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Ogden City Council leaders need to stop canceling regularly scheduled leadership meetings with Mayor Matthew Godfrey. These meetings have consistently been canceled since April. The mayor's frustration with the current council leadership is justified.
The excuse that the mayor can meet with the council at regularly scheduled council meetings won't cut it. It is a common -- and needed -- practice for municipal leaders to discuss policy, argue, and seek compromise at these types of meetings.
Council Chairwoman Amy Wicks and Council vice Chairwoman Caitlin Gochnour have adopted a flight policy, rather than a fight policy, in dealing with Mayor Godfrey and his administration. This creates dysfunction and it must be corrected if the disagreements that have divided Ogden's government are to have a chance to be eased. Elected officials cannot duck negotiation meetings just because they are uncomfortable with a political adversary's negotiation tactics.
And that is what's happening. Mayor Godfrey is a forceful politician. He's a strong debater. His style can make people uncomfortable. It is the responsibility of the council leaders to state their case as forcefully. That's the first step to negotiation. If, after these meetings, the council's answer to the mayor is no, then it's no. But let the mayor have as much debate as he gives! Then at least the issue will be roundly discussed and debated.
In the past, the mayor and council members have disagreed on what was accomplished at these types of meetings. We have a solution to that. Let's have the leadership meetings be open to the public. Interested residents could witness the efforts to hash out issues and reach compromise. These efforts could be reported in the newspaper. It would end the sniping that has followed past leadership meetings.
We are also concerned with the accessibility of Council Chairwoman Wicks. By her own admission, she frequently is not available until after 5 p.m. Given her position in Ogden city, she needs to follow the example of hundreds of her colleagues across the state and be available more often for the city administration and news media inquiries. We respect Wicks' work responsibilities, but if they interfere with her council chair responsibilities, maybe someone else should do the job.
We have a mayor with the tenacity of a bulldog. We have a council leadership that is willing to oppose him, but not communicate with him. They need to talk with him. It's their responsibility.
Cancel Your Subscriptions
Thank you for helping me understand why I canceled my home subscription to your newspaper.
Sunday's Editorial
Hardly any more posts are needed after reading flatlander's, he said it all and quite well. But, I will ask one question - did Godfrey write this editorial? I ask that question because I cannot believe a thinking, rational editor would write an article such as this and question the communication desires of our city council leadership and NOT question the poor and at many times non-existent communications of the mayor and his immediate staff. Just like flat asked - do you read your own newspaper?
The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
Mayor Godfrey, look out. If the Council ever consults with Brother Maynard and the Book of Armaments and figures out how to use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antiocccccchhhhh, you're toast.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk
How about "disgusting"?
Is it possible that the SE's offices being located in BDO, with the mayor as their landlord, has anything to do with this undeserved swipe at the City Council leadership? Has the Godfrey/Gondola Chamber of Commerce threatened to pull advertizing if the SE's already pro-Godfrey stance weren't extended further? What planet have you people been living on? Mayor Godfrey doesn't "communicate" with anyone who disagrees with him, even if they have facts, intelligence, and documentation to support their arguement. I've seen this first-hand. Ask an honest question or suggest an opposing opinion and you are met with little more than rudeness and vile sarcasm. And that's in public!I stopped my subscription to the SE a while back because I got tired of subsidizing Godfrey's mouthpiece. Become an independent, question-asking newspaper and I'll be back. But not until then.
Embarrassing
This is simply embarrassing.
A Humble Suggestion for the Standard Examiner
Having just read the SE's Sunday editorial over my morning coffee --- the coffee at least was good --- I am moved to offer a humble suggestion to the editors of the Standard Examiner in hopes of improving editorials to come. I suggest they read their own newspaper. I think they'd find it quite instructive. Today's editorial, for example, takes the Council leadership to task for [allegedly] refusing to communicate with the Mayor. Why, just a while ago, there was an editorial in this very paper that berated the Mayor for springing the contract to privatize operation of the Marshall White Center [and to close its pool] on the Council [and public] by surprised. Playing "Gotcha!" the SE said then to the Mayor, was no way to relate to the Council and public on important matters. Then, going back a bit further, there was the Mayor's secret instructions to the City's lobbyist at the legislature to encourage a bill removing the Council's ability to choose the head of Ogden's RDA [at the time, Mayor Godfrey]. He had to keep the instructions secret, because he'd made an agreement with the Council that the city's lobbyist would work only on legislation that both the Council and Mayor agreed he should work on. How do I know that happened? I read it in the Standard Examiner. Going back a bit futher, there were the emails from the Godfrey team stressing the importance of not letting the Council know the Mayor was trying to get UTA to launder federal grant funds to pay off a consultant he'd hired, on behalf of Ogden, to do a gondola report. Can't have the Council finding that out, the emails said. How do I know that happened? I read it in the Standard Examiner. And going back just a bit further... Godfrey has a long history displaying plainly his lack of interest in communicating anything to the Council other than orders... there was the time Godfrey wanted the city to sell some RDA property downtown to a particular buyer [who had not, by the way, made the highest offer for it]. The Council asked who it was they Mayor wanted to sell the property to, and the Administration told the Council not only that it wouldn't tell them, but that they had no right to ask. How do I know that happened? I read it in the Standard Examiner. But today, the SE editors have decided the problem is, the Council won't communicate. Do they read their own paper at all? Seems not. Then let's look at the evidence the editorial presents to back its opinion. Won't take us long to do that, because there is none provided. How many times has the Council leadership met with the Mayor since April? Don't know. Editorial doesn't say. How many meetings have been cancelled? Don't know. Editorial doesn't say. Were all cancelled meetings cancelled by the same party? Don't know. Editorial doesn't say. And then we come the final, shameful bit of pandering to the Mayor. It's at the end of the editorial. It says this: "We are also concerned with the accessibility of Council Chairwoman
Wicks. By her own admission, she frequently is not available until
after 5 p.m. Given her position in Ogden city, she needs to follow the
example of hundreds of her colleagues across the state and be available
more often for the city administration and news media inquiries. We
respect Wicks' work responsibilities, but if they interfere with her
council chair responsibilities, maybe someone else should do the job." Well, let's see now. Ogden has a full-time Mayor who residents pay a six figure salary to do a full time job for the city. The Council chair gets about $9K a year to work part time for the city, mostly evenings. So, if someone has to go a bit out of their way to schedule a meeting the other can attend, who should it be? Our six figure full time Mayor? Or our $9K part time Councilwoman? Why, the Councilwoman of course, says the Standard Examiner editorial board. I can understand why the Board tucked that last bit at the bottom of its editorial. It was hoping, I imagine, people would quit reading before they got to it. If the Publisher of the Standard Examiner is going to foist this kind of editorial embarrassment on readers, he should have the courage to sign his own name to the drivel.
Standard is showing its true colors
This is about the most disingenuous of all the groveling articles and editorials concerning Mayor Godfrey that the Standard has printed lately. It is pretty obvious that the Standard is firmly in the mayor's pocket and that the paper will do whatever they can to strengthen his position with the council by writing highly slanted articles about the mayor's hand picket candidates - Phipps, Hains, Garner and Dean - and by scurilous attacks on the council - like this one. The objective seems to be to return to the "Rubber Stamp" council the mayor enjoyed several years ago. This was the same council that fully supported the mayor in his obscenely bush league obsession with building the bowling alley and penny arcade (AKA the Junction) which indebted the tax payers of Ogden to the tune of $40 million or so dollars and is currently costing the same citizens over a million a year to make up for the financial failure that the mall is with this silly combination as its anchor. You say the mayor has "tenacity of a bulldog", well I believe he has the personality, intellect and behavior pattern of a pit bull. It has been said that he is especially contemptous of women, that he bullies them when there are no witnesses around and there have even been reports, from an Ogden police officer, that he physically smacked his own wife once during a 24th of July parade. This of course was never reported in the Standard. Considering that the leadership of the Ogden council are women, I think it perfectly appropriate that they refuse to meet with him in private. Your suggestion that these heretofore private sessions with the council leadership be made public is actually a pretty good idea as the mayor doesn't have the courage to abuse them in the presence of witnesses. Most bullies are rather cowardly in that manner. I rather suspect that if the meetings are in fact made public that the council leadership would be most willing to meet with him.The bottom line fellas is that there is no negotiating with an ill tempered pit bull and it is a real pitty for the citizens of Ogden that the Standard is the only news outlet that reports on Ogden politics. I suspect that if you had any competition you would not dabble in such one sided and disingenuous nonsense.