Posted inCarole Smith City of Salem Downtown

Here’s why Salem needs a genuine downtown association

Salem no longer has a downtown association. We need one. What happened at last night's City Council meeting is only one of many reasons why.  But before I explain what transpired at the meeting, a bit of relevant history about how downtown lost its downtown association is in order. I wrote about this in a couple of blog posts. My November 2013 post "Should Salem City Manager be known as Exalted Emperor Linda Norris?" explained how the existing downtown association, Salem Downtown Partnership, had its contract terminated by the City Council after Chuck Bennett (then a city councilor, now Mayor)…
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Posted inJobs

Robots could replace many of Salem’s 1,000 Amazon warehouse jobs

Amazon is betting big on robots handling many, if not most, of the order fulfillment tasks now being carried out by humans in its giant packing and shipping warehouses.  So even though it's good news that Amazon is going to build a warehouse here in Salem that reportedly will employ a thousand full-time employees, this excerpt from an article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, "Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords," gives good reason for concern about how long those jobs will last. For low-skilled workers, warehouse jobs have seemed to be something of a bright spot. Even if…
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Posted inCity Council

Salem Strategic Plan a mix of yawns and yays

Next Monday, October 23, the Salem City Council is set to vote on whether to approve the Strategic Plan that it's been working on for about a year.  Looking over the plan, I was hoping to find a lot that excited me. Maybe I was expecting too much, since only a few things made me think, Wow, that's cool! Download Salem Strategic Plan Still, I give the City of Salem and its consultants credit for page 1, "Plan on a Page." The only problem is, on that page there's little to be enthused about -- since this is where the…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council

Chamber of Commerce no longer running Salem. Let’s keep it that way.

When I first got heavily involved in Salem politics about four and a half years ago (after the horrendous needless killing of the U.S. Bank trees got my ire up), fellow progressive citizen activists would tell me, "The Chamber of Commerce runs this town."  Well, this isn't true any more. And that's a very good thing.  To understand why, take a look at the goal of the Chamber of Commerce's political action committee, Build Jobs PAC. As should be obvious from its name, the Chamber really is only interested in one thing: jobs. But obviously there's a lot more to…
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Posted inCitizen involvement T.J. Sullivan

Challenged to say what I’ve done to make Salem better, I’m pleased to reply

Blogs should come with a warning: If you ask a blogger questions that require some talking about themselves, expect a verbose answer. Especially if the challenge is to explain my contributions to Salem from a couple of people who appear to doubt that I've done anything useful in my entire life. Today they left rather similar comments on my post, "T.J. Sullivan is the Chamber's President-Elect. He's gotten well-deserved snark from me."  Concerned Citizen left the first comment. Hi Brian. Honest questions: What concrete things have you done to make Salem better? How many people do you currently employ and…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce T.J. Sullivan

T.J. Sullivan is the Chamber’s President-Elect. He’s gotten well-deserved snark from me.

Ah, it's so fitting. The Salem Chamber of Commerce has chosen T.J. Sullivan to be its president-elect. Meaning, Sullivan is in the on-deck circle to come up and bat for this town's most notorious promoter of selfish right-wing business interests. To "honor" T.J. Sullivan (note the ironic quotation marks) I spent some time this evening Googling my previous blog posts about him.  Here's what I found, in chronological order: February 2016: "Salem Chamber of Commerce mass transit bill to aid Cherriots is dead." Sullivan led the Chamber's fight to defeat a payroll tax that would have brought weekend and evening bus…
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Posted inThird Bridge

Third Bridge supporters resorting to ridiculous arguments

Over the years I've heard lots of ridiculous arguments about why Salem should build a billion dollar (with financing costs included) Third Bridge across the Willamette River. For example, back in 2013 I asked Public Works Director Peter Fernandez to give me the "single most important reason Salem needs a Third Bridge." How did he respond? By saying that the single most important reason is that there is only one way into and out of West Salem. Redundancy and safety were the top reasons a Third Bridge is needed. He said that the bridges are seismically unfit. Currently serious accidents…
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Posted inNational politics

Hell, yes, today is the day to talk about American gun violence

The White House doesn't want to have a debate about gun control today, because last night 59 people were killed in the largest mass shooting in American history, with 527 injured.  That's incredibly wrong. This is precisely the day we need to start talking about why the United States has so many gun deaths compared to the rest of the world. After every mass shooting I roll out the same plain fact: more guns means more gun violence. Today Vox updated their excellent  explanation in "Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts." America is an exceptional country…
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