Posted inCitizen involvement Donald Trump

Photos and videos of No Kings rally in Salem, Oregon

Yesterday I joined at least 6,000 other people for a No Kings rally near the state capitol here in Salem. We protested Trump's authoritarianism and inhumane policies. The rally was energizing. Also, highly positive, fun, and entertaining. It felt great to be among so many people who felt the same way about Trump's destructive actions in his second try as president: disgusted and shocked, yet optimistic about our nation's future if we stand together and resist Trump's efforts to turn our democracy into an autocracy. Here's photos that I took, followed by several brief videos. Lots of blow-up animals. Zero…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council National politics

My totally made-up 2024 local and national political awards

It's the last day of 2024. Time to spend a (very) few minutes inspecting the recesses of my brain about what struck me, politically, during the past year, before I turn my attention to a Very Important Question: will CNN be up with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen consuming copious amounts of alcohol at Times Square, or will this be a dry year for the only New Year's Eve hosts I can stand to watch? Here's some 2024 awards. Biggest national fuck-up. Joe Biden ignoring his almost-but-not-quite-explicit pledge to only be a one-term president before turning the 2024 Democratic presidential…
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Posted inCitizen involvement Oregon politics

Salem City Club looked at ranked choice voting, which is on November ballot

Last Friday ranked choice voting was discussed at a Salem City Club program that featured Shannon Grimes from the Sightline Institute in Seattle, where she focuses on electoral reforms in Washington and Oregon.  This November Oregonians will vote on Measure 117. If approved, the measure puts ranked choice voting into effect on January 1, 2028. Measure 117 was referred to voters by the 2024 state legislature, where it was passed on a party line vote, aside from one Republican who voted with the Democrats. So what is ranked choice voting? Here's an explanation that reflects what I heard Grimes say. …
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem Salem Reporter

Salem’s “news desert” makes it tough for the city to pass a tax increase

In reading a Salem Reporter story about the effort of city officials to get voter approval of a property tax increase in order to deal with a $8 million - $13 million gap between revenues and expenses, I was struck by the several mentions of communicating with the public about this problem. Here's some excerpts from "City Council discusses possible next steps to address budgetary shortfalls" by Joe Siess. Salem city councilors appear ready to put a measure before voters next May to raise property taxes to avoid sweeping cuts to city programs. But councilors made clear during a work…
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Posted inChris Hoy Citizen involvement City of Salem

Citizen activism prevents additional Salem Library cuts. For now.

It's great when elected officials do the right thing, even when they're forced into it by citizen activism. But most of the credit for the city's budget committee voting yesterday to prevent additional cuts to the Salem Public Library by using money from the hotel tax goes to Jim Scheppke and Lois Stark, fervent advocates for the library who did a great job organizing citizens to press for No More Cuts. Without Scheppke and Stark doing what they did, almost surely the West Salem branch would have been closed, with staff and hours at the main library severely curtailed from…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Help save the Salem Public Library from ruinous budget cuts

"Help. They're threatening me with grievous harm. I need my friends to defend me, because I can't do it myself." That's what the Salem Public Library would be saying, if it could speak. Since it can't, we library lovers have to do the speaking for the library.  The threat is real. City officials are planning to markedly slash the library budget again, after already making deep cuts in staffing, hours, and services.  NO MORE CUTS. That's the message from Jim Scheppke, retired State Librarian, and Lois Stark, a member of the Library Advisory Board, as you can read below. I've…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Resounding defeat of payroll tax should spur City officials to explore fresh ideas

In elections, usually even the most unqualified and unknown candidate gets 30 to 40% of the vote. So when the payroll tax got a "Yes" from only 18% of Salem voters in yesterday's election, they weren't just sending a message. They were screaming it from the rooftops. Both in the Marion County part of Salem and the Polk County part in west Salem (where just 16% said "Yes"). With the election over, and the certainty that remaining ballots to be counted won't appreciably change the outcome, we enter the what now? phase.  A Salem Reporter story about the payroll tax…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Watch the video of Salem Reporter’s town hall meeting on the payroll tax

Everybody should applaud the Salem Reporter, our city's online alternative to the Statesman Journal, for holding a town hall on the proposed payroll tax at the Elsinore Theatre this evening. For whether you oppose or favor the payroll tax, or don't have an opinion on it, it's great that a public debate on the tax happened prior to voters casting their ballot on it in the upcoming November election. I didn't attend the town hall. But I've watched some of the You Tube video of it, which I'll share below. (The screenshot above is just to show the debaters, Oregon…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Councilor Nordyke says city officials have lost public trust

Way to go, City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke. Vanessa Nordyke and furry friend Your responses to questions asked by the Salem Reporter about the payroll tax approved by the City Council on a narrow 5-4 margin without a vote of the people are a great example of speaking truth to power. The Salem Reporter sent questions to the four councilors who wanted Salem citizens to vote on the payroll tax. Only Vanessa Nordyke and Jose Gonzalez responded in time for publication.  Here's two of the questions, along with Nordyke's responses. I've highlighted in red her comments about the City of Salem…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Salem mayor and city councilors explain position on allowing payroll tax vote

The Salem Reporter (which I consider a subscription bargain for local news) had a great idea: ask Mayor Hoy and the other eight members of the City Council why they voted the way they did on the employee-paid payroll tax that ended up being approved on a contentious 5-4 vote this month. Journalist Abbey McDonald did a great job with "Salem councilors explain their votes for and against the payroll tax." I was particular interested in a question about why the City Council members either supported or opposed having Salem citizens vote on the payroll tax in the November election,…
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Posted inCitizen involvement National politics

This blogger is irked at a Florida bill aimed at censoring bloggers

Well, if Florida state Senator Jason Brodeur, a Republican, wanted to get himself criticized by bloggers, his introduction of a bill that would take away the free speech rights of bloggers was a genius move. But unfortunately, Brodeur has other motivations than social media masochism. That seems clear, given that Florida governor Ron DeSantis hates the media because they call him on his right-wing authoritarian bullshit. It's unclear whether Brodeur's bill has a chance of becoming law. Regardless, it grabbed the attention of the New York Times editorial board, which published "Florida Is Trying to Take Away the American Right…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Cycling

Read why people want Salem to have protected bike lanes

Ten days ago I started a petition in support of the Salem Bike Vision proposal to spend $10 million of an upcoming $300 million community improvement bond on building a network of protected bike lanes. Please sign the petition, if you haven't already. So far 228 people have signed the petition. Over half, 130 people, left comments explaining why they support the protected bike lanes proposal.  I've copied in those comments below, which total 3,876 words. Yes, that's a lot. But the people who wrote those words spoke well, and sometimes eloquently, about how protected bike lanes are a big…
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Posted inCitizen involvement Coronavirus

Salem, and the nation, needs more social capital

My wife and I had a pleasant, albeit low-key, Thanksgiving. Laurel's apple pie tasted great. The Trader Joe's meatless roast turned out fine once I realized that because I forgot to put the frozen roast in the refrigerator a full 24 hours before it went into the oven, that's why it was mushy. After another 15 minutes of cooking, the roast was perfect. Not so perfect was the news I woke up to on Friday. A new Covid variant was freaking out the world, including me. The world reacted with alarm on Friday to the highly mutated new coronavirus variant…
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Posted inCitizen involvement National politics

Sustaining Democracy book fizzles out on how to do it

I loved Robert Talisse's Sustaining Democracy book. Until I read the final chapter. Then I felt the same letdown as when I put in many hours watching a TV series that promises to eventually tie together compelling plot threads in a satisfying fashion, only to find that the final episode falls flat. But this doesn't take away from the brilliance of Talisse's analysis of what typically goes wrong in a democracy. It has a certain Marxist feel, since he persuasively argues that a democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. In brief, his argument is that democracies want citizens…
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Posted inCitizen involvement

Difficult-to-hear truths in “Sustaining Democracy” book

I guess it was good timing. Just as the fight in Washington D.C. over the Build Back Better bill and related bipartisan infrastructure bill hit a crescendo the past few days, I started reading a book by Robert Talisse, "Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side." I'd learned about the book by hearing an interview with Talisse on the POTUS channel on satellite radio. Even though it's a rather spendy Oxford University Press hardcover, I liked what Talisse was saying. (He's a philosophy professor specializing in democratic theory.) The book is aimed at a general audience, thankfully.  I've…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Police reform

Salem Police Department survey has problems, like the department

The Salem Police Department wants people to take a survey about the strategic plan being developed to guide how the department operates in coming years. I completed the survey today. And I could have completed it over and over, for as long as I wanted, because the survey allows people to respond more than once to it. This alone makes the value of the survey dubious.  Letting people fill out the survey multiple times makes it vulnerable to vote manipulation by vested interests -- either pro-police or anti-police -- who want to skew the results in their favored direction.  The…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Homelessness is the top concern of Salem residents

Recently the City of Salem released the results of its 2021 Community Satisfaction Survey, which is conducted annually by contacting a random sample of about 400 residents.Download City of Salem 2021 Community Satisfaction Survey - September 2021 Not surprisingly, city officials put a positive spin on the results in their Salem Connection email blurb. Ah, note the mention of "core City services." It's true that most people, 70%, are satisfied with city services. But that's a big drop from the 86% satisfaction in 2020. Since Covid was with us in both years, the pandemic doesn't seem to be the reason…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

Planned Parenthood doesn’t want counter-protests or protests at its health centers

Here in Salem, the so-called "The Church at Planned Parenthood - Salem OR" has been holding anti-abortion protests (which they call services) at the Planned Parenthood health center on Wolverine Street NE.  I said so-called because Awakening Ministries is the group behind The Church at Planned Parenthood -- which basically is a national group that local churches can become a franchise of. I'm an atheist who supports a woman's right to choose an abortion. So I strongly oppose what The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP) is trying to accomplish through its services/protests.  However, that group has a right to protest…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem Peter Fernandez

Flooding in Battle Creek area needs to be taken seriously

Here's another tale of how staff in the City of Salem Public Works Department are failing to be open, honest, and transparent with citizens. Earlier this year I reported that documents received from a public records request proved that Peter Fernandez, the Public Works Director, and other staff lied about why a property on Taybin Road in West Salem was slated for purchase. Fernandez, et. al, claimed it was for stormwater management. Actually, it was to buy right of way for Marine Drive in an area that the City Council had declared off-limits for ROW purchases. So the credibility of…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

“Our Salem” plan needs a top-priority: reducing greenhouse gases

If you care about how livable Salem is, check out a recently-released draft report from the City of Salem, Our Salem Vision. There's a lot to like in that vision, but also a lot not to like. So let city officials know what you think of the report. Even though the document says that the next step in the Comprehensive Planning process is public comment on the draft, I didn't see any indication in the report about how comments are to be submitted. A City of Salem Facebook post about Our Salem Vision also lacks any mention of how citizen…
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