Posted inCitizen involvement Third Bridge

Mark Coutis slammed by West Salem Neighborhood Association Ethics Committee

Ouch. The Vice-Chair of the West Salem Neighborhood Association (WSNA), Mark Coutis, has been slammed hard by an ethics committee formed to look into his offensive remarks about Black Lives Matter, along with other subjects -- including how Coutis insulted people in his role as a WSNA Facebook site administrator. What Coutis did was the subject of a public comment at a recent Salem City Council meeting. You can read the juicy details in a report issued by an Ethics Committee formed to look into a complaint filed against Coutis. I've shared screeenshots of the PDF file below.Download WSNA Ethics…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Salem Police Department

Looks like Salem City Council wants to reimagine the police

l understand why "Defund the Police" has become a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter protesters. But it can be misunderstood as calling for the abolition of police departments, which very few people really want to do.  "Reimagine the Police" strikes me as both more accurate and more politically palatable.  A Washington Post opinion piece, Don't "Defund the Police". Reimagine the Police. makes a case for the latter slogan. “Defund the Police” is candy to the one-liner simpletons. It’s a cry that launched a thousand memes about the lawless anarchy to come. It’s a loping softball to the grumping Trumpers who…
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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 inCitizen involvement City of Salem Comprehensive Plan

“Our Salem” workshop laid out an appealing vision for our city

Yesterday I came away more enthused than I expected about Salem's future, because there seemed to be widespread citizen agreement about how our city should grow in a fashion that improves quality of life. Last night I attended a City of Salem workshop at Pringle Hall that marks another phase of the Our Salem project aimed at updating our city's Comprehensive Plan. OK, that sounds geekily boring.  And as I sat at a table at the beginning of the workshop, listening to someone describe what sounded like an overly complex plan for how the two-hour meeting was supposed to go,…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

My frustration with City of Salem public records requests

"It shouldn't be this difficult." That's what runs through my mind, too often, when it comes to getting public records from the City of Salem. (Oregon variety; maybe the Massachusetts Salem can conjure up a spell and get records to requestors more easily, given their witch heritage.) Here's a chronology of my current frustration: July 29, 2019. Request submitted. I fill out a Public Records Request form, scan it, and email it to the City Recorder's office, which oversees requests. I ask for: All documents, emails, and other communications relating to the use of the Capital Press building owned by…
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Posted inBroadway Commons Citizen involvement City Council

Salem’s LGBTQ communities need your help

I get it. It's summer. The living is mostly easy. There's so many causes -- political, social, cultural -- that demand your attention. But please give some serious thought to spending a few minutes to help some people close to home: Salem's LGBTQ communities. Here's the issue they need your help with. The Salem Public Library has to be relocated while renovations are made to the library building at the Civic Center. City officials favor using the old Capital Press building adjacent to the Broadway Commons as a temporary library. Problem is, the Capital Press building is owned by the…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

Sign a petition to support LBGTQ rights in Salem

Please sign this petition I just started to support the Salem Human Rights Commission in its stand against the City of Salem leasing a building from the Salem Alliance Church to temporarily house the public library. Click on this link to the Care2 Stand up for LGBTQ rights in Salem! petition. The church rejects same-sex marriage and considers same-sex sex to be a sin. The Commission is calling on City officials to find another location for the library while renovations are made, even if that location costs more and is less convenient.
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Human Rights Commission stand on library relocation rests on secular faith

I'm a proud atheist. But for 35 years I was religious, having been an active member of an Indian organization led by a guru considered to be God in human form. So I understand how powerful religious faith can be. I also know that secular forms of faith are equally powerful and deserve just as much respect.  In fact, more so, as I'll explain below. This is why I admire the stand of Salem's Human Rights Commission, which recently unanimously voted to oppose the City of Salem paying the Salem Alliance Church for use of a church-owned building to temporarily…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Third Bridge

It took a village to stop the Third Bridge

After I watched the Salem City Council kill the Salem River Crossing or Third Bridge project last night, my first reaction was to feel deeply thankful toward the six councilors who did the right thing by saving Salem from this Billion Dollar Boondoggle. But with a bit more reflection, my thankfulness expanded to include many hundreds, in fact many thousands, of people who stopped the Third Bridge.  Most broadly -- and in some ways most importantly -- everybody who worked so hard to elect the six progressive councilors on the nine-member City Council. The Third Bridge would have continued on with…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Five strange things about Friday’s special City Council meeting about water problem

I'm a fan of strangeness. But there's pleasing kinds of strange and disturbing kinds of strange. Watching yesterday's special City Council meeting about Salem's toxic algae water crisis via a Facebook feed gave me the latter sorts of feelings...disturbing. Here's five things that struck me as strange: (1) That the meeting needed to happen at all. The City Council just had a meeting on Tuesday. But City of Salem officials botched their response to dangerous levels of toxic algae cyanotoxins in the water supply so badly, a special meeting on Friday was necessary.  This wasn't exactly the biggest emergency Salem…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Salem Weekly

Great idea: Salem could have a local online paper

The Statesman Journal is doing a poor job of reporting on local news here in Salem. But what's the alternative? Well, an opinion piece in The Guardian is about how people in East Lansing, Michigan formed a local paper, East Lansing Info. About a decade ago, my historic neighborhood was facing the possibility of a giant commercial development being built just down the hill from us by a company known to have a troubled history. Worried about our way of life, the president of my neighborhood association and I started going to city council meetings. Watching our city government came…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

What if Salem was like this…

Today I had an stimulating conversation about Salem, including political goings-on, with a person who had some appealingly fresh ideas about what needs to change in our city to make it a better place to live for everybody -- not just the already well-off. Our talk got me to thinking about what Salem would be like if... where what follows the "if" is an outcome unconstrained by what exists today, because that would pretty much guarantee more of the same. Here's a sampling of what my mind came up with.  What if Salem... -- Had a City Council that truly…
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Posted inCitizen involvement T.J. Sullivan

Challenged to say what I’ve done to make Salem better, I’m pleased to reply

Blogs should come with a warning: If you ask a blogger questions that require some talking about themselves, expect a verbose answer. Especially if the challenge is to explain my contributions to Salem from a couple of people who appear to doubt that I've done anything useful in my entire life. Today they left rather similar comments on my post, "T.J. Sullivan is the Chamber's President-Elect. He's gotten well-deserved snark from me."  Concerned Citizen left the first comment. Hi Brian. Honest questions: What concrete things have you done to make Salem better? How many people do you currently employ and…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

Salem Climate Action Plan top priority at Strategic Plan open house

T0night the City of Salem asked people to express their top priorities for actions in the Strategic Plan that's under development.  I took these photos in the Broadway Commons meeting room at about 7:15, more than halfway through the 6-8 pm Strategic Plan Open House. The crowd was pretty thin at that point -- probably as many city staff and officials were in the room as concerned citizens.  So the top priorities might have shifted a bit over the next 45 minutes. But by the time I left, the #1 priority action was a Climate Action Plan. (Every person who…
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Posted inCitizen involvement National politics

Pluralism — fox’y rather than hedgehog’y — is what Salem (and the nation) needs

We live in a polarized political world, both locally here in Salem and nationally. This is extremely bothersome. There's no way a city or a country can thrive when roughly half the population is viewed by the other half as worthy of disdain, because they hold views opposed to a supposedly Obviously Clearly Correct position. Today I finished reading Stuart Firestein's book, "Failure: Why Science is So Successful." In a concluding chapter Firestein praises pluralism. Specifically value pluralism, a notion promulgated by philosopher Isaiah Berlin. He writes: Berlin's value pluralism was at once far more radical and more constrained than…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

Salem needs some civic cheerleaders

I wish Salem had more cheerleaders. I'm not talking about the rah-rah pom-pom wielding variety (though I love them too; my granddaughter is one), but people who manifest these qualities: (1) They have an over-arching creative progressive vision for the marvelous town Salem can become.(2) They have the charisma and drive to draw others into supporting this vision.(3) They have the power, talent, influence, and resources to convert visionary dreams into reality. I got to thinking about this after someone thanked me for my blog posts about Sustainable Fairview, the project to redevelop the Fairview Training Center in south Salem…
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Posted inCitizen involvement National politics

Twenty-nine years ago, Oregon showed how health care planning should be done

Many years ago, twenty-nine of them, I was the lead staff person for an Oregon Health Priorities for the 1990s project. In 1988 it culminated in a Citizen's Health Care Parliament organized by Oregon Health Decisions, which is still in existence (I was the first executive director of Oregon Health Decisions). In May 2009 I wrote a blog post just before the Affordable Care Act became law that focused on a paper I wrote for the Citizens Health Care Parliament, "Quality of Life in Allocating Health Care Resources." In the post I said: Like most Americans, I'm hoping that a viable…
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Posted inCitizen involvement Third Bridge

West Salem NA Third Bridge vote was conducted shamefully

I'm giving the West Salem Neighborhood Association a big dose of Salem Political Snark for the shameful way a June 19 vote to support the Salem River Crossing (a.k.a. Third Bridge or Billion Dollar Boondoggle) was conducted. The pro-bridge Salem Bridge Solutions group is giddy with delight at how the vote to have the West Salem Neighborhood Association (WSNA) go on record as supporting the Salem River Crossing turned out: 302 in favor, 49 opposed, 3 abstaining.[Note this is a correction. Previously I reported a vote on an amendment to the final motion, not the final motion.] They're also super-proud…
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Posted inCitizen involvement Third Bridge

West Salem Neighborhood Association vote on Third Bridge won’t mean much

The astroturf (fake grass roots) Salem Bridge Solutions group is super-excited about tonight's West Salem Neighborhood Association meeting.  They think there will be a vote at the neighborhood association meeting to support building the Billion Dollar Boondoggle known as the Salem River Crossing, or Third Bridge. And also to build Marine Drive, which would connect with the as yet unpaid-for bridge -- should Salem-area residents decide they want to pay a $1.50 toll each way to cross the unneeded bridge, along with an increase in the local gas tax, vehicle registration fees, and property taxes. Well, Salem Bridge Solutions should…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem

Demand a Salem Climate Action Plan. Speak up on June 1!

Donald Trump doesn't accept the reality of global warming. He's working to reverse our nation's environmental protection efforts aimed at reducing harmful carbon emissions.  So this makes it even more important that Salem stand up for science, sustainability, and moving toward a 21st century economy that isn't based on outmoded fossil fuel assumptions of "drill, drill, drill" and "drive, drive, drive" (internal combustion vehicles). Salem needs a Climate Action Plan. Next Thursday, June 1, the City of Salem is holding a Strategic Plan Open House at the Broadway Commons from 6 to 8 pm. People need to speak up at…
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