A HIGHER FATHER

When George W. was asked if he had consulted with this father prior to making the decision to attack Iraq, he responded that he went to “a higher father”. Many of my good friends here in Utah immediately got a peaceful “Stepford wife” look on their faces and began nodding knowingly. I, for one, felt an icy cold chill.

What is it that allows even the goofiest reference to a higher power to shut down all of the real thought processes in our all to human brains. Why are so many of us comforted by such a reference when even a cursory look at our history shows that most of the time people governing in the name of God have allowed some of the most harrowing and evil actions that have ever occurred in the annals of time. To look logically at such a statement by our president at such a time should scare the socks off all of us.

First, how do we know that his version of a higher father bears any relationship to ours (philosophically speaking, do any two people see God in exactly the same way)? For example, what if W’s vision of himself is that he is an instrument in the hand of God who has been ordained to bring about the second coming of the Lord. Is this something we really want to leave for W to decide? That, in his version of religious nirvana, the prophecies of the apocalypse and Armageddon must be brought to pass, and attacking Iraq is a sure way to get the ball rolling. Maybe his view is not that proactive, but his underlying belief in all of that makes him much less concerned about the possibility that he might be making a monumental mistake. Self-fulfillment of prophecy is not normally real. What in George’s past, present active demeanor or attitude would lead any of us to truly believe that he has the remotest possibility of attaining a direct line to God?

Second, and I think this far more likely, he doesn’t really have an underlying belief in all of this, but is using the reference to dupe the true believer and get a pass on some frighteningly suspect logic. The fact that this may be the case should leave us to ponder why such references lead so many to accept being duped so readily. Why does the invocation of the use of faith require that we dispense with logic altogether to prove how strong is our faith, and therefore how holy we must be (among the faithful)!

Third, how selective our “faith” becomes. Jerry Fallwell asked the faithful to believe that Bill Clinton was guilty of (maybe multiple) murders and for a small “donation” he would send the “proof” (in VHS or DVD). It was, of course, utter nonsense; but it raised a ton of money for the cause of “faith”. On the other hand, Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face with a shotgun while slaughtering helpless quail in a staged “hunt”, and we are being asked to believe that we should send our heartfelt sympathy … to Cheney. Pat Robertson’s repeated invocation of the supposed will of God becomes ever more ludicrous and outrageous. He should be tarred and feathered, or utterly ignored. But instead his statements only further his cause of feathering his own nest (in the cause of faith).

In a much less frivolous sense, we believe that Abraham is the absolute paragon of true faith (and ironically the father of all three major God based religions) because, among other actions, he was willing to bind his own son and place him on an alter to commit his murder. What faith, such obedience, truly here was a man of God. The Lafferty’s are heinous murderers for having the “faith” to follow through with the murder of their sister-in-law and nephew. They said (and insist today) that God ordered the sacrifice. What lunatics they are! Once you open the door to the belief that God will, and has, ordered individuals to commit what otherwise would have been considered unspeakable criminal destruction, then how does our faith serve us?

In the Book of Mormon story, was Nephi a brave hero in the faith, or a burglar and murderer when he stole the plates of Laban? I’m not attempting sacrilege here because I believe that the idea of sacrilege in the first place is an ugly riot in the making. And for what, cartoons penned by an infidel? Muslims have used the fear of sacrilege to keep the Arab masses down for centuries and to enable them to fight their tyranny. Heaven forbid you tease my Mohammed about his turban but I can devastate Mohammed’s Golden Dome Mosque in retribution for the slightest wrong.

Fourth, just like Christians, Jews and Muslims like to point to Abraham as the father of their faith (Mormons tag actual lineage to Abraham through patriarchal blessings). Americans like to point to the creation and organization of the United States in a religious sense which we use again and again to justify some of the goofiest causes eg: slavery, denying women the right to vote and now denying homosexuals a number of common civil rights. Christians believe they are endowed with special rights under “their” constitution (Mormons believe the constitution was divinely inspired) and point to hints in the writings of the forefathers to substantiate their belief that the United States is, and always will be, a Christian nation. The fact is, that most of the forefathers were Deists (not Christians), and even this did not stop them from instilling the Constitution with prohibitions against letting government get involved in religious creation or substantiation. Many of the intrepid settlers of our nation came here expressly to avoid religious tyranny, not surprisingly imposed by European Christians, but eventually every religion in the world at some time or another has forced members of their community to emigrate through some form of religious tyranny. Today Christians in America are whipping up a little religious tyranny of their own. Ironically, Mormons think they are included in the Christian Right (though why they want to be is a mystery), they are not. President Carter wrote in his book, “Our Endangered Values” that one of the things that really got him crosswise with the newly emerging Christian Right was his effort to assist the Latter Day Saint faith with problems they were having with their international missionary program. LDS members as a whole hate the ACLU, but may need that organization to once again protect their right to exist once the Christian Right assumes the national power they crave. Members of the LDS faith are just as guilty of this unholy desire to control state and local governments in spite of specific “revelation from God” prohibiting it. D&C 134:9 clearly instructs, “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government.” This didn’t stop us from passing the “Larry H. Miller” law forbidding auto dealerships from operating on Sunday, all to protect the pious Miller from Sunday competition. I could have admired him for exercising his religious beliefs by voluntarily closing his many dealerships on Sunday, like the owners of Macy’s grocery stores do. But I revile him for using his religious and political muscle to force all dealerships to do the same. If I’m Jewish or Seventh Day Adventist, my belief keeps me from shopping on Saturday and the state forbids me to shop Sunday. Ironically, Christ exercised his Sabbath on Saturday (Only when the pagan Romans hijacked Christianity did Sunday become the Sabbath to replace its own day of worship of the sun). Saturday is the seventh day of the week when God supposedly rested.

Most Mormons believe there should be open, organized prayer in schools and other pubic gatherings. Like all religions, they believe the prayer should be of their own choosing. It was a Mormon and Catholic who joined together to bring suit against a Texas school district to end organized prayer by the good Christians that regularly contained the incantation “protect us from these cultists” (i.e., Mormons and Catholics). Most of my LDS associates don’t get the irony.

As it turns out, W should indeed have consulted his real father who had the sense not to mire us in the senseless and hopeless job of forcing Iraq to change regimes. Dick Cheney, then Defense Secretary, was most eloquent in describing the disaster that we would have inherited by physically removing Hussain. That, of course, was before he was made CEO of Halliburton, and recognized the phenomenal profits that we gullible citizens of God’s Country would lavish on his corporate entity to go in and finish the job. He, and all of his corporate buddies have been saying “Thank you, Jesus!” ever since. No real problem that the conflict was entered by Dick and W on the flimsiest excuse for a war ever “created”. They apparently did it on faith, which is odd because this whole episode is utterly devoid of “intelligent design”. May God save us from the faithful!

IF I HAD A NICKEL…

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard the refrain…the Ogden mall ruined our downtown. The theory goes, from those who have a dark and stormy memory, that before the mall, the streets of Ogden were crowded with shoppers, their fists stuffed with cash. The truth is that their complaints about the mall are dead wrong,… and dead right. Ogden’s downtown was in serous trouble when the mall debate began. It was sad to those of us who remember waiting in line to buy at Perkins, Ltd., Buehler-Bingham’s, the Blue Door and down the stairway to great clothes at Fred M. Nyes, watch Ogden's downtown dwindle away. So the mall was a bad idea…right? Wrong!
This mall was a bad idea. If the mall had been built in a way that retained the character of Ogden’s Washington Boulevard shopping experience while adding the convenience of a mall experience and a safe and convenient parking terrace, we would have lit a downtown fire that would still be burning today. It was stunning to see the downtown mall built with more solid brick walls than the prison. Replacing cool old storefront facades with dark windowless masonry destroyed the streetscape. The parking terrace was dark, scary and inconvenient. It was designed by Darth Vadar. Finding a suitable parking spot was like seeking a spot of vulnerability in the Star Wars Death Star.
To make matters worse, the critical southeast corner of the mall, where the funky old JC Penneys used to stand, belonged to a different owner, so the mall could never develop a coherent identity, except that from the outside it looked like a prison. There was one bright spot… Nordstroms! Because of Nordstrom’s investment in the mall, they bought and built their own store on the southwest corner, the Ogden Mall came out of the chutes ahead of Newgate; and on that draw alone, the mall limped along in spite of mismanagement and Frankenstein Castle parking. It was the nearest Nordstroms to Logan, Idaho and Evanston, Wyoming. Some of these outer reaches organized bussed shopping trips to the Ogden Mall for a chance at Nordstroms.
Imagine what would have happened without Nordstroms. Well actually we don’t have to; the dirt parking lot where the mall used to be is ample evidence. Nordstroms warned the powers in Ogden, Mayor Mecham’s administration, that they were going to have to leave if major mall improvements were not made. They didn’t want to leave, remember they owned their building. In fact, they wanted to expand from a “B” store to an “A” store, which they needed to compete with Dillards. The city leaders played possum, hoping that things would work out. Mecham didn’t want to expend city resources on a commercial venture. This is just one of those examples where philosophy should have come to grips with reality. The Mayor saved the money it would have cost to really build something so that later we could spend a lot more money to get nothing, hence two blocks of really attractive dirt. Cross Western is out of business, Meier and Frank (soon to be Macy’s) is in Riverdale and true to their threats Nordstroms is gone (along with their generous return policy, do you hear me…Dillards).
With our new dirt lot we do have the opportunity to reinvent a unique, street friendly, downtown asset. The high adventure recreation center is an exciting start, but not if it succumbs to the ravages of compromise and budget cuts. We don’t need another Gold’s Gym. If it can’t be done right, move on to another idea that can. The time has come for us to chase away the ghosts of Ogden malls past and to develop something truly exceptional for Ogden’s future. Maybe we can all make a few nickels along the way!

YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE GUY!


What did he say? He won the cold war? Wow! Now that’s news. But I get ahead of myself.
A few years back my associates and I drove out to Hill Air Force Base for the annual law day celebration, a nice affair with an unusually good luncheon celebrating the rule of law and its effect on freedom in the USA. Our only trepidation was the keynote speaker who was often referred to as “Borin’ Orrin.”
I like to give people a chance before drawing my own conclusion so I settled in to hear our senior senator. While lunch was served, Mr. Hatch made his way around the hall shaking hands and introducing himself. A personable chap indeed, and I was mildly impressed with his ability to connect with our group on a personal level. I had heard him speak years before at a joint service club meeting where I found him stiff and rather self important and wondered why he dropped “his good friend” Teddy Kennedy’s name eight times in a 15-minute talk. I remember doubting that Kennedy gave him the same deference while speaking in Boston.
The keynote address was to the point, brief, and almost snappy in delivery. I thought my fears were wasted until I realized that the talk was short because he planned to take some well-planted questions from the assembly. The first few were soft ball slow pitch queries designed for him to tout his accomplishments, and I began to fade a little when I heard him start an answer to a question I didn’t hear with the pronouncement that we lucky few gathered for law day were casting our eyes on the guy responsible for our victory in the cold war over the Soviet Union. I assumed he was going to describe his unwavering support for President Reagan who had already claimed that responsibility; but no, this was completely different.
It was his bill that procured for the “Afghanistani freedom fighters” (at our tax payer expense) a massive supply of stinger missiles that allowed those brave patriots to bring the USSR to its knees and return Afghanistan to the Afghanistanis. Yes, Hatch had a special relationship with those Islamic Ben Franklins and George Washingtons, but, of course, their real names were unfamiliar to us. Osama Bin something, I think it was, and the group that would later become known as the Taliban. Only later did we learn why the Soviet Union may have felt it worth their time to keep these lunatics under control. In Afghanistan, Bin Laden and his Taliban friends clamped a freedomless regime on the poor people of Afghanistan such that the godless communists could only have imagined. In the name of God, their oppression rose to unheard of depravity.
Thanks to being fully armed by Senator Hatch, they were able to plan international devastation in the safety of their “free country.” The repayment for our assistance to their “freedom fighters” were multiple deadly terrorist attacks, culminating in 9/11.

IN THE KNOW

On the day of the 9/11 attacks, Senator Hatch leapt to the spotlight. Having never met a tv camera he didn’t like, he appeared on all the major networks announcing that we had absolute proof that this heinous event was the work of Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda. Hatch made it clear that our intelligence had intercepted cell phone calls from Al Quaeda operatives to Bin Laden. Apparently, the terrorists are more technologically savvy than the Bush administration (they watch television) and immediately after Hatch appeared telling all he knew (you know, because he is in the know) the cell phone calls ceased entirely. What was not generally known is that our forces had been using these calls to pinpoint Bin Laden to take him out. Hatch’s massive breach of intelligence (on so many levels) cost us the capture of Bin Laden and his so-called brain trust.
As it was happening, Peter Jennings, who appeared to understand how foolish this statement was, asked Hatch if he wasn’t saying too much, only to have Orrin chastise him with, “now, Peter, you know better than that,” or some such statement and as it turned out, Peter did know better. Due to Hatch’s security leak, we still don’t have Osama.
After his last election, Orrin let it be known that he would not again run for the Senate. Did he think that as the man responsible for winning the cold war (see: You’re looking at the guy) he would be elected president or appointed to some important position like the Supreme Court? His lack of sensitivity and sense has removed him from any favor with the Bush administration so now we are stuck with him planning to run again for Senate. Why not, Utah will elect him. We’d elect Benedict Arnold if he were a conservative (which he was), so Orrin’s in.

JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Back in its history, Ogden had a wall. It anchored the town’s western border and protected the inhabitants from attack. Today the wall is memorialized as Wall Avenue.
This important wall could again have anchored our commercial future and protected us from the attack of Riverdale Road, but inexplicably our city fathers over the years have totally screwed this up. This city was blessed with the railroad. As it became significant, so did Ogden. The railroad became the major artery bringing the lifeblood of prosperity to O-Town. As the artery aged, it became occluded, pushing the by-pass artery of the interstate highway so far to the west that it essentially by-passed Ogden. All highway exits leading to Ogden are infuriatingly flawed. 21st and 12th Streets are so far west, Ogden is an afterthought. 24th Street is only half an exit, and if you’re lucky enough to be going the right way to use it, you wind up in that strange land known as West Ogden and to get downtown you must travel the solo lane of the viaduct across some of our least spectacular scenery.
Only 31st Street had promise. All we had to do was phase out nonconforming, noncommercial uses and develop a Riverdale Road like commercial district from Costco and the Newgate Mall to Union Station and from there up marvelous 25th Street to the heart of downtown.
Instead, our genius city fathers (from previous administrations) used the anchor block for what, car dealers? Super Wal-Mart? Great restaurants? Nope…the public works complex. Yes, you can start your trek into commercial Ogden by stopping at the whole block complex and paying for your…water bill. If I were a swearing man, I would insert a major expletive right here. People trying to come to Ogden by 31st Street find the most confused jumble of uses imaginable. Residential urban decay, public works, hodgepodge commercial, industrial and, of course, the rescue mission welcome tourists with their first impression of Ogden.
Is this important? Just look at what has happened in Riverdale. A sleepy little town that recognized the value of developing freeway access and has subsequently developed obscene budget surpluses. Is it hopeless for Ogden? Maybe. Amazingly, though, just last week a highway traveler on the way to Montana made their way into downtown Ogden, stopping at Ogden’s finest coffee shop, Mountain Perk (a shameless plug). They left with two large cups of our Kilamanjaro blend, and after driving away returned to fill a thermos. When asked how they found their way into downtown Ogden, they announced that they had more time than sense but the coffee was worth it.
We need more sense and less time to develop it. This particular Wall should be a corridor to our future, not just another brick in the way.

Well, under the current political climate I've heard the good Lord used to justify all kinds of nonsense but Sessions has sunk to new lows in his commentary on Chris Peterson and his purchase of the Malan property. Isn't it fabulous that he can invoke God, the working class and something he calls consecrated higher education, all to further his myopic view of the world. Did it ever occur to him that many of the great unwashed who don't work in the hallowed (and safely tenured) halls of the University would like an opportunity to live in a community that can provide good paying, decent employment with hope for future improvement in their "poverty-stricken neighborhoods". Yea, even some of his very students may desire to graduate and get a real job in Ogden so they too can spend their lives productively living "in the shadows of Mt. Ogden".
It wouldn't occur to a theoretical thinker like the good Professor that if the iron men who brought the train to the valley had opted to leave this city "the way God made it", his grandfather wouldn't have had a railroad to be a switchman on and his father wouldn't have had a stockyard to work at. I guess then the whole Sessions family could have spent generations wandering through the mountains eating pine trees (some parts are edible...or was that Grape Nuts).
As for the consecrated University, I guess it would be interfering with "the mission and integrity of the great educational institution" to provide for a future that would include immediate access to students to the finest recreational opportunities in the world. Do you think that might encourage out of area, out of state and out of country students to gain their higher education in such a setting (Philistines excluded) , paying out of state tuition, providing amazing student diversity and finally developing a campus based student community and real campus life the lack of which Weber has been infamous for? Would it be such a desecration to attract a world class ski team to Weber. Would it violate some portion of the Bible to start a working relationship between the resort and the University that would include degrees in hotel and hospitality management, food service, resort design and equipment maintenance to name just a few. Would it be a "nonsensical pipe dream" to intelligently develop some non polluting, clean recreational industries and activities that might attract tourists to our restaurants and hotels, business that may employ future generations of Sessions and conventions to our beautiful but often empty convention center. Incidentally this may result in a solution to your other constant whine relating to underpaid professors.
Who are you and the "many of us here in this community" who you claim to be speaking for who "will not allow" a private citizen to use his private property in any legal and legitimate way he deems appropriate. Isn't this also an "INALIENABLE RIGHT ENDOWED BY THE CREATOR". If you and these others "love Ogden and the mountains around it so dearly" and "love deeply every square foot of that land and come to the point of tears every time I walk on it", why didn't any of you see your way through your tears to your wallets and buy this "Eden" so you could each personally protect it from forward thinking men who are willing to put their hard earned money where there mouth is.

I’M AN O-TOWN GUY

I am an O-Town guy. When I was five years old, we lived a block away from Weber State College. My dad and I seldom missed a Weber football or basketball game. I watched Mike Sivulich, Justis Thigpen and Willie Sojourner play basketball. I watched Lee White and Henry Owens, and even Joe “The Toe” Blockovich play football. I cried when Don Horn and Haven Moses led San Diego to an improbable come-from-behind victory at Wildcat Stadium. I was so proud of my dad when he was elected Ogden’s mayor in 1960 and loved that he had been Weber’s Student Body President back when. I always though I would go to college there. I believed Ogden had to be the coolest city in the country.

In early 1970, I learned that not everyone agreed with my view of old O-Town. Dad had been the director of the coordinating council for higher education in the State of Utah. He was so excited during this time because of the great progress he felt the state colleges and universities were capable of. He never forgot his Weber State roots and used all his courage and will demanding that Weber and Utah State and other schools get a fair shake as against the University of Utah. (But truthfully it was Weber he felt he had to fight for.) The powerful university in Salt Lake had a strong voice in the legislature, and finding that Governor Rampton would not change directors, the legislature passed a law changing the job from a director to a chairman and saw to it that the chairman would not be my dad so that they could dominate higher education from the U of U and Salt Lake City. I wondered what my dad had done to lose his job. He wound up taking a job in Denver in higher education, forcing me to become a Bronco fan and go to college at Colorado State. Though I loved Colorado, I thought Denver was way too far away from the mountains (they looked like the ones on the license plate, beautiful but way off in the distance), and I wanted to live on the mountain and watch the sun set in the west. I returned to Utah to go to law school, ironically at the U of U and then started my practice of law in my own O-Town.

I found that it had changed. Same mountains, but not the same town. You almost didn’t dare walk around downtown and there wasn’t much reason to do so anyway. The people were different also. They didn’t seem to understand what a grand place they lived in. Mostly they liked to complain. Complain about the mall; 25^th street (tear it down), Weber State (they charge for parking at the basketball games, by God I won’t go); there’s no good shopping or restaurants in Ogden (they would complain while shopping and eating in Salt Lake).

Somewhere along the line, the town became a haven for criminals. From 1939 to 1983, the Weber County jail was on top of the municipal building and held 55 inmates. From then to now, we’ve had to build three new jails and we now regularly hold 1,200 inmates.

Recently, we have been getting an influx of particularly mean criminals. One major reason for this is another decision made at the state level (meaning Salt Lake) to the great detriment of Ogden,. The state has two major halfway houses, NUCCC in Ogden and Orange Street in Salt Lake. A halfway house takes people who are not quite bad enough to be sent to prison or (and here’s the rub) people who have spent time in prison (often the prison’s most heinous offenders) who are being released into the community.

If Salt Lake has one too, what decision has done so much damage to Ogden? Both facilities were designed to handle male and female inmates. Well, the powers that be (again read that Salt Lake) decided to make one facility all male and the other all female. Guess which one gets all the males? If you answered Ogden, you would be dead right. Which community gets to assimilate all the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, gang bangers, sex offenders, and drug dealers free from the big house? Ogden? Right again. All the women go to Sale Lake and some of them are pretty hard numbers, but nothing like the men.

Was this decision voted on, determined by chance or the luck of the draw? No! As usual, Salt Lake made certain it got the angels and we got the demons.

The legislature and governor control who gets appointed and these appointments look out for Salt Lake. Who looks out for Ogden? When Rampton and Matheson were governors, Ogden got actual support. Weber County Judicial positions were filled with qualified Weber County lawyers. Since then, it is very rare that a judicial appointment for Weber County doesn’t have a strong Salt Lake City connection.

Salt Lake got massive Olympic infrastructure and support. Ogden got the ice sheet. Most of the road construction here only made certain that the Olympians and tourists could come from Salt Lake to Olympic venue Snow Basin without ever having to step foot in Ogden. O-Town’s closest connection to the Olympics was the view of Ogden from the top of the Olympic tram.

Weber State University presidents have all been appointed by the powers that be (read that Salt Lake). President Thompson decided to pull the plug on football at WSU in the very year that Dave Arslanian had the team that would probably have gone deep into the post-season playoffs. Although Dave’s intense determination and love for Weber State eventually saved football, the action of the president cost him quarterback Brad Ott and running back Markieth Ross, who had averaged over 200 rushing yards per game the previous year. Ott went on to a strong career at USC helping bring that school back to prominence and sadly Ross went back to San Diego where I heard he re-upped with some bad old friends and prison. Dave’s team was ok but a shadow of what it would have been. (Arslanian was so disappointed he even accepted a job at Utah State.) Dave should now be Weber’s Athletic Director, but that’s not likely in the current climate there. The idea of scrapping athletics could never have been broached at the U of U.

Current president Milner has the opportunity to kick the prestige and cachè of the University into the stratosphere, but so far she’s being a good little president and seems happy to let the school go on being known as “Harrison High” and taking her marching orders from Salt Lake. At least Ron McBride might be kind of fun.

In the meantime, I got sick of having the only office building on Washington Boulevard between 25^th and 26^th with its lights on. We bought all three buildings there and filled them up with tenants. Then we bought the old Masonic Temple, which had been essentially empty since 1986 and filled it with tenants. Amazingly, one of our tenants is the Descente Company led by the Geiger clan, which has already done as much for Ogden as any individual company or family since the glory days.

Thankfully forward thinking city officials refused to give up on 25^th Street and now you can find the best restaurants and most interesting architecture in the state there. Also, the city and county built a beautiful convention center and restored the magnificent Egyptian Theater, rescuing Ogden forcefully from becoming a complete wasteland.

Descente, Mayor Godfrey and other lovers of O-Town have, without state help, pitched the idea of Ogden becoming the hub of the ski and outdoor activity industry. They have landed Goode Skis, Kahuna Boards and others, and are on the verge of bringing some other major names to Ogden. Naturally, the governor and the state development agencies are thrilled, right? Wrong!

In another stirring example of “what’s good for Ogden isn’t good for Salt Lake and what’s not good for Salt Lake isn’t good for the state,” Mayor Godfrey was recently visited by the state economic development agency who demanded that he give them the names of the contacts, phone numbers and addresses of the major ski companies he and Descente and others have been working with to bring to the Hub. He was told that Salt Lake City should decide who should have these companies, and this kind of success for Ogden just isn’t in their plans. In a strong act of courage and strength for such a diminutive man, he threw their asses out of his office.

Here’s the truth. Sale Lake is scared. The state intends for all the plums to go to Salt Lake. People in the know realize that the gondola proposals connecting commuter rail to WSU and up the mountain to Snow Basin will result in a coup of mammoth proportions. Though not making Salt Lake and its ski resorts insignificant, it will make Ogden and its resorts significant on a national and even international scale.

Residents of Ogden…remember when you complained when Ogden put seed money into 25^th Street and when the Egyptian was being restored and when the fairgrounds were developed, because we are just Ogden and we should be happy being the redheaded stepchild (I love red hair actually) to the magnificent Salt Lake. Well, now we have the chance to leapfrog over Salt Lake in a way that we haven’t seen since the railroad came to our town. We can develop a lifestyle with economic and political clout that will ultimately have other communities, including Salt Lake, asking us “can we please participate in some small way?”

I want my dad to be able to look at this town that he loves and this university that he bled for and this community that he knows as the place that allowed him to raise himself up from crushing poverty to be its top citizen and say with massive pride…I’m an O-Town guy.

It is extremely difficult to glean all the purtinent information on even the simplest subject from anything you read in a newspaper. This is not because of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" or the "liberal bias" of the print media. Most reporters, I believe, honestly want to report accurately unless they have a particular axe to grind. However, communication is inherently tricky in the best of circumstances and most news articles are not written in the best of circumstances.

With this in mind I would like to try again to clarify misinformation that is swirling around out there on the proposals for gondolas in our fair city of Ogden. Jim Manning writes in a letter to the editor in the Standard on August 16th, "$45 million for a transportation system with three stops? Are they kidding?". Well yes apparantly somebody is kidding you, Jim, because the gondola proposed for $45 million in downtown included all of the 6 stops currently used by the bus on that route. The proposal for three stops was included in a counter proposal for a gondola downtown that would cost around $25 million and would be a joint private and public project. The group that studied the gondola for UTA indicated that the gondola would be equally capable of making the number of stops specified in the feasibility study as would a light rail or streetcar system if we are willing to pay for it. Further, the cost of the gondola with all the same stops would still be less than half the streetcar and one-fourth of light rail. Jim's mantra that "Trams go up mountains; buses and light rail go on streets.", is as visionary as the statement if man were meant to fly he would have wings! If Jim and others would look again at the "amusement-park" like photo of the gondola soaring over the streets of Ogden they would notice there are no tracks or dedicated lanes to further bottleneck busy Harrison Blvd. or interfere with traffic turning lanes or run over pedestrians and cars.

I truly appreciate Jim's enthusiasm for the mountain gondola, though. On the same page , "Dale" Manley has things even more screwed up. There is no proposal whatever to run a trolley"from Second Street to 40th street" and nowhere in the paper did it say that "the majority would rather have the trolley". There has been no vote on these proposals, only the study of the five different options for mass transit (see prior posting), the light rail proposed by Jim is far too expensive to be considered and Dale's trolley system is also twice as expensive as a gondola with identical service. As for the gondola up the mountain, Dale and Jim are both right, it should be built and will be built with private funds.

There are two seperate issues regarding Gondolas in Ogden and it becomes cloudy when you mix the two proposals.
The first is the idea of a gondola from the trans hub at 23rd and Wall to the WSU campus. The second is the long dreamed of cable conveyance up the mountain to Snow Basin. Both have much to say for themselves but should not be spoken of together because they are not intended for the same purpose. Let's talk about the first one first.
It has always been part of the longterm transportation plan to develop a mass transit conveyance from the hub downtown to WSU. This is completely unrelated to the if or when of a gondola connection to Snow Basin. The only question has been what type of transit system should be used.
To this end, the recent study and resulting meeting where the study results were discussed compared 5 different types of conveyances and the pros and cons for each. The study considered two different forms of bus transit including dedicated travel lanes and "trax" like bus stops. Although less expensive to develop both of these proposals failed, according to the study, because they would be unlikely to attract new riders (we are smart enough to know that a bus with a nosecone attached is still just a bus). On the other side of the financial spectrum is a light rail system like in SLC. It would generate new riders but at a cost of $200 million it is way too expensive for this population base.
The other 2 options were considered feasible but the study chose the streetcar over the gondola for the following reason. The study gave the streetcar the same number for predicted new riders as light rail and then concluded that the gondola system, though half the cost of the streetcar, could not be counted on for new ridership because it had never been tried. The experts presenting the study did not believe there were any practical difficulties with using a gondola for mass transit and that it could include all the stops that any other system could. The study failed to consider: The value of not reducing travel and turning lanes or interfering with parking; The value of not running over people or crashing into clueless drivers; The potential for increased ridership just for the fun of being lifted through the city on a unique experience; The value of almost eerie silence from the gondola as opposed to the very noisy alternatives.
Finally, as the Mayor pointed out, the city's share of the $100 million streetcar would pay for the gondola in full.
The gondola requires people to monitor the stops but a streetcar needs an operator in every car. Streetcars are faster but they come by every 12 minutes or so, a gondola is every 30 seconds and only a few minutes slower in transit, so on average it would be a faster conveyance.
The gondola is just as safe for riders because anyone attempting mischief has to get out at a monitored station and is essentially captive until arriving at the station where an arrest would be inevitable. If you don't like the company, wait for the next car. You might find that you actually talk to people in a gondola, it is one of the funnest things about gondolas on the slopes.

The gondola can do everything as far as transit that any other conveyance can, but the thing that makes it so interesting is the uniqueness and the feeling of being at a ski town with a resort atmosphere. This leads us to gondola proposal #2 aka, the gondola to the stars. As others have said, this idea has been kicked around since the early 60's, but only now have the stars aligned in a way that makes it not only feasible but fabulous.
Thanks to Earl Holding we now have in our world class mountains a true world class ski resort. Thanks to some unusual foresight by our elected officials, we will soon be connected to all of the other communities along the Wasatch Front by commuter rail. Unbeknownst to many we have always had an amazing little city between the two. This mountain gondola will be unique in all the world in that only here in Ogden is there a metropolitan area of this size and resource that is located directly below a resort of this magnitude. All other Utah and Colorado resorts are way up at the end of long winding canyons that do not back up on the very mountain upon which rests a beautiful city like Ogden. Only to Ogden will people across the state be able to get on a commuter train and get to a gondola system that will wisk them to the best skiing in the state. Only to Ogden will people around the country and the world be able to send their kids to college where after class they can jump a gondola to the slopes for skiing,biking, hiking, dating, eating, communing, meditating, studying, working and learning.
This gondola will be privately funded, beautifully engineered, environmentally designed, maticulously maintained, vigorously marketed, continuously astounded (by people riding up it) and fervently appreciated. Someone snickered that the Mayor thought it may be as important to Ogden as the railroad once was. This analogy is not at all out of the question. Would you bring your convention to Ogden's center now? Would you if you could step from the presentation to a gondola that would open up all the recreation opportunities I just mentioned? What if you could also run a kayak down a world class kayak course on the Ogden or Weber river. What if you could experience sky diving in the extreme rec center located on the mall site or send your kids to the Treehouse children's museum or practice kayaking skills in the rec center or climb a three story climbing wall in the rec center in preparation for actual mountain climbing in Malan's basin which will also be accessible by gondola. Only in Ogden will you be able to live downtown and go to school at WSU by gondola and have access to all the mountain activities discussed previously and then ride the gondola back to work downtown.
Who wouldn't want to live downtown where you can walk a block to some of the greatest restaurants in Utah and to the Commuter rail to Jazz games and broadway plays at the Capitol Theatre or walk to an amazing production at the fabulous Egyptian Theatre or walk to an event at the amphitheater or... Are you getting the idea! O-town can become the place to be, not to be from. I am sick to death of the plethora of souls who want only to whine and complain about this city I live in and love. It has been said that Ogden is wasted on people who live here.
Come downtown to Mountain Perk and smell the coffee (a shameless plug). See what has already been done here and be ready to catch your breath at what is about to be done.