Salem

Let's understand one thing about Salem Hospital: it is the biggest part of a giant corporation, not a small community health care provider. The revenue of Salem Health, its parent organization, was over $500 million a few years ago. It's CEO, Norm Gruber, is said to make over a million dollars a year now. He made $877,000 in 2011.  So this is one reason I'm rooting for an elderly blind woman, Beverly Rushing, who is going up against Salem Hospital in her appeal of the City of Salem's outrageous approval of the hospital's plan to needlessly cut down thirty majestic…

Don't get me wrong. I prefer clean government to dirty government. But if we're going to have scandals here in Salem, it'd be cool to have R- or X-rated House of Cards'ish ones, big elaborate devious mischievous goings-on led by Machiavellian politicians and their cohorts who are so clever, it takes an equally strong dose of investigative prowess to get even a clue into what's happening behind the scenes. Instead, what's happening with the latest episode of the downtown parking saga is sleazy and disturbing, yet seemingly pretty damn obvious to discern. Hence, this scandal is fittingly Salem. More So-lame…

I hugely enjoyed the 2013 Salem Sunday Streets event, our town's first version of the much more expansive car-free ciclovias pioneered by Gil Peñalosa, the executive director of 8-80 Cities, who got this going in Bogota, Columbia with great success and now is preaching the cilclovia gospel around the world. “Streets are like a forbidden place,” Peñalosa says. “Almost nothing scares you as much as when your parents say ‘Watch out! A car is coming!’” But with the ciclovía, the streets “become open so people can enjoy the forbidden place.” In Bogotá, the ciclovía is used to promote public health: exercise classes…

End of August. Time to relax. Lay back. Soak up the remaining summer sun. Let the living be easy.  But this isn't possible when you care about open government and the vitality of downtown Salem, and the City Council is up to its usual irritating closed-door, backroom, Machiavellian shenanigans. Damn them! I was all set to wash our deck today in preparation for re-staining it. However, I ended up emailing and phoning, trying to learn how a series of OMG's transpired at last night's City Council meeting.  I'll trace the Oh my God's backwards from the final one. I didn't attend the…

There's a lot to like about Bend. But I've never thought of this central Oregon city as being on the cutting edge of mixed-use urban development. Well, I've never thought of my home town, Salem, as being cutting-edge in that way either. In fact, in any way. There's also a lot to like about Salem. However, there's a reason Oregon's capital city is often referred to as So-Lame. Still, I've figured that since Salem is in the mostly progressive Willamette Valley we had an edge over Bend in urban design, given that Bend is more conservative politically (in-migration of Californians…

The Salem Statesman Journal has a new publisher, Terry Horne, nine days after the Gannett Corporation announced it was spinning off its newspaper operations, leaving them to an uncertain economic fate.Download Terry Horne to join Statesman Journal as new publisher Gannett announced that previous publisher Steve Silberman was "moving on to a new job" on the same day the restructuring was revealed. Supposedly the search for his replacement would take place far and wide. Download Statesman Journal publisher moving to new job in Gannett John Zidich, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing Divisions' West Group, said the company would consider internal…

Last night I attended a meeting of a group that has been discussing parking problems in downtown Salem, Oregon. I don't know if it has an official name, so I'll call it the Parking Group. From what I could tell it is made up of small business owners. A few outside observers, such as me, also were in attendance. The Parking Group's goal is to come up with some recommendations to improve the downtown parking experience, then send them on to the Salem City Council. Some background:  Last year a City Parking Task Force was well on its way to…

When I heard that plans are afoot (love that phrase) to remove more large, beautiful trees in Salem's downtown historic district, my interest was aroused.  After all, I followed the 2013 U.S. Bank tree removal debacle extremely closely. Eventually I wrote a tell-all report, "Outrage: Salem's U.S. Bank tree killings," about how the bank president and City of Salem Public Works director cut down five large, beautiful trees for no good reason, then misled the public about why they did it. I also was instrumental in saving some large, beautiful trees on downtown's High Street. In this case a property owner…

Likely executives at our one and only community newspaper, the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal, will try to put a positive spin on today's announcement that Gannett is spinning off its newspaper holdings and USA Today -- separating them from its more lucrative assets: television and digital operations.Download Gannett to spin off publishing business But this is one more sign that newpapers are struggling in an increasingly online age. And Gannett isn't fighting in a heroic fashion, having a goal of preserving high journalistic standards even if it means going out of business one day. Rather, as a Forbes piece puts it, "Gannett Spin-Off Makes…

"You don't sound as compassionate as the other people." That was my wife's reaction when she read yesterday's Salem Statesman Journal Rapid Response piece, which featured short responses from newspaper subscribers who have signed up to answer editorial queries. Download Rapid Response: Short takes on two big questions This week featured two questions. Here are my answers to each. Q. As Americans, what should our response be to the global suffering? A. Let's be honest: We have no idea what the suffering of people half way around the world, or even next door, is like. Our compassion is conceptual. We try…

Mayor Peterson, City Manager Norris, and other City of Salem officials just can't seem to please anybody these days. When they tried to take over part of public Riverfront Park for a private access road, they were slammed by park lovers. When they tried to foist parking meters on the Historic District without asking citizens how they felt about this, 9,000 Salemians signed a "No Way!" petition that halted this plan. When they had a notion of turning the library into a police facility and relocating it to a parking garage, library lovers showered them with "Are you crazy?" messages…

Tonight I watched another shameful performance by the Mayor and City Council of Salem (Oregon), who voted unanimously to approve the destruction of Howard Hall, a building that the Historic Landmarks Commission voted unanimously to preserve. Interesting, to say the least.  A citizen commission made up of experts on historic preservation and the ordinance governing historic buildings such as Howard Hall considers all of the evidence, along with the law, and concludes that Salem Hospital hasn't met three of the four criteria required to destroy the building. A political body with strong ties to the Chamber of Commerce and Salem's…

Next Monday, July 28, the Salem City Council will continue with a public hearing about Howard Hall, a historic landmark that is the last building remaining from the now-closed School for the Blind.  The Historic Landmarks Commission voted unanimously to preserve the building, denying Salem Hospital's request to tear it down so the hospital could have a parking lot with 87 more spaces than is required by code. Members of the blind community aren't at all persuaded by Salem Hospital's offer to put a playground for physically challenged children where Howard Hall is now. They know this is just a…

Today the Salem Statesman Journal has a story about how a candidate for the state legislature, Chuck Lee, seems to be buying Facebook likes.  Download Did House candidate Chuck Lee buy Facebook likes? Naturally that got me curious about where the Statesman Journal's Facebook "likes" come from.  After a bit of Googling I found an informative story, "Facebook's new geographic data exposes tons of phony likes." That led me to SocialBakers.com, where I was able to get some free statistics on the location of the Statesman Journal's "likers." Turns out that 18% of the 20,066 likes are from Facebook users…

According to Salem city councilor Chuck Bennett, who represents the downtown area, City officials are looking at replacing the current free unlimited parking policy with "time-limited" parking. This could mean several things. Going back to a two-hour limit. Or installing parking meters, the City's goal before 9,000 signatures on a citizen initiative petition to ban meters and time limits dashed that dream. Bennett emailed me a response after he'd gotten my message asking if a report was true that he'd talked at a neighborhood association meeting about the council moving forward with parking meters again. No, I said the city…