Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council City of Salem

Avelo Airlines leaving Salem in August. My reaction: “I told you so”

To nobody's surprise except the City Council, Chamber of Commerce, and Travel Salem -- who assured citizens in 2023 that this time, really, you can count on it, an airline offering commercial service will remain at the Salem airport -- Avelo Airlines has announced that as of August 10 it will no longer have flights to and from our once-again airline'less city. Here's an excerpt from today's Salem Reporter story by Rachel Alexander and Mirandah Davis-Powell, "Avelo pulls out of Salem." Avelo Airlines is ending flights out of Salem in August, leaving the community again without a commercial operator after…
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Posted in2022 election Chamber of Commerce Chane Griggs

Mayor candidate Chane Griggs was a Third Bridge backer

A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about Chane Griggs, the second candidate to enter the May 2022 race to be Salem's mayor, since Chuck Bennett, the current mayor, isn't seeking re-election. Reading the story, I got an impression that Griggs is a classic Salem Chamber of Commerce candidate. After all, the Chamber doesn't want to have a progressive take over as mayor, given that Bennett is quite conservative, and progressives already have a 6-3 majority on the City Council. Excerpt: A prominent community leader is throwing her name in the race for Salem's soon-to-be vacant mayoral…
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Posted in2022 election Chamber of Commerce

Chamber of Commerce political action: “It’s quiet…too quiet”

Suddenly it hit me. The political part of my brain had been freaking out over national politics, as it always does.  Biden's approval rating sucks. Senate Democrats need to do away with the filibuster for voting rights legislation, but Sinema refuses to do this. The 2022 midterms look like a Dem disaster in the making. What's up with Kamala Harris' disappearing act, since I thought she'd run in 2024 rather than Biden. But then it dawned on me that locally, when it comes to political activities of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, as the saying goes, It's quiet...too quiet. …
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Posted in2020 election Chamber of Commerce City Council

Salem Chamber of Commerce apparently trying to hide $25,000 in PAC money

In tonight's blog post I planned to focus on the curious case of Brad Nanke suddenly deciding that he wanted to run again to be the Ward 3 city councilor, even though back in September of last year he told the Statesman Journal that he wouldn't seek reelection in 2020.  Salem City Councilor Brad Nanke will not seek reelection in 2020, planning to cap a nearly two-decade run representing southeast Salem after his term concludes. Nanke, in his fifth term on the council, has more than a year left to influence policy: His current term ends Dec. 31, 2020. "Five is enough," he told…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce Citizen involvement Homeless

A view of Salem’s problems from wide angle of inequality and corporatism

Watching the Salem City Council discuss homeless solutions last Tuesday night made me feel like I was looking through a magnifying glass. The problems were real. The ideas about how to help homeless people were tiny. Now, there's nothing wrong with small steps, like allowing a women's homeless shelter to add nine beds to their current 10 bed capacity, or considering allowing the homeless to camp in industrial parts of town. But equally valuable, if not more so, is looking at Salem's problems through a wide-angle mental lens that sees homelessness, environmental degradation, lack of affordable housing, urban sprawl, and…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council Progressive Salem

Honor Mike Swaim by making Salem more progressive

Mike Swaim was a much-admired former mayor of Salem who died on December 17 from a stroke that occurred during heart surgery.  Other people have praised Swaim for how he worked to improve Salem during his three mayoral terms in office from 1997 to 2002. Below I'm sharing a piece that Bill Smaldone wrote about Swaim that was posted on the Salem City Watch site.  And both the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal had stories about Swaim. So since I don't have anything to add about Swaim's exemplary life, I want to talk about how we can honor him in the…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce

Salem Chamber of Commerce needs to be less political

The most amusing quote in a recent Salem Reporter story by Troy Brynelson came from the outgoing CEO of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, Nick Williams. Departing CEO Nick Williams said community debates are more heated than he can recall. “I’ve been fortunate to be in this work for a little over six years and I’ve never seen it this divided before, which is unfortunate because at the local level we should be able to disagree knowing we’re going to bump into people at the grocery store,” he said. “I think the overarching theme is the way we seem…
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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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Posted inChamber of Commerce Third Bridge

Salem Chamber of Commerce still pushing billion dollar bridge boondoggle

Yesterday someone sent me a couple of pages from a recent Salem Area Chamber of Commerce publication that boasted about them adding 188 new members last April, which is going to enable the Chamber to keep pushing for a new bridge across the Willamette River. Download Salem Chamber of Commerce pages Here's a close-up of the highlighted part. The payroll tax would have allowed the Salem bus service, Cherriots, to offer evening and weekend bus service. Here's how I described the ill-considered opposition to this tax in an October 2015 blog post about the ballot measure. Opponents of the payroll…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce Larry Tokarski Salem Reporter

First meeting of Salem Reporter was with business leaders. Bad optics.

I was pleased to be one of the first to fork out $100 for a year's subscription to the Salem Reporter, a new online news source headed up by Les Zaitz that will start publication in September. Right after I subscribed, I emailed Zaitz and the three reporters he's hired, telling them how disappointed I've been that the Statesman Journal (Salem's daily newspaper, owned by Gannett) hasn't run stories that challenge the Powers That Be in this town. I’ll end by observing that in recent years I’ve been frustrated by the failure of the Statesman Journal to do genuine investigative…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council Land use

Poetic goodbye to Old Lindbeck Orchard shows what’s wrong with Salem development

I'm sharing a moving opinion piece by Jane Wille in today's Statesman Journal because we need more poetic feeling and less financial greed here in Salem. As you'll read below, Wille is saddened by the loss of the Old Lindbeck Orchard property in West Salem, which she says is to become high-density retirement housing. Last year the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger reported that it looked like a fenced gated community apartment complex was planned for the property. This supposedly is progress. I'm not so sure. After Wille's piece, you can read the comment I left on the Statesman Journal…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce

I have a pleasant talk with two Salem Chamber of Commerce staff

The title of this blog post admittedly sounds boring. What makes it wonderfully boring is that during all of my local liberal activism, I'd never had an hour-plus talk with someone from the Chamber of Commerce, much less two someones.  My primary connection with the Chamber has been criticizing its political positions, which lean decidedly toward the right. So when Natalie Jasinski, the Member Services staffer, asked if I'd like to get together to chat about how I see Salem, I jumped at the chance. We met at the Beanery in downtown Salem. Natalie brought along Kate Gillem, the recently-married…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council Third Bridge

Salem conservatives should do more actual conserving

I remember when conservatives used to actually believe in conserving things. Like money. And nature. My mother, an ardent Republican, was one of those old-time conservatives.  She was frugal. She was an environmentalist before that word came into fashion. Remembering the Great Depression (she was born in 1912), my mother hated to waste anything.  For a long time, "conservative" and "conservation" almost meant the same thing. A 2015 Think Progress piece talked about this in Republican Politicians are Betraying Their Party's Legacy of Conservation.  “You’re worried about what man has done and is doing to this magical planet that God…
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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 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 inChamber of Commerce

Chamber of Commerce’s Create Jobs PAC late on filing penalty for late filings

A sharp-eyed citizen who, like me, loves political irony sent me this screenshot of a transaction filed by the Salem Chamber of Commerce's Create Jobs PAC. This is public information available by searching the Secretary of State's ORESTAR system. As noted in red, on January 18, 2017 the Create Jobs PAC filed a transaction report about a $60 payment to the Secretary of State for penalties assessed against the Create Jobs PAC for late filings. These penalties totaled $4575.05, as reported in a February 7 Statesman Journal story, "Chamber of Commerce-backed PAC hit with campaign finance violations." A political action…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City of Salem

Few City of Salem “stakeholders” are ordinary citizens

Officials at the City of Salem are engaged in a strategic planning process that involves, in part, learning what sort of place people want our town to become. It's been criticized by the Breakfast on Bikes blogger in "City Strategic Planning Process too Opaque, Open House on 31st." Because of the winter storm earlier this month, the City's Open House on a strategic planning process was postponed until January 31st. At least from here the whole thing has seemed a little strange. If Council authorized it, we all missed it. If Council didn't authorize it, it's being funded by some secret…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce Police facility Statesman Journal

Either Chamber of Commerce is wrong, or Statesman Journal is deceitful

"What the ___?!" (I'll leave it to you to imagine a proper profanity to fill that blank.) That was my reaction when someone sent me the message below from the Keep Salem Safe folks who are advocating for passage of a way over-priced and poorly planned $82 million police facility bond measure on the November ballot.  They're telling people that the Statesman Journal has endorsed Measure 24-399. But clearly, this isn't true. The link circled in red below leads to a newspaper editorial that talks in a confusing fashion about "lowest common denominator" and earthquake safety, but doesn't call for a…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce

Non-surprise: Salem Chamber of Commerce endorses Republicans

The sun rises in the west. The Salem Chamber of Commerce endorses Republican candidates. Some things can be counted on in this otherwise uncertain world. A Statesman Journal article reports:       The Salem Area Chamber of Commerce is endorsing four local Republicans for election to the state House of Representatives.       The endorsements went to: Rep. Bill Post, seeking re-election in Keizer; opponent: Sharon Freeman (D) Rep. Jodi Hack, seeking re-election in Salem; opponent: Larry Trott (D) Patti Milne, seeking election in Woodburn; opponent: Teresa Alonso Leon (D) Laura Morett, seeking election in Monmouth; opponent: Rep. Paul Evans (D) Not that…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chamber of Commerce Chuck Bennett

Chuck Bennett gets lots of love (and money) from homebuilder PACs

Love may be ineffable when it comes to personal relationships. But love is quantifiable when we're talking about political campaign contributions.   Individuals and organizations give the most money to candidates they love the most. So even though browsing through records of political campaign contributions isn't all that fun, tonight I kind of enjoyed exploring the love-fest between Salem Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett and several homebuilder PACs (Political Action Committees). I also looked into Carole Smith's campaign finances, but this wasn't nearly as interesting. A brief discussion of Smith's contributions follows my report on Bennett's. ORESTAR is where the Oregon…
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