Posts by Hines Brian

Yesterday Dylan Chavez, president of the Salem Chapter of the AIA (American Institute of Architects), gave a fascinating Salem City Club talk about Influence in Design, "the nature and significance of architecture in our community." His slide presentation included interesting observations about what's good and bad in Salem's built environment. To semi-quote Madonna, we are material beings living in a material world -- not ethereal entities who can float through life blissfully unaffected by the physical stuff that surrounds us. Likewise, Chavez said that architecture is the background in which we live. Why does it matter? Because the background influences our behavior, both…

For a long time I've written about local Salem, Oregon political issues on this blog. Recently I started a new blog, Salem Political Snark. That's where new posts about Salem politics can be found. If you're a Facebook user, give the Salem Political Snark Facebook page a "like." Then you'll get new posts in your Facebook feed. Scroll down for new HinesSight posts.

For a while I'll continue to plug my Salem Political Snark posts here on HinesSight, where I've done my political ranting until recently.  Eventually I hope that HinesSight readers interested in local politics get into the habit of making Salem Political Snark a regular visit in the blogosphere. Giving the Salem Political Snark Facebook page a "Like" is a good way to keep track of new Snarks if you're a Facebook user. Feedly is another good way.  Anyway, here's two new Salem Political Snark posts: "My artistic critique of 2016 Salem political yard signs""Mean-spirited letter to editor cheapens Salem mayoral…

Last night I spent 3 1/2 hours of my increasingly short senior citizen life at one of the most irritatingly unproductive government meetings I've ever seen -- a Salem City Council meeting (or maybe a work session) on plans for a new police facility. You can read all about it over on my new Salem Political Snark blog. I wrote much of the "Salem City Council struggles with police facility and earthquake-safety questions" before the meeting, knowing that I'd want to focus on watching the Villanova-North Carolina national championship game when I got home. Then I updated the post on…

Another day, another post on my new Salem Political Snark blog: "City of Salem officials acting stupid on earthquake safety." It starts out with... Gosh, maybe this is too radical an idea for Salem's Mayor and City Council, but it sure seems like a "Public Safety" bond voters will be asked to approve in the November election should actually keep the public safe -- rather than being a massive waste of taxpayer money to build an overpriced Police Palace. A few years ago our sometimes-wise City officials recognized a scary truth: City Hall and the Library are almost surely going to collapse…

Political junkie that I am, the notion of having a purely political blog has rattled around in my old-man mind for a while.  When the name Salem Political Snark joined the rattling mental clutter, I thought DAMN, GOT TO DO IT! So, I have. Here's the clickable links for the JPEG image above.  Blog: salempoliticalsnark.comFacebook page: Salem Political Snark ("Like" it, please, please, please)Twitter feed: @SnarkySalem Spread the word about Salem Political Snark.  I'm not doing this just because it is election season. Local politicians and public officials are always doing sleazy stuff, so I'm not worrying about running out of…

Ah, George Orwell would be so happy with T.J. Sullivan, a Chamber of Commerce mouthpiece who was selected in 2014 by Mayor Anna Peterson to chair the Blue Ribbon (is there any other color?) Task Force on the Police Facility. "Doublespeak," says Wikipedia, is a close relative of Orwell's "doublethink," a central concept in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four book. Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs, "servicing the target" for bombing), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable.…

Are the skybridges good or bad for downtown? That's a simplistic question. Like most things in life, the answer is, "They're both good and bad."  But streetscaping Salem's Historic District -- making the streets and sidewalks much more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly -- that's pretty much an All Good in my opinion. The Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog has an interesting post, "Skybridges as Pedestrian Displacement Systems: Shelter, but anti-Sidewalk." But another ingredient in the lack of foot traffic is the way the skybridges here suck people, energy, and life off of the street-level sidewalks and reinforce the blank walls and…

The title of this post captures a core theme of the conversation I had yesterday with John Southgate, a Portland consultant highly knowledgeable about downtown revitalization.  Along with Public Affairs Counsel staff, Southgate did most of the writing and research for the Salem 2025 report that I blogged about recently. I've since learned, by the way, that Salem businessman Larry Tokarski commissioned the Salem 2025 study, a fact not mentioned in the report. Why can't Salem get its act together?  The Salem 2025 report points to the same question in various ways. Here's some quotes: -- ...it is clear that…

The City of Salem has put up a Survey Monkey poll about the proposed $80 million, 150,000 square foot police facility -- which is vastly overpriced, threatens the vitalization of downtown, and has sucked up money needed to make the Library and City Hall earthquake-ready. (If the link to the Survey Monkey poll doesn't work for some reason, head to the City's "New Police Facility" page; click on community survey in the fifth paragraph.) It is REALLY important that as many people as possible take the survey. Two questions are especially crucial. Here's my highly informed opinion about how you…