Salem

Salem sucks when it comes to the sort of bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure Gil Penalosa and other proponents of so-called "alternative" transportation say is sorely needed in every city. Check out 8-80 Cities. (That word, alternative, assumes that cars are the normal way of getting around. However, given the course of history it is obvious that human legs have that honor. As Penalosa likes to say, walking begins and ends every trip by car, plane, train, bus, or any other form of powered transportation.) My wife and I have mountain bikes. I also am addicted to an outdoor elliptical bike, the Streetstrider,…

As noted in a previous post, I liked Kasia Quillinan's remarks at a meeting of the task force that is charged with advising on the location and cost of a new Salem (Oregon) police facility.  Quillinan is a former City Councilor who currently is active in the Salem City Watch organization and other civic affairs. After I asked if her remarks had been written down and could be sent to me, she shared the following. I've mildly edited her piece for clarity, adding a few explanatory remarks in brackets. Quillinan makes a lot of sense.i Why are officials at the City…

Yeah, I'm showing my age with a power to the people mention. But given the mostly gray hair in evidence among the dozens of people who showed up to express their opposition to a vastly over-priced, poorly planned $80 million scheme by officials at the City of Salem to build a new police facility next to and over Mirror Pond at the Civic Center, along with renovations to City Hall and the Library, it's fitting to reboot that phrase from my 1960's memory bank. After submitting testimony to the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility established by Mayor…

We humans are social creatures. With long memories. When we interact with someone we've known for a while, each person brings with them the entire history of that relationship. As every couple knows, a simple present-moment utterance, "You forgot to take out the trash today," can set off an argument with roots far in the past. "Hey, I don't need more of your damn criticism and nagging!" The same principle applies on larger scales, including how people feel about their city leaders, both elected and appointed. It's important for policy-makers to realize that citizen reaction to a discrete project is…

Below you can read what I just emailed off to T.J. Sullivan, chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility established by Mayor Anna Peterson.  If you're not familiar with this issue, check out one of my Truth Bombs, "Salemians were excluded from police facility planning."Which, pretty much, they still are. I wrote to Sullivan, asking if public testimony would be taken at the beginning of next Thursday's task force meeting -- which looks like it either will be the last, or next to last, meeting of the group.I was told that likely public testimony would be heard…

Recently the Salem Statesman Journal newspaper wimped out on taking part in the worldwide fight for freedom of expression, "Je suis Charlie," that followed the despicable murders of satirists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices by Islamic fundamentalists. Yes, a few days ago the Statesman Journal published some Charlie Hebdo cartoons on its opinion page. But I couldn't help noticing that none of them showed an image of the Prophet Mohammed, the Islamic no-no that outrages dogmatic adherents of that religion. Editorial page editor Dick Hughes gave an unconvincing reason why in his column, "Will we offend you? Yes, for…

Tear it down! Aside from one building, that's what City of Salem and state government officials are moving toward on the historic North Campus of the Oregon State Hospital.  But Traverse City, Michigan has shown there's another way.  Salem, Oregon doesn't need to follow the disturbing path I talked about in yesterday's blog post, "North Campus of Salem's State Hospital slated for demolition." I learned about the way-cool redevelopment of the Traverse City State Hospital into The Village at Grand Traverse Commons via some comments on a Salem Community Vision Facebook post about the North Campus demolition plan. Sure, its…

If you care about the livability of Salem, Oregon, check out the latest potential Oh, no! blow to the many Salemians who want to preserve this town's historic heritage while adding some much-needed urban design coolness to what is, at present, a pretty damn boring and non-cutting-edge community. Yesterday Architect Geoffrey James posted disturbing news on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page about plans for the Oregon State Hospital North Campus property. James is part of a group that submitted a North Campus redevelopment proposal that was rejected by the powers-that-be in state government. Here's a view of the property in question,…

Yesterday the fog blew my mind. Fortunately, not so much as to prevent me from pulling my Mini Cooper over as soon as I could find a place to park on narrow, winding Liberty Road in rural south Salem, Oregon. I'd come over the crest of the highest hill before Liberty starts descending toward the flat land of the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge.  A wordless Wow! burst into my psyche. i've driven this road almost every day for 24 years. I thought I'd seen  everything that nature could come up with.  I was wrong. Way wrong. The fog was acting like…

Picket! Protest!  Exactly what is called for after Salem Hospital cut down dozens of beautiful ancient trees yesterday, just a short while after a legal ruling required it to reduce the size of a parking lot and save trees it wanted to cut down. Photo by Jim Scheppke of the devastation. Some of the destroyed trees are estimated to be 290 years old! Some people upset about the needless urban logging plan to do some protest picketing along Mission Street (across from Bush Park) from 5 to 6 pm for about a week. Here's what protest organizer Lois Stark said…

It's a struggle for me to keep profanity out of this blog post, after taking photos today of Salem Hospital's willful, needless, unfeeling corporate destruction of a precious urban forest. One fucking day (see, I couldn't help myself) after we got word that Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals had told Salem Hospital and the City of Salem that a ruling granting the hospital permission to cut down trees for a parking lot was in error, and needed to be revised by a hearing officer. So today the chainsaws and logging equipment came out. Salem Hospital's message: "Try to save…

For lovers of trees and haters of how the City of Salem trashes the broad public interest in favor of cozying up to special interests, this is a nice way to start out 2015. Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) has ruled in favor of those who appealed the City's approval of  Salem Hospital's plan to build a unnecessarily large parking lot, and demolish a beautiful urban forest, on the old School for the Blind property. So reports the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog in "LUBA: City Erred on Parking Lot and Tree Removal Decisions at Blind School." The…

Salem Weekly, our alternative paper, is a treasure for our community. Without it, we'd never know about important news, events, and cultural happenings that the Statesman Journal doesn't cover.     Ruth Hudgens sent out an email with a great idea. Donate to Salem Weekly!   There are two ways to do this: (1) A direct donation to Salem Weekly that isn't tax-deductible, or (2) A donation to one of two non-profit organizations that's earmarked for buying ads in Salem Weekly, which is tax-deductible (so far as I know).   Both ways are described below. Here's what Ruth said:   Dear…

Ugh! Depressing end-of-year news for Salem tree and nature lovers. But depressingly familiar in a town whose current City leaders seem to always choose short-term special interest profit over long-term community livability and sustainability. Over on Bonnie Hull's On the Way blog, she reports in words and photos on "Another Hospital Disaster... Urban Logging." As long as we’ve lived in Salem the darned hospital has been destroying, burning, and now logging land for more buildings, more parking.  The original hospital was in a residential neighborhood, near the university…a neighborhood we aspired to live in BUT, by the time we could…

More and more, the Salem Statesman Journal is becoming a caricature of a genuine community newspaper. Journalistic integrity and competence is sinking day by day, while frothy, shallow content expands in our local Gannett Corporation USA Today clone. Today's irritation is the deleting of all of the comments on Sunday's opinion piece by Dick Hughes, "Public Project Genetics: Failure Starts at Birth." I'm pretty sure there were five comments on the piece when I went to bed last night. This morning they were all gone, replaced by two new ones. One deleted comment was Susann Kaltwasser's, which was critical of…