HinesSight

City of Salem Facebook commenting policy doesn't make sense

Who knew? The social media Powers That Be at the City of Salem don't allow external links in Facebook comments. Well, except their own, apparently. 

I learned this after leaving a comment on a recent City of Salem post about a City Council work session regarding planning for a new police facility. 

Brian Hines Well, after hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on police facility planning over the past six years, this is the third try -- and the second "redo." So I suspect there will be more twists and turns in the saga.

As described in my blog post, the City of Salem has gone from a $70 million "public safety" project that included a much smaller police facility AND much needed seismic upgrades/ renovations to the Civic Center to a supersized 150,000 sq. ft. police facility proposal that leaves staff and visitors to City Hall and the Library with an excellent chance of being buried in rubble after the Big One earthquake hits, because now there is no talk about seismic upgrades.

I don't like the idea of police department staff being all safe in their over-priced new building while people die at the Civic Center because city officials decided it was more important to have a new police facility that was the Best Money Could Buy. Salem has many other needs. Wasting taxpayer money on an overpriced police facility prevents those needs from being met.

http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2016/01/redo-of-salem-police-facility-planning-costing-taxpayers-142000.html

I included the link to my blog post because I didn't want to clog up my Facebook comment with the thousand or so words in that post. If people wanted to learn more details about the City of Salem's three tries at planning a new police facility, they could simply click on the link.

So I was confused when a City of Salem comment popped up the next day.

City of Salem Just a reminder about the City of Salem's social media comment policy (thank you): http://www.cityofsalem.net/SocialMediaTermsOfUse

I replied to that comment:

Brian Hines Dear City of Salem, I'm confused by your reference to the City's social media comment policy. I just read it and couldn't find any sign that Geoff or I have violated it (we are the only commenters on this post). So why the link to the comment policy?

The response from the City of Salem Facebook guy/gal wasn't very helpful.

City of Salem "Our social media sites allow for comment but not posting or linking by others to externally generated content. Both the posts of employees and all comments on social media sites are public records under Oregon’s Public Records laws. The City will retain a record of the comments, even after the comment is removed from social media site."

Hmmm. This is a quote from the City of Salem's Social Media Policy. So apparently my commenting sin was that in my first comment I included a link to "externally generated content."

The first thing that struck me is that the City of Salem's "Just a reminder..." comment had included a link to externally generated content -- the Social Media Policy that prohibits links to externally generated content. 

So it's OK for City of Salem staff to post comments with links in them, but other commenters can't do this? That doesn't make sense. 

Nor does the whole policy prohibiting links to externally generated content. 

This is a big part of Facebook and Twitter. Links are the lifeblood of many posts and comments. It allows people to make a statement about this-or-that and back it up with a link that leads to more information about this, or that.

Taking away my Facebook-given right to include a link in a comment... I object!  

The City of Salem should be encouraging active discussions of issues on its social media sites. Often this will involve people sharing links that pertain to the subject being discussed. 

Now, I wasn't previously aware that all comments on the City of Salem Facebook page are public records. That's cool! I like the idea of my comments being stored for eternity (or close to it) on local government backup drives located thousands of feet under City Hall in solid bedrock (or wherever).

I don't see any necessary connection, though, between (1) including a link to externally generated content in a comment, and (2) having that comment be a public record -- so long as the link is part of the comment. 

Meaning, it is possible to delete a link after Facebook has recognized it and still have the link appear in the picture box thingie associated with the comment. Maybe in that case it is difficult to have the link be preserved as a public record. 

But if a commenter leaves the link in the comment, the public record will preserve that link, and a reference to the information the link contains.

So I don't understand why the City of Salem Social Media Policy prohibits links in comments. If the links are germane to the subject matter being commented on, why not allow them? 

I appreciate that City of Salem staff haven't deleted the link in my comment. I'll continue including links in my comments on the City's Facebook page (especially since the City of Salem does the same). 

There's more interesting stuff in the Social Media Policy that probably resembles language in other agreements that I habitually click "yes" to and never read. For example, this rather scary passage (I've boldfaced the especially scary parts):

6. We can’t guarantee the security of information you share on social media sites. By commenting, you waive any rights you may have to material, images or comments you post on City of Salem social media sites. You grant the City of Salem perpetual, non-exclusive, license to use, copy, transmit, excerpt, publish, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, host, index, cache, tag, encode, modify and adapt in any form or media now known or hereinafter developed, any submission posted by you on this site. You waive any rights you may have in having the material altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you. By submitting content you are consenting to its display on the site and for related online and offline promotional uses.

Oh, well. As a blogger I'm fine with City of Salem staff taking my brilliant comments and doing with them as they will. If they can find some marvelous "online and offline promotional uses" for a comment, great. 

If I don't know how the material has been "altered or changed in a manner not agreeable" to me, I'll sleep easy. (At least, until I do know.)

Most irritating thing about the Malheur Wildlife Refuge takeover

Like so many other people in Oregon, I've been avidly following developments over in Harney County, where a bunch of wacko right-wing militants have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for bizarre reasons only their twisted minds have a chance of comprehending.

(The Portland Oregonian has extensive coverage of the takeover, now in its 24th day.)

Every morning I fire up my laptop and head to the Oregonian's "What you need to know today" page. There's always something newly irritating -- a fresh outrage by Ammon Bundy and his band of no-nothings.

As we enter the third week of the thoroughly illegal takeover, with no end in sight, I've been thinking about what is The Utterly Most Irritating Thing about it.

Opinions will differ, but here's my nomination:

Inaction by law enforcement -- federal, state, local -- supports the oft-heard contention by gun nuts that only by owning lots of weapons can the heavy hand of government overreach be prevented from taking away citizens' God-given constitutional rights. 

Is there any doubt that if Bundy and company weren't heavily armed, they would have been kicked out of the refuge a long time ago?

Or at least, had the electricity cut off, and been prevented from freely traveling around the countryside to do whatever they choose, then return unimpeded to the refuge headquarters?

I'm no conspiracy theorist. I generally believe government officials are honest and competent.

But I can sure sympathize with those who see clear signs of racism and discrimination operating here, given how law enforcement has let the militants do whatever they want after their takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.

If these guys weren't white, wearing cowboy hats, and heavily armed, almost certainly they would have been arrested and charged with numerous crimes by now. Early on in the standoff, an Oregonian story said:

When black residents took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, the National Guard responded. The guard called protesters "enemy forces" and "adversaries," according to documents that became public this year.

When Ferguson residents’ anger spread and African Americans across the country protested, too, local police responded while wearing riot gear.

Why then, some people across the country wondered this week, were there no law enforcement officials confronting the 20 or so white men occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters?

The men carried pistols and long rifles to the refuge. One man told Oregon Public Broadcasting he came prepared to die. Yet reporters on the ground said they saw no police officers.

Since, things have gotten worse.

The militants have attacked another group of "patriots." They've used federal computers and accessed confidential information. They've destroyed a refuge fence. They've intimidated law enforcement officers. They've stolen refuge vehicles. They've urged ranchers to defy federal law. They've threatened to unleash "rapid response teams" against federal employees doing their jobs.

And we need to remember the previous 2014 Bundy Standoff in Nevada. 

BLM enforcement agents were dispatched in response to what were seen as threatening statements by Bundy, such as calling the events a "range war." There was no armed battle. When those guns were brandished, multiple violations of federal and state law occurred: It is a felony to point a weapon at a law enforcement officer and a federal felony to take aim at a U.S. government agent. And yet there were no arrests that day — no meaningful action has yet been taken against anyone involved.

So its no wonder Ammon Bundy and his fellow militants feel that they're above the law. Nothing ever happens to them. Law enforcement officials let them do whatever they want. A million dollars in grazing fees the Bundy family owes remains unpaid.

Why? Again, the only reason I can come up with is because they're white, wear cowboy hats, and are heavily armed.

The militants spout nonsense about defending the Constitution and converting federal land to private ownership. They plan to have citizen panels indict people for going against their bizarre views. They go to public meetings with their guns and intimidate locals in Harney County, almost all of whom want them to go home.

Irritating. Super irritating. 

Problem is, I'm just about as irritated at President Obama, the FBI, the federal Justice Department, Harney County Sheriff David Ward, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, and every other public official who has encouraged Bundy and the other militants to keep on doing what they're doing by not doing anything about them.

It sure seems like the lesson for other protesters is, carry a gun and nothing will happen to you. Oh, unless you're black. Then, even if the gun is fake, law enforcement will deal with you harshly (very harshly).

Des Moines shows how Salem can become cool

Citizens of Salem, Oregon, listen up! I have great news. Our city can become as cool as Des Moines, Iowa!

Ah, I sense your lack of enthusiasm. Des Moines? That's our urban model? I'll pass on that.

No, wait. Don't hang up on this blog post. You've got to read on.

Because today I came across a Politico piece that made me feel way better about Salem's chances of breaking out of its reputation as the drab something-or-other between vibrant Portland and Eugene. 

I urge you to read "How America's Dullest City Got Cool" in its entirety. 

But if the lengthy article's 5,800 words are too much for you, I've selected a mere 1,700 words from the piece that offer up the gist of how Des Moines transformed itself into a happening city.

After each of these excerpts, I couldn't resist adding some commentary of my own in blue italics relating to how the passage applies to Salem. 

First, a few facts: Des Moines, like Salem, is the capital of its state. It's population is 209,000, not far off from Salem's 160,000. In both cities, a river flows through it. Sure, there also are many differences between Des Moines and Salem. 

As you'll read below, though, the pre-cool Des Moines bears a lot of resemblance to current-day Salem. Des Moines residents came together to transform their town. So can we Salemians (I hate the term Salemites).

How America's Dullest City Got Cool
by Colin Woodard
(excerpts, with commentary)

The capital of Iowa has long had a reputation as one of the least hip, least interesting and least dynamic cities in the Western world, a dull insurance town set amid the unending corn fields of flyover country, a place Minneapolis looks down on and the young and ambitious flee as soon as they graduate.

Likewise, Salem gets looked down on by Portland. But we're surrounded by a variety of farm fields, including hip vineyards, so that's a plus for us.

But unbeknownst to many outside the Midwest, over the past 15 years Des Moines has transformed into one of the richest, most vibrant, and, yes, hip cities in the country, where the local arts scene, entrepreneurial startups and established corporate employers are all thriving. Its downtown — previously desolate after 5 p.m. — has come alive, with 10,000 new residents and a bevy of nationally recognized restaurants.

A lively downtown -- sweet! Salem is a long ways from getting 10,000 more people living downtown, but progress in that direction is already happening. 

No longer just a drab dateline from the first battleground state, this metropolis is riding high in the polls. In recent years Des Moines has been named the nation’s richest (by U.S. News) and economically strongest city (Policom), its best for young professionals (Forbes), families (Kiplinger), home renters (Time), businesses and careers (Forbes). It has the highest community pride in the nation, according to a Gallup poll last year, and in October topped a Bloomberg analysis of which cities in the United States were doing the best at attracting millennials to buy housing.

Our new City Manager, Steve Powers, said when he arrived, "I'm here to help Salem become the best city in the United States." Yes! Let's surpass Des Moines. 

Cities don’t, as a rule, change their identities. They might accentuate a characteristic they already possess, but plow horses don’t become thoroughbreds. So how did Des Moines pull off the urban equivalent of a Triple Crown win?

Call it radical cooperation. Des Moines tapped the latent power of the heartland — a cultural ethos of working together and good manners that’s helped account for Iowa’s stability — and harnessed it to an ambitious plan to jump-start downtown by building cultural amenities, attracting creative class types and retaining big employers. Des Moines’ civic leaders realized the city wasn’t going to transform itself without a clear long-term vision, so in an almost hyper-Iowan way they did something almost unheard of. They took it upon themselves to bring in an outside visionary and then tied together the destinies of the various projects he envisioned, forging an almost ego-less, private-sector-driven renaissance that has continued to flower over the past decade.

Ah, vision. So important. That's why I enjoy being a member of the Salem Community Vision steering committee. This group is a step in the Vision Direction. Salem just needs all sorts of people and organizations to radically cooperate like Des Moines did.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the city tried to turn things around by installing suburban conveniences, including an enclosed system of skywalks, allowing people to get from building to building and through new indoor shopping malls without putting on their coats, which only furthered the abandonment of the sidewalks and the storefronts.

Interesting. Salem did the same thing downtown. Skybridges -- they make some sense, but they do detract from the vitality of our Historic District by hiding people away rather than getting them outside.

Graham had a colleague to recommend, an innovative urban thinker looking for a Midwestern city to experiment on. Bucksbaum was thrilled. Soon that visionary, Mario Gandelsonas, found himself in a car hurtling up Fleur Drive from the Des Moines International Airport, headed for downtown.

He was horrified at what he saw.

First impressions of Salem from the freeway (we don't have a "real" airport) also are pretty ghastly. Before I moved here from Portland in 1977, I had a negative view of Salem, based on what I'd seen on brief visits to the State Fair and such.

Gandelsonas’ urban planning philosophy was simple: don’t treat a city like a map that needs to be redrawn and corrected, but as a living organism with its own purpose, personality and innate characteristics. Successful interventions are ones that enhance and enable the organism’s socio-economic metabolism by removing blockages or creating new centers of potential growth. Instead of producing a total and comprehensive master plan for a city, Gandelsonas sought to identify a series of “moments,” civic projects that would enhance its fabric and unleash its potential. Or so the theory went.

Moments. Civic projects to unleash potential. Sign me up! There's plenty of good ideas floating around Salem. We just need to get them anchored to achievable reality.

Downtown itself “looked like science fiction,” he recalls. “It was mid-morning and there were no people on the streets. At lunchtime, the streets were still empty, but for about an hour the skywalks were full of people. At 4:30 they started filling up again as everyone rushed to the nearest parking structure and then for half an hour there was a full-on traffic jam as 50,000 people tried to get to West Des Moines. Then the city was empty again. For me this was the perfect picture of a place that was totally dysfunctional.”

Reminds me of a Twitter tweet about Salem from the early days of our town's Salemia craze: "Visitors mistakenly believe zombie apocalypse has hit the town because shops close and streets empty before dark."

So one day in the spring of 1990, Cownie, and a handful of city leaders gathered at the Embassy Club atop the 36-story Ruan Center, then the city’s tallest building, as Gandelsonas cast his vision on the urban panorama below. He began to tick off his ideas.

The central riverfront should be transformed into a usable public space connecting downtown with the east side beyond. The latter, a dilapidated neighborhood between the river and the gold-domed State Capitol, should evolve into a “Red Brick City” of storefronts and apartments. Between the river and the Ruan building, he envisioned a revitalization of the Court Avenue entertainment district, with more housing rising near the railroad tracks just to its south. To the west, a lakefront on the road from the airport would be made into a park and the car dealerships and dilapidated one-story buildings that had first greeted him would be demolished to make way for an expansive city park.

Wow. Way to go, Des Moines. But, hey, Salem also has a lot of "red bricks" in our downtown Historic District. We've got the same potential as Des Moines. Just need to get the potential ball rolling.

Lots of cities come up with grand plans. Very few actually complete them. Almost none do so with virtually no opposition and, in the end, widespread approval. Des Moines did.

The idea had broad support and little opposition, in part because fewer than 1,000 people lived downtown and the envisioned changes would displace none of them. But the task ahead was daunting: get a new, 2,000-unit downtown neighborhood built; expand the entertainment district; transform the riverfront and Gray’s Lake into top-notch recreational areas; build a civic center, science center and all the rest. That’s when the state of Iowa stepped in, offering to provide funding, but with conditions that would force the business and philanthropic communities well out of their comfort zone.

Nothing wrong with being pushed out of a comfort zone. Salem is too comfortable with itself. We need more people pushing for change, dreaming the possible dream.

Simultaneously, Principal, the insurance company, was taking the lead on a $70 million refurbishment of the downtown riverfront, to which it would ultimately contribute $18.5 million. The project, announced in 1999, featured a mile-long walking trail, two pedestrian bridges, an ice skating rink, and amphitheater, and took a decade to complete. “At one point early on, my boss at the time asked if we couldn’t have more leverage investing in education,” says O’Keefe, who was in charge of Principal’s effort. “I said I didn’t think we’d find anything that would have the impact to our investment as this one. Making use of your natural amenities is just the fastest and easiest way to further a city’s development.”

Meanwhile, the metro region’s chambers of commerce, downtown development groups, and major landholder alliances merged into a single superentity, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, which became an essential vehicle for region-wide cooperation. “Business leaders were tired of going to multiple meetings of people trying to do the same thing,” recalls Eugene Meyer, who was mayor of West Des Moines throughout the 2000s and is now president of the Partnership.

 

No reason why Salem can't also come together. Our Chamber of Commerce needs to become more creative and cooperative. Downtown businesses and residents need to get their act together, forming a cohesive voice for the Historic District. The folks at City Hall need to listen to citizens more and lecture less. Progressive activists like me... we're perfect! (just kidding...)

In the early 2000s, as construction cranes sprouted around downtown Des Moines, Richard Florida’s “creative class” theories were taking the urban planning world by storm. Florida, an urban theorist who now heads the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, argued that cities prosper when they are attractive to the knowledge workers, intellectuals and artists that power the post-industrial economy. Build amenities, the argument went, and they will come, and their presence will naturally attract the industries that need them. Des Moines was in effect running a large-scale experiment for his theories.

During the first decade of the new century, Des Moines’ net employment grew by 7 percent and the overall population by 18 percent. Many of the newcomers were young, educated, and, yes, creative types drawn by the changing downtown landscape. “People started wanting to come downtown because there were more and more entertainment options coming up, and that spurred them to think, let’s not drive out to the suburbs afterward and then drive back for work,” says developer Gerry Neugent, now CEO of Knapp Properties, who had a front-row seat. “What if we lived here? That spurred housing and then they just started feeding off each other.”

Creative class types aren't exactly flocking to Salem. Portland and Eugene get them. Salem, not nearly so much. This shows that becoming a cooler town is an economic development strategy. Are you listening, Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Peterson, and Salem city councilors?

Over the next four years, the entire area transformed into a residential neighborhood of new lofts and repurposed commercial buildings. The population of downtown doubled, then doubled again. Today, it has an estimated 15,000 residents, up from 1,000 in the 1990s, and 2,000 more units under construction.

Make downtown cool, and they will come. Such is the lesson of Des Moines. Jobs follow people, more than the other way around. Yet Salem is stuck in an outmoded emphasis on jobs, jobs, jobs, rather than quality of life, quality of life, quality of life.

 

 

Walls connecting the Des Moines Social Club’s two buildings feature graffiti that changes annually. The non-profit hosts a two-day graffiti festival in August called Color Codes. “We try to offer the art forms that the other groups in town are not offering, and street art is certainly one of them,” Mannheimer says. | Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures for Politico Magazine

 

A few months later, Mannheimer moved to Des Moines, took a job as a maitre d’ at the club atop the Ruan Center — the same place where Gandelsonas had outlined his vision for city leaders years before — and began lobbying for what would eventually become the Des Moines Social Club, an incubator for the local arts scene featuring a theater, club, art gallery, classroom spaces and office space for theaters and non-profits. Iowa’s openness eased the way.

The business community loved the Social Club, a place they could take potential recruits to help convince them that moving to Iowa wasn’t like being sent to Siberia. (Baby boomers are retiring, so companies need to attract lots of new talent to replace them.)

I've heard stories about efforts to entice attractive businesses to Salem that fail when the owner/CEO takes a tour of downtown. Imagine if the Historic District elicited cries of "Yes!" rather than "Ho-hum." 

That said, Des Moines has a long way to go before anyone will call it the next Austin, Texas. Most people coming here are still Iowans or those married to them. Visitors checking into downtown hotels at 9 p.m. on a Sunday are still told their only dinner option is to order in from the Dominos at 4^th and Grand. The state of public transportation is such that you can’t really live in the city without a car, a burden many millennials avoid. An airport terminal expansion has been talked about for years, but the $420 million effort remains in the planning stages. The new arena and convention center were supposed to attract private capital to build an associated convention hotel, but instead the city and county had to step in to secure financing for the $100 million project. (“If the market was going to support this hotel, they would have stepped up to build it,” says Draper, a prominent critic of the new plan.)

But out-of-towners are taking notice, says Republican political consultant Tim Albrecht, who confers with a great many when the presidential caucuses roll around, including the political reporters deployed by the national news organizations. “I used to say to them that Des Moines isn’t so bad and that I think they’d like it,” he says. “This time around I told them the same and they would respond: ‘We know, we asked to come here.’ That’s a big difference.”

Hmmmm. Salem also suffers from a lack of public transportation, which discourages Creative Class types from moving here. Still, I felt really good coming to the end of the Politico piece about Des Moines. 

We can vitalize and up-cool Salem in much the same way. It just takes genuine commitment, collaboration, and cooperation between various groups in this town -- business leaders, elected officials, civic activists, non-profit organizations, and many others. 

"Redo" of Salem police facility planning costing taxpayers $142,000

This morning I went to City Hall and picked up a CD that contained public record documents I'd requested.

It was a citizen activist pleasure to pay $24.43 to learn how much the City of Salem is paying the DLR Group for architectural services related to planning for a new police facility. 

The answer is... $142,127 for the original contract signed in September 2015. See:
Download 145145 Architectural Services for the Salem Police Facility

Plus a possible $20,000 additional for analysis of a fourth police facility site (the original contract required analyses of just three sites). This is how much DLR Group proposed; I don't know if the City of Salem has agreed to pay the $20,000. See:
Download Salem Police DLR Group Add One Site 151223

Along with many other people, I've been following the meandering path of police facility planning for quite a while. The tangled often-chaotic history can be read about on a Salem Community Vision web page that contains newspaper stories and blog posts (including mine) on this subject.

This is the third try -- or second "redo" -- at planning for a new police facility. To some extent the efforts have built on each other, but mostly the redo's have been marked by significant shifts in direction.

First try was from 2010 to 2013, as described in my "City of Salem planned new police facility in backwards way." With no citizen input, a $70 million plan for a new police facility at the Civic Center, plus seismic upgrades/renovations, was revealed at a City Council work session in June 2013.

Second try was spurred by strong public opposition to the Civic Center site. Mayor Peterson formed a City of Salem Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility, chaired by T.J. Sullivan. Jake Davis, a DLR Group principal, spoke about this "redo" in a June 2015 letter I came across in the original contract file.

Dear Selection Panel, 

It takes courage to take a step back in the process of building a new police headquarters in order to take a confident step forward. But that's what the City did by seeking input from the Police Facilities Task Force on its initial public safety plan, and we laud you for that.

OK. I said much the same thing a few months before Davis spoke about "take a step back" in my April 2015 post, "Salem's Police Facility Task Force makes progress by going backward."

Sometimes going backward is the best way to start moving forward. That's what happened last night at a meeting of the impressively-named City of Salem Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility.

(I'm still waiting to see a Red Ribbon or Yellow Ribbon Task Force; will its members feel inferior?)

... So after almost five years of unproductive planning -- see my previous post, "City of Salem planned new police facility in backwards way" -- the task force wisely decided to basically start over.

Third try, then, is what DLR Group has been doing since September 2015, working with a City Council subcommittee. Again, with no citizen input. 

Last month DLR Group unveiled its sizing plan for a 150,000 square foot police facility, which the subcommittee approved. Interestingly the above-mentioned June 2015 letter from DLR Group principal Davis says:

In December of 2014, at your invitation, Justin Stranzi and I told the Police Facility Task Force that we believe a modern facility for a large department like Salem's should expect to be closer to 90,000 square feet than the 75,000-square-foot floor. 

Others have suggested larger. Which number is correct? The City has arrived at a critical juncture to identify the ceiling or, more accurately, a sensible mid-point for needs, and it has a mandate to zero in on the right answer. Good work has been done, and we're not here to reinvent the wheel. We're here to help.

Well, since all of the DLR Group/City of Salem third try planning was done behind closed doors, the public doesn't know how the current police facility plan got supersized to 150,000 square feet. 

Regarding "closed doors," the City of Salem's Request for Proposals said in the Background section, "The consultant will be tasked with making presentations of work products to a subcommittee of the City Council, and one or more optional community open houses."

Those open houses never happened. 

Tonight, though, the City Council will be having a 5:30 pm work session in the Anderson Room of the Library. It's expected that DLR Group will present a conceptual design and cost analysis for a police facility on each of the four potential sites.

But once again, members of the public will have to keep their mouths shut. No talking by ordinary citizens allowed at work sessions! 

Eventually a public hearing will be held at a regular City Council meeting -- likely after a site has been recommended by the council subcommittee and citizens are only able to offer a thumbs-up or -down to the proposal.

The RFP Background section says:

This scope of services assumes the City is preparing materials for community outreach and Council decision-making process regarding a possible November 2016 bond measure. This scope of services is to be completed prior to the Council's decision in early 2016 regarding the possible bond measure.

If the bond measure passes and funding for construction of the facility is approved by the voters in the November 2016 General Election, the City will undertake a subsequent procurement process for design of the facility. The Consultant will be free to compete for subsequent services procured for this project.

So this reminds us that after six years of police facility planning, Salem still doesn't have a site for one, nor a detailed design, nor even agreement on how large a new police facility should be.

Regarding the last point, I'm expecting, and hoping, that City Council members who weren't on the council subcommittee will weigh in on the size question tonight, given the mysterious ballooning of the square footage from 75,000 sq. ft., to around 100,000 sq. ft. (redo #1) and now to 150,000 sq. ft. (redo #2).

(Every little square foot translates into around $300 additional cost; so an extra 50,000 sq. ft. means taxpayers are out an additional $15 million, plus bond financing costs.)

O'Brien site north of downtown is best place for new police facility

Salem Community Vision has analyzed the four sites that were selected by a City Council subcommittee last month as the best possible locations for a new police facility.

One by one, they posted "reviews" of each site on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page. Below I've shared the analyses all together -- putting the Clear Winner first.

This is the location known as the O'Brien site, where several car dealerships used to be on the east side of Commercial just north of downtown. It was by far the highest ranked site using criteria developed by consultants and approved by the council subcommittee.

Yet as I noted in my previous post about police facility planning, the Mayor and several city council members seem to have the hots for a site that didn't make the top three locations recommended by the consultants. 

The most interesting part of tonight's meeting was the selection of four possible sites where a new 150,000 sq. ft. police facility could be located.

The consultants were asked to pick three sites, but Mayor Peterson was so enamored with the block south of the Library, she agreed to pay the consultants more money to have them conduct a detailed site analysis of that location -- which didn't make the top three.

Back in December I asked City staff to tell me how much money the additional site analysis for the Commercial & Leslie Block is costing taxpayers. I've been promised that I'll get this information before a City Council work session about the proposed police facility locations -- which is tomorrow, January 21, 5:30 pm, Anderson Room in the Library.

I'll share this info once I get it.

Read on for the brief cogent analyses by Salem Community Vision of how each site would work for a new police facility. Again, I start with the Winner, then list the Also-Rans.

THE O'BRIEN SITE IS A WINNER

The Police Facility Council Subcommittee asked their Chicago architects to evaluate every feasible site for a new police facility in Salem. They evaluated 30 of them using a numerical assessment based on solid criteria. So far so good. Site 13 (also known as the O'Brien site) was the clear winner, scoring 129 points (see picture below).

Unfortunately, the O'Brien site was not the favorite of Mayor Peterson, who said so at the last Subcommittee meeting. So instead of selecting the highest ranked site, the Subcommittee asked their expensive Chicago architects to do preliminary designs for the top four sites (the others' scores were 100.5, 106, and 97 — the Mayor's preferred site)

So we are paying for four designs instead of one.

Salem Community Vision Steering Committee member Geoff James, who is a long-time architect in Salem, prepared the sketch above to show how nicely the O'Brien site would accommodate a 75,000 square foot police station. There would even be room for a records center and a new municipal court and public meeting room. We believe all this could be built for around $30 million.

We hope that when the City Council holds their work session next Thursday night that they will focus on the O'Brien site and that they will reject the idea of a supersized 150,000 square foot police facility in favor of a right-sized and affordable new police facility like the one Geoff James has proposed.

--------------------------

WHY BOTHER WITH WINDOWS TO THE WEST?

The City is paying a Chicago architect to do preliminary designs of a new police facility on four different sites that a City Council subcommittee has selected.

Site 1, also called Windows to the West, is the only one of the three mostly owned by the City. That might seem like a plus, from a cost standpoint, but as noted in the architect's presentation above, this site has a "high development cost" because of its small size. So even if you don't have to spend as much money on the site, fitting a building with parking for 200-300 police vehicles on this site would be very expensive. The parking would involve a multi-story parking facility that costs about $30,000 per parking space.

Other problems with this site include the fact that an established business on the north side reportedly does not want to move, and to locate a police facility on a busy one-way arterial that is congested at rush hour is not ideal.

The Mayor seems to like Windows to the West because it fits her vision of an expanded Civic Center and would not take as much private property off the tax rolls, but we think it's a waste of money to pay a Chicago architect to design a building on the site that has so many obvious drawbacks. Expect the cost estimate for a new police facility on this site to be an eye-popper.

 

--------------------------

 

 

WHY BOTHER WITH THE COMMERCIAL AND LESLIE BLOCK?

As we reported a few days ago, the City is paying big bucks to a Chicago architect to do preliminary designs of a new police facility on four different sites that a City Council subcommittee has selected from 30 possible sites.

Here is the second one, Site 2. Unfortunately, it has more issues than Site 1 that we posted on a few days ago. It is slightly smaller, which means, like Site 1, it would require an expensive multistory police facility and a multistory parking facility. It also slopes rather dramatically from Leslie Street down to Mission, which might create other expensive design challenges.

Unlike Site 1, Site 2 is not mostly owned by the city and would have to be purchased from several different property owners, which could pose some difficulties if they don't want to sell.

Building a police facility on Site 2 would also be bad news for Salem Public Library users. To create more room for the police facility, the plan below shows that Leslie Street, which is how most people enter and exit the library parking garage, would be closed. That might leave the only library entrance on Liberty Street. Also, there is talk of using the library parking garage for the police facility. Can you imagine young families coming to the library and dodging cop cars on their way out of the parking garage?

Site 2 is bad news. We say fuggetaboutit!

 

--------------------------

 

WHY BOTHER WITH THE DT STORAGE SITE?

Here is the third of four sites that a subcommittee of the Salem City Council has selected as a possible site for a new police facility. They have asked their high-priced Chicago architect to design a 150,000 square foot police facility on all four sites. That's right. Four separate designs. That doesn't come cheap.

This is so wasteful from several angles. First, Salem voters will never, ever, raise their property taxes to build a supersized police facility of 150,000 square feet. The police are only in about 50,000 square feet now. The subcommittee claims they are just planning for the future, but that's foolishness. No business would do that. They would build a modestly larger facility now on a site that has room for expansion in the future.

The other way this is wasteful is that this site is a very poor candidate for a police facility to begin with. It's too big — about an acre and a half larger than 4 acres that was the maximum size lot recommended by the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force. It also abuts the terrific mixed use development we has been built recently just to the north on Broadway (Salem Cinema, Christos, etc.). This site would lend itself to more of that, not a huge campus with an oversized police facility. Even the Mayor and Councilor Dickey agree with us on that!

 

Why the Malheur militants aren't like the Occupy protesters

Being a proud progressive, I'm committed to rationality, fairness, sound arguments, and fealty to facts. (Which makes me much different from most right-wing conservatives these days.)

So I've been pondering whether I'm justified in being outraged at what the militants who have taken over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge here in Oregon are doing, given that I was supportive of the Occupy Movement. 

After all, both groups took over public property in an attempt to bring attention to their causes.

Which basically are transferring federal land to private ownership in the case of the militants, and reducing social/economic inequality in the case of the Occupy protesters.

But after giving this quite a bit of thought, I've concluded that I'm justified in feeling angry at the militants while mostly admiring the Occupy Movement. Here's why.

(1) Guns versus being unarmed. Ammon Bundy and his band of anti-government militants brought a bunch of guns with them to the wildlife refuge. They're armed and dangerous, given the history of a previous protest involving Bundy and his father where federal agents had guns pointed at them in a threatening manner (they should have been charged with a crime, but haven't been so far).

By contrast, the Occupy folks were unarmed.

There's no mention of "gun" in the Wikipedia article about the Occupy Movement. So the moral high ground goes to them. Armed protesters are sending the message, "Don't mess with us, or we'll shoot." To my mind, whatever justification they might have for protesting an injustice gets obliterated once firearms are brought into the picture.

This relates to...

(2) Patriotism versus insurrection. Since my college days, I've done a lot of protesting during the past fifty years. None of the groups I was involved with advocated going against the Constitution of the United States, or overthrowing the federal government in any way.

We understood that if we broke the law, there would be consequences, even though the law might appear to be unfair.

However, the Malheur militants consider themselves to be above the law, above the Constitution, above the Supreme Court rulings that confirm the legality of the federal government's ownership and management of public lands.

This makes the actions of Bundy and Co. much more akin to insurrection, than patriotism. They don't want to work within the Constitution; they have weird ideas about setting up an extra-legal court system that goes against the principles on which this nation was founded.

The Occupy Movement never advocated overthrowing constitutional law or the authority of the federal government. So here also, the militants are morally inferior. 

(3) Reasonable versus unreasonable demands. A legitimate protest movement either makes reasonable demands, or recognizes the pie-in-the-sky nature of what is being asked for. In other words, the protesters either call for changes that are possible, or understand the impossibility of this happening.

The Occupy Movement didn't say, "Until tax rates on the wealthiest 1% are raised substantially, we won't leave the public spaces we're occupying." But the Malheur militants have strongly implied that they won't leave the refuge until a process for returning federal land to private ownership is instituted.

This won't happen.

It can't happen without an act of Congress and approval by the president. Even Greg Walden, the Republican congressman who represents eastern Oregon, says this won't happen -- even if the GOP captures the White House this year. 

Overall, then, it's one thing to stage a peaceful unarmed protest to draw attention to your cause, knowing that you'll have to face legal consequences if you break the law, while making reasonable demands that either are possible to fulfill or accepting that the requested changes can't happen now, if ever.

This is what the Occupy Movement did. Kudos to them for doing it.

But it's a whole other thing for gun-wielding militants to take over public property, vowing to remain there until their extremely unreasonable demands are met, including returning federal lands to private ownership in a completely unconstitutional manner.

So get out of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, Ammon Bundy and your fellow unpatriotic troublemakers.

Accept whatever charges law enforcement throw at you for your illegal acts. Be happy that your crazy ideas have been publicized way beyond what they deserve. Go home and try to change this country for the better through the rule of law and political action, not via unreasonable armed threats.

I was pleased to learn about the #GOHOMEMALHEUR movement.

They're requesting daily donations for three organizations opposed to the militants' goals that will be made until the illegal occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge ends. I like this effort, but preferred the option of making a one-time donation to the Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash

Nobody likes to peek at their investment portfolio after a day like today: a 390 point drop in the Dow (-2.4%), with the S&P 500 not much better at -2.2%.


But even though I toyed with the idea of brewing up a Cheerful Cocktail before I logged in to our Schwab account -- recipe: equal measures of anti-depressants, whiskey, potent marijuana, and caffeine extract -- I realized that our index fund investing approach would leave me feeling fine after I inspected our holdings.

Not happy. Not ecstatic. But fine.

Why?

Because since 2002 I've been a happy passive investor, having kicked the addiction of believing that I, or anyone else for that matter, can consistently beat the market. (See "Index Funds: the 12-Step Recovery Program for Active Investors.")

I described this approach in a 2009 post, "Index investing rocks and Jim Cramer sucks."

I've been a fairly serious investor for about twenty-five years. For quite a while I was the type of guy who'd be a Cramer acolyte. I subscribed to investing newsletters, researched stocks, tried to devise foolproof investing schemes.

Until I realized that I was acting foolishly. And started reading about index investing.

Since 2002 we've had a big chunk of our investments in DFA (Dimensional Fund Advisors) index offerings. DFA is a pleasingly geeky outfit. Their approach is highly sophisticated, as you'll see if you take their philosophy tour -- which starts on this page.

I don't claim to understand all the economics jargon. But I do know that I sleep a lot more soundly now that I've given up trying to outsmart the market.

Today our investment portfolio dropped in value by 1.1%.

That's exactly half of the S&P 500 decline of 2.2%. Which is typical, and unsurprising, since I aim for a roughly 50-50 mix of stocks and bonds. If stocks go down 2.2%, bonds will stay about the same or even increase in value as investors flock to safety. 

Hence, we lose half as much as the stock market loses. But this isn't the only reason, or the biggest reason, why I'm largely unbothered by how global financial markets are behaving currently.

It's the passive investing, doing almost nothing in good times and bad times alike, that has made such a big difference in my outlook about our investment assets. I talked about this in a 2008 (bad times!) post on my Church of the Churchless blog, "Profitable spiritual investing."

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

About all I do, other than embrace my average'ness, is try to keep our investments balanced fairly close to 50-50 between stocks and bonds/cash.

Right now they're at 56-44, which is close enough. (Aside from index funds, we own shares in an actively managed total return fund that aims for a 60-40 stock/bond split; since I have no control over what it does, I shoot for 50-50 with the index funds we own.)

Index investing has improved my life a lot. I used to worry when markets went down. Now I'm much more tranquil -- even without a Cheerful Cocktail. 

There's a lot to like about having a "we're all in the same boat" philosophy of investing. To illustrate this, here's excerpts from a Morningstar X-Ray report on our investments I just printed out.

Asset Allocation: Your portfolio is moderately risky. Financial planners typically recommend this type of portfolio for investors who have three- to 10-year investment horizons and who are concerned by volatility and not preoccupied by it.

Stock Style Diversification: Your portfolio's stock exposure is spread evenly across the market and includes a good mix of small, medium, and large companies, as well as a fairly even mix of conservatively priced value stocks and high-flying growth stocks. For most investors, maintaining such broad-based market exposure is a prudent way to invest.

Stock Sector: You have a core portfolio. Compared with a benchmark with a similar investment style, you have very normal exposure to all market sectors. 

World Regions: You have a fairly healthy stake in foreign stocks. Comparing your foreign exposure to a common international index, you have a pretty standard regional breakdown. 

Fees & Expenses: The mutual funds in your portfolio tend to have very low expense ratios. This is good, because expense ratios have been shown to be a major factor in mutual-fund performance over the long term.

So there we are. These words aren't exciting, but they're just how I want our investments to be described.

"Moderate." "Spread evenly." "Good mix." "Prudent." "Very normal." "Pretty standard." 

We're average. Happily average. How the U.S. and global markets go, is how we go. That's the beauty of index investing.

You trade feelings of being a genius, or an idiot, depending on how your active investing strategy is working out, for a peaceful Ces't la vie.

Congressional Republicans refuse to applaud a cure for cancer

Watching Obama's 2016 State of the Union address last night, my wife and I were struck by how rarely Republicans applauded anything Obama said. 


The Daily Kos has a partial list of the subjects that left Republicans cold and apathetic in "What did Republican lawmakers hate about President Obama's State of the Union address?"

For those keeping score at home, here are just some of the issues that President Obama raised during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that Republican Senators and Congressmen in attendance refused to clap for, let alone get off their asses and cheer:

• Nearly 15 million new jobs and the unemployment rate being cut in half.
• Equality for all Americans.
• Cutting pollution levels.
• A good education for our children.
• Fighting terrorism.
• The idea that America is the strongest nation on earth.
• Avoiding war.
• Making it easier to vote.

And—drumroll, please—saving the best for last …

• Curing cancer! 

File this one under shit-you-can’t-make-up.

What made this display of extreme partisanism even more disturbing was this: while Republicans were deliberately failing to applaud things that are good for all Americans because Obama was mentioning them, Obama was talking about the urgent need to improve the atmosphere of our political discourse.

Here's some of what Obama said. I've boldfaced especially pertinent lines.

And that brings me to the fourth, and maybe most important thing that I want to say tonight. The future we want, all of us want — opportunity and security for our families, a rising standard of living, a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids — all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates. It will only happen if we fix our politics.

A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country, different regions, different attitudes, different interests. That’s one of our strengths, too. Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, fiercely, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and the imperatives of security.

But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t — it doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, it doesn’t work if we think that our political opponents are unpatriotic or trying to weaken America.

Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise or when even basic facts are contested or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest.

Too many Americans feel that way right now. It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

But my fellow Americans, this cannot be my task — or any president’s — alone. There are a whole lot of folks in this chamber — good people — who would like to see more cooperation, would like to see a more elevated debate in Washington but feel trapped by the imperatives of getting elected, by the noise coming out of your base. I know; you’ve told me. It’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. And a lot of you aren’t enjoying being trapped in that kind of rancor.

Well, I'm not so sure about those last sentiments. Last night Republicans sure seemed like they enjoyed sitting on their hands when Obama talked about subjects that everybody in this country should support.

Like, curing cancer. And generating many millions of jobs the past seven years.

People often wrongly say that both sides -- left and right, liberal and conservative -- are responsible for the breakdown in Congressional cooperation. 

Well, there's some truth to that, but Republicans have moved much farther to the right over the years than Democrats have moved to the left. This is a fact, as graphically illustrated in the Washington Post's "How Congress became so partisan, in 4 charts."

Here's the 2012 chart.

Ideology is along the horizontal axis. Conservative is to the right; liberal is to the left.  Party unity scores are along the vertical axis. Greater party unity is up; less party unity is down.

You can see that Republicans (in red) are considerably more rightward ideological than Democrats (in blue) are leftward ideological. Numerically, .675 versus -.394 (0 is ideologically neutral). And quite a few more Democrats fail to vote with a majority of their party.

Here's how things looked back in less rancorous days, 1992.

It's cool how this chart looks like the wings of a bi-colored bird. Because back then, members of Congress could actually get together and agree on things in a bipartisan fashion. 

Tellingly, the ideological scores for the two parties were much closer together then than they are now: Republicans were at .359; Democrats were at -.317. 

So in twenty years, Congressional Republicans went rightward from .359 to .675. That's 88% more conservative. 

During the same time period, Congressional Democrats went leftward from -.317 to -.394. That's 24% more liberal. 

Thus Republicans have moved over three times more to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. Which means they are mostly responsible for the parties being so much farther apart these days.

Obama is trying to bring our country together again. Democrats like me are ready and willing to help with this. We just need some interest from Republicans.

Failing to applaud curing cancer, putting Americans back to work, and fighting terrorism isn't helping with this, GOP.

I'm fed up with news being replaced by guesses about what might be

News and political junkie that I am, the presets on my car's satellite radio prominently feature the POTUS (Politics of the United States), MSNBC, CNN, and NPR channels. 

Usually I listen to them. But today I kept channel surfing -- listening for a short while, then mentally blurting out a profanity and clicking on either my Chill or Classic Rock music channels. 

My willingness to hear blather about what might be, what could occur, what the future possibly could bring, it's sunk to a low level. 

I've been gradually heading in this direction for quite a while.

Today, though, I felt more disdain than ever before for the almost non-stop frothy guesses about what will, before too long, become solid reality.

"What do you expect President Obama to say in his State of the Union speech tonight?," a host would ask. Then several people would pipe up, expressing opinions about what is going to be a freaking fact in just a few hours.

I realized that I didn't give a damn what they thought. Tomorrow, after the speech has been given, I'd like to hear some informed analyses about what Obama said.

But what's the point in spending lots of air time trying to predict an unpredictable future?

It used to be that news shows actually reported -- shock! -- on what has actually happened in the world. Now, though, the 24 hour news cycle apparently requires that 23 of those hours be devoted to guesses about what might happen newswise in the future.

"Polls show Sanders narrowing the gap with Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire. What does this mean for Clinton's presidential chances?"

I'd think, Here's what it means... nothing! Or so close to nothing, let's round it off to exactly nothing.

Astonishingly, someone on the satellite radio channel would point out the truth -- that in previous elections, polling in Iowa and New Hampshire at this point in the presidential election season had nothing to do with who eventually became this nation's leader.

And then the show's guests would ignore that fact, going back to guessing about who is going to win in those states in coming weeks based on the most recent polls.

The inanity and uselessness of it all hit me hard.

Listening to an actual "blast from the past" on the Classic Rock channel felt so much more real than all the blathering about what might be. A David Bowie song would play. It wasn't a possible David Bowie song. It was a song that Davie Bowie truly sang. 

So refreshing.

Probably my increased distaste for future news forecasting, as opposed to actual news reporting, is linked to my re-reading of Alex Rosenberg's marvelous book, "The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions."

Rosenberg, a philosophy professor with a strong background in science, likes to talk about the human predilection for story telling. We're almost hard-wired for this, he says. (See this post on my other blog.)

Natural selection made us crude conspiracy theorists, using the introspective markers we mistake for our own plans and designs to cause behavior, and using other people's noises and inscriptions to figure out their behavior. 

This sort of conspiracy theorizing to predict other people's behavior has limited but long-standing adaptive value. That's why Mother Nature found a way of addicting us to it.

We use other people's behavior, including the noises they make (their talk) and the inscriptions they scratch out (their writing), along with our own silent markers and mental images to guide our expectations about other people's behavior.

When we get it right, there's the relief from curiosity and the psychological satisfaction that makes us keep doing it. 

...Because the markers that move around our introspectable minds only crudely indicate what is really going on in each person's brain, folk psychology doesn't do a very good job. It breaks down badly once you use it to predict a lot of people's actions.

...The thoughts about human actions that are supposed to give them meaning and purpose have no reality in the brain. Our own apparent thoughts about things are crude indicators of the real causes of our behavior.

We guess at the thoughts of others from their behavior, their actions, their statements and speeches, their letters and diaries. But the results of our guessing are equally unreliable indications of what actually moves people.

Which is why I'm coming to feel that guessing what one person, such as President Obama, or lots of people, like voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, will do is absurd. 

But we'll keep on doing it because it is fun. Even if it has little or nothing to do with reality.

The good side of "strange," as in... Strange Up Salem

Several years ago I realized that I wanted to strange up Salem. It just seemed so right.

I didn't spend a lot of time -- well, actually not any time -- pondering what "strange" meant before I dived into writing a Strange Up Salem column for our city's alternative paper, Salem Weekly, from 2013 to 2015. 

I'm still strangeing away on a Strange Up Salem Facebook page. (Give it a like! I love likes!) 

Yesterday someone left a visitor post that simply said, No, let's not.

That shocked me. How could anyone be opposed to strangeness? It's obviously so wonderful! But then I realized that I'd never paid much attention to what "strange" meant. I just felt it was a really good thing. 

Because I've always been attracted to the positive connotations of strangeness. Which, after some Googling of "strange definition," were found to include:

not before known, heard, or seen
exciting wonder or awe
different from what is usual, normal, or expected
out of the ordinary

So, yeah!, I sure do want to Strange Up Salem. Let's make Oregon's capital city a fresh discovery, inspiring wonder, better than expected, way more than ordinary. 

Defining strange, though, is much different from the experience of strange. A definition is conceptual; an experience is, obviously, experiential. 

Everybody is different. One person can look upon something and find it appealingly strange. Another person can see the same thing and feel repelled by its strangeness. After all, "strange" also connotes:

not comfortable or at ease
alien, foreign
causing puzzlement, perplexing
not relaxed

But maybe these supposedly negative aspects of strangeness aren't so different from the positive aspects. After all, who wants to be always comfortable, surrounded by the familiar, cushioned by certainty, relaxed and at ease?

Strange often feels like a jolt. A waking-up. A shock. A shove. 

We're propelled out of a habitual way of experiencing the world. Yes, this can be disconcerting. Also, exhilarating. Or at least, a pleasurable break from a sojourn in the ordinary.

I'm a fan of the Walking Company's Abeo LiTe shoes. (Yes, the brand has a capital "T" in its name -- strange!)

When I saw that a new color, orange, had been added to the men's line, my reaction was a blend of attraction and uncertainty/puzzlement. I'd never had a pair of orange shoes. Viewing them online, I felt they were appealingly colorful. 

But maybe... too garish? 

"Screw it!" was my next thought. I ordered the shoes. Now, I like them a lot. I've had people I don't know comment positively about them. 

I've worn the shoes quite a few times. I always enjoy the flash of color on the bottom of my legs as I walk along. Yet there's also a certain unsettling sense that comes with wearing the shoes. I've been so used to gray, black, and other subtler-hued shoes, the orange jolts me a bit with every step.

In a good way.  

This is how I want Salem to make me feel. Alive. Unique. Different. Bold. Expressive. 

In short, strange.

Trans-Pacific Partnership not looking good to me after Salem City Club talk

I've been on the fence about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

On the whole, free trade makes sense to me. But opponents of this proposed agreement between the United States and eleven other Pacific Rim countries have made some good arguments against it. 

So I went into today's Salem City Club talk, "The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Look at the TPP Through an Oregon Lens," with an open mind. 

I'm good friends with Russ Beaton, who gave the talk. Russ is a retired economics professor at Willamette University. He's heavy into sustainability, progressive politics, organic gardening, and other Good Stuff. 

I don't always agree with Russ, but I usually do.

After listening to what he had to say about the TPP, asking a question from the audience, and hanging around after the meeting for more discussion with Russ and other City Club members, I now lean toward the bad idea side of the Trans-Pacific Partnership debate.

As Russ told us, the TPP is one of those issues where strange bedfellows hook up. Many on the far right of the political spectrum dislike the TPP because Obama is for it. Many on the far left dislike the TPP because they see it as being dominated by corporate wish lists.

I like to think of myself as a left-leaning moderate.

Thus when Russ said early on in his talk that if the TPP is approved by Congress (on an up or down vote; no tinkering with the proposed agreement is allowed) centrist politicians will be the reason, I thought, "This seems to mean that politically the TPP is pretty well balanced."

Well, by the end of the hour I'd changed my mind. Here's the key things I learned that made me turn mostly sour on the TPP.

Not so much aimed at free trade as unfettered profits.
I'd been viewing the TPP as a way to eliminate unfair barriers to trade between Pacific Rim countries, like when the United States subsidizes our sugar producers to give them a competitive advantage. But reportedly most tariffs already have been removed between the TPP countries. 

Russ explained that much of the hugely lengthy TPP agreement (over 5,000 pages, I recall) has to do with non-tariff trade barriers. I don't claim to really understand what these are, but my general impression is that they are aimed more at guaranteeing corporate profits, rather than free trade. 

For example, after I got home from the City Club meeting this Climate Progress post caught my eye, "TransCanada Just Gave Environmentalists a Huge Boost."

For many, the Keystone XL pipeline was a catalyst for environmental action, and when the State Department denied developer TransCanada’s permit application in November, it was a signal that the environmental movement had triumphed over corporate and fossil fuel interests. So when the tar sands company announced this week that it was filing a claim against the United States for $15 billion, under provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), many were outraged.

But TransCanada’s heavy-handed use of the Clinton-era agreement might be the rallying point activists need to stop another, perhaps even more far-reaching, federal action: the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP is a massive, Pacific Rim trade agreement that would apply NAFTA-like provisions — including prohibitions on interfering with private investment — to the relationships between the United States and 11 other countries, including Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

The United States treated the Keystone XL pipeline fairly. There wasn't a bias against TransCanada, no policy "tariff," so to speak. But apparently NAFTA and the TPP allow corporations to file claims against member countries for, basically, lost profits.

Meaning, even if the economic playing field is level -- such as a rule that requires cigarette pack labels to look a certain way, as happened in Australia -- a foreign corporation could complain that even though it is being treated just like a domestic corporation, that rule has kept it from making as much money as it would have otherwise.

(See "Philip Morris Sues Australia Over Cigarette Labels. Why?")

Russ told us that corporate attorneys have been heavily involved in drafting the language of the TPP. A prime goal has been to get things in there that their corporations haven't been able to get Congress to approve, and/or Obama to sign into law.

That's disturbing. As is...

The TPP isn't so much an EU, as a legalistic nightmare. 
I came to this conclusion after asking a somewhat muddled question from the audience that, if I'd framed it more clearly, would have gone like this:

Progressives like me are drawn to the idea of One World where national borders take a back seat to shared human interests -- sort of like how the European Union has been set up. This requires countries to give up some sovereignty so international agreements can be formulated that provide wide-ranging benefits. So where is the harm in the United States giving up some control of what happens in this country, if this leads to improvements in living conditions both here and in other countries?

Russ did a good job of sorting the confusing language in my question from the makes-sense parts.

From his answer, and what he said during the rest of his talk, I came to realize that while People coming together to form international unions is one thing, Corporations coming together are a whole other thing.

As already noted, the TPP drafting process has been dominated by corporate interests. Labor unions, environmentalists, and others have been on the outside looking in. Russ told us that even Oregon Senator Ron Wyden hasn't been able to get a copy of the TPP agreement.

(Most of what we know about it has come from WikiLeaks.)

Further, the process used to adjudicate disputes over TPP provisions doesn't sound like something that would happen in a warm and fuzzy One World. Three-person panels made up of corporate attorneys, who likely would have been involved in the TPP drafting process, would hear complaints.

From what Russ said, ordinary people, or even non-governmental organizations, wouldn't be able to take part in the panel hearings. Attorneys from aggrieved corporations would make their case before corporate attorneys hired by the TPP.

Not an appealing picture. Especially since Russ raised the prospect of the attorneys switching sides at some point -- an attorney who works for a corporation could end up being part of a TPP complaint panel.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the debate over the TPP goes in Congress. Russ had a slide where he showed "pro" and "con" arguments for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are good reasons to vote aye and nay on the TPP. 

Unless I learn more about the agreement that changes my mind, I'm leaning toward asking my representatives in Congress to vote no.

Progressive Salem is all about positive change

Hard to believe. But I believe it.

Because this fits with what I know about Salem Mayor Anna Peterson and her right-wing city council majority.

Last night I attended a Progressive Salem meeting where someone said, "The Mayor thinks that people don't want change. They're happy with Salem as it is."

Wow. This shows how out-of-touch with reality the folks currently in charge at City Hall are. 

Ask homeless people if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask people needing to ride a bus on weekends and evenings if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask relatives of the eight pedestrians killed by cars last year if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask downtown business owners and visitors if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask lovers of historic buildings destroyed by the City if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask young people who want a more vibrant place to live if Salem is fine as it is.
Ask taxpayers hit with wasteful spending if Salem is fine as it is.

No town is perfect. Salem has a lot of room for improvement.

Fortunately, most people here are optimistic about making Salem much more livable for everybody -- not just our town's version of the 1%.

That's why I feel so good about what Progressive Salem is doing: trying to elect city leaders who have a positive, creative vision for the future. 

The meeting yesterday featured short talks by two energetic women running for City Council this year: Sally Cook (Ward 7) and Cara Kaser (Ward 1). Tom Andersen, a current City Council member, also spoke.

It was oh-so-refreshing to hear about how they want Salem to change for the better. 

I really have no idea what coherent vision for the future the current crop of conservatives who control City Hall have for Salem. Best I can tell, they just muddle along from decision to decision, paying a whole lot more attention to what the Chamber of Commerce desires than what ordinary citizens need and want.

By contrast, Cook, Kaser, and Andersen believe in progress. That's why they're proud to call themselves progressives. 

Conservatives look backward at the past, trying to keep things the same. Progressives look forward into the future, envisioning how things can be better. 

In one of my Strange Up Salem columns in Salem Weekly, I talked about this whole Vision Thing. Have a read. (All of the columns are here.)

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If This Town Was a Woman Named “Saleme”

Salem needs a vision check. In this sense: what sort of desired image does our city have of itself, and how well are we moving toward that vision?

Let’s imagine a woman named Saleme.

She has a certain vibe about her. She’s unique, as everyone is. How Saleme feels inside about herself, she wants to express outside in the way she dresses, acts, talks, and such.

This is the key to having a sense of style: knowing who you are, and projecting that self-image confidently. Not copying someone else.

Salem needs to do this. We aren’t Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Ashland, or any other place. Salem is a city like no other in the entire world.

Yet even though I’ve lived here for thirty-six years, I still have difficulty understanding who this city I know so well and love so much really is. Which is OK, because cities, like people, defy simplistic descriptions.

But Salem still needs a broad vision of what citizens want our city to be like. This should guide specific governmental decisions. Similarly, how could Saleme get dressed if she doesn’t know whether she prefers a sophisticated tailored style or laid-back casual appearance?

It’s pretty clear that our City leaders —elected officials and top administrators — aren’t big on the Vision Thing. Their focus is on what’s right in front of them, not the big picture.

So we get a mishmash of policy decisions that don’t fit together well. It’s as if Saleme was dressed by a bunch of random strangers with different tastes.

Shoes from a construction worker. Pantsuit from a banker. Jewelry from a belly dancer. There’s no way she’d end up with a look that matched her own sense of style.

Memorable cities don’t leave their image to chance. They know the importance of well-fashioned urban design.

Yet the City of Salem is prone to doing this and that without asking how “this” and “that” meld, fit together, harmonize in fulfilling a vision of what Salemians want their city to be.

A giant freeway’ish third bridge. Downtown parking meters. Tall apartments and a nursing home next to Riverfront Park. Car-free crossing to Minto-Brown Island. Removing beautiful downtown trees. Constructing a large police building on Civic Center property.

It doesn’t take an urban designer to realize these parts don’t fit together into an attractive whole.

For example, a now-defunct riverfront apartment complex was approved that would have obstructed views of the Minto-Brown pedestrian bridge’s signature arch.

Fortunately, some Salemians are trying to do something about this lack of coherence.

They remind me of my wife, who has a better sense of style than I do. I’ll be standing by the door, car keys in hand, and hear “Do you really think that shirt goes with those pants?”

Recently-organized Salem Community Vision is asking this sort of question of City officials. Check out their Facebook page. Help Salem develop an urban style that fits with our vision of ourselves.  

Malheur Refuge militants ignore reality of "welfare ranching"

Anti-government militants' takeover of buildings at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge here in Oregon has a lot of absurd aspects. 

For example, the ranchers (convicted of federal crimes) they supposedly are supporting have disavowed the militants. Seemingly most of the people in Harney County, where the refuge is located, want the outsiders to leave.

Also, the militants claim to be defending the Constitution. But the founders of this country set up a method to decide how the Constitution is to be defended. It's called the Supreme Court. Until that court rules federal ownership of land is unconstitutional, those who say otherwise have no legal leg to stand on.

So they should be raising money for court battles, rather than carrying guns around and shooting their mouths off about claiming the Malheur Wildlife Refuge for private ownership. 

My favorite absurdity, though, is how right-wing supporters of the refuge occupiers like to frame the dispute as a battle between hard-working independent cattle ranchers and an overbearing federal government.

The truth is that "welfare ranching" is alive and well in Harney County, as it is throughout the West.

Taxpayers heavily subsidize those who raise cattle on public lands. So it is ridiculous that the militants are complaining about federal control of those lands, when ranchers benefit so much from publicly financed giveaways. 

The welfare rancher label applies to all ranchers who hold permits to graze the vast public spaces of the West, both delinquent and not. It includes the Wright brothers; the ranchers in Iron and Beaver counties in Utah complaining that wild horses eat too much; and 21,000 others. 

They are all welfare ranchers subsidized by US taxpayers, and you know who are the biggest welfare ranchers of all, grazing livestock on the hundreds of millions of acres of public grass and forest land, all assisted by public subsidies paid for by US taxpayers? 

Billionaires that populate Forbes rich lists. 

The .01 percenters. They are the nation’s biggest welfare ranchers, according to numerous environmental and policy groups; and it’s time they brought some attention to themselves, and the federal grazing program they’re exploiting to waste as much as $1 billion a year of taxpayer money while causing long-term damage to one of the public’s most treasured assets. 

Treasured is the right word. Citizens say they want federal land to be protected for future generations, with livestock grazing being a much lower priority. 

Which makes sense, even economically. 

"Taking Stock of Public Lands Grazing" is an economic analysis from the 1990s, but likely the conclusions still hold true. 

Given that agriculture is the direct source of only a small fraction of total economic activity, that livestock grazing is only a fraction of total agricultural activity, that federal forage is only a fraction of the total feed required by western livestock, and that feed is only one source of the value created in livestock production, it should not be surprising if that federal forage supports only a very small fraction of total economic activity in the West.

At the time of the study, just 0.1% of income in Harney County came from economic activity due to grazing on federal lands. That's one-tenth of one percent. And only 3.1% of jobs in the county were supported by federal land grazing.

So recreation, tourism, wildlife conservation, and such likely are more important to Harney County than welfare ranching. 

Update: I just came across a typically geeky-correct post on this subject from the 538 folks: "The Armed Oregon Ranchers Who Want Free Land Are Already Getting A 93 Percent Discount." Excerpt:

According to a 2015 report by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Bureau of Land Management’s fees for grazing cattle on public land are much lower than the fees charged by private landowners, and they’ve only become cheaper in recent years.

...So getting to buy grazing rights from the Bureau of Land Management is a steal, unless, like the Bundys, you think the government is trying to charge you for what’s rightfully yours.

I've written several blog posts on this subject. Since it's a pleasure to quote myself, I'll do just that. 

Rancher thinks public land is "private"

I don't like ATVs wrecking nature. But I also don't like the attitude of "welfare ranchers" who get to graze livestock on public land for ridiculously low fees, then complain that they're not able to do just what they want on their property.

Such as killing wolves, even though these natural predators account for only a minuscule percentage of livestock losses.

Also, keeping people off of leased public land... It'd help if ranchers paid higher lease fees that truly covered the cost of both the grazing right and the environmental damage done by their livestock. Then they'd have a better argument for keeping other taxpayers off of the public land they're leasing.

Oregon cattlemen out of touch with wolf reality

Face the facts, ranchers. You're feeding at the public trough.

Government is keeping you in business if you graze cattle on federal land. So this is one reason why you need to go along with the public will regarding wolves. Which currently is saying, "Let them become part of the balance of nature again."

Ranchers wrongly believe that wolves are a much bigger threat to livestock than they really are, so they jump to an erroneous conclusion -- wolf kill! -- when they see a dead animal.

Again, ranchers need to remember that when they're using public land, they're getting a taxpayer funded benefit, just like welfare recipents do. They should feel grateful for that subsidy of their operations and not complain when reasonable restrictions are placed on their use of public property.

Ranchers overly afraid of the big bad wolf

Ranchers should chill about wolves and spend their energy worrying about other more serious problems. Like, how much longer is the public going to let them get away with welfare ranching?

Many ranchers in Oregon graze their cattle on public lands. According to the “Welfare Ranching” book, federal permittees pay only $1.35 per month to graze a cow-calf pair while the average monthly cost of grazing a cow-calf pair on private lands is $11.10. So us taxpayers should have a lot to say about what happens on public ranchland, since we’re the ones subsidizing the ranchers.

Here's all of my Strange Up Salem columns

A couple of days into the New Year, today I felt a strong desire to complete an undone resolution -- get all of my Salem Weekly Strange Up Salem columns uploaded into one freaking long blog post.

But it's "just" 4,400 words. The 49 columns total almost 25,000 words, being 500 words each. Each one is perfect bathroom reading! (depending on your toilet habits)

For each column below you'll find a title, download link, and an excerpt that gives a feel for what the column is about. 

I enjoyed digging up the columns -- OK, not literally -- and recalling what I'd said in them. They ran in Salem Weekly from May 2013 to May 2015. Now I'm focused on my Strange Up Salem Facebook page. Give it a like!

I tried to balance the personal and the political, strangeness being a quality of each.

One reason I put this compendium together is to make it easier to find the columns myself. As I made PDF files out of each one, I was surprised by how I'd already forgotten many of the subjects I wrote about. 

And I came across two bonus columns that were written, but not published in Salem Weekly. These are at the end of the list.

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I Know What You Want
Download 1 SUS column PDF

At the risk of sounding like a phone sex line... I know what you want. You’re hungry for it. You’re hot for it. You’ve gotten tantalizing glimpses of what you lust for, but it’s been frustratingly out of reach.

What I’m talking about is a stranger Salem. Meaning, a city with sights, sounds, people, places, and other delights that make us go ooh, ah, and give me more rather than ho-hum, so lame.

Strange Is Life
Download 2 SUS column PDF

Strange is life. At the core of each of us beats a marvelous heart of strangeness. We feel it pulsating in ooh! and ah! moments when a burst of mysterious beauty breaks through the mundane veil that often shrouds our consciousness.

Cities also have a heart of strangeness. Downtown. A dynamic core where people congregate to live, work, and play, celebrating the diversity of their individual strangenesses.

A Strange Creature
Download 3 SUS column PDF

Have you heard the rumor? Of a strange creature roaming the trails of Minto Brown Island Park. It’s like nothing seen before. Fortunately, it elicits smiles rather than screams.

The rumor is true, because I am that creature. A senior citizen skateboarder.

Keep Fighting, Good Citizens of Salem
Download 4 SUS column PDF

Viva la Revolution! Ongoing variety. After Americans revolted in 1776 against an external oppressor, Great Britain, we’ve continued to fight against internal threats to democracy, liberty, and the broad public interest.

So here’s a big shout-out to the citizen activists in Salem who protest wrongs that need to be righted. Without your forebears, we wouldn’t have a country.

Support New Cool Local Businesses
Download 5 SUS column PDF

So what’s the deal? Salem is just a few thousand people away from being the second biggest city in Oregon. Yet we lack many cool businesses that residents of much smaller towns are able to enjoy.

Seems to be a chicken and egg problem.

A cool business won’t expand into Salem unless it can be sure there are enough cool-appreciating people in the area who will patronize it. But Salem isn’t going to attract more cool-appreciating people so long as this town deserves its So-lame nickname.

Salemia's Twitter Frenzy
Download 6 SUS column PDF

In 2011 Salemia touched off a craze among Salem’s Twittersphere. It began when filmmaker Mike Perron tweeted, “Salemia. Opening scene: five hipsters fighting over a half smoked cigarette outside Chelsea's place...”

...Here’s some favorites from the first wave of #Salemia tweets.

• Woman choosing the right pajamas for going to Winco. At 12:30 in the afternoon.

• Visitors mistakenly believe zombie apocalypse has hit the town because shops close and streets empty before dark.

Don’t Mess With Riverfront Park
Download 7 SUS column PDF

Salemians love their Riverfront Park. They don’t want part of this “treasure” (oft-heard word at the last City Council meeting) handed over to a private developer for an access road to Pringle Square.

Watching the meeting via CCTV,  I was moved by how passionate people were about preserving the Carousel. Shrinking its parking lot and putting a road next to the area where excited children jump out of cars struck many as a really bad idea.

Mountain West Investment, Be Creative With Riverfront
Download 8 SUS column PDF

Well, Mountain West Investment made some little plans without blood-stirring magic.

They won’t be realized, mostly because taking over part of the Carousel parking lot for a private access road to apartments on the west side of the railroad tracks ran afoul of a federal funding commitment the City made to keep Riverfront Park in public recreational use for perpetuity. Forever.

Now the outline of a better plan for the Boise Cascade property is becoming clear: make all of the land west of the tracks part of Riverfront Park.

Political Games Played With Downtown Parking
Download 9 SUS column PDF

Here’s my plea to City Councillors and the Mayor: be honest and straightforward with the citizens of Salem.

If you truly favor free downtown parking, say so. Urge citizens to vote “yes” on the initiative in May 2014. If it passes, collaborate with the Stop Downtown Parking Meters folks to make this policy a success. Amazingly, no one from the City has talked to them before or after they got those 9,000 signatures.

Time For a Shake-Up at City Hall
Download 10 SUS column PDF

Now that I’ve become involved with City issues like the unjustified removal of the US Bank trees; building an unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid for $600 million Third Bridge; attempted imposition of parking meters against the wishes of downtown businesses; and secretive planning for an expensive City Hall renovation that would do away with the Peace Plaza, I realize that the City has the same problem as the County:

Viewing citizen involvement as a problem to be brushed aside, rather than as an opportunity to make better decisions.

Relish Every Taste of Strangeness
Download 11 SUS column PDF

Recently I became Medicare-eligible. That’s right, I’m freaking 65! I’m waiting to become both older and wiser. Not at all sure about the latter. But here’s some of what I’ve learned about strangeness.

Venerate it, (along with elders like me, naturally).

Looking back at your life, likely what will stand out are the weirdest, strangest, most peculiar experiences. Normalcy, routine, averageness -- those aspects tend to fade into the background.

If This Town Was a Woman Named “Saleme”
Download 12 SUS column PDF

Salem needs a vision check. In this sense: what sort of desired image does our city have of itself, and how well are we moving toward that vision?

Let’s imagine a woman named Saleme.

She has a certain vibe about her. She’s unique, as everyone is. How Saleme feels inside about herself, she wants to express outside in the way she dresses, acts, talks, and such.

Your Planet Has a Population of 1
Download 13 SUS column PDF

Be yourself. And let the world be itself.

Eight words. Which do a damn good job of summing up my lifetime of philosophizing, spiritual seeking, pondering the Meaning of It All.

The strangest thing is you, me, every individual. Inside the human cranium is an utterly private realm, unknown to anyone but the consciousness that experiences it from the inside.

Some Talking Could Save $30 Million
Download 14 SUS column PDF

After several years of mostly-secret meetings, City officials are running around town pushing a plan to build a new three-story Police Facility with expensive underground parking at the Civic Center.

Cost: $44 million. However, the City of Eugene recently remodeled an existing building into a similarly-sized police headquarters for $17 million.

Salem Community Vision, a group working to improve local government decision-making through more citizen involvement, is asking why less expensive alternatives to the $44 million Civic Center Police Facility haven’t been seriously considered.

How Salem Can Become Happy Town
Download 15 SUS column PDF

Urban design isn’t rocket science, complex and only comprehended by a few. Each of us is an expert on happiness: our own. We all can do some urban experimentalism.

What places in Salem make you smile inside? What places make you go “Ugh, I can hardly wait to get out of here”? (I say: downtown’s Court Street and Lancaster Drive, respectively.)

We Are Salemians, Not Salemites
Download 16 SUS column PDF

I have a dream. A cause. Something offering meaning to my life. A goal that proclaims, “This man fights for what is right.”

I hereby proclaim that I devote myself to…

Making “Salemian” the word used to describe the people of Salem, not the horrible, distasteful, disgusting, so-wrong “Salemite.”

From No Way! to Better Way
Download 17 SUS column PDF

Salemians who stopped last year’s poorly thought-out Boise Cascade redevelopment plan, pat yourselves on the back (or wherever you like to be patted).

Saying No Way! to a land grab of part of beloved Riverfront Park, the Carousel parking lot, for an access road to apartments that would loom over the forthcoming pedestrian bridge to Minto Brown Island — that led to a Better Way.

Explore These Salem Blogs
Download 18 SUS column PDF

I encourage you to discover a largely hidden side of Salem: its blogosphere.

Out in cyberspace, Salem bloggers urge us to wake up to what our city can become; they critique its urban design polices; they praise the creativity of Salemians. And more!

I’ve focused on blogs because they’re a Middle Way. More substantive than ephemeral Twitter and Facebook. Less stodgy than a typical steadfast web site.

Slow Down For Strangeness
Download 19 SUS column PDF

To some, calling our city “Snailem” is a putdown. But there’s a lot to like about slowing down.

This lets us sense the sweet strangeness of existence that often goes unnoticed. Marcel Proust said: “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Slowing facilitates that fresh vision.

Save Lives. Wear a Purple Sticker.
Download 20 SUS column PDF

I’m talking about the City of Salem’s $80 million plan to build a new police headquarters at the Civic Center, along with renovating City Hall and the Library.

With financing costs added, the total balloons to $128 million. Who pays? You do, if you live in Salem.

The good news is that Salem Community Vision (SCV), a group I’m involved with, has come up with a half-price alternative, $40 million, or $64 million including financing.

Build the police headquarters out in the community, not at the Civic Center.

Spice Up Salem With a Dash of Novelty
Download 21 SUS column PDF

Our town’s blandness can be viewed as a creative strength. A dash of color in a black-and-white world dazzles the eye. Imagine trying to stand out as a moviemaker in Hollywood.

As the saying goes, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Let loose your novelty powers. Salem will bow down in gratitude.

Chamber of Commerce Out to Buy Elections
Download 22 SUS column PDF

I wish the Salem Chamber had that attitude. But instead of broadly representing this area’s business community, it acts like a narrow special interest group.

Here’s the primary thing the Chamber says it cares about: “Will this measure/candidate support or hinder the ability of private sector employers to grow their businesses and create jobs?”

Nothing about quality of life, fiscal responsibility, parks and recreation, good schools, community involvement, open government, a vibrant downtown, and other issues that are vitally important to Salem citizens.

Do Global Warming Deniers Run City Hall?
Download 23 SUS column PDF

Many Salemians believe our city’s leaders are immune to the plague of anti-science craziness infecting those on the right side of the national political spectrum.

In the U.S. as a whole only 30% of conservatives believe the effects of global warming have begun to happen, compared to 74% of liberals. But Salem conservatives are Oregonians. Could they also deny the reality of climate change?

After asking the Mayor, City Manager, Public Works Director, and city councillors to answer three simple questions about global warming, I’d say “Yeah, they probably do.”

Salem’s Invasion of the Mind Snatchers
Download 24 SUS column PDF

The mind control device wasn’t visible.

Not surprising. I figured the Chamber of Commerce surgeons would be too skilled to leave any traces. They’d be the best money could buy. So after an election forum I decided to dive into the belly of the beast.

I looked Sheronne Blasi, a City Council candidate, in the eye. The question had to be asked.

“Have you gotten the Chamber of Commerce brain implant yet? You know, the one that allows Chamber officials to push a button and control how city councilors vote.”

Say Yes to All of Life
Download 25 SUS column PDF

“Yes, Yes, Yes.” I enjoy seeing these words colorfully emblazoned on banners at the marvelous Oregon Country Fair in Veneta (a must-go July experience for lovers of alternative reality).

This is the heart of strangeness, the vitalizing power that makes life into passionate ooh’s and ah’s rather than listless oh yeah’s and so what’s.

Yes. This is. We are. It barely matters what the “is” and “are” consist of.

Congrats, Crazy Council Candidates
Download 26 SUS column PDF

I admire people who do crazy things. Not riding a motorcycle at 100 mph drunk out of your mind sort of craziness. That’s just stupid.

I’m talking about the smart crazy wonderfully manifested by five city council candidates in the recent primary election: Tom Andersen, Bradd Swank, Scott Bassett, Xue Lor, and Christopher Proudfoot.

Only Andersen won. But all of these guys are winners of A Fine Madness award. Dudes, what you did was freaking crazy!

My Freaking Genius Idea
Download 27 SUS column PDF

It’s time to invite The Daily Show to Salem. I’m a big fan of their special reports, which often feature a correspondent venturing to a town and interviewing residents about some off-beat goings-on.

Hey, Jon Stewart and company! This is Salem, Oregon calling. We’ve got plenty of weird stuff happening at City Hall. It’s tragicomic to those of us living here, but Comedy Central viewers would focus on the funny side.

I’ve got ideas for some sketches.

These just scratch the surface of the absurdities that our city officials — Mayor Peterson, City Manager Norris, Public Works Director Fernandez, and others — have been inflicting upon Salemians.

Let’s Shop in Salem Catalog of Dreams
Download 28 SUS column PDF

Dreams are free. And fun.

So let’s bust out of the mind-prison that prevents Salemians from freely envisioning how our city could be, breaking the bars of “never could happen,” “costs too much,” “wouldn’t fly politically.”

John Gear, local attorney and LoveSalem blogger, has called for a Salem Catalog of Dreams. Great notion.

Four Recipes for Instant Strangeness
Download 29 SUS column PDF

It’s summer. Living is easy. Who wants to work hard at making Salem stranger? Instead of laboring to cook up a stew of strangeness, here’s four ways of making our town seem tastier instantly.

(1) Observe like an alien... (2) Marvel at what life has wrought... (3) Imagine this is your last day... (4) Get out of your mind.

Embrace Downtown Food Carts
Download 30 SUS column PDF

Food carts are a big success in Portland, drawing national acclaim from Bon Appétit magazine and CNN. So what’s not to like about having a vibrant food cart scene everywhere in Salem, including downtown?

Nothing. But to some people here change is scary even when it is for the better. Diversity, creativity, more eating options… Eek!

At the July 14 city council meeting I was surprised to hear several councilors and restaurant owners talk about their Big Fear that people would flock to a downtown food cart pod and — oh no, the horror — enjoy eating there!

Up to the Present, Salem
Download 31 SUS column PDF

Salem needs an anti-time machine that will let us experience what’s happening now, not the past or future.

Here’s a mantra Salem’s Mayor, City Manager, councilors, and other city officials should repeat: “Up to the present, 2014 or bust.”

...Unfortunately, living in Salem feels like being stuck in quicksand while watching everyone around you run happily by. This town makes a habit of being the last to get the memo about where the world is heading.

Can We All Get Along?
Download 32 SUS column PDF

Great question, Rodney King. Police brutality isn’t the same as heated debates over how to handle downtown parking, but the unnecessary fighting over this issue also is bothersome.

At its last meeting the City Council initiated the return of a 3-hour time limit even though discussion of downtown parking was billed as “informational” on the agenda, with no action expected.

Yet without advance notice a motion suddenly appeared and was quickly passed unanimously. This violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Oregon’s public meetings law, which requires “that decisions of governing bodies be arrived at openly.”

Salem Sunday Streets — Every Day!
Download 33 SUS column PDF

Imagine this town with fewer cars and more bikes. People strolling around a fun-filled city center. Food carts, outdoor yoga, captivating music. Salemians able to safely skateboard and bicycle downtown.

If you were at the recent Salem Sunday Streets event, you didn’t have to imagine. It was real! If you weren’t there, make sure you don’t miss the next one.

When Life Asks You to Dance, Say Yes
Download 34 SUS column PDF

“Come on, let’s dance.”

An attractive young woman was standing in front of me, holding out her hand. I was sitting next to my wife, Laurel, taking a break from a ballroom practice night at the RJ Dance Studio.

Those four unexpected words provoked an intense reaction.

People talk about mixed feelings. My mind and gut were way beyond that. During the few seconds it took me to reply, my emotions were whirling at warp speed in a turbo-charged Dilemma Blender.

A Strange Reason to Legalize Marijuana
Download 35 SUS column PDF

As biologist Edward O. Wilson puts it in his new book, “The self, despite the illusion of its independence created in the scenarios, is part of the anatomy and physiology of the body.”

Mind-blowing, right?

Scientifically obvious, yet shocking to our intuitive sense of ourselves as immaterial self or soul. I am brain-meat that has evolved the capacity to consider itself, if not divine, largely aloof from physicality.

Which is my philosophical neuroscientific reason for voting “Yes” on Measure 91, Oregon’s marijuana legalization initiative.

Rage Against The Machine
Download 36 SUS column PDF

I woke up in the middle of the night with a “Da Vinci Code” insight.

In a flash I understood it all, the ugly reality hidden behind this town’s benign facade, the conspiracy keeping the curtains closed on a truth-revealing window.

The Machine! It was controlling everything!

I’d had glimpses of this monster before. It took some deep sleep unconscious cognizing for my brain to form a coherent picture of how this town is in the grip of difficult-to-discern malevolent forces.

My Dysfunctional Relationship With Salem
Download 37 SUS column PDF

After 37 years of living in or near Salem, I seem to be settling into a pleasantly dysfunctional relationship with this town. Like Sharon Stone’s character in “Basic Instinct,” Salem allures me. Even when she is out to destroy me.

Salem and I, we’re becoming like those charming elderly couples who gripe at each other constantly.

“I would have been better off never getting married to this old coot. Should have gotten hooked to my high school boyfriend and saved myself from fifty years of grief.”

Then they smile, hug, kiss with wrinkled lips. These lovers always will be together. Bitching and complaining about their partner’s faults all the way. 

Don’t Be Tricked by the Statesman Journal
Download 38 SUS column PDF

I no longer trust our so-called “community newspaper.”

I’ve been a subscriber since 1977. Most of that time, I believed the Statesman Journal cared about reporting local news truthfully, fairly, completely.

No longer. Along with many others, I now see the paper as being one of the biggest obstacles to improving Salem. Without a well-informed citizenry, a town is easily hijacked by special interests.

The Power of “I Like It”
Download 39 SUS column PDF

Then my grandmother said, “I like it.” Writing those three words just unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. I knew they meant a lot to me. Until now I didn’t know how much.

Everything changed with that “I like it.” I didn’t care if nobody else liked my poem. I did. My grandmother did. Two is a crowd, but one is a lonely number.

We need people to affirm our strangeness. We humans are social creatures. From birth we’re wired to reach out and enjoy touching others, while they touch us.

Exposed! Salem’s Delicious Secret
Download 40 SUS column PDF

Salem has a secret. A hidden identity. A persona that will shock many who believe they know her well. Let’s rip off the disguise and reveal the true nature of our town.

Liberal.

Facts don’t lie. A fellow political junkie sent me analyses by ward, city, county, and state for several recent elections. The clear conclusion: Salem leans decidedly left.

Salem Fiddles While the Planet Burns
Download 41 SUS column PDF

So while both the Earth and the western United States experienced record warmth in 2014; while ski resorts in Oregon face steadily declining snowpacks as hotter air causes more precipitation to fall as rain; while drought becomes an ever-increasing threat to farmland and forests…

Salem’s clueless politicians and corporate executives go on their merry Screw the Planet way.

Pushing an unneeded billion dollar Third Bridge that would encourage more carbon-emitting autocentric sprawl. Cutting down precious trees for parking lots and “just because we want to.” Stifling adequate mass transit bus service. Pouring many millions into highway projects while ignoring the need for safe bike lanes, sidewalks, and pedestrian crossings.

Time to Make Salem a Bike-Friendly Town
Download 42 SUS column PDF

When it comes to riding a bicycle in Salem, most people are like me: desirous of doing this, while worried about how dangerous it is.

After all, this town has been designed to bow down before the Altar of  Vehicular Traffic Flow.

Making it safe and easy for bicyclists and walkers to get around has been an afterthought, getting occasional lip service in transportation plans without much follow-through commitment from City of Salem officials.

Angela Obery seeks to change things.

Salem Needs a Visionary City Manager
Download 43 SUS column PDF

So… how enthused are you about what the folks at City Hall have done for Salem lately?

Anything come to mind? Something that made you think, “Wow, this town is going to be so much better now! Thank you, Mayor, City Council, and City Manager.”

Problem is, there’s not much wow-inducing creativity coming from our leaders. It’s difficult to even discern what their over-arching vision for Salem is.

Because they don’t have one.

Stay Weird. Stay Different.
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Graham Moore’s acceptance speech at the 2015 Academy Awards touched me. The loud applause that greeted his words showed I wasn’t alone. He said:

“When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. And now I’m standing here, and so I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she’s weird, or she's different, or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different.”

When I was about the same age, I didn’t feel like killing myself. Rather, when I drove by the liquor store in my small rural town, I thought about throwing a rock through its window.

Mayor, Say Yes to Intoxication
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Get wasted more. Scheme less.

Salem would be much better off if our city officials — Mayor, City Manager, city councilors — took this advice.

I’ve got scholarly support for it. Edward Slingerland is an expert in Chinese thought and cognitive science.

In his book, “Trying Not to Try,” Slingerland extols intoxicants, which historically have been used by humans as social lubricants.

When wasted, people are naturally spontaneous. In modern parlance, real. Alcohol, cannabis, and such loosen the cognitive control needed for lying or faking. 

Mayor to Citizens: Shut Up About Trees
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The Mayor asked whether we want to be a community that encourages the public to get involved in decisions that affect people, like whether there is a good reason for certain trees on public property to be removed.

Most Salemians would answer, absolutely!

But Peterson desires less, rather than more, citizen involvement. “I want less live theatre on these policy issues,” she said.

Well, this explains a lot. If you’ve ever felt like top City officials don’t care about what you think, they’re just following their Mayor’s lead.

Time to Take Back this Town
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Readers, I’ve enjoyed writing this column for the past two years. But Salem Weekly is moving in a new direction, so this will be my last Strange Up Salem offering.

... At first it was tough for me to figure out what I should say in this final column. I felt pressure, like I was dying and the people around my bedside wanted to hear some marvelously profound Last Words.

Then I realized, it’s simple, just be real. Don’t try to be anyone other than who you truly are; don’t try to say anything other than how you really feel.

Authenticity. Ah, a theme.

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A FEW EXTRAS: 
COLUMNS I WROTE, BUT WEREN'T PUBLISHED IN SALEM WEEKLY

This was my first try at a Last Column. I ended up being more political in my final column, because that's what felt right.

Be a Warrior of Strangeness
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Picture yourself as a Warrior of Strangeness. Bold. Confident. Fearless.

You are, as a recruitment saying used to put it, an Army of One. Nothing else in the history of the universe has ever manifested your qualities: mind, body, desires, talents, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses.

Your moment-by-moment mission, because the cosmos demands this of every unique creature, is to fully express who you are.

Yet we worry, “Oh, but I can’t. If other people saw me as I truly am, as I inwardly know myself to be, they’d think I’m really strange. I need to keep myself under wraps in order to fit in.”

And this column was one of my first Strange Up Salem writings -- when I wrote a few sample columns for Salem Weekly a year or two before we reached an agreement for me to be a regular contributor to the alternative paper.

Trader Joe’s Arrival Delayed Due to Lack of Strange
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Thus if we Strange Up Salem, we’re engaging in economic development. Along with making this town more creative, fun, dynamic, and appealing.

Consider Trader Joe’s. My wife and I love to shop at their stores. Whenever we’d go to a Trader Joe’s in Portland or Eugene we’d ask, “Any plans to open a store in Salem?”

The reply always was negative or non-committal. Then our hopes were further crushed when, in July 2009, Trader Joe’s announced it was opening a store in Corvallis.

Freaking Corvallis! Amazing. Salem was a city of 155,000 people; Corvallis had 55,000. As the name of a Salem Weekly feature puts it, OMG! WTF?

How two old folks spent New Years Eve 2016

Youngsters, maybe you've been wondering what New Year's Eve will be like when you reach the ancient age of 67. 

Well, wonder no more. I'm exactly that age!

So I'm perfectly qualified to reveal fascinating details about the Not-so-Secret Lives of Senior Citizens on the evening of December 31. Based on a sample of two -- me and my wife.

This year, like most years, we didn't sit on our butts at home. No, indeedy. Far from it. 

First we sat on our butts in our Chevy Volt as we drove to the 6 pm showing of "Youth" at Salem Cinema. After that, we sat on our butts in the movie theatre, followed by a repeat of the car butt-sitting when we went home, after which we sat on our butts in front of our television set.

Exciting evening! See what you have to look forward to!

Standing in line to buy our tickets, I heard a string of "two senior citizens for Youth" from the people ahead of us. That made us feel good. We were with our tribe -- old folks who spend New Year's Eve in a movie theatre.

Chivalrous guy that I am, Laurel stayed in the auditorium while I braved the snack bar line.

My gray-haired compatriots were civil enough, but I sensed an undercurrent of concern as the artisanal'ish popcorn machine kept running out under the rush of orders from the Hot to Party moviegoers. 

I had plenty of time in line to ponder how wild I wanted to get this New Year's Eve.

I was torn between the small and medium boxes on display next to the popcorn popper. My desire to lose some weight spoke "small," but the go-crazy side of me screamed "medium." Which is what I heard myself saying when I reached the front of the line.

Laurel wanted some coffee. She usually drinks de-caf after 5 pm. I decided she also needed to let go and party! on this New Year's Eve. I told the Salem Cinema snack bar person, "A large coffee, half regular, half de-caf."

We'd seen snippets of the Youth movie on a 60 Minutes segment featuring Michael Caine, who stars in the film. The clips were mostly on the light and cheerful side.

I especially liked a scene where Caine, who plays a retired composer/conductor, and his movie-making friend, played by Harvey Keitel, enjoy the company of a nude Miss Universe in their hotel's pool. (The front of her was equally appealing in the movie itself.)

However, Youth turned out to be one of those "art" films with a blend of dark and light aspects.

We enjoyed the movie. It just wasn't exactly a paean to the joys of growing old -- aside from the joy of old men who get to see Miss Universe up close and personal without her clothes on, which would be a real delight, yet not one I'm likely to experience.

So we spent most of the drive home talking about the Fellini-like aspects of the film. Why did X say and do this? What was the point of Y? And... is life really as pointless as key Youth characters make it out to be?

Fun time! Who needs bubbly champagne and frothy chit-chat on New Year's Eve when you can discuss the meaninglessness of human existence?

Feeling a need to lighten up, I headed for a hot bath and glass of wine when we got home, while Laurel fired up the TV and started watching a recorded Nature program.

By the time I got out of the tub, our wild-and-crazy New Year's Eve had shifted to viewing a motherless baby sloth being taught how to climb trees by a woman who hoped to reintroduce the animal to the wild. I found this mildly interesting. Listening to the Nature show while dozing on our couch... perfect.

When it was over, I managed to wake up and commandeer the remote control from Laurel, restoring the natural Tao-given order of things where the Man of the House changes channels and adjusts the volume.

Voyeuristic party animals that we are, I'd set up each of the main New Year's Eve programs to record. So we started off watching New Year's Rockin' Eve, switched to Pitbull's New Year's Revolution, and ended up with New Year's Eve With Carson Daly.

Basically these shows allowed us to experience what young people do on New Year's Eve, but without having to actually associate with them.

We saw young people wearing funny hats; we saw young people dancing to music we don't like; we saw young people talking about what a great year 2016 will be (apparently failing to realize that life is pointless and it's all downhill after birth). 

When the clock on TV reached five seconds to midnight, I summoned up my senior citizen energy. Swinging my feet off of the couch, I managed to stand up and lean over the recliner where Laurel watches television. 

We kissed. Briefly. I tried to get our dog interested in a three-way (kiss), but ZuZu's mind was set on going downstairs to her futon and eating the biscuits she gets as a bedtime snack. So we all got ready for bed.

Before 1 am, I was asleep, having celebrated another New Year's Eve in our usual old folks way: movie, television watching at home, struggling to stay awake until midnight, a kiss to welcome 2016.

Works for us. Your results may differ. Especially if you're under 40. But... just wait. Your tastes may change.