(Roy Police Chief) Whinham said. "I'm a big supporter of this.""I don't understand why my good friends in another city (hint Ogden City under Godfrey & Greiner) don't want to use the program."
Standard-Examiner
Drug drop-off a success in Roy
June 13, 2011
Whoa! So What Happening in OGDEN?
Well here's what's happening. Rather than forcing the issue, our sackless Emerald City Council "leadership" (so-called) is now weakening in the knees... and is now proposing "quarterly" drop-offs. NO! We are NOT making this up. Here's the Council packet for tomorrow night's Council meeting:
Fair warning. We''ll likely be demanding Caitlin Gochour's head on a plate in the upcoming election. "Gutless Gochnour" will forever go down in history as the ever-compromising Neville Chamberlain of Emerald City politics, wethinks.
15 comments:
"mixing all unused drugs with substances such as coffee grounds or kitty litter to make them unsuitable for consumption, ... into the trash?!?!?
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by establishing a quarterly collection program for ... Ogden ... to facilitate the safe and convenient collection and destruction of unused, unwanted or expired pharmaceutical and over-the-counter medications ... [and] be administered by the Ogden City Police Department (OPD). "
So, you can either throw your Oxy-Contin and Lortabs out with the kitty litter - OR - keep a jar filled with pills until the quarterly "event" comes along ,,, and Hope that no animals or kids accidentally get sick or dead from finding them in the garbage - or that no one sees your jar of pills and steals it, hoping some of it is worth something on the street?
Hmm, this ordinance does nothing to really fully employ the whole purpose behind the drop-off box in the lobby that works so well at ALL the other places in Weber County where it is used.
And Chief Greiner: you're worried about possible federal guideline or regulation violations by having a safely locked box in the lobby of the police station -- what about violations concerning throwing it out with the coffee grounds or keeping a large jar of pills on the shelf in a household?
js
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Hey Rudi, I'm glad that the drug drop off is a big success in Roy but then again, this is Ogden and frankly, is this really a big enough deal to get worked up about? The Council under Caitlin G. have done a good job (so far) with the route selection imbroglio and it is a lot more important than this drop off thing. A big tempest in a teacup just for the sake of making a point.....well, I think the Council has better things to do. As you once pointed out Rudi - different strokes for different folks.
Rudi, before you demand any council member's head on a plate, I'd suggest you be sure to recruit a candidate to replace that council member. Or shall I infer that you're running?
Am I running? Nope. I honestly don't believe I shall do that. On the other hand, I will be strongly supporting council members in the next election who understand that the Council is a co-equal branch of City government, under the Utah Mayor-Council form.
Got a problem with that?
Scores of other Utah communities and P.D.s are successfully running programs like these, without problems. This should be no big deal at all in Ogden; so I'm befuddled that Greiner and the Godfrey Administration are dragging their feet.
This should be a Council slam-dunk IMO; except for a City Council which of-ttimes appears to be afraid of its own shadow.
Why spend money on a drop box? They are much more interested in wasting money on toys. The dispatch center is being remodeled to add the big brother camera center. The blimp itself might have cost less than a new patrol car but when the cameras and everything else are added up it's more like $200,000.
I've suggested it before, and this seems a good place to suggest it again: Every candidate for Mayor of Ogden ought to be asked, in a very public way in a very public forum, this question: "Will you, if you are elected, ask for the resignation of any city employee who serves at the pleasure of the Mayor who has retired in place and is receiving both a pension and a salary for the same job, beginning with the Chief of Police? Yes or no?"
Mr. Curmudgeon
Ask for their resignation?
No,
but I would ask for them to be placed in stocks on the muni building front steps for a week where the citizens could pelt them with rotten tomatoes and other moldy fruits left over from the farmers market. Perhaps followed by a long and delightful public execution!
Yeah, I got a problem with that, when as of the moment you have identified no such candidates!
Well then, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm very disappointed in Ms. Gochnour's general Council performance; and I'm willing to see what other alternatives shake out.
Good point, Ozboy! Here's a page and image depicting the Sierra County Sheriff's Gallows, which used to be conspicuously adjacent to the Downieville, CA courthouse where I used to ply my trade (occasionally, in another life):
Sierra County Sheriff's Gallows
Yes stocks and gallows outside the Emerald City Municipal Building!
A good crime deterrent, seems to me...
Permit me to politely remind you guys that the double dipping was not illegal. It was an abuse of the public trust and the retirement system, I agree, but the fault for the abuse lies, I think, squarely on the Mayor's doorstep. It could not have happened unless he offered to re-appoint Chief Greiner immediately upon his retirement. Gotta tell ya, if someone offered me double-pay [perfectly legally] to do the same job I was doing already, I'd probably grab it too. I might like to think I'd have the ethical backbone to say "no" to legal double pay, but I'm not at all sure I would [provided the offer was legal, as it was.] The practice needs to stop. We agree on that. But let's put the onus for what happened in this instance precisely where it belongs: on the Mayor's doorstep. Have problems with Chief Greiner's performance of his job, go after him for those [e.g. not resigning as legislator when the he was determined to be in violation of the Hatch Act; his playing license-look-up for Godfrey when the Mayor decided to play Junior G-Man and follow a city employee's wife around downtown to see if her husband was opposing Hizzonah's re-election; high-pursuit gas balloons, and so on.] But Double-Dip becoming Double-Dip couldn't happen without the Mayor's say so. And it was legal. So however satisfying it may be to fantasize about stocks and gibbits, it's out of place.
While I've not been as happy with Ms. G's performance as Council Chair as I had hoped I would be, let us remember that any Council Chair is but one [1] vote on the Council. And that one of the Chair's jobs is to broker compromise solutions when the Council is sharply divided on an issue such that a majority for a proposal is not there. [Is this the case on this issue? I don't know.] But it'd be wrong to simply assume that the Council Chair position is inherently powerful enough that its holder can simply impose whatever the holder wants done on the rest of the Council. That's not how the Council is constructed.
I like the drop-off plan; it seems to work well in other northern Utah cities; the Chief's reasons for opposing it do not seem compelling to me; and I think the Council would be wise to insist via ordinance if need be that the drop off plan be instituted in the OPD. But if there are not four sure votes for that [actually, five, since Hizzonah, da Mayor will likely veto], there's little point to a policy of "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
Though in this case the compromise solution --- quarterly drop-off days --- seems likely to be a particularly ineffective policy, and encouraging people to hang on to out-dated or no longer needed meds for three months until the next drop off date that won't annoy the chief seems particularly ill-advised.
We don't disagree about waiting and seeing. Heck, I have no idea whether Gochnour herself will run.
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