The Junction City will soon have a new mayor, with the three-term incumbent, Mike Caldwell, announcing earlier this year he wouldn’t be seeking reelection.
Ogden voters will soon be receiving their ballots, if they haven’t already, for the city’s primary elections. Registered voters will have until Sept. 5 to pick their preferred candidate. The two candidates with the most votes will head to the general election, set to take place Nov. 21.
In total, Ogden voters have seven candidates to choose from. Some already serve in elected office or have previously been in city leadership — and others are running for office for the very first time.
This is the first of two stories that will focus on the seven candidates running for mayor.
In part one, we talk with three candidates, all of whom have been elected to office in Ogden before.
Ben Nadolski
Ben Nadolskicurrently serves on the Ogden City Council for District 4, an office he’s held for seven years. Nadolski grew up in Phoenix before coming to Utah to play football at Weber State. He’s currently the regional operations supervisor over northern Utah at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
Nadolski said the top three issues Ogden faces are crumbling infrastructure, a lack of affordable housing and the need for responsible development.
“Infrastructure is like the lifeblood of every community,” Nadolski said. “It is one of the most basic things that we have to provide, and if we’re not providing it at the level of service that our people need, then we’re not meeting their expectations.”
Nadolski said if elected mayor, he’d use money from Ogden’s general fund and state grant money to make the needed repairs, adding there’s a lengthy backlog of roads and sidewalks in need of upgrades.
For affordable housing, he said the city needs to first revise its general plan. The City Council has already started updating the plan but it will require many hours of public input to complete. He said the city can also update zoning ordinances to ensure the developments are sufficient on space, but also an efficient way to house Ogden’s growing population.
“We need to make sure that developers have an opportunity to build a kind of housing stock that we need — and when I say what we need, it’s what our people need — that they can afford. So it probably can’t have as big a yard as the house that I started in. (They) probably can’t have the same square footage. It might even be a condo, or (duplexes), but they’ve got to be something that people can purchase, begin to build wealth through equity.”
As a growing city, Nadolski said responsible development is another issue he’s heard from voters as a growing concern. He said dense housing needs to be close to transportation hubs, so people can get around without congestion.
Projects like the WonderBlock — a massive potential redevelopment in downtown Ogden that would create over 350 housing units and thousands of square feet of office and retail space — are important for the city moving forward, he said. Though Nadolski had his qualms with the project and voted against the plan while on the city council, he says the WonderBlock is the kind of plan that needs to be carefully considered.
“Moving forward. I want to make sure that we’re putting them in place in a way that doesn’t create too much tax burden on us in terms of tax increment,” he said. “We need that increment to provide for the infrastructure, and if we’re bringing more people downtown, we need to be able to provide for the services those people need.”
Bart Blair
A member of the Ogden City Council, Bart Blair is a lifelong Ogden resident who has been on the council since 2010. He’s a graduate of Ogden High and Weber State, and his family owns Blair Service, a Sinclair gas station and auto shop on 30th Street.
For Blair, the three most important issues Ogden faces is its aging infrastructure, maintaining public safety and making the Ogden Airport profitable.
Blair said before he was elected to city leadership, critical infrastructure like roads and water pipes were neglected for years. The city has done a better job improving infrastructure since, but there’s still plenty of work to do. With water specifically, Blair said the city is in the process of replacing its 125-year-old pipes. He said when the city started replacing part of the water infrastructure, it revealed a huge issue that’s since been addressed.
“We were losing 5 million gallons of treated water a day,” Blair said. “We had no idea we were losing that until we dug that out. That in and of itself is a huge savings. I know that when we tear out the other half there’s going to be we’re going to learn things that we didn’t know.”
Blair notes that Ogden does a great job training new police officers, but officers also often leave for better-paying jobs. This isn’t a new issue for the OPD, but Blair said there’s more the city can be doing to help keep officers.
OPD has been scrutinized in recent months after a report from Fox 13 that revealed a point system for officers based on the number of tickets they write. Some state officials have said it’s close to a police quota system, which was banned in Utah in 2018. Blair said he was taken aback when he heard the news. He said he doesn’t believe the system was implemented for ticket quotas, rather as one of criteria used for an officer’s evaluation.
“I support it, in that context. I support it in one of 13 criteria for employee evaluation. I don’t support it … if that’s the sole way that we’re going to evaluate our police officers,” Blair said.
He said he believes there’s opportunity for the city to boost its general fund by upgrading the Ogden airport. He pointed to the success of the Provo airport as evidence of what happens when the city takes the time to invest.
“I think we have the opportunity to mesh multiple business opportunities out there,” Blair said. “But like I said, I believe in the airport. The Ogden airport could be a great hub.”
Jon Greiner
Jon Greiner is another born and raised Ogdenite who’s been in city and state government in previous years, including most recently running the Ogden airport for five years. But he’s also no stranger to controversy.
He served as both Ogden police chief and as a state senator, but a federal Merit System Protection Board found Greiner violated federal law by running for a state senate seat while also holding a city job that applies for and oversees federal grant money. Ogden fired Greiner as police chief in 2011 and he did not run for reelection in the state senate.
“The opposing party didn’t like the idea of a police chief and senator being the same person,” Greiner said. “So they filed a complaint against me and ultimately, it caused the removal of me to run for Senator again, and remove me as being the police chief.”
For Greiner, the biggest issues facing Ogden are elevating the city’s status within Utah, the need to improve infrastructure and community service.
Greiner said he wants to make sure the city’s redevelopment is done with care and to ensure developments don’t fall by the wayside. He said prospects like rent-to-own housing are something the city could promote to keep people in Ogden for years to come.
“Instead of traditional condo ownership, why don’t we think about an apartment ownership,” Greiner said. “If somebody wants to live in that apartment for a while, there (can be) some incentive for them to stay there, and live in the apartment. Maybe the rent’s cheaper and they become an owner.”
Fixing infrastructure is a big issue Greiner has heard from voters, and he would look for different ways to fund improvements to the city, whether it would be from city funds or outside money.
“We need to go back to the basics of providing what we’re supposed to be providing as city government, and one of those is infrastructure and roads,” Greiner said.
As a former Ogden police chief, Greiner said the ticket count is just one aspect in how the department evaluates officers. He downplayed it as an issue, but said it will likely be an ongoing topic of discussion.
“I don’t think we’re done with this,” he said. “I think this is a perceived problem, it’s not a reality.”
For Greiner, he touts his city experience as an advantage over other candidates. He’s been away from city government for four years, and he believes he still has plenty to offer.
“I just think that I owe the city of Ogden that I love one more, more opportunity to help move it forward and not regress,” he said.
