Posted inCity Council City of Salem Downtown

Looks like paid parking is coming to downtown Salem. Bad idea?

Downtown parking here in Salem used to be free and unlimited, if my memory serves me correctly. Then parking was still free, but limited in hours -- currently three.  In 2013, when downtown parking was free with a two hour limit, city officials planned to install parking meters. That idea was met with strong resistance from downtown businesses and led to a petition drive spearheaded by downtown resident and business owner Carole Smith aimed at stopping paid parking. The City Council ended up implementing the initiative language rather than let it go to a vote of the people. That allowed…
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Posted inCity of Salem Salem Police Department

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice. Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm…
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Posted inCity of Salem Salem Police Department

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice. Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem Salem Reporter

Salem’s “news desert” makes it tough for the city to pass a tax increase

In reading a Salem Reporter story about the effort of city officials to get voter approval of a property tax increase in order to deal with a $8 million - $13 million gap between revenues and expenses, I was struck by the several mentions of communicating with the public about this problem. Here's some excerpts from "City Council discusses possible next steps to address budgetary shortfalls" by Joe Siess. Salem city councilors appear ready to put a measure before voters next May to raise property taxes to avoid sweeping cuts to city programs. But councilors made clear during a work…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem City Council facing tough choices on revenue-raising options

It wouldn't be surprising if Mayor Hoy and the other members of the Salem City Council have a bit of post-traumatic stress as they get serious at next Monday's council meeting about choosing an option to raise revenue for city services, which are heading for a $15 million shortfall in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2025.  That figure is in an informative Salem Reporter story, "Library advocates push for property tax increase to restore Salem library hours." Local library advocates organizing through the group Fund Our Libraries Now are asking the Salem City Council to seek voter…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Bush Park baseball stadium expansion moves forward with Parks Board vote

The Salem Reporter is doing a great job keeping our community informed about plans for improving the Willamette University baseball field at Bush Park, which would host summer games for a new Salem for-profit team that would join the West Coast League. Yesterday a story was published about a Thursday meeting of the Parks Advisory Board where the baseball project moved forward. Here's an excerpt from "City parks board advances plans for Spec Keene Stadium." Members of Salem’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on Thursday voted in support of an updated agreement with Willamette University advancing plans to use a…
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Posted inCity of Salem

Salem residents appear to favor a progressive income tax to pay for city services

Thanks to a May 7 story in the Salem Reporter, I learned about the results of a survey that asked 400 Salem residents how they felt about various issues associated with the push to find a way to raise money to pay for City of Salem budget shortfalls.  Here's a PDF file of the survey results.Download City of Salem Funding Survey I scrolled through the results, looking for the issue that seemed most important if city officials are going to succeed in convincing citizens that this (whatever it is) is the best approach to bridge the gap between the services…
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Posted in2024 election Chris Hoy City of Salem

All I know is that a Hoy won the Mayoral Debate

Last Tuesday the Salem Reporter and Salem City Club held a debate between the two candidates for Mayor. One thing is clear: Hoy won. I can say that with complete confidence because the candidates were incumbent Mayor Chris Hoy and his unrelated opponent, Councilor Julie Hoy.  Given Chris' much longer political experience, and his incumbency, I figured that he would dominate the debate. But though I think Chris was sharper and more on point with his answers to questions posed by people from the sponsoring organizations, which earned him a win in my utterly personal opinion, Julie performed better than…
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Posted inChris Hoy Citizen involvement City of Salem

Citizen activism prevents additional Salem Library cuts. For now.

It's great when elected officials do the right thing, even when they're forced into it by citizen activism. But most of the credit for the city's budget committee voting yesterday to prevent additional cuts to the Salem Public Library by using money from the hotel tax goes to Jim Scheppke and Lois Stark, fervent advocates for the library who did a great job organizing citizens to press for No More Cuts. Without Scheppke and Stark doing what they did, almost surely the West Salem branch would have been closed, with staff and hours at the main library severely curtailed from…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Help save the Salem Public Library from ruinous budget cuts

"Help. They're threatening me with grievous harm. I need my friends to defend me, because I can't do it myself." That's what the Salem Public Library would be saying, if it could speak. Since it can't, we library lovers have to do the speaking for the library.  The threat is real. City officials are planning to markedly slash the library budget again, after already making deep cuts in staffing, hours, and services.  NO MORE CUTS. That's the message from Jim Scheppke, retired State Librarian, and Lois Stark, a member of the Library Advisory Board, as you can read below. I've…
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Posted inCity of Salem

Salem Library advocates irked at city proposal to cut hours and staffing further

Library lovers may have a reputation for mildness, but actually they're fierce defenders of what they view as a top priority for City of Salem funding: keeping our libraries (main and West Salem) open a decent number of hours, staffed by a decent number of employees. Jim Scheppke, the retired State Librarian, is a tireless advocate for the Salem Public Library. Here's some recent Facebook posts from Jim. And here's a post from Scheppke about decreasing crime in Salem that is relevant to the library funding question, because "public safety" often is cited as deserving to be the top budget…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City officials deny Salem library will be closed, but that was an option from them

I find it amusing when officials at the City of Salem are shocked that the public thinks they're going to do something bad, when that's exactly what was being suggested prior to the public getting outraged about the bad thing happening. Which causes the city officials to go, "No, oh my gosh, how could you ever have thought we'd do that?" Well, in this case the bad thing was completely closing the Salem Public Library. A few days ago the Salem Reporter had a story about the public reaction to this possibility. Salem’s city councilors overwhelmingly said this week they…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Why is the Salem Public Library so bad? A retired librarian shares the facts.

The Salem Public Library sucks. Sure, I could come up with synonyms for "sucks," which I did in the title of this blog post: bad, horrible, disappointing. But sucks conveys the anger and sorrow library lovers should feel about a recent decision by the City of Salem to cut library hours a lot. Retired state librarian Jim Scheppke has been sharing Facebook posts that provide solid facts to back up the inescapable conclusion that while the Salem Public Library sucked in comparison to other public libraries in Oregon before those cuts, the Suck Factor is now much worse. Below are…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Man awarded $3 million due to excessive force and false arrest by Salem police officer

Not a positive moment for the reputation of the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. Last week a jury awarded $3,150,000 to Christopher Garza after a Salem police officer, David S. Baker, treated him badly in 2021. Christopher Garza (Oregonian photo) An Oregonian story by Maxine Bernstein tells the tale in "Jury awards $3 million to Salem man falsely arrested by an officer who used excessive force." (The Salem Reporter reprinted this story.) Excerpts: A jury Thursday awarded more than $3 million in damages to a Salem man wrongly accused by a police officer of stealing a car and…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Resounding defeat of payroll tax should spur City officials to explore fresh ideas

In elections, usually even the most unqualified and unknown candidate gets 30 to 40% of the vote. So when the payroll tax got a "Yes" from only 18% of Salem voters in yesterday's election, they weren't just sending a message. They were screaming it from the rooftops. Both in the Marion County part of Salem and the Polk County part in west Salem (where just 16% said "Yes"). With the election over, and the certainty that remaining ballots to be counted won't appreciably change the outcome, we enter the what now? phase.  A Salem Reporter story about the payroll tax…
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Posted in2024 election City Council City of Salem

Salem payroll tax like blood in water to conservative sharks

As a progressive who was happy when liberals wrested control of the Salem City Council from conservatives in 2017, now I'm worried that the payroll tax debacle could be a harbinger of a right-wing renaissance in local politics. What's disturbing is that this is a self-inflicted wound by five of the six progressive members of the City Council who provided the votes to pass a new payroll tax on everyone who works in Salem on a narrow 5-4 vote. Now that wound is like blood in the water to energized conservative "sharks." (The five were Mayor Chris Hoy and councilors…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council City of Salem

Watch the video of Salem Reporter’s town hall meeting on the payroll tax

Everybody should applaud the Salem Reporter, our city's online alternative to the Statesman Journal, for holding a town hall on the proposed payroll tax at the Elsinore Theatre this evening. For whether you oppose or favor the payroll tax, or don't have an opinion on it, it's great that a public debate on the tax happened prior to voters casting their ballot on it in the upcoming November election. I didn't attend the town hall. But I've watched some of the You Tube video of it, which I'll share below. (The screenshot above is just to show the debaters, Oregon…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem payroll tax looks like it’s headed for defeat

While I won't be surprised if the controversial payroll tax is passed by Salem voters this November, since nothing in politics is absolutely certain, it appears more likely that it will be defeated. I'm guessing by a 60-40 margin or thereabouts. I'm not aware of any publicly available polling on the payroll tax. But the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal have each conducted unscientific surveys about how people feel about the tax, which would be levied on anyone who works in Salem even if they don't live here. Each survey found the payroll tax to be unpopular. Here's an excerpt…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Story of Salem firefighter’s widow being denied benefits is more nuanced than outrageous

Look, I never pass up an opportunity to become outraged at something officials at the City of Salem have done. That's why I called this blog Salem Political Snark rather than Salem Political Praise. So when I saw a story on KGW News a few days ago about how the widow of a Salem firefighter, Maurice "Mo" Stadeli, was being denied workers compensation benefits after her husband died of tonsil cancer because the city was asking the state Supreme Court to reverse a Court of Appeals ruling that approved the benefits, my outrage meter was prepared to rise into the…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem city officials playing some games with budget problems

Yeah, I know. The title of this blog post is kind of like a headline saying "Dog seen chasing a squirrel." What's obvious really doesn't need mentioning. But even though we expect government officials to play games when they're talking about their budget, it still makes sense to point out specific instances of this so we don't become overly accustomed to the game-playing. Yesterday the Salem Reporter ran a story about ways officials at the City of Salem want to cut the city general fund budget in light of a potential defeat of a controversial employee payroll tax to be…
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