Posted inCity Council City of Salem Larry Tokarski

City Council poised to make public pay for improvements, not Larry Tokarski

Tonight the Salem City Council is having a public hearing on forming a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District in the Creekside area. Basically, as I understand it, a developer (Garrett and Alice Berndt) has requested that buyers and owners of lots in the area be saddled with a total of $7,347,000 in fees to pay for needed improvements to an extension of Lone Oak Road.  This is a complicated subject, and I don't pretend to be familiar with all of the details surrounding this issue, which has been festering for many years. Arguments have gone back and forth about who…
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Posted inDonald Trump

After one year of Trump, my predictions about him get a C+

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of my January 20, 2017 blog post, "On Trump's first day as president, I predict his next four years." Overall I give myself a C+ grade on the ten predictions, since at this point five seem True, four are equivocal, and one is absolutely False.  Here's what I said Trump would do, along with comments on my soothsaying. While it certainly feels as if those four years should be up by now, in much the same way that a painful root canal seems to take forever, obviously my first prediction merits an Incomplete:(1) There's a…
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Posted inWomen's March

Salem Womxn’s March wrongly criticizes inclusivity of 2017 Women’s March

I wish the organizers of the Salem Womxn's March that will be held on January 21 would stop criticizing the 2017 Salem Women's March for supposedly not being inclusive enough.  This is flat-out wrong.  The speakers at the 2017 event included an African-American woman, her daughter (who sang), and a lesbian woman. Sign language interpreters were on stage for the hearing-impaired. Special seating up front was reserved for those in wheelchairs, or anyone needing those seats.  I filmed the entire march of 4,200 people who filled the streets of downtown Salem. The video is part of this web page I…
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Posted inCarole Smith Downtown

Carole Smith critiques the City of Salem streetscape project

I'm sharing an email message that Carole Smith, a downtown business owner and resident, sent to me recently. She isn't happy with how the City of Salem streetscape project is being conducted, to put it mildly. Well, neither am I, as I wrote about in "Downtown Salem Streetscape project will ignore streets." The whole emphasis is on sidewalks. As shown above, "alleys and roads not part of [project] scope." So they really should have called this a Sidewalkscape project, which is much more limited than a true Streetscape plan -- such as the one proposed for Salem several years ago.  This…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Third Bridge

City of Salem Third Bridge conspiracy theorizing: “Something’s amiss here”

I agree with the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger who said Something's amiss here in a Tuesday post that is more interesting than the title portends, "At the MPO: Work Program and Rule-Making Updates for the TAC." Here's the juicy part of the post. The Technical Advisory Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization meets today, and there is no important action item.But the agenda does have a couple of other things to note.Work on the formal Work Program continues, and if there is any sign that the remand by LUBA on the land use matters had any real consequences, I'm still…
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Posted inDowntown Salem Main Street Association

Here’s some problems with the Salem Main Street Association

In April 2017 I wrote a blog post called "New Salem Main Street Association debuts with questions and concerns." Nine months later, those questions and concerns remain.  First, it's peculiar that this group remains so secretive, since the kickoff event had some lofty goals: (1) Advocates for downtown Salem businesses, property owners and residents(2) Implements marketing and promotion of downtown Salem (3) Manages funds related to the economic vitality of downtown Salem Yet the Salem Main Street Association still doesn't have a web site, aside from the one above. The small print says, "We're under construction. Please check back for an…
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Posted inOregon politics

Vote Yes on Measure 101. It’s a no-brainer.

Here in Oregon there's only one thing on the January ballot, Measure 101. And it's a no- brainer: VOTE YES I say this after spending an hour today hearing both sides make their best cases for "Yes" and "No" at a Salem City Club meeting. Even though I came in expecting that Yes would have the better arguments, I was surprised how weak the No arguments were. Measure 101 asks Oregonians to decide if $210 to $320 million worth of assessments on insurance companies, some hospitals, the Public Employees Benefit Board, and managed care organizations go into effect, as passed…
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Posted inNational politics

Here’s 5 good reasons not to shop at Salem’s Hobby Lobby

Even if you love Hobby Lobby for its craft supplies, here's some very good reasons not to shop at the Hobby Lobby store that just opened in the Willamette Town Center mall (which used to be called Lancaster Mall).  The biggest reason was given in a Slate podcast interview with Candida Moss, a Professor of Theology who wrote a book about the company's efforts to Christianize this country, "Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby."  After hearing Moss talk about some Hobby Lobby horror stories that I'll summarize below, at about the 21:14 mark Mike Pesca, the interviewer, says…
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Posted inYear in Review

Salem Political Snark’s 2017 year in review: top 12 posts

Hey, if the New York Times can do it, then Salem Political Snark sure can follow in those hallowed journalistic footsteps. So here's our very own Year in Review.  I picked a blog post from each month. This led to some tough choices when several posts caught my eye in the same month. For example, I had to pass on "'Illegal signs are trash.' Which is why they make Salem look trashy." Also, the related "'Jesus Loves Strippers' sign gets Salem hot and bothered." And I would have liked to share "Salem Weekly needs to survive. But how should it change?"Oh...…
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Posted inWomen's March

My open plea to 2018 Salem Womxn’s March organizers

I write for lots of reasons. One is to relieve anxiety. Putting my worries into words somehow makes me feel better. And at the moment, I'm not feeling good about the 2018 Salem Womxn's March, which I've argued should be called a Women's March to build on the amazingly successful 2017 event with that name.  Now, because there is very little public information available about next month's march other than this event notification on the Salem Resists Facebook page, maybe the concerns I'm going to relate below are misfounded. If so, I look forward to Womxn's March organizers setting me…
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Posted inJim Lewis Third Bridge

Third Bridge supporters fantasize about taking control of Salem City Council

I just finished a great book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire." Now, fantasies come in different shades of unbelievability. The Salem Bridge Solutions fantasy reflected in a comment left by one of their leaders, Mike Evans, isn't totally fantastical, but in talking trash about a No 3rd Bridge proclamation of "Our Work is Done," it also isn't highly realistic. A recent post on the Salem Bridge Solutions page points to what I mean. Five positions on the nine-member City Council will be on the May 2018 ballot (whoever gets a majority of votes in the May primary election wins outright,…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Of course FBI staff have political opinions, clueless Republicans

I survived, barely. Watching part of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this morning, I felt like my head was going to explode -- a common side effect of listening to Republicans talking about anything relating to the Mueller investigation. GOP members of the committee were shocked, no, let's make that SHOCKED!!!, to learn that an FBI agent and a FBI lawyer exchanged text messages about their desire for Trump to lose the 2016 election. Well, so did most of the country, judging from Trump's huge popular vote loss by some three million votes. So there was…
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Posted inWomen's March

Salem should have another Women’s March, not a Womxn’s March

Let's get some self-revealing stuff out in the open before I proceed to challenge the wisdom of calling a follow-up to last year's highly successful Salem Women's March a Womxn's March. I'm a heterosexual (cisgender, just to show that I'm clued-in to some new-speak) man. I'm old, 69. I believe in using English words that can be pronounced. I'm married to a woman, Laurel, who was one of the lead organizers for the 2017 Salem Women's March. I created a web page that showcased this event, which attracted 4,200 enthusiastic people -- see below. So depending on your point of view,…
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Posted inLand use

2018 Bi-Mart Country Music Festival could bring 60,000 people to Ankeny Wildlife Refuge area

For 2018, Bi-Mart wants to move its annual Country Music Festival from Brownsville, Oregon to farmland adjacent to the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge near Salem. [Update: the Statesman Journal has a story about the festival, "Willamette Country Music Festival's move to Marion County raises concerns about refuge." Here's how it starts off.] Organizers of the Bi-Mart Willamette Country Music Festival want to move the four-day event to Marion County and more than double its size, to as many as 60,000 attendees per day. But opposition is building over the proposed location: 692 acres of farmland bordering Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge,…
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Posted inCity Council Land use

Salem’s Dogwood Heights development stirs up neighborhood worries

Now that most of the easily buildable vacant land in Salem has been utilized for residential development, construction on the acreage that remains is bound to be more controversial.  This was clearly evident at last night's City Council meeting, which featured a lengthy hearing on the proposed Dogwood Heights subdivision near Croisan Creek Road and Madrona Avenue in south Salem.  I watched much of the hearing via the CCTV stream because my wife and I are looking into buying a house in the Salem city limits (currently we live in rural south Salem), and Dogwood Heights is in an area…
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Posted inDowntown

Downtown Salem Streetscape project will ignore streets

Last night there was an open house kickoff for the Downtown Salem Streetscape Plan. Held in the ground floor meeting room at Courthouse Square, I felt a lot of energy and enthusiasm from the good number of attendees,  City of Salem staff, and the consultants hired to oversee the project.  People could use stickers to indicate a part of downtown where they had an idea for improvements, where they customarily entered the downtown area, and where they thought the heart of downtown was. Not surprisingly, Court and Liberty got the most heart stickers. And you can see that many attendees…
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Posted inSalem Weekly

Salem Weekly needs to survive. But how should it change?

The most recent issue of Salem Weekly asks a self-reflective question on the cover: "Can Salem Weekly and Other Alt-Weeklies Survive the Tides of Change?" I'd include a link to this cover story, but more than a week after the November 23 bi-weekly issue hit the streets, as of this writing the Salem Weekly web site still hasn't been updated to include content from that issue. Which points to the problem facing Salem Weekly: A.P. Walther, the publisher, is marvelously dedicated to keeping the paper afloat, but along with many other alternative papers around the country, the Salem Weekly ship…
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Posted inStatesman Journal

Cancel your Statesman Journal subscription for 30 days to save $500 a year

I've subscribed to the Statesman Journal for 40 years. Today I cancelled my subscription (for 30 days), because this will save me $510 in 2018 -- following the outrageous Monday-Sunday home delivery rate increase from $44 to $59.01 that takes effect December 1. (What's up with that one cent?) That's a 34% increase, which is on top of a 14% increase last March. In June I wrote a pissed-off blog post, "Statesman Journal outrage: new subscribers charged half of what loyal subscribers pay." Now the situation is even worse. New subscribers are being charged a bit over a third of…
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Posted inSmart growth Statesman Journal

I couldn’t resist commenting on a woman’s praise of Salem

Yesterday the Statesman Journal published a "Your Turn" piece by Emily Skelding that began as a post on her This Is Just to Say blog, and ended being titled either "Salem a fabulous place to raise family" (print edition) or "Salem transplant proud of her new hometown; wants community to stop apologizing" (online edition). I liked Skelding's praise of Salem. I also can't resist commenting on it.  First off, notwithstanding the online title the Statesman Journal gave to her piece, Skelding's blog post says that she grew up in Salem, then lived in other places before returning here.  I must add…
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Posted inChuck Bennett City Council Third Bridge

Ding, dong, the Third Bridge is dead

And so it came to pass that there was cause for much rejoicing at last night's City Council meeting, for the Wicked Third Bridge (of both East and West, since it would have connected these two sides of Salem) almost certainly was put to death. Not by having a house dropped on it, or by being splashed with water, which would indeed be a perplexing way for a bridge to die, but by the City Council approving a motion to establish a committee that will examine ways to reduce traffic congestion around the two existing bridges without building a new…
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