Posted inUncategorized

Battle of the Books continues with Salem Public Library on defense

There's something both marvelous and disturbing about the vigorous debate happening now (geez, I sound like CNN) between Jim Scheppke, an ardent supporter of all things library'ish, and Sarah Strahl, director of the Salem Public Library, regarding tens of thousands of books being removed from the core collection.  Marvelous, because I love it when someone who cares deeply about an issue here in Salem takes on the Powers That Be with fierce intensity. In this case, literally, because as you can read below, Scheppke takes issue with what Steve Powers, the City Manager, is saying about the library's severe cutting…
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Posted inCity of Salem

Library expert criticizes “core book” policy of Salem Public Library

Jim Scheppke knows a lot about libraries. He was the State Librarian of Oregon for two decades, and a librarian for 32 years. He doesn't like that the Salem Public Library is removing tens of thousands of books from its core collection to make room for new, trendy books.  Scheppke's opinion piece in today's Statesman Journal, "Preserve the core collection at Salem Public Library," struck me as well-written, nicely factual, and highly persuasive.  Here's some excerpts: At the beginning of October, the management staff at the Salem Public Library launched a project to permanently remove as many as 100,000 books…
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Posted inCara Kaser City Council Third Bridge

Third Bridge closer to death after tonight’s City Council meeting

Observing via CCTV the Salem City Council debate tonight whether to move ahead with the Salem River Crossing, or Third Bridge, felt like I was watching a movie where you know the bad guy is going to be killed at some point, but you know that isn't going to happen until a lot of drama and close calls have built up the suspense. Like I said yesterday in "Jim Lewis dreams the impossible Third Bridge dream," it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Lewis' motion to have City staff respond to issues raised in a legal setback that remanded…
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Posted inCity Council Jim Lewis Third Bridge

Jim Lewis dreams the impossible Third Bridge dream

Ah, so cute! I find it adorable how some people -- in this case, a Salem City Councilor, Jim Lewis -- imagine that they can do something that seems impossible.  Like, fly by flapping their arms. Or make their cat do tricks. Or... get the City Council to vote in favor of moving ahead with a Third Bridge, a.k.a. the Salem River Crossing, at a council meeting tomorrow (Monday, November 26). Lewis was narrowly re-elected last May as the city councilor for Ward 8 in West Salem. He ran a sleazy campaign, wrongly claiming that his opponent, Micki Varney, wanted…
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Posted inCity of Salem

Salem Public Library removing 30% of print book collection. Resistance is mounting.

Trigger warning: if you love books, and hate to see them mistreated, you might want to partially cover your eyes when viewing the photo below. I'm sorry that this blog post has to be so graphic, but as the saying goes, A picture is worth a thousand words. (And this post is much longer than that.) Jim Scheppke, a community activist and ardent library supporter, worked for the Oregon State Library for 25 years, 20 of them as library director (this is the library for the State of Oregon, not the Oregon State University library). Today he sent me this…
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Posted inDowntown

Downtown Streetscape plan suffers from Salem’s parking space mania

I'm no mental health professional, but I'm prepared to diagnose a malady that is rampant in Salem: parking space mania. Some of the symptoms are: -- Feeling that something is seriously wrong if it isn't possible to park in a downtown block where your intended destination is located. -- Driving in circles around downtown looking for an on-street parking space even though a totally free parking structure with plenty of open spaces is close by.  -- Freaking out at the prospect that any number, even just a few, of on-street downtown parking spaces will be lost, even if this would make the…
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Posted inSalem Reporter Statesman Journal

Sunday’s Statesman Journal had zero local content on opinion page

Salem's one and only daily newspaper, the Statesman Journal, is falling deeper into a well of mediocrity. The newest outrage against journalistic excellence was obvious in yesterday's Sunday paper where, for the first time in the 41 years that I've been reading the Statesman Journal, to my recollection, there was precisely zero local content on the opinion pages.  A post on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page nailed the outrageousness of this: NO LOCAL OPINION IN THE SUNDAY PAPERCharles Sprague is turning in his grave today. When he was the editor of the Oregon Statesman he wrote a daily editorial…
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Posted in2018 election

Midterm election’s meaning revealed by Ed Dover at Salem City Club

There's lots of ways to look at the results of last Tuesday's midterm election. But some ways are wrong -- like the attempt by Republicans to spin the election as a GOP win. Today Ed Dover spoke the truth about the midterms at an engrossing Salem City Club presentation, "Patterns and Meanings of the 2018 National, Oregon, and Mid-Valley Elections." Dover is a retired Professor Emeritus at the Western Oregon University Department of Political Science and Public Administration. This was Dover's 10th post-election talk to the Salem City Club. I've heard a bunch of them. Dover has an astounding grasp of…
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Posted inLand use

Neighbors appeal Costco shopping center

Good news. The headline of a Salem Reporter story says, "Neighborhood appeal puts Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center on Hold." Here's how the story starts out: Costco’s road to a new location in south Salem is not over after neighbors appealed the city’s recent decision to allow the Kuebler Gateway Shopping Center. The appeals trigger what could be months of more deliberation. The South Gateway Neighborhood Association, and three neighbors acting on their own through an attorney, cited a number of reasons why Salem planners should not have approved the nearly 200,000-square-foot project in late October. They contend the shopping center…
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Posted in2018 election

Progressives, here’s some cheerful midterm election commentaries

In a Washington Post piece I read today, I saw a saying: "Republicans are naturally triumphal even when they lose and Democrats tend to get depressed even when they win." This seems generally true. But like I said last night, I'm pleased with how the midterm election turned out. Sure, it was distressing to see Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams, and Beto O'Rourke fail to win their races. But here in Oregon we enjoyed a genuine Blue Wave, and Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives is a really big deal.  FiveThirtyEight.com is projecting a gain of 37 House seats,…
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Posted in2018 election

Midterm results: I predicted I’d be sad, but actually I’m happy

A few days ago I predicted how I'd feel given certain results of today's midterm election. Below I've highlighted in green the outcomes that became reality. I added the Beto O'Rourke loss to the last two scenarios, having neglected to include it in my original post. You can see that right now -- 10:07 pm -- I thought I'd be in a mood of Sad, but things could have been worse. But actually I'm feeling Happy, though mildly disappointed. Here's my best guess why. (It has to be a guess, because it's difficult to pin down emotions.) First, I spent…
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Posted in2018 election

Ecstasy or agony? I forecast my midterms reaction.

Looking back, I realize that my despair over Trump beating Clinton in the 2016 election was caused in part by my failure to anticipate what I thought was unthinkable: Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States.  So this time around, I'm going to envision various emotional states of mind I might be in late Tuesday night -- election day -- or on Wednesday morning, if voting results of the races I most care about aren't all in before I go to bed. I need to say that while I just said races I most care about, the absence…
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Posted inCity of Salem Comprehensive Plan

Salem Futures project was killed by clueless conservatives

Echoing a Who song: Salem, let's not get fooled again. In the early 2000s a pioneering, far-reaching, creative Salem Futures project was killed by clueless conservatives. Our town has been paying the price ever since, as I'll discuss below. Here's how someone active in land use issues at the time recently described to me the ax'ing of Salem Futures. (Note: LCDC stands for Land Conservation and Development Commission. It oversees the Department of Land Conservation and Development, DLCD.) Mayor [Janet] Taylor killed the Salem Futures project after almost two years of work and a million dollars. LCDC was giving Salem…
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