Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Third Bridge sadly staggers on in pathetic City Council meeting

Tonight five clueless members of the Salem City Council voted to move ahead with the unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for Third Bridge, a.k.a. the Salem River Crossing.  Let it be remembered who supported this billion dollar boondoggle: Mayor-elect and current city councilor Chuck Bennett, along with fellow councilors Steve McCoid, Jim Lewis, Brad Nanke, and Warren Bednarz. Councilors Tom Andersen and Diana Dickey voted against the bridge. Bednarz was roundly defeated in this year's election by Third Bridge skeptic Sally Cook. So his vote tonight can't hurt him. But Bennett, McCoid, and Lewis will be up for re-election in 2018. Their opponents…
5
Posted inCity Council Daniel Benjamin

Citizens speak to City Council about racism and bigotry in Salem

Last night I was thankful to be part of a beautiful discussion of an ugly subject: racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry here in Salem, Oregon. The City Council meeting was held in the Library's Loucks Auditorium because so many people were expected to speak about the resignation of Ward 6 councilor Daniel Benjamin following his Facebook sharing of a video showing Black Lives Matter protesters being rammed by cars.  That expectation came true. The auditorium was almost filled to capacity when the meeting started. (I took this photo earlier than that.) Dozens of people used the public comment…
2
Posted inCity Council City of Salem North Campus

Appealing proposal to save North Campus historic buildings rejected by City/State officials

Here we go again... the City of Salem and the State of Oregon are doing something incredibly stupid. Yeah, I know, this isn't shocking news. Government officials are notorious for making bad decisions. In Salem, for example, the Mayor and her current City Council majority have laid plans to build an unneeded half billion dollar Third Bridge requiring $1.50 each-way tolls (on the two current bridges also) and want taxpayers to fork out $82 million for a vastly over-priced police facility that costs twice as much per square foot as it should. Oregon state government operates under the shadow of…
1
Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Third Bridge planning by City of Salem is horrendously bad

Billion dollars, so what? Just trust us and pay the bill.   In a nutshell, that's how officials at the City of Salem are approaching the Billion Dollar Boondoggle, known also as the Salem River Crossing, Third Bridge, or Preferred Alternative. They're rushing to get an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) expansion approved that's necessary for the proposed bridgeheads on either side of the Willamette.  There's a joint hearing tonight at the 55+ Center, 6 - 9 pm, to hear public testimony on the UGB expansion. The Salem City Council, the Keizer City Council, the Marion County Commission and the Polk…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council National politics

An anti-science candidate shouldn’t be president. Or, a Salem elected official.

Facts matter. Objective reality is too precious to waste. Personal opinions need to be based on impersonal knowledge of how the world really is. I hold those truths to be self-evident.  So did my deeply conservative mother, an avid Republican who also was a big lover of science. I was raised reading both National Review and Scientific American. My mother was as thrilled with discoveries in particle physics and genetics as she was when Ronald Reagan became governor of California (where I grew up). That was then, when "conservative" and "science-loving" were totally compatible words. Today, the editors of Scientific…
1
Posted inCity Council Creekside Golf Course

Water rate giveaway to Creekside Golf Course affirmed by City of Salem committee

Oh, goodie! I'm so excited that the Creekside Golf Course water rate scandal, a.k.a IrriGate, is continuing on its special-interest-kiss-up backroom-dealmaking course. This will give local political junkies like me even more raw material for snarkiness. When politicians fail to realize their mistakes, doubling-down on a stupid decision, it's entertaining to watch how far down the Rabbit Hole they will go before thinking, "Oh, shit, we should have turned around before hitting the slimy bottom." Here's a report I've gotten from a reliable source on today's Water-Wastewater Task Force meeting, the group that's been determined to foist a $600,000 water…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Creekside Golf Course Peter Fernandez

More disturbing revelations about Creekside Golf Course water scandal

OK, Salem's IrriGate scandal isn't Watergate quality, and I'm no Woodward or Bernstein, but this tale of crony capitalism and special-interest deal making at City Hall still is fascinating to dig into and report on. Following up on Tracy Loew's initial reporting in a Statesman Journal story about how a City of Salem advisory committee voted to recommend that Creekside Golf Course get a $60,000 water rate break, a fellow citizen activist has shared some juicy tidbits with me about how this potential $600,000 giveaway to Creekside and other large irrigators came about.  (The outrage is magnified by the fact that…
3
Posted inChuck Bennett City Council Creekside Golf Course

Crony capitalism on display in Creekside Golf Course water rate giveaway

There's so much wrong with the City of Salem's planned $600,000 reduction in water costs for all high-volume irrigators -- a roundabout way of saving the Creekside Golf Course $60,000 a year -- that it almost has a delicious rightness to it.  Meaning, hopefully this travesty-in-the-making will wake up Salem's citizenry to what has been obvious to those who closely watch goings-on at City Hall. Crony capitalism is alive and well in Salem, but it should be dead and gone. Here's how Wikipedia describes it: Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on…
1
Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Third Bridge opponents and supporters have very different visions for Salem

I came away from last night's City Council meeting highly encouraged about the future of Salem. Sure, the immediate outcome was discouraging: a 6-2 vote to move ahead with an expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) to accommodate what I like to call the Billion Dollar Boondoggle, a third vehicular bridge across the Willamette that is unneeded, unwanted (by most people), and unpaid-for.  Councilors Tom Andersen and Diana Dickey voted against the UGB expansion. Councilor Jim Lewis was absent. That left Mayor Anna Peterson and Councilors Chuck Bennett, Steve McCoid, Daniel Benjamin, Warren Bednarz, and Brad Nanke on the…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

More Third Bridge outrages revealed at City Council meeting

The biggest story that hardly anybody is aware of here in Salem, Oregon is a billion dollar Third Bridge across the Willamette River. If ever built (and that's a big IF), it would be the largest public works project in Salem history. But our secretive Mayor and her City Council majority are doing their best to keep citizens uninformed and uninvolved, hoping that few people will notice a horrendous waste of taxpayer dollars on a bridge that doesn't solve any transportation problems, but lines the pockets of the Sprawl Lobby -- those who profit from unneeded government spending on boondoggles…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Salem’s Mayor gets irked at my No 3rd Bridge sign

"Teacher, um, no, I mean MAYOR, don't kick me out of the City Council meeting! It was my pal who put me up to it, REALLY!" I felt like saying this when Mayor Anna Peterson interrupted a staff presentation at tonight's Salem City Council work session on the Salem River Crossing, a.k.a. the Billion Dollar Third Bridge Boondoggle. Check out this one-minute video.   But Peterson was so irked at me peacefully holding the sign that Jim Scheppke had given me, I decided to non-meekly put the sign in my lap rather than incur the Wrath of Anna and risk…
8
Posted inCity Council Third Bridge

Salem City Council trying to sneak through billion dollar Third Bridge

Here's some juicy City of Salem gossip I heard today which has a ring of truth -- because it fits with the habitual secretive modus operandi of the Mayor and her right-wing city council majority:  Do the public's business as far outside of public view as possible, because that way it's easier for special interests like the Chamber of Commerce to wield their influence on Salem's local politicians.  What I was told by a usually reliable source is that City officials are hellbent to get local government approvals for the billion dollar Third Bridge boondoggle as far along as possible before January…
3
Posted inCity Council Smart growth

Bend sets goals for climate change. Salem’s City Council sits on its butt.

As a long time Salem-area resident, I'm used to having my town's environmental reputation kicked in the ass by more with-it Oregon cities like Eugene, Corvallis, and Portland.  But now also Bend? Geez, Bend is in Deschutes County, central Oregon, which used to be reliably Republican. And hence, not much concerned with supposedly optional niceties such as protecting the livability of our one and only planet Earth.  With a lot of new people moving to Deschutes County, though, the gap between Democratic and Republican voter registration has shrunk considerably in recent years.  So this helps explain why today's Bend Bulletin…
7
Posted inCity Council Jim Lewis

Salem City Council embarks on investigation into “Sign-Up-Gate” scandal

Oh, man. Last night the Salem City Council passed a motion to investigate me and two other people. Shit! THIS IS F@#KING SERIOUS! So serious, it deserves a scandal-worthy name: Sign-Up Gate. The three of us being investigated, naturally, are The Sign-Up Gate Three.  I've made an annotated photo of myself that can be used by investigators, local media, and the New York Times (once this inquiry goes national, as it deserves to, given its importance). We can credit (if that's the right word) Councilor Jim Lewis with laying bare the details of this scandal (if that also is the right…
4
Posted inCity Council Police facility

Salem City Council meetings are unduly scripted

Scripts are for plays, movies, and TV shows where the plot, including the outcome, is laid out ahead of time. Public hearings aren't supposed to be scripted.  After all, what's the point of inviting citizens to express their opinions on an issue if members of a government body -- in this case, the Salem City Council -- have already made up their minds?  But as you can read below, this was the reaction of several people who attended last Wednesday's City Council hearing on a proposed new police facility: Mayor Peterson and the eight city councilors weren't open to new…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Police facility

New Salem police facility seems to be on shaky voter ground

Well, after attending a 2 1/2 hour Salem City Council work session last night, I can report that six years of planning for a new police facility appears to be on track to end up as dysfunctional as it began. (See here for documentation of the messy process.) Which is too bad. The police department needs a new facility. But I observed the work session thinking, "Man, here's another reason voters probably will reject a bond measure in the November 2016 election." (For a comprehensive and readable analysis of this project, check out the Salem Community Vision position paper, "Salem's…
No Comments
Posted inCitizen involvement City Council

Conservatives are preventing Salem from being a true “collaboration capital”

Today the Salem Statesman Journal ran a surprisingly well-written editorial. Amazingly, because I'm a frequent critic of the paper, I found little to disagree with an analysis of last week's primary election, "5 lessons from City Council, other election races." Little, though, doesn't mean nothing. Reading Lesson #5 caused some mental raised-eyebrows. 5. Unity beats disunity If there is a political divide in Salem, it often is cast as progressives (i.e., liberals) versus business and specifically the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce. That is only partially accurate. The business community is not monolithic, whether in Salem or statewide. As we have…
No Comments
Posted inCara Kaser Carole Smith Chuck Bennett

Progressive candidates win Salem City Council races. The Oligarchy weeps.

"The oligarchy is dead," a friend said to me tonight at Shotski's Woodfired Pizza as we applauded Sally Cook's decisive Ward 7 victory over current City Councilor Warren Bednarz -- who was endorsed by the Salem Chamber of Commerce and other special interests.  The Marion County Democrats put on a Primary Election Night party. Even though the races for Salem Mayor and four City Council seats are nominally non-partisan, everyone knew that the battle for the contested seats was between the Progressives and the Establishment, a.k.a. the Oligarchy. With most of the votes in, it looks like the Oligarchy lost…
2
Posted inCity Council

Thank you, candidates! (Politics is the craziest sport.)

I offer a heartfelt Namas'cray to all of the Salem people running for Mayor and City Council seats in tomorrow's 2016 primary election. Thank you for being crazy enough to put in so much time, effort, and money seeking an office that pays exactly nothing, requires a hell of a lot of work, and puts you in the firing line for constant criticism. Some of you, I heartily disagree with politically. Some of you, we're political bed-fellows. Doesn't matter. I honor your craziness, your fine madness: Carole Smith and Chuck Bennett, Mayor; Cara Kaser and Jan Kailuweit, Ward 1; Brad Nanke,…
No Comments
Posted inCity Council Steve Powers

City Manager Steve Powers talks about his job. And Salem.

The Salem City Manager heads up an organization with over 1,100 employees and a $466 million budget. In the private sector, a CEO with these responsibilities likely would earn $1 million a year, or thereabouts.  Steve Powers' annual salary, though, must be in the neighborhood of $176,000. (That's what his predecessor, Linda Norris, was slated to earn in 2015.) So Powers has a big job that pays comparatively little, pretty typical for government work. Yet he's accomplished the goal he set out at age 20: become a City Manager.  That's what Powers said at last Friday's Salem City Club talk, "The…
1