Posted inCity Council City of Salem Environment

Time for Salem to ban fireworks, sale and use

Yesterday the City of Salem banned the use of fireworks, as did two fire districts adjoining Salem. Now the City Council should implement a permanent ban on the sale and use of fireworks. The reasons given for yesterday's ban only scratch the surface of what's wrong with fireworks. Sure, high temperatures, low humidity, and wind gusts make setting off fireworks especially dangerous in terms of starting fires. But those conditions are the new normal for early July in this era of rapidly accelerating global warming. Yesterday, Tuesday July 4, was the hottest day on record for our planet. The average…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem T.J. Sullivan

City of Salem pays $3.5 million for vacant property near riverfront. Why?

Since I don't watch City of Salem Urban Renewal meetings on You Tube (got to save my time for Succession), until today I wasn't aware that the Urban Renewal board, which is the City Council under another name, had approved paying $3.5 million for 1.14 acres of property near the riverfront. The property is marked with a red star. The triangular Park Front building is above it. The South Park apartments are below it. Riverfront Park is to the left of it. As I'll describe below, this seems like a questionable thing to do. In fact, it strikes me as…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City wants to increase taxes while giving millions to an airline

Since I'm a Democrat, most conservatives would say that I favor big government. But that's only partially true.  I'll all for big government doing big things for the general public. However, when government wants more money to do things that don't make sense, I'm opposed to that -- as most people are. That's why two recent stories in the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal made me wonder, What are the folks at City Hall doing? This seems more than a little crazy. The April 6 Salem Reporter story is titled "City looks to boost fee and tax collections by millions…
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Posted inCity Council

Conservative Salem city councilors flame out on neighborhood association motion

As I noted back in March 2022, before the May election for Mayor and half of the Salem City Council seats, the main qualification for Ward 6 candidate Julie Hoy seemed to be her last name -- which probably not coincidentally also is the last name of Chris Hoy, who was the previous Ward 6 councilor and now is Mayor Hoy. So the way I see it, conservatives in Salem recruited Julie Hoy to be a right-wing replacement for Chris Hoy, hoping that their shared name would make Ward 6 voters think Julie was similar to Chris. Which, for sure,…
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Posted inCity Council Downtown

Parking meters could be coming to downtown Salem

For at least ten years, maybe more, parking meters in downtown Salem has been a contentious issue. Back in July 2013, Carole Smith, a downtown resident, property owner, and activist, collected more than 8,000 signatures, many more than were needed to put a Stop Parking Meters in Downtown Salem initiative on the May 2014 ballot. This celebratory poster appeared on many downtown businesses. Because when confronted with the widespread opposition to parking meters in Salem's core, the conservative-leaning City Council at first did away with all time limits on downtown parking, then reversed itself in the fall of 2014, instituting…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City Council approves $2.4 million for airport in dumb move

Here we go again. Monday night the City Council approved spending $2.4 million in precious general fund dollars in yet another attempt to lure an airline willing to provide commercial air service at the Salem airport. I guess Mayor Hoy and the eight city councilors have short memories. Or a penchant to forget the not-very-distant past when airlines came to town, and soon left town. Because Chamber of Commerce types here keep promising that this time an airline will commit to providing commercial air service if enough public money is spent to show that Salem is serious about making the…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Climate Action Plan

Salem needs to get past “blah, blah, blah” about climate change

As 2022 draws to a close, I'm hoping that 2023 is when Salem's city officials get past what climate activist Greta Thunberg calls the "blah, blah, blah" approach to reducing the world's greenhouse gas pollution. Meaning, lots of talk, very little action. The Salem City Council has passed a Climate Action Plan. It includes these goals: By 2035, GHG Salem emissions shall be reduced to 50 percent of the citywide greenhouse gas emissions for the baseline year of 2016, and By 2050, Salem should be carbon neutral. But the Climate Action Plan isn't being taken seriously by city staff and…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Police reform

Salem City Council makes mobile crisis unit a low priority

If the efforts of city councilor Vanessa Nordyke to make a mobile crisis unit a reality in Salem ever come to fruition, she deserves a Perseverance Prize. Because while the general public really likes the idea of having people other than police officers respond to mental health and other calls that don't require an officer, the Salem Police Department, City Manager, and her fellow city councilors haven't been nearly as enthusiastic.  Last Monday the City Council dealt the mobile crisis unit proposal another setback when Nordyke's motion to seek $2 million in state funding for a multi-year pilot project failed…
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Posted in2022 election City Council City of Salem

Wasteful use of fire trucks called out by 350 Salem OR

Sending a giant fire engine out to respond to a medical emergency is like having an Amazon package delivered by a semi-trailer truck. In each case, almost always there's no need for such vehicle overkill.  But even though just 2% of calls to the Salem Fire Department involved fires, the department is asking for $26 million in the $300 million bond levy on the November ballot to replace worn-out fire trucks.  The reason, pretty obviously, is that those trucks are being used inappropriately. If a right-sized vehicle was used for medical emergencies, fire trucks would be used for their intended…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

New plan for commercial air service at Salem airport sounds like old failed plans

Here we go again, the Chamber of Commerce and Travel Salem engaging in another round of fantasies about commercial air service returning to the Salem airport. Salem's Angry Owl isn't impressed. Neither am I. Having moved to Salem in 1977, back then there really were airlines flying out of the Salem airport to places people actually wanted to go. Can't remember exactly what they were, but I recall there were frequent flights to the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, and probably other locations. Now a Salem Reporter story paints a decidedly less rosy picture of where it might be…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Climate Action Plan

Climate Action Plan not getting the respect it deserves

Today was a really hot day in Salem. My car's thermometer said 99 degrees when I headed downtown at 4 pm. When I left at 6 pm, I had a reading of 107 degrees after my car sat on a sunny side of Court Street for a couple of hours. We need to get used to many more hot days, since the effects of human-caused global warming are becoming more obvious with every passing year.  To its credit, the City Council pushed for a Salem Climate Action Plan, which was accepted by the council in February of this year. Since,…
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Posted inCity Council

Salem City Council should ban fireworks

Not surprisingly, recently there's been a lot of discussion on Facebook about fireworks, almost all of it negative. Many want a ban on fireworks in Salem. People find them annoying and dangerous. Pets shake with fear at the loud booms. Wildlife are stressed by the bright lights and scary noises. Last Fourth of July I wrote "Fireworks should be shunned like cigarettes are." In researching that blog post about the bad side of fireworks, after some Googling I came up with the familiar problems: fires, trauma to pets, scaring wildlife. I also learned something new. Fireworks are highly toxic.  Fireworks…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem Fire Department is woefully inefficient, fighting few fires

Probably you've noticed that even though structure fires are rare in Salem, huge fire trucks are still frequently seen racing around the city. What the heck are they doing, since they're not fighting fires? They're doing what government bureaucracies almost always do. If your original reason for being no longer applies, then redefine your mission to avoid becoming irrelevant or having your budget reduced. So now "fire" departments actually are wasteful ways of responding to medical calls, both emergencies and non-emergencies. Oregon's Phil Keisling wrote about this in his 2015 piece, Why we need to take the 'fire' out of…
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Posted inCity Council Cycling

City Council approves protected bike lane from Harritt Drive NW to 17th Street NE

It isn't everything that Salem Bike Vision proposed for a network of protected bike lanes in Salem, but it's a good start. After all, politics is the art of the doable. Idealism is fine. In the end, though, getting part of what you want is a heck of a lot better than falling on a idealistic sword and not getting anything. A protected bike lane So even though I'd hoped for more protected bike lanes to be included in the $300 million community improvement bond measure Salem voters will be asked to approve this November, it was pleasing to watch…
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Posted inCity Council Cycling

More evidence that City of Salem staff hate protected bike lanes

Totally predictable. But disturbing all the same. City staff played games with a survey intended to gauge public support for an upcoming $300 million bond measure by slanting the survey to make it less likely that those responding would say Yes! to the Salem Bike Vision proposal to build a network of protected bike lanes. City councilor and Mayor-to-be Chris Hoy recognized this game a month ago, as I noted in a May 24 blog post, "Mayor and city staff try to keep Salem from having protected bike lanes."  Discussion then turned to the public opinion research mentioned in the…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem isn’t really one of the best-run cities in America

The City of Salem Facebook page was all proud about Salem supposedly being one of the best-run cities in America. Not surprisingly, Mayor Bennett said it showed how wonderfully the folks at City Hall are doing. I'm not nearly as excited, for reasons I'll describe below. First, this isn't a scholarly bit of research conducted by an organization with impeccable credentials. It's a report by WalletHub designed to drive clicks to their web site, where I assume they do something involving being a hub for people with wallets. Second, it might make sense to speak of the "best-run city government,"…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

A middle-aged white guy will be the next Salem City Manager

So after four months of searching the country for candidates to be Salem's next City Manager, the folks at City Hall came up with three middle-aged white guys.  My intuitive reaction when I saw the image below on Facebook was, Oh, no! And this is coming from an old white guy. Look, I have nothing against middle-aged white guys. I can remember being one myself a mere couple of dozen years ago. It just seems wrong for city officials to conduct a nationwide search and end up with three candidates who don't reflect the vast majority of people in Salem. Women…
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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 inCity Council Cycling

Weird reasons against protected bike lanes in Salem

Any user of Facebook knows that while there is a lot to like about this social media platform, there's also a lot not to like -- such as damn crazy ideas being spread around. About a week ago I started a petition in support of the Salem Bike Vision proposal to build a network of protected bike lanes in Salem. At the moment it has 190 signatures. Please sign it! To publicize the petition, I shared a post on three Facebook pages that I administer: Salem Can Do Better, Strange Up Salem, Salem Political Snark. The 591 reactions to date…
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Posted in2022 election City Council

Medlock now leads Gwyn by two votes in Ward 4 council race

If this was a fast-moving sporting event, rather than a slow-motion counting of all the votes, the contest between Dynee Medlock and Deanna Gywn to become the next Salem City Councilor in Ward 4 (a seat currently held by Jackie Leung, who didn't seek re-election) would have fans on the edge of their seats, waiting to see who ends up on top when time runs out. Here's how the contest stands as of today. Yesterday Gwyn led Medlock by two votes. Now Medlock leads Gwyn by two votes. We're not done yet with the May 17 election. A Salem Reporter…
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