Posted in2022 election City of Salem

Salem’s $300 million bond measure deserves a half-hearted “Yes” vote

I don't live in the city limits, so won't be voting on the $300 million infrastructure bond measure on the November ballot. But if I was able to vote on it, I'd sigh, grit my teeth, roll my eyes, and then reluctantly mark "Yes." The Salem Reporter has an informative story about the bond measure.  Salem voters next month will decide whether to fund repairs to streets and build new roads, replace aging fire trucks, improve parks and buy land for branch libraries and affordable housing over the next decade. The city is seeking voter approval in the November general…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Excessive force by Salem police officer costs city $1 million

Justice has been served Eleaqia McCrae, who was shot in the eye and chest with rubber bullets by Salem police in May 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest. Today the Salem Reporter published a story about the $1 million awarded McCrae by a jury after she filed a lawsuit. The city of Salem will have to pay a protester just over $1 million because police violated her constitutional rights when they shot her with rubber bullets at a local protest two years ago. A federal jury on Friday, Sept. 30, unanimously ruled in favor of Eleaqia McCrae, 22, who…
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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 inCity of Salem Public Safety

City officials dawdle while major crashes happen at Liberty and Mildred

It's irritating when City of Salem staff play bureaucratic games that affect people's lives. It's infuriating when they do this after someone has died. But that's the sad state of affairs reported in a Statesman Journal story today about the dangerous intersection at Mildred Lane SE and Liberty Road S near the city limits. The story says that teenager Sara Schumann died in 2020 when the car she was a passenger in failed to heed the stop sign on Mildred and hit an oncoming vehicle. Then there were other major crashes in 2021 and 2022. Laurel, my wife, and I live about…
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Posted inCity of Salem Public Safety

Fire showed emergency message system needs improvements

Last Friday, September 9, the Vitae Springs fire in south Salem caused lots of people to search for information about how rapidly the wildfire was spreading, where evacuations were taking place, and what the chances were of the fire reaching areas further away. Like, my neighborhood, Spring Lake Estates, that adjoins the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. Friday evening I'd seen a report that a Level 1 (Be Ready) evacuation notice had been issued for areas four to six miles from where the Vitae Springs fire had started. I found via Google Maps that our house was about 7.6 miles from the…
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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 of Salem Police reform

Oregonian editor criticizes Marion County DA and Salem Police secrecy

Officials at the City of Salem, including the Police Department, along with the Marion County District Attorney's Office, are getting some well-deserved bad press. After the Salem Reporter editor criticized the City of Salem and Marion County DA for a coverup following a public records request by his publication concerning a suspicious $53,500 payment to former deputy police chief Steve Bellshaw, today the Sunday Oregonian had a letter from the editor that makes similar criticisms. Here's the letter from Therese Bottomly. It makes for interesting reading, especially for those of us concerned about government transparency and public accountability. In decades…
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Posted inCity of Salem Salem Police Department

Salem Reporter editor criticizes secrecy of Salem city officials

Below is a indictment of what sure seems to be a coverup by officials at the City of Salem following a public records request by Salem Reporter concerning a suspicious $53,500 payment to former deputy police chief Steve Bellshaw. Written by editor Les Zaitz, I'd intended to only use excerpts from Zaitz' column, since I respect the right of Salem Reporter to make content available only to subscribers, of whom I'm one. But the more I thought about it, the more important it seemed to have this column read by as many people as possible. So I'm hoping Zaitz will…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

What is Salem Police Department hiding from the public?

If anyone thought that a new police chief, Trevor Womack, would usher in an era of transparency and openness for the Salem Police Department, that thought needs to be dumped in the trashcan of unmet expectations. Last month I described two examples of the department hiding facts from the public. The people trying to lift the lid on police secrecy are experienced journalists: Joe Douglass and Ardeshir Tabrizian. When Douglass hit roadblocks from the Salem Police Department with his public record request for information related to communications between police officers and the Proud Boys militia group prior to a 2021…
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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 of Salem Police reform

Another example of Salem police hiding facts from public

This shouldn't come as a surprise, given that so many police departments in the United States act as if they're beyond the law. Which of course is ironic, given that police are supposed to be enforcers of laws. But there's an unmistakable whiff of arrogance emanating from police officers these days that didn't seem to be nearly as apparent in years gone by. Partly this could be a defensive reaction to recent well-publicized failures of police officers to do their job competently. Partly this comes with carrying a gun. That makes many people look upon police as if they were…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Joe Douglass pursues how Salem police handled 2021 Proud Boys rally

I give Joe Douglass a lot of credit for how diligently he's sought public records related to how the Salem Police Department handled the May 1, 2021 Second Amendment gun rally in Riverfront Park where the Proud Boys provided "security." (More accurately, insecurity, since Proud Boys accosted a journalist and other people in the park, demanding that they leave the area, even though the rally had no more of a right to be there than anyone else.) Since the Proud Boys are a violent hate group that played a big role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the nation's…
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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 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 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 inCity Council City of Salem Land use

Meyer Farm subdivision rejected by City Council, but city staff are trying to keep it alive.

Ah, the games City of Salem staff like to play, even when they seem illegal, or at least, decidedly improper.  Last Monday night the City Council voted 5-2 to reject an application to build a 139 single-family lot subdivision on the beautiful property in south Salem known as the Meyer Farm. I wrote about this last October in "Thirty-acre Meyer Farm property in south Salem may be developed." Neighbors, along with others concerned about the proposed development, formed a Facebook group, Friends of The Meyer Farm. I've followed their persistent, thoughtful, energetic efforts, finding them impressive. Fighting a subdivision is…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Here’s how Salem police killed a man for lousy reasons

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about how angry I was that Salem police killed a mentally ill homeless man after he failed to comply with a traffic stop when he failed to come to a complete stop upon exiting a parking lot. A moving violation shouldn't be a death sentence. But as I said in "Killing of mentally ill man shows Salem police are incompetent," the officers involved in killing Richard Meyers did a lot wrong in the early morning of February 7. In this post I want to use excerpts from a February 17 press…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Killing of mentally ill man shows Salem police are incompetent

Angry. Pissed-off. Furious. That's how I feel after reading stories about how a grand jury found Salem Police were justified in shooting and killing Richard Meyers, a mentally ill homeless man whose "crime" was failing to pull out of a parking lot without stopping. In Salem, as elsewhere in the country, that will be a death sentence if you have the bad luck of encountering incompetent police officers who are clueless or uncaring about deescalating a situation, choosing instead to shoot first and think afterward. Maybe you think "incompetent" is too strong a word. Actually, it isn't. If a grandmother…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Shameful secrecy surrounds killing of man by Salem police

The more I learn about last Monday's killing of a man by three Salem police officers who fired their weapons after the man drove into Northgate Park following an attempted traffic stop, the angrier I get. I'm angry that a homeless man with mental health problems is dead. I'm angry that the Salem Police Department won't say why the officers shot Richard Meyers or if he was armed. I'm angry that the Oregon State Police, which is investigating the killing, are using the grand jury system as an excuse to not provide any information about how and why Meyers died.…
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