Posted inCity Council Progressive Salem

Jackie Leung should get Progressive Salem support for her City Council campaign

I'm a proud member of Progressive Salem. It's great that the group has helped elect five progressives to the City Council, a majority. But here's some constructive criticism about how Progressive Salem decides who to endorse. So far, Progressive Salem is sitting on its hands when it comes to the Ward 4 race in south Salem. This seems ridiculous, since the two candidates are... Steve McCoid, the incumbent, who was narrowly elected in 2014 by about 200 votes. He defeated Scott Bassett, who was a Salem United candidate, which was a sort of precursor to Progressive Salem. McCoid leans conservative.…
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Posted inCity Council Creekside Golf Course Larry Tokarski

Neighborhood association asks City Council to reconsider Lone Oak Road decision

Good news! There's a chance Larry Tokarski, the Creekside developer, won't be able to walk away from his obligation to build an extension of Lone Oak Road after all.  The South Gateway Neighborhood Association has sent a letter to Mayor Chuck Bennett, Councilor Steve McCoid, and the other members of the City Council asking that the council reconsider its 7-2 decision to form a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District.  Download SGNA - Reconsideration of Lone Oak Reimbursement District Instead, as shown in the image above, the letter proposes an intriguing alternative idea. If Tokarski comes out on top in a…
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Posted inCity Council Larry Tokarski

Why did Larry Tokarski start, then stop, construction of Lone Oak Road?

Last Monday the Salem City Council voted 7-2 to form a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District that's supposedly needed to pay for a missing north and south section, plus a bridge over Jory Creek. I talked about this in "City Council poised to make public pay for improvements, not Larry Tokarski." Tokarski is the developer of Creekside, through which the north section of the so-far unbuilt Lone Oak Road would pass. The mystery is why Tokarski never was required to pay for that part of the road, plus the bridge over Jory Creek. He started construction of these improvements in…
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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 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 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 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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Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

City Council plans to reduce traffic congestion without a Third Bridge

The writing is on the wall as regards the eventual demise of the Salem River Crossing, a.k.a. Third Bridge. Or rather, the writing is in the form of a motion to be made by Mayor Chuck Bennett at next Monday's City Council meeting to form a Council task force "to evaluate options for reducing traffic congestion and improving vehicular mobility around the Marion and Center Street bridges." Download CITY OF SALEM - File #: 17-545 It seems clear that this is how the Third Bridge will begin to die after opponents were successful in getting the Land Use Board of…
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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 inCity Council

Salem Strategic Plan a mix of yawns and yays

Next Monday, October 23, the Salem City Council is set to vote on whether to approve the Strategic Plan that it's been working on for about a year.  Looking over the plan, I was hoping to find a lot that excited me. Maybe I was expecting too much, since only a few things made me think, Wow, that's cool! Download Salem Strategic Plan Still, I give the City of Salem and its consultants credit for page 1, "Plan on a Page." The only problem is, on that page there's little to be enthused about -- since this is where the…
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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 inCity Council City of Salem Homeless

Arta Potties SOS! Why isn’t Salem embracing public portable restrooms?

Rebecca Maitland Courtney is frustrated with her home town. She has a right to be. After coming up with the idea for Arta Potties, artistically-decorated portable toilets that serve both the homeless and ordinary people, she's finding that other cities are giving her a lot more love than Salem.  I just spent an enjoyable hour talking with Courtney. She's a caring, creative woman who can't understand why it is so difficult for people in Salem to come together and embrace a great idea: making restrooms a right for all in downtown, rather than a privilege for those who have the money…
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Posted inCity Council Donald Trump

Salem City Council should do away with the Pledge of Allegiance

Every Salem City Council meeting begins with the Pledge of Allegiance. Whenever I'm at a council meeting, I'll stand for the pledge, but I don't say it or put my hand over my heart.  The whole idea of the Pledge of Allegiance just strikes me as decidedly creepy.  From what I can tell by some Googling, North Korea is one of the few other countries in the world that are so enamored of a pledge of allegiance.   Of course, in North Korea the pledge is to the Supreme Leader. Here, the first mention of allegiance is to the United States…
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Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Great video discussion of why Salem needs to ditch the Third Bridge

Whether or not you believe Salem needs to spend more than $400 million on another bridge across the Willamette River, this CCTV interview between Ken Adams and Bob Cortright will help you understand what's going on with the Salem River Crossing project. Sure, I know a 26 minute video can seem like eternity in these days of 30-second social media attention spans. But Adams and Cortright do a great job of digging into some details that everybody in Salem should know about.  I jotted down some notes as I watched the video while eating breakfast this morning. Here's ten things…
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Posted inChuck Bennett City Council Tom Andersen

Salem moves closer to a Climate Action Plan

Because the Trump administration has a head-in-the-sand approach to global warming, cities like Salem have to help fill the federal void when it comes to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Otherwise, devastating wildfires, persistent drought, supersized hurricanes, massive flooding, and other manifestations of human-caused climate change are going to keep on worsening.  Fortunately, today I learned that Salem is making good progress on having a citywide Climate Action Plan -- thanks to the efforts of our local 350.org chapter, 350 Salem OR, and supportive city councilors such as Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, and…
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Posted inCity Council Illegal signs Political signs

Illegal signs have a Facebook fan. Will litter boosters follow?

I'm confident that most people in Salem consider illegal signs in the public right of way to be the abomination that they are. Ugly. Irritating. Trashy. Disrespectful of public property.  But after Salem Community Vision -- a group dedicated to improving the livability and vitality of our town -- praised the City Council for making a stronger commitment  to remove illegally placed temporary signs, and warned that Kelly's Home Center once again may be visually polluting Salem with lots of illegal signs this Labor Day weekend, some lovers of those signs popped up on Facebook. Notably, Ashlee Bell Wright, who…
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Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

City Council elections count. Time to kill the Third Bridge.

Hypocrisy. We're all prone to it. But conservatives in Salem sure seem to be more hypocritical than progressives -- especially when it comes to the most controversial local political issue in this town, the Salem River Crossing or Third Bridge. I don't recall any of my progressive friends calling into question the legitimacy of a long string of pro-Third Bridge votes by the Salem City Council back when conservatives were in power. And I sure don't remember any members of that right-leaning council majority saying that even though one of their campaign positions was to build a Third Bridge, this…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Political signs

“Illegal signs are trash.” Which is why they make Salem look trashy.

There was a lot of discussion about illegal temporary signs in the public right-of-way at last night's City Council meeting. Here's some great testimony by Kathleen Hill on changes to the City of Salem sign ordinance that go in the wrong direction when it comes to illegal signs. (See my previous post, "City Council needs to enforce ban against temporary signs in public right of way.") As Hill said, signs left on utility poles or stuck in the ground on the public right of way between sidewalk and street are indeed trash. And they make Salem look trashy, unappealing to…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Political signs

City Council needs to enforce ban against temporary signs in public right of way

With all the problems in our country (and the world) right now, I understand why some people feel it is wrong to get upset about the many illegal signs littering the public right of way in Salem.  OK, I understand. But I heartily disagree that this isn't important. It is! Salem's quality of life -- along with our ability to project a positive image to visitors and people/businesses who might want to move here -- is diminished when illegal signs proliferate along our streets, making this town look like a perpetual garage sale. Lots of the signs are placed by…
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Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Third Bridge boondoggle gets another City Council setback

Good news for Salem: the massive waste of a billion dollars known as the Salem River Crossing (a.k.a. Third Bridge) encountered another roadblock at last night's City Council meeting.  There was a public hearing on the FY 2017-18 budget, which included $3.6 million to do something with Marine Drive in West Salem, which currently is just a short street that blends with Harritt Drive south of Riverbend Road. Two options were on the table.  The clearly legal something was to use the leftover money from the 2008 Streets and Bridges Bond to do what voters approved when they passed the bond…
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