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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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

So, who’s in charge at the City of Salem?

I'm starting to hear people wonder why goings-on at the City of Salem haven't changed more this year, given that four newly-elected city councilors joined Tom Andersen to form a 5-4 progressive majority on the City Council. Well, this is sort of similar to asking why Republicans haven't been able to get much of their legislative agenda passed even though they control the presidency and both houses of Congress. Politics is complicated. So are bureaucracies.  But at the national level, the reins of power are easier to discern. Here in Salem, all one has to do is look at a…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Climate Action Plan an absolute must for Salem City Council

Yesterday Donald Trump made a great argument for the Salem Climate Action Plan that was a major focus of last night's City of Salem Strategic Plan open house at the Broadway Commons. In one of the most shameful actions in his scandal-plagued presidency, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.  His announcement gave no coherent reasons for doing this. Trump simply lied, as he always does.  Yesterday, President Donald Trump gave a speech announcing that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. It is a remarkable address, in its own way, in that virtually every…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council

Global warming denial on display at Salem City Council

Our nation has a reality-denying president in Donald Trump. Among other things that are objectively true, yet not to his tiny mind, he believes global warming is a hoax.  The last thing Salem needs is Trumpian City officials who refuse to accept the scientific consensus that global warming is happening, humans are the primary cause, and the world needs to take steps to reduce carbon emissions.  (See "Let's not let horrors of Trumpism infect Salem politics.") So when I watched part of the May 6 City Council work session on a Salem Strategic Plan, it was seriously disturbing to see…
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Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Salem City Council votes 5-4 against Third Bridge

Elections matter. Beginning in 2014, five (of nine) Salem city councilors have been elected after vowing to oppose the Third Bridge, also known as the Salem River Crossing.  Or, as I like to call it, the Billion Dollar Boondoggle.  The Statesman Journal has some good reporting on tonight's 5-4 vote to reject an Intergovernmental Agreement with the Department of Land Conservation and Development that would have helped move the Third Bridge forward. Check out Jonathan Bach's story, "Salem councilors reject third bridge agreement with state department." Opponents of a third Salem traffic bridge over the Willamette claimed a victory Monday as…
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Posted inCity Council

Who’s the strangest Salem City Councilor? I rank them.

Being the founder of Strange Up Salem -- which has morphed from a regular column in Salem Weekly to a popular Facebook page -- I figure nobody in this town is more qualified than me to take on an awesomely important task: Rank the nine members of the Salem City Council, the Mayor and eight councilors, in order of their strangeness.  Today is a propitious moment to do this. Yesterday Chris Hoy joined the Salem City Council, having been elected in a special Ward 6 election to fill the seat left vacant since Daniel Benjamin's resignation last fall. So now…
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Posted inCity Council

How will Chris Hoy’s victory affect the Salem City Council?

It was a happy night for Salem progressives yesterday. Chris Hoy won the special election for the Ward 6 City Council seat left vacant by Daniel Benjamin's resignation last year. Hoy's large margin of victory over the other candidates -- including Greggery Peterson, the "establishment" pick endorsed by current Mayor Chuck Bennett and previous Mayor Anna Peterson -- was aided by the enthusiastic support of volunteers from Progressive Salem, who put in a lot of time canvassing for Hoy. Here's a photo of the Hoy election night party at La Margarita Express, courtesy of a Facebook post by Geoff James.…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council

City of Salem strategic planning effort seems to be going backward

Showing that I'm either (1) crazy, (2) got too much time on my hands, (3) a glutton for punishment, or (4) a dedicated citizen activist blogger (I like this choice!), I just spent two hours of my remaining lifetime watching a Salem City Council work session on its strategic planning effort that was streamed live on Facebook. One of the most interesting comments came from Mayor Chuck Bennett when he said, "I'm tired of planning" and "We don't need to sit around and talk about it." Understand: these sentiments were expressed during a meeting of City officials who have been…
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