Salem Political Snark

Salem City Club debate on $82 million police facility bond measure

Here's a big question about the September 23 City Club debate on Measure 24-399, the $82 million police facility bond measure on Salem's November ballot.

Where will it rank among history's Great Debates? How will it compare to Lincoln versus Douglas, Huxley versus Wilberforce, Augustine vs. Pelagius? 

Since I'm one of the debaters -- taking the NO side on Measure 24-399 -- I can confidently say that this City Club interchange between me and T.J. Sullivan will be incomparable. 

Meaning, there's no way it can be compared to the great debates I mentioned.  

But it's going to be highly interesting and, hopefully, entertaining. Sullivan and I each have good arguments to make about whether a YES or NO vote on the bond measure is the best way to go. I'm looking forward to presenting my arguments for why the $82 million police facility plan deserves to be voted down so a better plan can be brought forward.

Click on the Salem Can Do Better link below for specific reasons:

Today the Salem City Club sent out an e-bulletin about the police facility bond measure debate. It has info about both the September 16 and 23 City Club events, so scroll down that link to learn about the bond measure debate. I'll share the info below via three screenshots.

Click here if you want to attend the debate. 

City of Salem's Creekside crony capitalism clown show continues

Whenever I think the Creekside Golf Course water rate giveaway attempt, a.k.a. IrriGate, can't get any sleazier and more ridiculous, it does!

Thanks to some good reporting by Tracy Loew in the Statesman Journal, we've learned "Creekside water deal off again." For those who haven't been closely following this Crony Capitalism Clown Show, here's a recap of the episodes to date, as told through my blog posts:

Scene 1: The Water-Wastewater Task Force (appropriate acronym, WTF) gives the Creekside Golf Course a requested $60,000 rate cut on its irrigation bill after the golf course owners say that otherwise they'll go out of business and 50 jobs will be lost. To make it look less like a sweetheart deal for just the golf course, the Task Force decides to cut the rate for all irrigators, losing $600,000. Ordinary water users will have their rates raised to make up the $600,000.

Scene 2: Salem Political Snark, a.k.a. Me, points out that Larry Tokarski, one of the two owners of the Creekside Golf Course, is linked to a major contribution to Chuck Bennett's campaign fund. Mayor-elect Bennett is a member of the WTF Task Force and, not at all shockingly, supports the giveaway to Tokarski's golf course.

Scene 3: A fellow civic activist shares information with me that shows City Councilor Steve McCoid had a cozy "pre-meeting" with Public Works Director Peter Fernandez (who the Task Force advises) where he suggested the $600,000 giveaway to all irrigators so Creekside could get its $60,000 cut. McCoid is a Creekside resident and golf course member, which raises ethical concerns.

Scene 4: The water rate giveaway to irrigators, and concomitant rate increase to other water users, is affirmed by the WTF Task Force. City Councilor/Mayor-elect Bennett now is spinning the Creekside rate decrease as necessary to make sure the golf course remains a basin for stormwater. (Next, I can imagine Bennett claiming that keeping the golf course open is important to keep Salem's gopher population thriving.)

Scene 5: I share a couple of letters to the editor in the Statesman Journal from people who wonder why their water bill should increase so Creekside members can continue to play golf, calling this a "sweetheart deal that benefits a well-connected real estate developer at the expense of the rest of the city."

Scene 6: Someone who listened to the audio tapes of the Water-Wastewater Task Force meetings points out to me that soon-to-be-gone City Councilor Warren Bednarz (defeated in the May election by Sally Cook, thankfully) twice admitted that he owned commercial irrigated property which would benefit from the 30% water rate reduction he voted "Yes" on. 

Which brings us to the latest episode of the Creekside Clown Show. Here's the September 8 Statesman Journal story, with my comments in red italics. 

A city water advisory committee has again backed off a deal cutting water rates for irrigators, including for the troubled Creekside Golf Course.

Believe me, the WTF Task Force wouldn't have done this if their crony capitalism hadn't come to light through media reports. Just imagine all the other crap that's going on in City Hall that we DON'T know about.

At the urging of city councilor Chuck Bennett, the committee punted the issue to the Salem City Council.

“It is going to be a political decision,” said Bennett, who also sits on the committee. “This gives the council a cleaner opportunity to address it in a political fashion.”

Freaking unbelievable. Mayor-elect Bennett admits that a water rate reduction for a golf course owned by one of Salem's largest special interest contributors to right-wing candidates is a "political decision." Maybe it'd be simpler if the Chamber of Commerce's Political Action Committee was given an electronic device where they could cast votes directly at City Council meetings. 

City councilor Steve McCoid proposed the irrigator rate cut in response to Creekside’s request for rate relief. McCoid is not on the water advisory committee but is a Creekside Golf Club member.

Conflict of interest! McCoid lives in the Creekside development. His home value will be greater if the golf course remains in business.

Golf course owners said that without city help they would close the business and develop the property, eliminating about 50 jobs and important wetland areas. But Public Works Director Peter Fernandez argued that it was not fair to cut a deal for one customer.

Sure, but how is it more fair that a deal is cut for all 670 irrigators? A special deal just for Creekside only would have cost $60,000. After his "pre-meeting" with Councilor McCoid, Fernandez went along with an extra-special deal for ALL irrigators that would cost other water users $600,000.

The proposal would reduce rates for all 670 irrigators, from $4.24 to $3.03 per unit (748 gallons).

Residential rates would be raised an average of 65 cents per month to make up lost revenue. It would save Creekside about $60,000 per year.

The committee first approved the deal on July 14.

Two weeks later it reversed its decision after Creekside owners balked, saying other irrigators shouldn’t get the same deal and demanding a bigger discount.

At its Aug. 11 meeting, the committee reinstated the decision after golf course owners said further calculations showed the deal actually would help keep the course open.

Give me a break. We're supposed to believe that a golf course with 50 employees is going to be kept in business because of a $60,000 water rate reduction? Creekside Golf Course says it is reducing its job force. So almost certainly they've already saved more than $60,000. Tokarski and Co. is just looking for an extra taxpayer giveaway.

On Thursday, the committee characterized those as “preliminary” votes.

Of course the WTF Task Force did. Thanks to reporter Tracy Loew, citizens learned about the Crony Capitalism they were trying to push through. After getting caught, naturally they're going to try to deny that they were serious.

Its rate recommendation to the city council now does not include the irrigator rate cut, although the cut will be presented as a separate option for the council to consider.

The committee based its latest decision partly on an hour-long presentation by Fernandez showing that 16 other irrigators use more water than Creekside.

“We have a whole group of folks here who I don’t think know what this does for them,” Bennett said.

Well, Chuck Bennett and Peter Fernandez don't know that actually the Creekside Golf Course is the #1 irrigator in Salem. So says a revised chart that was released today. Here's a Salem Community Vision Facebook page image:

Also, Mayor-elect Bennett is talking about the 670 irrigators, apparently. Bennett must not care that the hugely greater number of ordinary water users, which includes low-income people who are having trouble makings ends meet, would have their water bill raised to benefit those irrigators under the Bennett-McCoid-Fernandez water rate giveaway plan.

Fernandez said the Salem-Keizer School District is the city’s largest irrigator, using 10 times as much water than Creekside, and as such would be the largest beneficiary of the rate cut.

More conflict of interest! Chuck Bennett is a lobbyist for the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators. Mayor-elect Bennett shouldn't be pushing for a water rate reduction for the Salem-Keizer School District. 

“There’s been misinformation in the paper. Part of it is because everybody thinks Creekside gets all the benefit,” club member Kent Hunsaker told the committee. “We are a small part of that benefit.”

But Creekside is the reason an irrigator water rate reduction was proposed. That's a fact. The only reason Creekside is now a "small part " of the reduction is because the WTF Task Force was afraid giving a rate reduction only to the Creekside Golf Course would look like the special interest deal that it actually is.

But later Thursday, in response to the Statesman Journal’s questions about the validity of the calculations, city officials said the data is incorrect and the report will be rerun. It was not finished at press time.

Now it is! Fernandez and Bennett were wrong. Way wrong. I've been told that Creekside is the #1 irrigator. Here's Chuck Bennett's lame excuse for Fernandez's miscalculation, which includes one of Mayor-elect Bennett's insults directed at my Salem Community Vision friends, Susann Kaltwasser, Carole Smith, and Geoff James. 

Also at the meeting, the committee approved general rate increases. In 2017, water base rates will increase 2 percent, wastewater rates will increase 2.5 percent, and stormwater rates will go up 3 percent.

In 2018, all three rates will increase 3 percent.

Salem Mayor Anna Peterson attended the meeting but did not speak.

I bet she had her fussy face on, though! Peterson only has a few more months in office to get all of her Crony Capitalism/Special Interest/Chamber of Commerce-Suck Up's done.

The city council has scheduled a public hearing on the annual water rate proposal for its Oct. 10 meeting. Fernandez said it may schedule a separate hearing on the irrigator rate cut.

FUN! I can hardly wait to learn how many citizens other than Creekside members are eager to have their water bill increased to pay to keep the Creekside Golf Course open. (My best guess: none.)

An anti-science candidate shouldn't be president. Or, a Salem elected official.

Facts matter. Objective reality is too precious to waste. Personal opinions need to be based on impersonal knowledge of how the world really is.

I hold those truths to be self-evident. 

So did my deeply conservative mother, an avid Republican who also was a big lover of science. I was raised reading both National Review and Scientific American. My mother was as thrilled with discoveries in particle physics and genetics as she was when Ronald Reagan became governor of California (where I grew up).

That was then, when "conservative" and "science-loving" were totally compatible words. Today, the editors of Scientific American felt the need to write an editorial called Donald Trump's Lack of Respect for Science is Alarming.

Four years ago in these pages, writer Shawn Otto warned our readers of the danger of a growing antiscience current in American politics. “By turning public opinion away from the antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders,” Otto wrote, “the new science denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced before.”

Otto wrote those words in the heat of a presidential election race that now seems quaint by comparison to the one the nation now finds itself in. As if to prove his point, one of the two major party candidates for the highest office in the land has repeatedly and resoundingly demonstrated a disregard, if not outright contempt, for science. Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality.

...When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.

Now, I readily admit that progressives also can run afoul of scientific reasoning.

But even though some of my fellow liberals have questionable opinions about the safety of GMOs or the value of getting a flu shot, their lack of scientific understanding pales before the many Republicans who doubt the reality of global warming, evolution, and Big Bang cosmology.

This incursion of science-denialism into mainstream politics is highly dangerous. It strikes at the heart of how our nation's founders viewed American democracy: as an Empire of Reason. I wrote about this in "Naturalism needs to rule public policy debates."

What is the common ground on which we all can stand during our debates and discussions about what is best for us?

What evidence and facts can be brought into attempts to reason our way to some sort of consensus on complex controversial issues?

The answer to both questions is Nature and Nature’s Laws. Everybody lives in the same natural world. We all breathe the same air, drink the same water, walk on the same Earth, gaze into the same sky.

Yes, humans also hold a wide variety of ideas about what, if anything, might lie beyond the physicality of this universe.

But those hypothesized supernatural conceptions divide us, while the actuality of science, and the understanding that flows from reasoned consideration of what is known to be real — that unites us.

Such was the unparalleled vision of our nation’s founders.

It'd be nice if anti-science Trumpism was limited to the national political stage. Unfortunately, it also manifests right here in Salem -- though usually not as obviously, given the desire of Oregon conservative politicians to disguise their skepticism about science in this left-leaning state.

I've asked Salem's Mayor, city councilors, and other leaders in this town to reveal how they view global warming. Disturbingly, mostly only liberals responded. Almost all of the conservatives and corporate/Chamber of Commerce folks hid behind a No Response.

In the blog post where I shared the results, I said:

Almost certainly, some of the non-respondents are global warming deniers in one form or another. However, I suspect they're reluctant to admit this in a state and city where most citizens are strong defenders of protecting the environment. And there is no bigger threat to the habitability of our one and only Earth than global warming. 

So we here in Salem are fortunate to not have a blatant science-denier like Donald Trump in control of City government. But almost certainly we've got closeted anti-science types in charge of City Hall. 

Temporarily. In May 2018 Salem will have a chance to elect a new Mayor and four city councilors. Hopefully this will bring some fresh science-loving people into power.

Councilor Warren Bednarz voted himself a 30% irrigation rate reduction. Twice.

Here's another twist in the Creekside Golf Course water rate reduction scandal: City Councilor Warren Bednarz, a member of the City of Salem Water-Wastewater Task Force, repeatedly voted to give himself a 30% reduction on his irrigation bill.

Now, if you're thinking, Aren't elected officials supposed to recuse themselves from votes that would give them a private financial benefit?, congratulations. That's the correct thought. 

But someone who listened to recordings of the Water-Wastewater Task Force meetings has learned that not once, but twice, Bednarz admitted that he owned commercial irrigated property which would benefit from the 30% rate reduction he voted "Yes" on.

At the July 14 meeting, Councilor Bednarz admitted that he had a conflict of interest:

First off, before the meeting began I mentioned that I have two meters that are “irrigation only” so I am least a little privy to the five months, four months, three months a year, turn it off.

Yet later in that meeting Bednarz voted for a recommendation that would reduce the water rate for all irrigators by about 30%. Amazingly, apparently no one else on the Task Force thought it was unseemly for Councilor Bednarz to be voting for a water rate reduction that would personally benefit him.

Well, more than unseemly, since state law requires that a public official declare a conflict of interest on an issue that would give the official a "private pecuniary [monetary] benefit." Then the official isn't supposed to vote on that issue.

But Bednarz didn't declare a conflict of interest, and he did vote to recommend the 30% irrigator rate reduction. 

At the Task Force's next meeting on July 28, Bednarz again spoke about how he is one of 670 irrigators, as is the Creekside Golf Club. Referring to Peter Fernandez, the City of Salem Public Works Director, Bednarz said:

Peter, I am two of those 670 meters. I have two of them. I’m not looking for a rate reduction. There’s no reason. Two or three hundred a month isn’t going to kill me. So I still think that a classification based on something is a way that we can get around this policy-wise.

Once again, Bednarz didn't declare a conflict of interest. This time he voted against the irrigator rate reduction.

A few weeks later, though, on August 11, my source tells me that Councilor Bednarz seemingly voted with all of the other members of the Task Force (except Councilor Brad Nanke, who voted "no")  to support the 30% rate reduction for irrigators. This is what the audiotape of the August 11 shows; no written minutes of the meeting are available yet.

Earlier this year Bednarz was hit with two ethics complaints for the very same thing: failing to declare a conflict of interest on issues that would benefit members of his family. So it appears that Councilor Bednarz still feels that he is above the law in this regard.

Fortunately for the citizens of Salem, last May Bednarz was soundly defeated by challenger Sally Cook in his City Council re-election bid. 

Here's my previous posts about the sleazy Creekside Golf Course goings-on:

Crony capitalism on display in Creekside Golf Course water rate giveaway

Follow the money: Creekside Golf Course "IrriGate" scandal

More disturbing revelations about Creekside Golf Course water scandal

Water rate giveaway to Creekside Golf Course affirmed by City of Salem committee