore, a trusted initiate of Boss Godfrey's personal Ordnertruppen, asks a rhetorical question of those lumpencitizens who will undoubtedly kick the corrupt little twerp's arse to the curb in November (if not September):

"If we individually owned a powerful corporation, whom would we ask to lead it?"

NOT Boss Godfrey, nor his lackey council candidate shills and suck-ups, Mr. Moore, we ever so gently suggest.

Wait and see, Mr. Moore. Everyone in town knows Boss Godfrey doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being elected to any public office in Emerald City again, regardless of the size of his re-election war-chest. The Emerald City citizens are simply too fed up.

As much as we'd like to rant on about Mr. Moore's letter, we now turn the topic to another curious news item. On the eve of the primary election, Boss Godfrey is suddenly talking about cooperating with the council, in identifying a preferred transit corridor, according to this morning's Std-Ex story:

OGDEN — Mayor Matthew Godfrey says he will develop a mass transit corridor priority plan in cooperation with the city council.

“We (the city’s administration and city council) agree that there needs to be a plan that everyone feels good about,” he said.

Cooperation with the council? Boss Godfrey getting cozy with the "lesser branch" of city government? If THAT isn't a man bites dog story, we don't know what is. There's a first time for everything though, we guess.

Take it away, gentle readers. It's Monday morning -- time to blow out the weekend cobwebs.

House Representative Froerer Proposes Immediate Property Tax Relief

One state legislator responds decisively to the taxpayer heat

By Curmudgeon

$700 a Month Residential Property Taxes? A month?!?!?!?

Yes, that's right. Some homeowners in Ogden's Hole [aka in realtor-ese "The Upper Ogden Valley"] have seen their property tax assessments soar to $700 a month... as much a month as their mortgages cost. From a story in today's Standard-Examiner:

The largest tax increases in the county have occurred in the Ogden Valley area, particularly Huntsville, Liberty and Eden, he said. Some property owners in those areas are paying taxes of about $700 a month, which nearly equals their mortgage payments, he said.

When Mayor Godfrey and his Lift Ogden Amen Chorus [blessedly silent of late except, it seems, for Mr. Royal Eccles, candidate for the Council] was in full-throated roar, they assured us that the gondola/gondola scheme would make Ogden "the next Aspen" or "the new Vail" or "the new Park City." The claim changed a lot, as Lift Ogden claims have a habit of doing. When next a promoter or politician dangles a silver-bullet quick fix for Ogden's imagined ills before us, we ought to think about consequences beyond promises that Paris Hilton and her entourage will stroll the Junction browsing the Prada and Gucci shops until her next gondola ride. We ought to keep in mind that recreational residential real estate booms can, and for some, do have disastrous consequences. [Yes, being forced out of your home by ballooning property values in a fevered market is a disaster for those forced out.]

The Std-Ex story recounts State Rep. Gage Froerer's [R-Ogden's Hole] call for property tax rebates for those hardest hit. Earlier this week, Rep. Froerer, accompanied by a Weber County commissioner and county tax staff, took part in a public meeting up in the Valley to explain to angry residents why their taxes had soared so far so fast. Rep. Froerer got his ears pinned back. The residents were in no mood to listen to accounting explanations. They were angry and frustrated and afraid of losing their homes and they let Rep. Froerer know it.

Apparently, Rep. Froerer then did something very strange for a Republican office holder: he listened. [What would the President think if he found out? Happily for Froerer, the President is on yet another paid vacation and so is unlikely to learn of Froerer's apostasy.] Rep. Froerer, according to the Std-Ex story, is advocating a tax rebate for those hardest hit, modeled on a similar plan in Davis County.

Ed. Note: For robust and thorough coverage of the percipient tax revolt now brewing in Ogden Valley, be sure to check out the most recent articles in Ogden Valley Forum.

The Council Discusses Downtown Development & Transit

Report on last night's 8.16.07 RDA and city council work sessions

By Curmudgeon

Last night, the City Council held back to back work sessions, the first sitting as the RDA Board, and the second, as the Council. The RDA work session came first. All members of the Council were present within moments of the session’s beginning.

Mr. Harmer introduced Mr. Tom Christopolous [sp?] as Ogden’s new business development manager. He replaces Mr. Scott Brown in that position. Mr. Christopolous formerly held a similar job for the city of Layton. He left to go into business, succeeded, recently sold his business and so was available for the development post in Ogden, Mr. Harmer said.

The main topic of the meeting was the proposed RDA and other city funding for the Windsor Hotel rehab project on 25th Street. Mr. Harmer began by noting that Ms. D. Littrell had sent a letter to the City raising three questions about the three out of state investors in the Windsor Project and their Ogden company [Ogden Properties LLC]. Mr. Harmer passed the questions on to the OP LLC investors and they responded to all of them. First, Ms. Littrell wanted to know why someone other than the three investors was listed as the company’s registered agent in Utah. The three investors in OP LLC are all Californians and Utah law requires that an LLC in Utah have a Utah resident as registered agent, Mr. Harmer explained. Second, Ms. Littrell apparently alleged that one of the investors,[ a Mr. Nichols I think] had headed up a bicycle company [Ibis] that had gone bankrupt. Mr. Harmer explained that Mr. Nichols had sold his profitable company to others, who ran it into bankruptcy, at which point Mr. Nichols repurchased it, and made it profitable again. Finally, Ms. Littrell raised questions about Mr. Scott Brown’s involvement in the Windsor project investment group. Mr. Harmer said the OP LLC investors replied that Mr. Brown is “not an equity participant” in the project and that they have “no contractual arrangement” with Mr. Brown. Mr. Harmer did say Mr. Brown was providing some advice to the partners about organizing their company and projects in Ogden, but that it was being done as a favor, not as a participant in the investment.

Read the full report.

Comments?

Free Candidate Web Pages at Weber County Forum

Get your candidate links and web pages here

Being veritable slaves to tradition here at Weber County Forum, we are pleased to announce this morning the continuation of a practice which we've been following here at WCF since clear back in 2005. Yes, gentle readers -- once again -- with the Emerald City municipal elections on calender this year -- we'd like to announce that we'll be assembling another hopefully robust "elections module" in our right sidebar.

In that connection, we invite our readers to avert their eyes to the right of their screens, and to click on the "Candidates for Office" link beneath the "Ogden Election 2007" header. What you'll find there is a complete 2007 Ogden City elections candidate roster, with contact information provided to us by the Ogden city recorders office. During the past week or so we've been contacting candidates, and madly googling the net. In the course of that effort we have augmented the city-provided information with additional candidate email and website links . Unlike the 2005 election, in which none of the candidates for municipal office operated their own websites, we have this year already identified four Emerald City candidate-operated campaign sites.

Additionally, we have installed several "candidate pages" within our own blog archives, containing information and photo images from two candidates for Emerald City Council seats who've decided not to set up their own sites. We anticipate setting up more of these pages in the days to come.

With this in mind, we now extend an invitation to all candidates for elective city offices in the year 2007:

• If you have established your own free-standing candidate website, please send us your site URL (via the email contact link in our upper-right sidebar,) which we'll link from our candidate roster.

• If you do not have your own website, feel free to send us your formatted text data (the MS-Word is easiest to work with) and any graphic image that you'd like to have displayed (JPG format is best.) Once this data has been received by us, we'll happily set up your web page in a manner similar to those already set up to date.

In short, there's no reason at all that any candidate for Emerald City elected office should NOT have their own web presence.

And to the rest of our Weber County Forum readership, we urge you to keep your eye on our election module as the September 11, primary approaches. Our election feature was one stop shopping for municipal election information in the year 2005, and it's our aim to pull off the same this year.

This project is of course a work in progress. And with this in mind, we also request that those gentle readers with friends or associates who are candidates for Emerald City elected office to alert those candidates to visit and submit their their information to this site. Hopefully, by the date of the September primary we'll have web data and email addresses for all Ogden City candidates, as well as useful links to other pages and sites pertinent to our primary election.

Take it away, gentle readers.

Gangs, "The G-Train" and a Hard-hitting Letter to the Editor

A Tuesday morning Emerald City news potpourri

Once again, this morning's top Standard-Examiner headline story is focused on the rampant "gang problem" in Emerald City, with an Ace Reporter Schwebke report on last night's Councilman Jesse Garcia's community meeting, which had been earlier announced in Sunday morning's Std-Ex edition.

From all reports, there was a "standing room only" crowd of concerned Emerald City citizens in attendance, together with a panel of "experts," assembled by Garcia on short notice to give their presentations.

Noticeably absent from this event was Emerald City's "Boss of Bosses," Mayor Matthew Godfrey, the one Emerald City citizen who ought to have been there, listening with his ears wide open. We're going to assume that Boss Godfrey was busy with other more important business (such as shaking down other Emerald City citizens for four-figure campaign contributions.)

We've received a report that several other elected officials and candidates for municipal office did however make room in their own busy schedules to attend this event, i.e. Neil Hansen, Susie Van Hooser, Amy Wicks, Jim Freed, and Caitlin Gochnour, thus giving us assurance that there are at least a few candidates for elected city offices who are interested in hearing from the lumpencitizens.

As an added bonus, we link this special first-hand report from Weber County Forum's own reader-correspondent Bill C., who kindly sent us his short write-up late last night.

Also in the news today is one of Boss Godfrey's very own most special friends, Sue "G-Train" Wilkerson, who, according to this additional Scott Schwebke story, is snatching up and developing central city properties like a madman. The article refers to hundreds of thousands of of city dollars floating around for the construction and rehabilitation of homes in the Jefferson Avenue Historic District. Whether Ms. Wilkerson actually got her hands on some of that taxpayer dough for her own projects -- Ace Reporter Schwebke does not tell us. What we do know however, is that it's usually financially beneficial to be a close and loyal "Friend of Matt (FOM)." In other words, being an FOM is not an entirely irrational state of being.

And finally, we highlight this morning's Emily Smith letter to the editor, bringing again to the public forefront questions about the pathological secrecy and questionable business practices of the current mayoral administration. This letter packs quite a political wallop, and is a model of efficient and intelligent argument, we think. As we stand poised with less than one month remaining before the 2007 municipal primary, we hope many of our gentle and well-informed readers will be inspired by Ms. Smith's effort, and write their own missives for publication in our home-town newspaper.

Okay, that's it for now, gentle gentle readers. It's now your turn to let everybody know what you think.

Update 8/18/07 10:31 a.m. MT: Std-Ex editor Dave Greiling has an article in this morning's edition, providing some interesting background information about the production of the Standard-Examiner's recent "gangs series."