Wednesday Morning Tidbits

Standard-Examiner readers scratch their heads and wonder what happened at last night's RDA meeting

We find a puzzling Scott Schwebke story in this morning's Standard-Examiner, regarding the American Can development project. The Emerald City RDA board last night amended the existing development agreement governing that project, the article reports; however our favorite Ace Reporter provides not the slightest clue as to the substance of that amendment. We incorporate Mr. Schwebke's hopelessly vague "descriptive" paragraph here:

"OGDEN — The Ogden Redevelopment Agency agreed Tuesday night to amend a development agreement enabling a developer to secure a $3.7 million bank loan to renovate Building D within the former American Can Co. complex."

That's it folks. That single paragraph is all this story provides us regarding the nature of last night's development agreement amendment. From this point the story rambles off into an odd array of largely irrelevant tangents, leaving interested readers scratching their heads, wondering exactly what substantive change the RDA Board made to the existing development agreement.

Did the original agreement contain a restriction, prohibiting the present property owner (AmCan) from borrowing against the equity in its own property? Did the RDA Board agree to subordinate an existing RDA security interest, in order to let a private lender (Wells Fargo Bank) take a senior lien position? Did last night's RDA Board action in any way jeopardise the economic value of any property interest which the Emerald City RDA may have had with respect to the the American Can property? We don't know -- because the uninquisitive Scott Schwebke did not report on what should have been the primary topic of this morning's story.

We've recently been quite laudatory of Scott Schwebke's reportorial efforts. For example, his recent "Secret Gondola Study" series was top-flight reporting -- reporting which in large part blew the lid off the administration's secrecy and deceit, with respect to a quarter-million dollar federal grant which the administration tried to funnel off to a special Friend of Matt. For the moment it appears however, that Ace Reporter Schwebke has lapsed into the same kind of shallow reporting that he's produced during much of his tenure as "city hall beat" reporter for the Std-Ex. We hate to get down on Scott. But now that he's shown us what great work he can produce when he puts his mind to it, we won't fail to let him know when we think he's fumbled the ball.

Perhaps one of readers who attended last night's meeting will chime in here, to explain what Scott Schwebke neglected to tell us about.

On another topic, we'll briefly highlight another Standard-Examiner Letter to the Editor, appearing on this morning's editorial page. Judging from this Donna Gardner letter, it would appear that it's not just Weber County Forum readers who are a mite suspicious of Boss Godfrey's "Godfrey the Crimefighter" 2007 election campaign plank. If anyone amongst our readership knows Ms. Gardner, we hope they will refer her here. As regular Weber County Forum readers know, in the arena of crime-fighting, Boss Godfrey isn't merely an exaggerator -- but rather an outright prevaricator.

The floor is open. Talk about any of the above... or whatever else floats your boat.