Ogden council races are a referendum on the mayor's vision

Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 11/04/2005 02:01 AM

Ogden council races are a referendum on the mayor's vision
Plans: Godfrey's plan for a $20 million recreation center is at the forefront of city voters' minds
By Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune

OGDEN - The four City Council races in this northern Utah city are not really about the candidates. Rather, they are a referendum on Mayor Matthew Godfrey and his administration's ambitious plans to remake Ogden.

The question voters must decide is whether they want a council that continues to support Godfrey's initiatives - or one that challenges the second-term mayor's vision for the city.

The one issue that most focuses the choice for voters is the $20 million high-adventure recreation center that Godfrey wants to build with public money as the centerpiece of a new development on the site of the Ogden City Mall. Two private businesses would run the center, which would include a gym, a bowling alley, and an air tunnel.

Four candidates back Godfrey's plan. Like the mayor, they say the market has failed Ogden and that calls for drastic measures - even public investment - in commercial projects they hope will revive a moribund downtown.

Those four are incumbents Kent Jorgenson and Donna Burdett, as well as political newcomers Stephen Larsen and Dori Mosher.

"We're trying to create economic engines," Jorgenson told a crowd of about 70 at a candidates forum last week.

"We have got to increase our tax base," Mosher declared.

Their challengers - Bill Glasmann, Dorrene Jeske, Doug Stephens and incumbent Jesse Garcia - say Godfrey's plan is a gamble that could cost millions, which instead should be spent modernizing Ogden's decrepit water and sewer lines.

Those candidates would rather tap the future income flowing from the Business Depot Ogden (BDO) for the city's infrastructure - as an existing ordinance requires - rather than use it as collateral for a loan on the high-adventure center. Godfrey is asking the current council to kill that ordinance.

"I'm in favor of economic development, but it's a question of 'Do you put all your eggs in one basket?' " said Garcia, who often opposes Godfrey's initiatives and who lost a bid to unseat the mayor two years ago.

Garcia also noted that Godfrey's handling of mall redevelopment so far has been expensive. A lawsuit by the Woodbury Corp. and challenge by the Army have pushed the initial $10 million price tag to buy and demolish the mall to $17 million.

Candidate Stephens, who narrowly lost a council bid eight years ago, said private money should build the new mall. "The city needs to be out of the private sector."

Some candidates, while generally supporting Godfrey, take pains to tell voters they are not guaranteed votes for whatever the mayor does.

"I'm too big to fit in the mayor's pocket," says Larsen, who notes that he objected to Godfrey's handling of Stuart Reid, his community-development director who resigned, got a $44,000 severance and then signed a $78,000 contract to run BDO for the city.

Likewise, most of the candidates, even those who like Godfrey's plans, have been careful about endorsing a gondola to carry people from the downtown transit center, through the proposed mall and to Weber State University. If it is built, they say, it should be with private money.

kmoulton@sltrib.com

SL Tribune article link.