OGDEN CITY COUNCIL
Hopefuls spar over leadership style, airport operations
BY TIM VANDENACK
Standard-Examiner Staff
OGDEN — Leadership focus, the Ogden Nature Center and management of
Ogden-Hinckley Airport figure big in the contest for the At-Large A
seat on the Ogden City Council — judging by responses from the hopefuls
at a debate, anyway.
Incumbent Marcia White, seeking her second term, and Lew Wheelwright,
challenging her for the post, faced off at a candidate forum Thursday
night, touching on those issues and more. Bart Blair, seeking his third
term in the At-Large B post, also addressed the gathering at Union
Station here, though his challenger, Mary Khalaf, didn’t attend.!
White stressed the
importance of fiscal responsibility and emphasized her organizational
skills and familiarity with the process of getting things done at City
Hall.
"It’s going to take people who understand how to look at budgets, how to look at revenue and how to look at expenses,"
she said. While it may not excite broad public interest, one of her
proudest accomplishments, she said, was helping implement longer-term,
five-year budget planning.
Wheelwright, a businessman and chiropractor, said if voters want to maintain the status quo, he’s not their guy.
Sometimes leaders need to shake !
things up to get things done, he said, and he also sounded sup!
port for minimizing government intrusion into private business.
"I do come in to it as a disruptive force if I get in," Wheelwright said.
Even so, he also said he analyzes the data at hand in making decisions
and would bring a businessman’s perspective to the council. "We’re
going to have to run the city more like a business, not like a club," he
said.
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The League of Women Voters of Weber County and Junior League of Ogden
hosted Thursday’s gathering, which drew about 50 people. The candidates
for the Ward 1 and Ward 3 posts, also up for grabs, met Wednesday.
Airport:
Dissatisfaction with management of the city-owned Ogden airport pushed
Wheelwright into the City Council race, hoping to be able to spur
change as an elected official. Wheelwright, a pilot, owns hangars at the
airport and decries eventual plans to build a parking lot where one of
his hangars sits, which he says reduces the property’s value.
"That has been a totally ill-managed deal," said Wheelwright, who’s
focused his displeasure on Jon Greiner, the airport manager.
White sai!
d the germane issue relative to the airport is reducing the cost the
city incurs in managing it, up to $500,000 some years. City leaders have
been seeking more commercial flights out of the airport to that end,
which White lauded.
"The conversation we need to have is finding solutions to make it solvent," she said.
Commercial service is a key prong of airport operations, Wheelwright
said. But general aviation activity — private pilot operations, for
instance — is also key, and growth prospects in the commercial sector
are probably limited.
"A lot of people will say we can be a regional airport. Probably won’t happen," Wheelwright said, noting!
the proximity of the mountains of the Wasatch Front and the r!
elatively short runway here.
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TIM VANDENACK/STANDARD_EXAMINER
The Ogden City Council At-Large A candidates, incumbent Marcia White,
right, and Lew Wheelwright, met at a candidate forum Thursday, Oct 27,
2017, at Union Station.
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As to Wheelwright’s criticism of airport management, White noted that
city council members typically recuse themselves on issues if they have
a financial interest, an apparent reference to her challenger’s
ownership of hangars at the airport. Beyond that, oversight of Greiner
falls to Mayor Mike Caldwell, not the city council.
Ogden Nature Center:
Kerry Wayne of Marriott-Slaterville has injected himself into the
Ogden City Council races, distributing fliers critical of White, Blair
and Doug Stephens, a city councilman up for re-election in the Ward 3
race. Wayne maintains they haven’t done enough to protect the Ogden
Nature Center from encroaching development and the issue came up
Thursday.
Charges she
hasn’t done enough to protect th!
e center are "absolutely false and incorrect," White said. When news of
a proposal pushed last summer by Caldwell to allow development on a
piece of property adjacent to the center emerged, she immediately
called the mayor to voice her displeasure. The plans ultimately fizzled.
Wheelwright zeroed in on Ogden parks officials’ moves to gather up Wayne’s fliers as he
was placing them under car windshield wipers near Lion’s Club Park in
Ogden earlier this month. Some fell into the gutter, parks officials
say, and they viewed the fliers as litter. Wayne decried the parks
officials’ actions, as did Wheelwright.
"That’s a huge concern for me," Wheelwright said. !
"If that’s the case, we have some major issues."
Infrastructure, tapping technology
Looking forward, Blair, alone on the stage when it was his turn with
forum moderator Adrienne Andrews, said the city’s infrastructure needs
attention. The city should also continue to tap technology to better
inform the public of municipal matters and do what it can to make Ogden
an inviting place.
"One of the strengths of our city is the diversity in it," Blair said.
Khalaf was attending a leadership academy in Phoenix sponsored by the
Americans for Prosperity Foundation, according to a spokesman at
Thursday’s forum.
Contact reporter Tim Vandenack at tvandenack@standard.net, follow him on
Twitter at @timvandenack or like him on Facebook at
Facebook.com/timvandenackreporter.
