First off, it's great that City officials have released a 2018 report on how the City of Salem is making progress on goals in the recently adopted Strategic Plan. Download 2018-annual-community-report The report is nicely designed, attractive and clear. It's easy to read. And it reassures citizens that the folks at City Hall have some clear direction in regards to how Salem needs to change for the better. I've only given the report a quick read, but wanted to share my first impressions of the 2018 Annual Community Report. The high-level goals in the Strategic Plan strike me as pleasantly vacuous.…
I'm sort of ashamed to admit it, but once upon a time I was a professional planner. I was an executive service manager with the State Health Planning and Development Agency (SHPDA) back in the 70s and 80s. Looking back, what I'm not proud of is how I and other SHPDA staff elevated technical criteria over human values without giving much thought to why we did this. I bring this up because I'm worried that the City of Salem effort to update the Salem Area Comprehensive Plan will make the same mistake: expect citizens to conform to the values of…
The State of Oregon has put the 45 acre Hillcrest property up for sale. According to Wikipedia, Hillcrest was a youth correctional facility that closed on September 1, 2017. I learned of this from Mark Wigg, who is active in promoting more walking/cycling trails in Salem, along with more parks. Below you can read a presentation Wigg emailed me, which I presume has been sent to City of Salem officials and City Council members. What he says makes a lot of sense. In a follow-up email, Wigg added: "Living accommodations for 300. Gym kitchens classrooms pool." After the presentation I'll…
Well, that didn't take long. At 11:30 am yesterday, City of Salem officials sent out an email about the start of an effort to update the Salem Area Comprehensive Plan. A mere 19 minutes later, at 11:49 am, Michael Slater wrote a post on a Facebook page where Salem City Council issues are discussed that critiqued the Our Salem Stakeholder Advisory Committee, which a City of Salem web page describing the planning effort says "will be providing guidance to staff." Slater said: The City has released the members of the advisory group that will assist staff on "technical" issues related…
It's embarrassing that the SKATS (Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study) body, which focuses on transportation planning in our area, has some global warming deniers on it who are mightily resisting connecting a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions with how people should get around via vehicles, mass transit, bicycles, and whatever. Salem-Keizer Area Transportation Study (SKATS) is the designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Salem-Keizer area. A MPO is a federally mandated body for any urban area over 50,000 in population. The SKATS MPO is directed by a Policy Committee composed of elected representatives from the cities of Keizer, Salem and Turner, Marion…
Salem is a liberal-leaning city. But local radio stations, with the notable exception of KMUZ, tend to tilt decidedly rightward. KSLM and KYKN seem determined to compete on who can air the most conservative craziness, as I blogged about last April in "KSLM is trying to out-right-wing-wacko KYKN." A show featuring two local conservative commentators, Gator Gaynor and Denise Nanke (wife of Salem City Councilor Brad Nanke) has disappeared from the KYKN lineup. I emailed KYKN management, asking why this happened, but never got a response. It could have had something to do with Gaynor and Nanke mocking the Parkland,…
Last night the Salem City Council, meeting as the Urban Renewal Agency board, failed to ask the right questions about a massive cost overrun on the not-yet-built new police facility. This failure was across the board. Council progressives didn't ask the right questions. Neither did the council conservatives. The Mayor didn't ask the right questions. And City of Salem staff sure didn't either. So I'm going to present some key questions that went unasked. What bothered me the most about the approval of $2 million in urban renewal funds to fill a hole in the police facility budget wasn't so…
Nine days ago I argued that the Salem City Council should cut costs to bridge a funding gap facing the yet-to-be-built police facility planned for just north of downtown. As noted above, in the $63.9 million plan 9.18% was budgeted for escalation, meaning construction inflation. This totaled $4,503,000. There also was a 9% contingency line item of $4,907,000. So $9,410,000 was set aside for construction cost increases and unforeseen contingencies. It sure seems this should have been enough, so why are City officals asking for $2 million on top of the $9,410,000? (Note: in my blog post I observed that if…
A headline in a recent Statesman Journal story didn't tell the entire truth about a cost overrun on the $61.8 million police facility Salem voters approved in a May 2017 bond measure election. The headline, "Salem officials seek extra $2 million as police HQ construction costs rise," makes it sound as if construction cost inflation is the reason City officials are wanting $2 million to be allocated from urban renewal funds to fund additional police facility costs. But there already was $4.5 million in the police facility budget earmarked for 9.2% worth of cost escalation due to construction inflation. So…
Nationally, it's been a depressing week for progressives like me. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse with 5-4 Supreme Court decisions that ratified Trump's travel ban, gave a green light to gerrymandering, and trashed public employee unions, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement today. That gives Trump another crack at appointing a highly conservative justice who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, thereby allowing states to make abortion illegal. Which surely would happen in many red states. Also, a compliant Supreme Court could refuse to put any check on Trump's authoritarian desires, making the United States a…
It's an all-too-familiar theme here in Salem: people feeling powerless about unwelcome development in their neighborhood that they feel is being pushed upon them by forces they can't control. Before sharing photos of what's planned for the new shopping center where Costco will be the dominant presence, I wanted to show the most surprising aspect of the meeting. Empty chairs. This reflects the failure of Costco Wholesale and PacTrust real estate representatives to have the guts to stand up in front of concerned neighbors and answer their questions about why it makes sense to plunk a gigantic big box store…
So how would you feel if you lived next to 27 acres of untouched forest land just outside the Salem city limits, and one day logging equipment rolls in to clear-cut all of the trees -- firs, white oaks, other species? And when you asked someone in charge why this was being done, they reportedly said, "I'm logging it for timber." Except, it turns out that this really isn't true, because a 46 acre, 212 lot subdivision is planned for the property that's north of Robins Lane SE and west of the I-5 freeway. To cap it off, you later…
Steve Powers is the Salem City Manager. The City Manager is hired with the approval of the City Council, then he or she is in charge of all other City of Salem employees. Someone sent me a copy of Powers' January 2017 Performance Evaluation, noting that some deficiencies noted in the evaluation seemingly were reflected in how Powers has been handling the toxic algae water crisis. Before discussing those deficiencies, some background info. News of Powers being hired as Salem's City Manager broke in August 2015, as I wrote about in "Salem has a new City Manager -- Steve Powers."…
The folks at City Hall who made the indefensible decision to keep Salem residents in the dark for seven days after s sample was taken that showed high levels of a cyanotoxin in the water supply are trying to claim that a "10-day window" rule permitted this. In a Statesman Journal story, Public Works Director Peter Fernandez said: City officials “hung our hat” on EPA guidelines that allow for a 10-day period to make treatment adjustments to fix the water. After 10 days, the buildup of toxins becomes more serious. So let's take a look at how the 10-day EPA…
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…
Today we learned that Salem's water is still unsafe to drink for young children, pregnant women, dialysis patients, and other people with compromised immune systems. But there's a lot still left to learn about how City and State officials botched their response to last Saturday's test results showing unsafe levels of toxic algae in the water system of Salem and other municipalities sharing that system. (1) Why the four-day delay in alerting people about the problem? I talked about this in an earlier post, "Salem-area water safety alert could have been handled better." Mayor Chuck Bennett, who is out of the…
Nobody's perfect. But everybody can learn from their mistakes. So from my vantage point, here's what I see could have been handled better regarding the toxic algae warnings in Salem-area water systems that went out yesterday. It sure seems like people should have been notified earlier. A Statesman Journal story reports that City of Salem staff knew last Saturday, May 26, that unhealthy levels of toxic algae had been detected. (Lacey Goeres-Priest is Salem's water quality supervisor.) Water was sampled late last week and officials received the results of testing the water on Saturday, said Goeres-Priest. The results showed toxin levels…
If you love Salem's downtown -- I sure do -- you'll want to see these photos I took at last night's Downtown Salem Streetscape Project open house. There's some exciting improvements in the works for downtown sidewalks, alley entrances, and Front Street crossings to Riverfront Park. Traffic calming features got me especially enthused, since whatever makes downtown streets less freeway'ish is a very good thing.Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.
Last night the City Council decided to take another month to consider its reconsideration of a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District that appears to have support mainly from the developers who would pocket money supplied by lot owners in south Salem.
A hearing was supposed to clear up questions about the Reimbursement District, but it seemed that as many questions were raised as answered. So after lengthy discussion, Mayor Chuck Bennett moved to hold open the hearing until the April 23 City Council meeting. That motion was passed unanimously by nine rather confused councilors.
In case you've missed the twists and turns of this issue — and if you only read the Statesman Journal, you've missed out completely, because our local newspaper no longer covers most local news, including news about the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District — here's my blog posts about this subject, listed from oldest to newest..
The hearing last night featured quite a few complaints from people who would have to pay thousands of dollars to the Reimbursement District when a house was built on their lot, even if they'd rarely, if ever, use an extension of Lone Oak Road.
They questioned why owners of lots quite far from Lone Oak Road would have to pay up, while current residents of the Creekside neighborhood wouldn't have to pay anything.
In my three-minute testimony, I argued that there didn't appear to be a need for a Reimbursement District. You can either listen to what I said via the You Tube video below, or read my remarks in a continuation to this post.
Several city councilors said they'd be submitting questions to City staff that they'd like answers to when the Reimbursement District is discussed again at the April 23 City Council meeting.
Here's a key question that I hope gets asked and answered: Is the Creekside developer required to build a bridge over Jory Creek and an extension of Lone Oak Road, or is constructing these improvements the responsibility of the City of Salem?
I recall that City staff said last night that if the Creekside developer plats Phase 14, the bridge and road would have to be built as a condition of moving ahead with the development of that phase. However, the staff report for the Reimbursement District reconsideration hearing only speaks of the Creekside developer being required to construct Lone Oak Road.
The Creekside developer is required to construct Lone Oak Road between Muirfield Avenue and Augusta Drive as a condition of the next sub-phase of Creekside’s Phase 14 development. However, the timing of construction is at the developer’s discretion, not the City’s. Therefore, this condition to construct Lone Oak Road is also being imposed on other developments in the area since the street is needed to serve these other properties.
There also was considerable talk about a 2015 Memorandum of Understanding that called for the City of Salem to build the bridge and possibly also the road (the MOU language isn't crystal clear on this point), with the Creekside developer seemingly only being responsible for dedicating the right of way for the northern extension of Lone Oak Road. Download Attachment 7 – Creekside MOU 052715
The MOU calls for the City of Salem to include $750,000 in the Capital Improvement Plan for FY 2016 through 2020 to build the bridge. But the plan for the Reimbursement District assumes that the bridge will cost $5,6 million. So there's close to a $5 million discrepancy between what City officials thought the Jory Creek crossing would cost in 2015, and what it now is estimated to cost,
This is a major screw-up which was cause for concern at previous City Council hearings. Last night it was learned who was responsible for the $5 million mistake: Peter Fernandez, the Public Works Director. He said that he failed to get a cost estimate from the City engineering staff, choosing instead to rely on a cost estimate by the Creekside developer.
Here's a video I made of Fernandez' admission that he was the one who screwed-up.
This $5 million mistake by Fernandez is important for reasons beyond the high dollar figure. Here's why:
(1) Peter Fernandez had numerous opportunities to come clean about why the cost of the Jory Creek crossing mushroomed from less than a million dollars to almost six million dollars. But he only revealed his failure to get a cost estimate from his engineers under close questioning from Councilor Tom Andersen last night. This calls into question Fernandez' credibility on other issues, and is a valid reason to wonder why he should continue to serve as Public Works Director.
(2) It was acknowledged yesterday that given the $5.6 million cost of a bridge over Jory Creek, there is little likelihood that the Creekside developer will ever choose to build the bridge. So this eliminates a major rationale for the Reimbursement District, which already obviously is on shaky ground given the fact that after approving it, the City Council voted to reconsider that decision, and now has decided to spend a month considering the reconsideration before the April 23 Council meeting.
(3) To elaborate on the above, it makes little sense for the City of Salem to include money to build the bridge in a future Streets & Bridges bond measure, then pay back some of that money via funds raised through the Reimbursement District. If this happened, money provided by all property tax payers in Salem would be reimbursed by assessments placed on several hundred lots in the south Salem area that are part of the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District. Those lot owners would be justifiably irked by this.
(4) Their irritation would be justified for several reasons, one of them being that City staff said that the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District is by far the largest district of that kind in Salem. In other words, and as already noted, lot owners who are far away from Lone Oak Road are being asked to pay for bridge/road improvements. The fact that the City of Salem would be the entity being reimbursed by those lot owners for bridge construction makes the Reimbursement District even more unfair.
Another nail in the coffin of the Reimbursement District is the fact noted by City staff last night that two subdivisions planned for the area south of Sahalee Drive include about 120 lots (outlined in purple and orange above). The developers of these subdivisions (one 10 acres, the other 20 acres) are responsible for building the southern extension of Lone Oak Road to Rees Hill Road.
Bizarrely, last night City staff said that since the Reimbursement District assessment per lot would be about $10,000, the $1.2 million raised (120 times $10,000) just about equals the cost of building the southern extension of Lone Oak Road. So the City of Salem would collect $1.2 million from the developers, then reimburse the developers for the $1.2 million they'd just paid to the Reimbursement District.
Um, here's another idea: ditch the idea of the Reimbursement District and simply have the two developers build the southern extension of Lone Oak Road for $1.2 million, sharing the cost between them.
Bottom line: the Lone Oak Road reimbursement district is a solution in search of a problem. Read my testimony below for why this is the case.
I've got no problem with reporters dishing dirt on stories from another news outlet. But it sure seems that if they do this, their own coverage of the issue -- or in the case of the Statesman Journal, non-coverage -- becomes open to critiquing. Yesterday Statesman Journal reporter Jonathan Bach tweeted about a follow-up story regarding the Creekside development and Lone Oak Road in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly. Gordon Friedman, who used to be a Statesman Journal reporter and now works for the Oregonian, chimed in with a comment on Bach's tweet, as did another person. Here's my…
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