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…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chuck Bennett

Smith and Bennett letters to editor have “ships passing in night” feel

Both candidates in the recent race for Salem Mayor -- winner Chuck Bennett and loser Carole Smith -- had letters in the Statesman Journal this week, a day apart. Not too much should be made of them. But also, not too little. So I'll try to strike a middle ground in my profoundly wise Salem Political Snark analysis of what the letters mean for this town.  Serious, yet not too serious.  My basic reaction is that the letters from Smith and Bennett had sort of a "ships that pass in the night" feel to them. Given that the mayoral candidates ran…
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Posted in2016 election

What $950 bought me in Facebook Page political post “boosts”

Nowadays political campaigns are making good use of social media. Heck, this is a big reason why Donald Trump got the GOP presidential nomination -- he's a Twitter Master.  So when the May 17 election for Salem Mayor and City Councilors approached, I decided to throw about a thousand bucks into supporting my favored progressive candidates -- Carole Smith, Cara Kaser, Matt Ausec, Sally Cook -- via "boosted" posts on my Strange Up Salem Facebook page. This was part of what I thought of as my extra year of Mini Cooper payments effort to improve Salem's political landscape. The five…
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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…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chuck Bennett Statesman Journal

Statesman Journal is source of a lie a SJ editorial railed against. So sweet!

This is SO beautiful for a snarky blogger such as moi: discovering that the source of a Big Political Lie railed against in several Statesman Journal stories came from... (drum roll, please) A story in the freaking Statesman Journal itself! This fills me with so much pleasure, because there's nothing I enjoy more -- well, actually this isn't true, but let's pretend it is -- than criticizing our town's pitiful excuse for a community newspaper. So if you sense joy oozing from the words you're reading, you're correct! If you followed goings-on in the recent race for Salem Mayor between…
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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…
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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,…
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Posted inCara Kaser

Cara Kaser calls out false statements being spread by her opponent

With just a few days to go before the May 17 election, Ward 1 City Council candidate Cara Kaser is fighting back against falsities being spread by her opponent's campaign.  Kaser doesn't mention him by name, just referring to him as "my opponent." He's Jan Kailuweit, the Chamber of Commerce-backed candidate. Kaser is endorsed by Progressive Salem.  Here's what Cara Kaser says in a Facebook post today: Over the last several weeks when I've been out canvassing, I've heard from too many people who have been given negative misinformation about me by my opponent's campaign. Fortunately, I've been able to…
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Posted inChuck Bennett

Chuck Bennett complains about legal, truthful satirical mailer about him

Salem Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett is notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to criticism. He calls people who disagree with him "trolls," while his opponent, Carole Smith, says "Listen to your town nuts."  I made a 40 second video that shows how differently Bennett and Smith talked about citizen participation in their Salem Weekly endorsement interviews. (The Salem Weekly editorial board ended up endorsing Smith.)   Now Bennett is complaining about an anonymous mailer that's been received by Salem voters. I'm not sure why this deserved a story in the Statesman Journal, given that the mailer is (1) completely legal, and…
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Posted inStatesman Journal

Dick Hughes tries (and fails) to defend Statesman Journal editorial board

I called the Salem Statesman Journal editorial board a "farce" in a recent post. It bothered me that all six members of the editorial board are newspaper staff (no community members), and three of the six are from the news side of the Statesman Journal. Realizing that one of the editorial board members, Kaellen Hessel, covers goings-on at City Hall for the newspaper, I emailed her this message after writing the blog post. Ms. Hessel, I suspect you went to journalism school. (Me too, sort of; I was a journalism major at San Jose State for my first semester.) I’m…
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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…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chuck Bennett

Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett is saying stuff that isn’t true

With the May 17 election for Salem Mayor and four City Council seats coming up in about ten days -- VOTE! It's so easy with vote by mail -- the campaigning is hot and heavy.  Well, with Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett let's make that hot, heavy, and seemingly untruthful. I've gotten reports that Bennett has been saying things that are factually challenged (a polite way of putting it). Like... (1) Telling people that the 2008 Streets and Bridges bonds will be paid off soon. Reportedly Bennett said this in an attempt to put a positive spin on an $80 million…
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Posted inCity Council Statesman Journal

Statesman Journal “Editorial Board” is a farce — all members are newspaper staff

In its bi-ennial ritual of kissing up to the Salem Chamber of Commerce and their biggest advertisers, the so-called Statesman Journal Editorial Board is rolling out its endorsements for Mayor and three contested City Council races. (So far they're two for two in endorsing Chamber candidates; in 2014 the newspaper was four for four.) I feel justified in using the term so-called to describe the Editorial Board, because all of the six members are employed by the newspaper. No community members are on the Editorial Board.  So when the newspaper says, "The Editorial Board endorses...," it would be more accurate…
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Posted inUncategorized

“Speak Up” or “Shut Up” — choice for voters in Salem’s May 17 election

Here's the important choice Salem voters will make in the May 17 election for Mayor and four City Council seats. Do we want a Mayor and City Councilors who encourage us to SPEAK UP?These candidates are Carole Smith, Mayor; Cara Kaser, Ward 1; Matt Ausec, Ward 5: Sally Cook, Ward 7. Or do we want a Mayor and City Councilors who prefer that we SHUT UP?These candidates are Chuck Bennett, Mayor; Jan Kailuweit, Ward 1; Brad Nanke, Ward 3; Warren Bednarz, Ward 7. I've heard each of the SPEAK UP and SHUT UP candidates speak at debates and forums. I've perused…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chamber of Commerce Chuck Bennett

Chuck Bennett gets lots of love (and money) from homebuilder PACs

Love may be ineffable when it comes to personal relationships. But love is quantifiable when we're talking about political campaign contributions.   Individuals and organizations give the most money to candidates they love the most. So even though browsing through records of political campaign contributions isn't all that fun, tonight I kind of enjoyed exploring the love-fest between Salem Mayor candidate Chuck Bennett and several homebuilder PACs (Political Action Committees). I also looked into Carole Smith's campaign finances, but this wasn't nearly as interesting. A brief discussion of Smith's contributions follows my report on Bennett's. ORESTAR is where the Oregon…
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Posted inChamber of Commerce City Council Fresh Start Salem

Edgiest moments from Salem City Council Candidate Forum

Here's one unarguable takeaway from last night's City Council Candidate Forum: If you take the intense in-your-face vibe of either the Republican or Democratic presidential debates (especially the Republican) and flip it upside down, like turning matter into antimatter, you'll end up with something closely akin to Salem's oh-so-decorous candidate forum. Held in the Library's Anderson Room, and sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Marion and Polk Counties, along with the Salem City Club, the forum accurately reflected Salem's dual political personality: calm on the outside, seething on the inside.  So as I took notes about what the…
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Posted inChuck Bennett

Chuck Bennett lobbied for a copper mine in the Opal Creek forest

Today, Chuck Bennett is running to be Mayor of Salem. About twenty years ago, he was a lobbyist for a company that wanted to mine copper, gold, and silver on 32 acres in what is now the Opal Creek Wilderness Area.  click to enlarge In 1991 Bennett was called the "public relations counsel" for Plexus, Inc., which referred to the mine as the Bornite Project (bornite is the name of the copper-rich ore discovered at the site). Plexus and two other companies merged in 1993, becoming Kinross Gold. After that, newspaper stories about the Opal Creek mining project refer to Chuck…
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Posted inThe Machine

Rage against The Machine in Salem’s May 17 election

Ah, it felt good to resurrect one of my Salem Weekly Strange Up Salem columns today: "Rage against the Machine." (I now like to capitalize both words in The Machine to indicate how malevolent it is.) The column seemed like the perfect accompaniment to a post I put on my Strange Up Salem Facebook page today. RAGE AGAINST SALEM'S MACHINE! Vote for People People in the May 17 election.These candidates will bring us a Fresh Start: -- Carole Smith, Mayor-- Cara Kaser, Ward 1 city councilor-- Matt Ausec, Ward 5 city councilor-- Sally Cook, Ward 7 city councilor The Machine wants…
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Posted inCarole Smith Chuck Bennett

Mayor candidates Smith and Bennett duke it out before SJ editorial board

Well, regarding the title of this post, "duke it out" was more of my wish for what would happen when Carole Smith and Chuck Bennett met jointly with the Statesman Journal editorial board, seeking the newspaper's endorsement. After watching half of the hour-long video of the session, I came away wanting more candidate-to-candidate interaction, rather than what actually happened -- Smith and Bennett separately answering questions posed by editorial page editor Dick Hughes. As I noted in "Contrast between Smith and Bennett evident at Salem City Club Mayoral debate," there are major differences between the candidates. But this isn't as clear,…
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Posted inPublic Safety

Salem Police Facility planning staggers on to uncertain outcome

Dedicated observer that I am of our "public servants" at the City of Salem, I eschewed staying in the sun this gorgeous afternoon and ventured into Room 220 at City Hall, where the Mayor and City Manager oversee their kingdom.  Topic of the day for a City Council Police Facility subcommitee: an update on police facility planning efforts. Thankfully, the meeting only lasted about 40 minutes. This felt much better than the 3 1/2 hour City Council work session on the police facility a few weeks ago that fried my brain and frustrated my patience. This time Mayor Peterson seemed…
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