If elected, my number one focus would be that I Am a Servant for All the Citizens of Ogden.
Other areas of focus would be on the aspects of my stewardship over the well-being of Ogden City. This would include encouraging the administration and council to work more as equal partners in this stewardship, not the “strong mayor” administration as presented in these past years under the recent administration.
One main focus would be to begin and maintain an open door policy with all citizens, having an ear to lend to anyone with a question or concern, and the ability, staff and technology to be able to answer them. Important to the aforementioned communications would be to continue to publish the council meeting agenda packets online for anyone to view, so they can be informed on what we are doing or facing as a City government or as a City.
I will work at creating a communication bridge between the Administration/Council that will focus not only on getting input and giving information, but also providing explanations and good foundational arguments for doing things a certain way and providing options that should be made available for public input; moving away from the old “this is what we’re going to do, trust us to get it done” only to have the general public find out later it was done at the expense of something just as or more important to the City as a whole.
I will also focus on getting away from debt financing / tax increment funding / tax incentives to encourage developers to come and build and/or lease --- I think that has been the focus too much of late, and in these hard economic times more creative ways need to be brought out of the developers themselves. For one, it would really give them more stake in the business and more incentive to work harder to keep it running – rather than making it easier for them to let go and say “no great loss, the City paid for it.”
Taking away tax increment funding incentives would challenge developers and businesses to come with a more permanent plan and a higher sense of pride of ownership in what they bring to the table in Ogden, and would give back to our schools what is rightfully theirs and allow them to improve on performance and teacher/parent/student satisfaction and success in Ogden City School District.
Local Education is another issue I will strongly focus on – I will give it microscopic treatment, looking for anything that even remotely looks like it would take away from our children’s education. I will question anything that appears to want to take anything away from the education in our city. I will demand other options be looked at; the other council members and administration as a governing body should be able to come up with something other than taking education away to bring in recreational development.
I will focus on the long term, big picture: what will be here or begin here while I’m in office that will stand the test of time and remain when my 12 year old is out of college and a productive member of our community. When I am in my golden years and have grandchildren I want to be able to tell them about this or that marvelous thing that was built or improved or preserved while I served the citizens of Ogden …
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