OGDEN — During the State of the City address in January, Mayor Ben Nadolski introduced the public to a new vision for the city: “The Ogden Way.”

“‘The Ogden Way’ is more than a slogan,” Nadolski told the crowd that evening. “It’s an ethos. It’s a spirit that’s within us. The Ogden Way is also a framework, a framework that allows all of us to work collaboratively all towards the same goals. No more competing with each other. No more fighting with each other.”

Nearly seven months later, Nadolski is assessing the rollout of this philosophy, where it’s shone the strongest and what facets to work on as it continues to guide the direction of the city.

“It’s a big concept to present,” he told the Standard-Examiner on Wednesday, “and it speaks to a lot of different audiences, but ‘The Ogden Way’ is a slogan that (encapsulates) my work and my vision and our mission for this community. It (encapsulates) our core values that we’re going to focus on as a city proper, like our employees and our community.”

“The Ogden Way” also encompasses pillars for human success, which the city’s webpage on the concept identifies as:

• “Safety: A secure and vibrant environment for all residents and visitors.
• “Education and lifelong Learning: Opportunities to grow and succeed through k-12 education, college readiness and degree pathways, workforce training, trade school certifications, adult education and lifelong learning.
• “Stable Neighborhoods: Neighborhood districts that foster connection, pride and resilience through connections with neighbors, parks, recreation, schools and houses of worship.
• “Vibrant Economy: A robust, diverse and dynamic economy that supports businesses and workers now and in the future.
• “Strong Infrastructure: Reliable and affordable systems and structures that keep the city running safely, efficiently and reliably.
• “Healthy Lifestyles: Access to physical, spiritual and mental wellness, and recreation opportunities, including trails and open space.
• “Meaningful Connections: Events and opportunities that foster social connections and build relationships, and a sense of belonging across all cultures, faiths and socio-economic circumstances.”

Building the vision

Nadolski said building this framework can be traced back to his first year in office.

“My first 100 (days), I laid out how I was going to approach and spend my time,” he said. “I knew what partners I needed to reach out to and meet with. I knew I needed to listen to the employees and understand the organization, and I was going to be pushing those core values of collaboration, service, innovation, integrity, transparency and a mindset of constant growth and improvement — as people and an organization.”

He said he learned that the city was lacking something important.

“After that 100 days, we knew from what I’d learned that I needed to have a strategic plan for the entire city,” he said. “There wasn’t one. There wasn’t a mission statement. Some of the strategic planning that had been done had been done on a department level, but there wasn’t a relation to other departments. I needed, at the executive level, to give more direction and leadership for all of the departments to align with so that all of our departments across different functions and services that often have to interact with each other to serve people, they’ve all got to be rooted in the same mission.”

Nadolski said he feels that a major role of being mayor is to help guide the city on the path it should be going down.

“The role of the mayor, to me in my mind, is to set the vision, bring the resources of the city in alignment with that vision through a shared mission in alignment across departments doing so in an efficient and effective way fiscally so that we can make sure we’re not wasting resources of the community so we can achieve stable tax rates,” he said. “And making sure we’re the kind of anchor entity that partners with all of our community towards a shared goal. It will take me most of my first term to be completely aligned and ready to go, but it really is advancing really well. There’s tons of good uptake, and it’s something that everybody can tie into in one way or another.”

The pillar of safety

Nadolski said one of the brightest spots in the implementation of “The Ogden Way” has been in public safety.

“Our police department and our fire department are both full staff,” he said. “What it means to be fully staffed means that we have over time — including before my tenure and including during my tenure — have prioritized public safety. That means that we compensate our firefighters and our officers fairly and in a way that respects the work that they do. I think that we’re more than fair — we’re competing really well in the overall marketplace.”

He said it’s not just a reflection of compensation but also the culture that the city has cultivated in recent years.

“Firefighters and police officers want to be a part of something that they believe in,” he said. “I’m really, really proud to say that we are creating an environment that our first responders believe in. They don’t just believe in the mission, they believe in the mission of serving this community, of serving each other in service to the community. They believe in the values and the priorities of this administration. It’s not just a talking point; it’s reflected in the fact that we’re full staff.”

Nadolski said having a fully staffed police department is huge for the city.

“It means that all of our specialty bureaus are full, that we’re not mandating overtime and that if there are overtime opportunities, they’re voluntary and elective,” he said. “It means that we are proactive in our policing, not just reactive, and it means that we make a quantifiable difference in what we see in our city.”

He added that Type 1 crimes — things like murder, rape and robbery — are down 12.2% so far versus last year.

Nadolski said the city’s fire department has also put an incredible amount of work into keeping the community safe.

“We’re in the midst of a really challenging summer,” he said. “We have drought conditions across the entire state. You guys are aware of the high-profile structure fires that we’ve had. … It’s more than just the number of fires they’re responding to –it’s also all of the medical calls, it’s all of the car accidents and so on that they’ve always had to respond to. Plus, the proactive prevention work, that’s a lot of effort. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we’re handling this easily because we’re full staff; we’re pulling it off because we’re full staff. Our firefighters are tired, they’re grinding hard every day.”

He said the city ultimately has the best police and fire departments he could imagine.

“I’m really proud to say that our police and our fire departments are as good as they get,” he said. “It’s not just serving our people here in Ogden. We’ve seen them step up and serve neighboring communities, especially in times of tragedy. That is something you cannot put a price on.”

Projects to complete

While there have been successes in the public safety sector, Nadolski said one area that’s needed retooling as time goes along is tackling the myriad of development projects.

“When I started this job, I inherited a lot of unfinished economic development projects,” he said. “It was a commitment I made in the campaign, part of my economic development priority — to finish the unfinished work. When I got here, I found out it was a lot more than I realized. That has been a huge challenge.”

He said it’s a sign that Ogden is a city very much sought after by people near and far.

“Ogden’s a town that has good energy, good people, and I think we have a strong future here,” he said. “People are recognizing that and there’s opportunities afoot, but it’s hard to capitalize on all of them when we have so much from the past we’re still finishing. That has been something that has required constant retooling and recalibration.”

Nadolski said he and city officials are working to get through these development agreements in the best way possible.

“There’s a whole array of agreements, contracts and approvals that were already in place that I can’t undo — legal obligations I have to follow through with,” he said. “But sometimes there’s opportunities to renegotiate things, and it’s my intent and my directive to staff that when there’s room for renegotiation that it is done in a way that is fair and beneficial to the people of Ogden and to the city.”

He added the city is also working toward updates in its visioning documents.

“We have been stewarding a general land-use effort,” he said. “A general plan is something that’s supposed to last 20 years and we’re way overdue on ours. That started under my tenure in leadership and that is an almost-two-year effort in public engagement, feedback and building that back into an enormous document governing our land use and how we build our city moving forward.”

The city is also working on retooling its zoning ordinance and development code.

With “The Ogden Way” just getting underway and ever growing and changing, Nadolski vowed he’ll find a way to lay it out in full.

“It is a hard thing to communicate because it talks to so many different audiences at so many different levels,” he said. “I’ll write a book about it and maybe then it’ll make a little more sense.”