Mayor Godfrey’s Gondola Folly in Ogden, Utah
Welcome to Ogden Utah. Our city government seems to be jumping from one scheme to another to put our city on the map. I guess that our mayor has not considered that many of us like our small, blue collar city. We have always been a working class city since it was founded as a railroad town.
He wanted an outdoor adventure mall to be built on the old Ogden City Mall site. City council members who were up for reelection were voted out in favor of candidates who proposed other uses for the site. (My favorite proposal was outlet malls.) Instead of taking the voters’ message, they went ahead and pushed it through, signing contracts before the newly elected council members could take office. This is something the working class citizens of the city will not be able to afford to use. People may come from outside the city may visit occasionally for a weekend or the day but this is not for the citizens.
The reason I liked the idea of an outlet mall so much is that the citizens will use it. It will also attract people from other areas to shop in our city. It will provide jobs and customers for locally owned businesses the same way that the adventure center would.
Before the adventure center has even been completed, he is proposing another scheme. Mayor Godfrey wants to build a gondola. A developer friend of his has an idea to build an exclusive vacation home community on our foothills. This community would be accessible only by the gondola. In order to accomplish this, the mayor is proposing selling the city owned public golf course. This would leave only the country club golf course. Regular citizens will no longer be able to golf. It would also mean Weber State University would have to sell its undeveloped land to the developer. The mayor also wants to use public money to fund this gondola.
First, they tried to sell it to us by telling us it would be used as a form of public transportation. How can this be if it stops at only 2 places? If it doesn’t go where people need to go, it isn’t a very effective form of public transportation.
Next, he tried to sell it by telling us that it would bring tourists by providing a unique link to ski areas. At last count, no ski resorts have signed on to be a part of this scheme. In fact, the owner of the most popular ski resort in the area and the resort that is closest to the proposed gondola area has stated that he has no intention of being a part of the gondola project.
Snow Basin, home of the Olympic downhill in the 2002 Winter Olympics, already has a gondola on its resort. You don’t have to ski to ride it and it is open year round. Anyone who wants to ride a gondola can ride theirs and the views are better than riding over businesses and homes.
Finally, he tried to sell it by telling us that property values would rise. If his project is successful in attracting tourists (which many smart, educated people say it won’t be), property values may rise. So will property taxes. Those working class homeowners will be taxed out of their homes. Any jobs that will result out of the tourist industry will not be high paying jobs. Those of us who payed taxes to fund the gondola will not be able to afford to continue living here.
Tax payer dollars should not be spent to fund a project that will benefit a few elites and make millions for a friend of the mayor. City resources should not be sold to private individuals without providing the public with an alternative. If the public golf course is sold, a new public golf course should be built with the proceeds of the sale.
Many would still like to know why city funds are being used to pay for trips to Europe for the mayor and his wife so that they can look at gondolas.
Several professors at Weber State University have expressed opinions that the sale of university land to a developer does not benefit the university, in fact, some have said it will be harmful to the school. They have also stated that facts and statistics used by the mayor and his developer friend to convince people that this idea is a good one are faulty. If that many people who have earned a PhD. say that this idea won’t work the way they say it will, I think they are probably right and we should listen to them.
Once the foothills have been developed, they can never be undeveloped. There are very few places where the mountains are as undisturbed as the ones we have here. We should treasure that, that has value.
Now there are some other problems with this gondola idea. First, someone please explain to me how it is a good idea to build steel towers with cable running between them, with people inside cars running along the cables, above businesses, homes, and schools, right on top of a fault line? What do people think is going to happen when the fault shifts?
Speaking of steel towers, Ogden has worked hard to promote its historic downtown district. The tv show “Everwood” is filmed here and movies have been filmed at Ogden High. How exactly do these gondola towers fit in with historic downtown? Wouldn’t a trolley be better? I think the economy of Ogden would be helped and more tourists brought in if we promoted historic downtown and worked to attract more tv and film projects to film there. Gondola towers will make that difficult.
The proponents of the gondola have stated that those of us who can’t afford the taxes on increased property values should sell our homes for a profit and move someplace else. Are they really telling us to just leave our homes, my family has been in this city since it was founded. I don’t want to leave. I want a city government that will look out for the interest of all citizens, not just the ones who live on the bench and have money.
This idea that the poor should just go away fits in with the mayor’s other policies.
His zoning requirements require very specific landscaping. Many of the people who live in the city cannot afford that. He has hired a code enforcement officer to drive around issuing tickets to homes that are not in code. People who are trying their best are getting tickets because their homes are not up to the mayor’s standards. Personally, I feel that this money could be better used to hire an additional gang officer in the police department or some other anti-crime measure. If there is gang graffiti all over the city, are prospective business even going to notice landscaping of homes? There have been rumors that those on the benches get warnings and everyone else gets tickets. I would believe this if I believed that code enforcement ever went to the benches. He drives through my neighborhood every day. At a time when state officials are encouraging water conservation, our mayor outlaws desert landscaping or landscaping that requires less water.
Rates for city water have been raised more this year than they have been in recent memory. There are no other options, we must be connected to city water. I find it ironic that water rates are being raised to unaffordable levels at the same time that tickets are being written if the lawn is not green enough.
The mayor is designing ordinances to either force citizens to conform to his specific standards or force anyone who doesn’t fit his ideal out of the city. When he was elected, his opponents called him “the east bench major.” His actions have proven that name accurate.
