Nothing to Hide

Council Meeting 8.15.06

By Dian Woodhouse

The big news of the night is that the Ogden City Council, in a businesslike and efficient manner, did the following:

Adopted an ordinance to put the merit scale for police and fire back to where it was before this year, enabling officers to qualify for a 5% merit raise upon achieving a score of 3, instead of 4 or 5, thereby reducing the present ticket quota for the police, among other things...

Adopted therefore a new salary schedule for all members of the classified service, and...

Established an "Employee Negotiation Review Workgroup," contingent on written responses from the three employee groups, to review the employee negotiation process...

And tabled the appointment of Dustin Chapman to the Planning Commission for two weeks.

Here's how the meeting went.

All Council Members were present, as were Mayor Godfrey and John Patterson. Then as business as usual, past minutes were approved. Councilman Stephens has lately, during this approval of past minutes, said a couple of things about what was contained in the minutes he personally reviewed. This I think much better than hearing Council Members approve minutes of dates without telling us the public a bit about what transpired,

The next items were "Common Consent," meaning that these items had been discussed in work sessions and were now to be put to a vote. They were:

Approving the vacation of 16.5 feet along the west side of Fillmore Avenue between Swan Street and 23rd Street, (Public hearing on this is September 19th, 2006,) and,

Approving the honorary designation of Harrison Boulevard from 36th Street to 46th Street as Wildcat way, (Public hearing September 5th, 2006.)

Both passed unanimously. These common consent items are intriguing in that there is absolutely no background on them put forth in Council Meetings. This of course gives rise to random speculation, especially in the first case, of whatever could Ogden City be wanting and doing with 16.5 feet of Fillmore between 23rd Street and Swan? Anyone who knows, feel free to chime in.

The next item of business was the consideration of the appointment of Mr. Dustin Chapman to the Ogden City Planning Commission. Councilman Stephenson spoke to this issue, stating that "various e-mails" had been "floating around" regarding this appointment, and that therefore he moved that approval of this appointment be tabled until the Council had an opportunity to interview Mr. Chapman about certain concerns.

Councilman Safsten said here that this interview would be, of course, in Closed Session, as is customary with interviews of this nature.

The motion to approve or deny this approval was therefore set for two weeks from today by unanimous vote.

Then came the motion to approve the employee negotiation review workgroup. Councilman Glasmann said here that it was important to note that these were new agenda items, not a revisitation of old ones. Councilman Stevenson then spoke in favor of this issue, stating that this year's negotiating process had been "somewhat painful," and that the Ogden City Council wished to in good faith resolve the situation and problems. Terming the action in the motion "an olive branch" extended to the employee groups by the Council, he asked to meet in good faith to address issues, including alleged "old promises that were broken," and ended by stating that the motion was a wish to "sit down and work through" things.

Councilman Glasmann made the motion to approve, Councilwoman Wicks seconded, and the motion passed with one dissenting vote, Councilman Stephens, who stated that he thought there was more work to be done on the issue.

The next two items, that of the merit system and the salary schedule, passed quickly and unanimously, and public comment began.

Caril Jennings spoke first, thanking the council for the work it does for the community and especially for the olive branch. "I admire and support your need to study these issues," she said, as well as the council's appearance as well as fact in being fair and objective. Appreciating the difficulty of what the Council faces at times, she said, "I wouldn't want your job," and thanked them again.

Rulon Yorgeson began by stating that the custom of having public comments after a vote had been taken was in his opinion not a satisfactory way to run things. He went on to say that "the Council doesn't have as much authority as it used to have," and that this should be looked into, and if it was found to be true, "You might as well go home." The council needed to become a stronger group, he said, and "you are accountable to the people.

Basil Beech spoke very briefly, thanking the Council for their actions regarding the police and fire departments.

John Valdez, the rep for UAGE then spoke, first asking a question: Did the resolution that was just passed change in any way Resolution 95-9? (This is the one currently in force outlining the negotiating process.) Chairman Garcia shook his head in the negative in response. Mr. Valdez then went on to state that the UAGE strongly supports this effort, and that although UAGE's experience in the negotiations had been a satisfactory one this year, he strongly believed that the Council should get its own negotiator.

There were then comments from a representative of neighborhood watch, suggesting that there be a meeting between neighborhood watch groups and police and fire to see if there was anything more neighborhood watch could do to make Ogden safer.

Virginia Hernandez then spoke, stating that the recent publicity about the van had not been good for Ogden and that she thought that it was therefore a bad thing to have done. She spoke in defense of the Mayor, stating that the wage decision that led to the van and resultant publicity had after all been made by the Council, and that the Standard Examiner "should not have made this a political issue." Stating that "if the city council in the beginning had voted with Jeske," this all could have been avoided, she ended by affirming her support for the police and fire departments.

Dustin Chapman spoke next, thanking the Council for giving him the opportunity to "let me say my side" regarding the concerns as to his possible appointment to the Planning Commission. "If anybody in this room has questions, my phone number's in the book... I have nothing to hide," Mr. Chapman said.

Sandy Poll then spoke. Stating that she does not live in Ogden, but shops and does business here, she stated her strong disapproval of the way things had been handled by the city regarding the negotiations and the van incident, and that her intelligence had been insulted by statements of the mayor regarding these issues. Stating that the Mayor and Police Chief should reverse their positions and reinstate Matt Jones, she voiced concerns about political ties the city might have to the county prosecutor regarding the investigation into the van incident, and ended by stating that "we are all empowered," when public safety is making a decent wage, and that she would not shop in Ogden until things are fixed and the city is safe.

Mayor Godfrey passed on Administrative Comments.

Councilman Stephens explained his no vote on the negotiation workshop, stating that he felt that the Council should have had more of a complete program to present to the citizens of Ogden.

Councilman Safsten concurred with this, but felt that the wording in the ordinance does allow for changes and amendments. He stated that he committed whatever he could offer the process to make sure that it's open, fair, and complete.

Councilman Glasmann spoke, stating that his vote tonight was the same as it would have been on June 13th, had he not been unable to vote then because of illness. Having read through the minutes, it was his opinion that the process had been respected, and that Resolution 95-9 "needs some fine tuning." He congratulated Lift Ogden for taking their signs down and the police for removing their van.

Chairman Garcia addressed Rulon Yorgeson's comment about the Council having less authority by stating, "I would not have been here for thirteen years if this had been done."

And Councilwoman Jeske voiced her approval of tonight's business, stating that this would pave the way for a better process.

Editorial Comments: Progress, it seems, is being made. I especially liked John Valdez' comments that the Council should have its own negotiator, or at least take more of an active part in negotiations. The employee negotiation review workgroup will be interesting, to say the least, if the employees agree to do it. In my opinion, the functioning of two of these groups as associations instead of unions puts the negotiating process in somewhat of a gray area---instead of having formal negotiations, they have a "meet and confer," for instance---and it seems that in these dealings the rules are sort of made up as people go along. Which is not All bad, if consensus can be reached, but a formal negotiation process does have the benefit of establishing a hard procedure that must be adhered to by all parties.

And to end, I have to say that this isn't an end. It's far from being over. Matt Jones, for instance, is still on administrative leave. And it could be said of Matt Jones that, the way things turned out, he was a catalyst for these first steps in rectifying the wage situation between the city and the police and fire departments. Being a catalyst in this way obviously isn't too much fun, but the fact remains that, even if he is not where he'd like to be right now, back at work, still---those he works with got to take a step up. And that is no small thing. Not a small thing at all. -Dian

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