Posted inCity of Salem

Hillcrest is for sale. The City of Salem should buy it.

The State of Oregon has put the 45 acre Hillcrest property up for sale. According to Wikipedia, Hillcrest was a youth correctional facility that closed on September 1, 2017.  I learned of this from Mark Wigg, who is active in promoting more walking/cycling trails in Salem, along with more parks. Below you can read a presentation Wigg emailed me, which I presume has been sent to City of Salem officials and City Council members. What he says makes a lot of sense. In a follow-up email, Wigg added: "Living accommodations for 300. Gym kitchens classrooms pool." After the presentation I'll…
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Posted inNational politics

Everybody was talking to someone else at today’s Kavanaugh hearing

Have you ever been at a party, engaged in conversation with someone, and you suddenly notice that while they're talking to you, their attention has strayed to an attractive person standing behind you, and they're now looking over your shoulder rather than at you? That's how I felt watching today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who Ford has accused of assaulting her sexually back in 1982. It was can't-miss drama for a political junkie like me. I watched most of the proceedings on TV. There was everything: suspense, tears, ups and…
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Posted inCity of Salem Comprehensive Plan

City of Salem comprehensive planning effort gets some well-deserved criticism

Well, that didn't take long. At 11:30 am yesterday, City of Salem officials sent out an email about the start of an effort to update the Salem Area Comprehensive Plan.  A mere 19 minutes later, at 11:49 am, Michael Slater wrote a post on a Facebook page where Salem City Council issues are discussed that critiqued the Our Salem Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which a City of Salem web page describing the planning effort says "will be providing guidance to staff."  Slater said: The City has released the members of the advisory group that will assist staff on "technical" issues related…
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Posted inOregon politics Statesman Journal

Statesman Journal partnership with Verify More seems creepy

About a week ago Salem's daily newspaper, the Statesman Journal, ran a story, "Statesman Journal partners with nonprofit on political candidates' background checks."  Most businesses run job candidates through a background check before hiring, to ensure there are no surprises or issues that didn't come up during the interview process. With that in mind, the Statesman Journal is partnering with a nonpartisan, nonprofit called Verify More to do background checks on Mid-Valley political candidates. This idea struck me as strange at the time. Now that I've learned more about Verify More, I'm adding disturbing and creepy to describe how I feel about this…
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Posted inOregon politics

Jim Moore talks Oregon mid-term election at Salem City Club

I've heard political analyst Jim Moore speak after elections, but today was the first time I'd heard Moore offer up his take before an election.  Before Moore started his Salem City Club presentation, I told someone sitting at my table that I hoped Moore wasn't going to throw cold water on the chances of Oregon progressives in the upcoming mid-term election.  Thankfully, he didn't, as I'll explain below. But though I wish Moore's fingers in the photo I took of him were indicating how small Republican chances were, actually his gesture had some other meaning. (Or maybe no meaning.) Moore,…
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Posted inSalem Reporter

I’m liking the Salem Reporter, but have ideas for improvements

Today was the official kick-off for the Salem Reporter, our town's fresh online option for getting local and state news. A few stories had been published earlier, but this was the scheduled opening day. The web site design is a clone of another paper (Malheur Enterprise) operated by Les Zaitz, who founded Salem Reporter along with businessman Larry Tokarski.  Salem Reporter looks clean, bright, modern, and easy to read. Given that there won't be lots of stories on the Salem Reporter site, it makes sense to simply list the latest stories on the home page, plus a brief description of…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council National politics

If all politics is national now, what about local Salem politics?

Baby boomer that I am, I'm old enough to remember when what Yascha Mounk writes about in a New Yorker piece, "The Rise of McPolitics," was the lay of the political land in this country: For much of the twentieth century, the real power in American politics rested not with U.S. representatives or senators but with the governors, mayors, and assemblymen who controlled local purse strings. In many cases, men like Chafin got people elected to Congress in order to reward them for years of loyal service or to rid themselves of ambitious rivals, but national politics was of comparatively…
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