Ogden mayor plans to seek 3rd term

Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey says he plans to seek a third term as mayor.

He will be running against Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden, who was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 1998 and wants to take Ogden in a different direction.

In January, Hansen announced his intention to run for mayor. Godfrey delayed deciding on his own candidacy because he was waiting for results from a survey he commissioned to gauge support in the community.

The 300-person survey came back with good results, said Godfrey, who became the city's youngest mayor when he was elected in 1999 at age 29.

Now, nearly two terms later, Godfrey says he's still passionate about Ogden and helping the community develop and redevelop. Over the past eight years, 60 acres have been redeveloped, including the former Ogden City Mall site, now called The Junction, which includes a high-adventure recreation center, known as the Salomon Center, and a Megaplex 13 theater.

About 120 acres in Ogden are now in some phase of redevelopment, Godfrey said. But he's not just about business.

"We've seen crime drop to its lowest level since the early 1970s," he said, adding that he plans to work with Ogden Police Chief Jon Greiner to further decrease crime in Ogden.

Godfrey also wants to reduce taxes for residents, something he says he's done three times in the past eight years. With more businesses coming to the city, residents can benefit from the sales-tax and property-tax revenue those businesses generate, he said.

But Hansen — a lifelong Ogden resident and independent owner of ACN, a telecommunications company — says Ogden should head in a different direction from where Godfrey is taking it.

Hansen said he's seen downtown Ogden deteriorate over the past eight years and believes Godfrey hasn't reached out to the people for advice.

The Salomon Center may not have been the best direction for Ogden to take with redevelopment of the Ogden City Mall, Hansen said, because the city had to bond for the building's construction, meaning the city owns the building and appears to be in the real-estate business.

"I don't know if that's the correct course for what government should be doing," Hansen said. "We could have had more commerce in downtown than one building."

But Godfrey said the mall, like others around the nation, was failing and made way for a mixed-use development, similar to the City Creek Center, which will be built in downtown Salt Lake City on the site of two large indoor malls.

Hansen said that if elected, he would increase the presence of police downtown to make people feel safer.

Neither man has filed as a candidate, but both plan to within the next two weeks. Candidates for municipal office may file between July 2 and July 15 this year.

Filing dates

Filing dates for candidates for municipal elections are July 2 to July 15. Most city councils have at least three members whose terms expire in January. Contact your city for more information.

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E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com