Hinessight

I don’t quite know what to make of this sign that I saw affixed to several shelves in the book and magazine section of the South Salem Fred Meyer store. It reads: “From time to time, certain publications contain material that may be offensive to you, while being acceptable to others. It has been our longstanding policy that you determine what is acceptable, and what is not, by what you purchase or refuse to purchase. Your opinions and views on personally offensive products are welcome. Your refusal to buy any product for personal or religious reasons is always respected and…

Courtesy of the BBC’s “The World” program, here are some weblogs that are reporting on the South Asia tsunami disaster and soliciting aid for the area. There’s an intimate immediacy to many of the bloggers’ postings that is missing from the newspaper, radio and cable stories Laurel and I have seen/heard. Donate what you can through those weblogs, Northwest Medical Teams, or one of the charities kindly publicized by Google. If there ever was a time to become one world, this is it. http://desimediabitch.blogspot.com/ http://www.tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ http://www.worldchanging.com/ http://www.ramdhanyk.com/

Finally! A Supreme Court gets it right in an important election dispute. According to wire reports the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that more than 700 King County ballots should be counted, which likely will favor Christine Gregoire given the left-leaning tendencies of that county. Of course, if her purported eight vote statewide lead (without the additional ballots) holds up, this ruling may be moot. I got hooked on the live coverage of the Supreme Court hearing this morning on C-Span. Good arguments by both sides, but I thought the Democratic Party attorney was particularly smooth and persuasive. Not quite…

I always feel like applauding a watchdog group that barks noisily when our so-called “public servants” are engaging in some shenanigans. So I will: clap, clap, clap to Friends of Marion County and their hard-working president, Roger Kaye, for catching the Salem City Council in what appears to be a conflict of interest cover-up.

Yesterday the Statesman-Journal reported that revisions to Salem’s annexation rules would be put on hold until January as a result of Roger’s efforts. Some background: In 2000 Salemites voted to approve annexations of land into the city. Presently city rules require that developers tell people how they plan to use the property that they want to have annexed.

This makes sense. Before voting on whether to bring a parcel into the city, wouldn’t you want to know what was going to be done with it? An ugly commercial strip mall is one thing; a creatively designed sustainable community is quite another thing.

However, now that more conservative city council members have replaced the progressive Mayor Swaim-era councilors, common sense is giving way to corporate interests. The council has been considering making changes to the annexation rules that would much reduce the information given to voters about a proposed development.

That’s fine, so long as the changes are made in an aboveboard manner. But Friends of Marion County revealed at a Monday City Council meeting that several councilors, plus Mayor Janet Taylor, have failed to disclose that they received substantial donations from the Colson & Colson Construction Co. which—no big surprise—would benefit from a revision to the annexation rules.

I’ll include a copy of Roger Kaye’s letter to Mayor Taylor and the City Council for the interest of Salem land use junkies. Laurel is a board member of Friends of Marion County and has been following this issue, along with other Measure 37 related matters. The battle is just beginning over whether short-term financial gain or the long-term public interest will be the centerpiece of land use planning in Oregon.

We hope very much for the latter. But this will only happen if elected officials vote to do the right thing, rather than what will bring them the most campaign contributions.