About 20 of us, citizens and consultants, had a spirited 90-minute discussion in the Library's Anderson Room about downtown trees and other vegetation, though the discussion also included broader Streetscape topics.
Here's 30 great ideas generated by the Focus Group:
(1) Eliminate a lane of traffic on some downtown streets with three or four lanes so there's more room for trees and people on the sidewalks.
(2) Define the personality of both downtown and the entire city, then make Streetscape reflect that personality.
(3) Come up with a unified, repetitive, simple Streetscape design.
(4) Trees need room to grow. Give them that space.
(5) Don't forget habitat for songbirds and butterflies. Pigeons aren't enough wildlife for downtown.
(6) Beauty lies in vegetative diversity, not a monoculture of similar trees.
(7) Add evergreens to downtown, both conifers and broadleaf trees, for greenness after deciduous leaves drop.
(8) Create a City culture where trees are honored, and aren't cut down for no good reason like the U.S. Bank trees on State Stree were.
(9) Allow trees to grow large and gorgeous so they create a Wow! when viewed, not just a ho-hum OK.
(10) The downtown area needs more water walkways. Let's use our creeks and river to better advantage.
(11) Have a living Christmas tree on the Chemeketa Parkade to draw people into downtown rather than having a Christmas tree at Riverfront Park.
(12) Convert the top level of the Chemeketa Parkade into a a green space that can host the Saturday Market. Great views!
(13) Use some parking spaces for mini-parklets where people can sit and congregate.
(14) Focus on native plants. Bring local agriculture into downtown: filberts, grape vines, for example.
(15) Put business signs at street/eye level, not high up on buildings where they can be obscured by tree branches.
(16) Focus on people, not cars. No car has ever shopped at a downtown business, just people.
(17) Have some city-owned chairs that people can move around the downtown area for flexible seating.
(18) Have good pedestrian lighting everywhere. And have lights in trees for much of the year, not just around Christmas.
(19) A lot more awnings would be awesome. Make them wide and colorful. Think Paris! They'd shelter downtown visitors from both rain and sun.
(20) With GPS and smart phones, business signs aren't needed as much for way-finding. So make them less obtrusive and more attractive. Also, ditch the "sandwich signs" on the sidewalk, since they don't look good and take up valuable space.
(21) Include maintenance of trees, hanging baskets, and such in every step of the Streetscape design. Have drip systems for watering.
(22) State and Court streets should connect nicely to Riverfront Park, on one end, and to Willamette University and the Capitol, on the other end.
(23) Involve downtown business owners in the Streetscape project.
(24) Have built-in underground reservoirs for watering.
(25) Have street level color in vegetation.
(26) Downtown should have water features to drown out traffic noise and relax people.
(27) Have groves of trees and seating at the corners of blocks where they will be most visible.
(28) Use vegetation and planters to create a barrier between sidewalk seating and traffic. People will be looking at greenery, not vehicles speeding by.
(29) Give up some parking for great design, and people will flock to downtown -- like they do to 21st and 23rd streets in northwest Portland.
Last Monday the Salem City Council voted 7-2 to form a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District that's supposedly needed to pay for a missing north and south section, plus a bridge over Jory Creek.
The mystery is why Tokarski never was required to pay for that part of the road, plus the bridge over Jory Creek. He started construction of these improvements in 2007, as documented in a staff report for the June 26, 2017 City Council meeting.
Two photos show what was started by Tokarski, then stopped. (click to enlarge)
I asked some questions of Dan Atchison, the City of Salem attorney. He graciously gave me a detailed response, which I've shared below. But after reading what Atchison wrote, I still was left with this post's title question, "Why did Larry Tokarski start, then stop, construction of Lone Oak Road?"
I understand the reasons given by Atchison why Tokarski supposedly wasn't required to make the Lone Oak Road improvements. But the fact that he started to make them sure supports an assumption that Tokarski knew he had an obligation to build the bridge and road.
So why didn't City officials force Tokarski to restart construction rather than letting him proceed with further Creekside development? I hope this gets answered, because it is a $7.5 million question -- the cost to build the bridge over Jory Creek and the northern section of Lone Oak Road.
Here's my response to Dan Atchison, followed by his message that sparked my response.
MY RESPONSE:
Dan, as noted in a previous reply, I appreciate your detailed response to my questions. Having pondered the last City Council meeting where the Lone Oak Road issue was discussed, along with associated documents, I’m still wondering about a few things.
I’ve heard that there was some sort of agreement between the City and Tokarski around 2003 to build the bridge and northern missing portion of Lone Oak Road (year may be not be exact). This has a ring of truth to it, since Tokarski began work on the bridge and road in 2007. So notwithstanding the arguments you made below, in 2007 Tokarski obviously believed that he was required to build the Jory Creek bridge and missing northern section of Lone Oak Road, or he wouldn’t have started to construct these facilities.
Do you know what caused Tokarski to do this? I’m assuming that he didn’t begin that construction work out of the goodness of his heart. And several comments from Peter Fernandez and others indicated that Tokarski had an obligation to build the bridge and road, but stopped work on them and never started that work again. I understand the arguments you made that Creekside was built in phases, and supposedly none of the phases required him to build the bridge and road. However, the fact that Tokarski started to do this seems to me to be persuasive evidence that he actually was obligated to do what he started to do.
I’d be interested in any thoughts you have about this.
— Brian
DAN ATCHISON'S MESSAGE:
Mr. Hines:
A few points of clarification on the MOU. First, I misspoke on Monday when I referred to the 2016 LUBA appeal as leading to the MOU, instead it was the 2015 LUBA appeal, as discussed below. Second, the City did not agree to construct or pay for the bridge in the MOU. As set forth in that document, City staff committed to recommending to Council that the project be included in the City’s capital improvement plan (CIP) up to $750,000.
Council later adopted that recommendation, and the project is in the CIP today. In reality the MOU did not bind the City to do anything, or pay any money, that it was not already obligated to do if and when the project was constructed. The City was not an active participant in the 2015 LUBA appeal. The developer and the HOA, who intervened in the appeal, would be a better source on the background for that issue. Moving the project into the CIP simply made the $750,000 immediately available for reimbursement to a developer that actually constructed the improvements. The project is listed on page 32 of the CIP for $1,050,000 in Transportation System Development (TSDC) funds, and can be found at the following link:
I encourage you to review that staff report as well as the recording of Monday’s council meeting, that you watched, where the developments were discussed at length. The June 2017 staff report and its attachments do a good job of setting out the various phases of development that occurred in that area over the years, what public improvements have already been made, and what development and public improvements remain.
As to the question of why the bridge and sections of Lone Oak Road (Bridge Improvements) have not been built, there is no clear or simple answer, and staff isn’t in a position to speculate as to what may have occurred in the past.
One fact to keep in mind is that “Creekside” is not a single subdivision or development. Instead it was proposed and has been developed as a series of phases, or individual subdivisions (“Creekside” is currently on its fourteenth “phase”). The use of “phase” is a misnomer in this context. A true “phased subdivision” is where an entire property or area is included in a single tentative subdivision plan. Then smaller portions of the area within the tentative plan (phases) are platted, and lots are created, sold and developed in that phase. Currently, when a property is proposed for a phased subdivision, the City ensures that each phase meets the land use requirements independent of other phases. That was not the case for the Creekside subdivisions, because each phase was proposed, approved, and developed as separate subdivisions.
When the initial development application for Creekside was made in the early 1990’s, the City did not have provisions for phased development of residential subdivisions, so there were few rules on the books to review and regulate multiple interrelated subdivisions. With the adoption of the Unified Development Code (UDC) in 2013, the City now has regulations in place to address phased development of subdivisions, though they are not intended to specifically address a circumstance like this.
In the 1990’s, as is the case now, each individual subdivision must be reviewed for conformance with the criteria on its own merits. Under U.S. and Oregon “takings” law, governments may only impose exactions that are proportional (and have a rational nexus) to the impacts of a proposed development. In the case of the different Creekside phases, none of the individual subdivision phases would warrant imposing a requirement that the development pay for and construct an approximately $9 million off-site street improvement that constitutes the Bridge Improvements (On-site improvements, those within the boundary of a development, are easier to exact and justify than off-site improvements because they are necessary from a physical standpoint for the development to function). The Bridge Improvements would be an off-site improvement for every past phase of Creekside, other than phase 14 which encompasses the bridge and road sections, because the developer platted and developed areas that did not touch this particular part of Jory Creek where the bridge was proposed.
In my opinion, the decision to delay development of the bridge area is reasonable and shouldn’t be seen as nefarious. The developer was simply developing other properties in the area that were relatively easier and cheaper to develop and sell first. Further, the 1990’s saw a significant housing boom in Salem and nationwide, so every developer was moving as quickly as possible to develop residential subdivisions to meet the demand for housing.
In retrospect, it is easy to say now that the developer should have been required to construct the Bridge Improvements early on. However, because each subdivision had to be reviewed as its own independent development, and the Bridge Project was not wholly within any one of them, it was difficult as a matter of law to prohibit development of those phases, when they were able to provide alternatives to meet the accessibility requirements the bridge was to provide (See, the Sahallee phase, which found access to the south on Rees Hill Road, instead of connecting to Lone Oak).
Regardless of the fact that the cost of the improvements was clearly disproportional to the proposed individual phases, the City did impose conditions of approval to require the construction of Bridge Improvements on different phases of the Creekside development, as well as other developments in the vicinity. This was because along with the subdivision applications, the developer proposed the Creekside area be developed as a Planned Unit Development (PUD), which in essence is a master plan for the area, and staff believed that the PUD was an overriding factor tying all the different phases together.
When the City’s 2016 decision for phase 14, which included the condition to build the bridge, was appealed to LUBA, the City argued that the condition was warranted and justified because the developer was seeking to modify the entire PUD approval, and not simply seeking to further divide a small portion of the overall property. We were not successful in that argument, as LUBA found that a PUD modification was not necessary for that particular subdivision. LUBA viewed the particular subdivision application in isolation, and made this holding notwithstanding the fact that the result was the elimination of the condition to build the bridge, which was (in the City’s view) a key element of the overall PUD. LUBA took the same position in a similar case involving the City of Corvallis.
In general, whenever a subdivision application is submitted, the developer will be obligated to construct major public facilities in the immediate vicinity that will serve the development. These facilities include water, sewer, stormwater, and transportation facilities. In some cases these facilities are required in the City’s master plans to be “oversized” to serve not only the specific development but also future development in the vicinity. In these cases, the developer is responsible for their pro-rata portion of the cost of the facility, and may seek SDC credits, or reimbursement of the cost beyond their portion through formation of a reimbursement district.
The Bridge Improvements are only minimally SDC eligible, and the developer would not be able to recover the complete cost of constructing the facility through SDCs. Ideally, a reimbursement district would have been established at the beginning of the development, that would have imposed a reimbursement fee on the development of all of the potentially benefitted properties. However, Salem’s code did not allow reimbursement districts until 2005, 13 years after many of the phases of Creekside were platted. Reimbursement fees are only required to be paid upon development of lots through land division or obtaining a building permit for a home. Therefore developed lots within a platted subdivision are generally not eligible for, nor included within a reimbursement district, because it is unlikely they will generate reimbursement fees.
By the time in 2005 that a reimbursement district was an option for Creekside, the majority of the property within the Creekside area had already been divided into lots and/or developed diminishing the effectiveness of a reimbursement district.
I hope the above discussion sheds some light on the issue.
Basically, as I understand it, a developer (Garrett and Alice Berndt) has requested that buyers and owners of lots in the area be saddled with a total of $7,347,000 in fees to pay for needed improvements to an extension of Lone Oak Road.
This is a complicated subject, and I don't pretend to be familiar with all of the details surrounding this issue, which has been festering for many years.
Arguments have gone back and forth about who should be responsible for road improvements in the area, which is in part a safety issue, since some current and proposed home sites only are served by one road, so if it were to be inaccessible emergency vehicles can't reach those homes.
What's most interesting to me is that Larry Tokarski was the developer of the Creekside neighborhood, and back in the early 1990's he was required to pay for improvements to Lone Oak Road. See: Download UGA90-09Pages1-43
Here's a screenshot of one of the pages in that document.
My understanding is that in 2003 the City of Salem and Tokarski had an agreement that after 350 homes were built in the Creekside development, the improvements to Lone Oak Road would be made by Tokarski. However, as noted below, in 2007 these improvements were put on hold.
At two City Council meetings last year (March 27 and June 26), this issue came up for discussion. I've made a short video of comments made by councilors Steve McCoid, who represents the Creekside area, and Chris Hoy.
It's sort of surprising that in both these comments, and also elsewhere in discussion of the issue, I never heard anyone mention the name of the developer. I'm pretty sure Larry Tokarski is the developer being referred to, hence I titled the video "Salem City Council on Tokarski development screw-up."
Rich Fry, another Salem developer, spoke about this issue during the public comment period at the March 27, 2017 City Council meeting. Following Fry's remarks about the Lone Oak bridge, which supposedly would cost around $6 million, Public Works Director Peter Fernandez said: "The project was the responsibility of the Creekside developer and over time they simply never built it."
Now, unless there is a statute of limitations on commitments by developers to build roads and bridges needed for their development, it sure seems like Larry Tokarski and his firm, Mountain West Investment, should be the ones on the hook for the Lone Oak Road improvements.
What makes this issue even more interesting politically is that Tokarski is the biggest contributor to conservative causes in Salem, people running for office and ballot measures. Last April Salem Weekly ran a story, "The Man Whose Money Talks in Salem."
Larry Tokarski began his real estate career in Salem in 1973. Since then he has founded and managed Mountain West Investment Corporation through which he has influenced the development and building of over a billion dollars of real estate. This includes over 1,000,000 square feet of commercial and residential facilities and more than 30 subdivisions. Tokarski has also been involved in the development and building of 47 retirement communities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada.
Not a Salem resident (Tokarski lives in Wilsonville) the developer has invested a minimum of three-quarters of a million dollars in local political campaigns since 2009.
For example, Mountain West Investment Corp contributed 75 percent of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce’s Build Jobs PAC funding for the May 2016 election. Below you see, Tokarski paid $10,000 to support the campaigns opposing progressive candidates for spring 2016 Salem City Council election, Sally Cook and Cara Kaser.
Well, someone who has been involved in over a billion dollars in real estate apparently should be able to pay for about $7 million in road improvements for the Creekside area, especially since this was agreed to by Tokarski.
Before the City Council asks another developer to pay for those improvements through a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District, it sure seems like the agreement(s) made by Tokarski should be carefully examined. I didn't see any sign of this in tonight's staff report, since the history of the Lone Oak Road improvements only begins with a 2008 requirement that Garrett and Alice Berndt make those improvements.
Somewhere along the line Tokarski appears to have been relieved of the necessity of making those promised improvements. An earlier 2017 staff report does detail how the "Creekside developer" (Tokarski) failed to complete the improvements:
Lone Oak Road SE is functionally-classified as a collector street in the Salem Transportation System Plan. From its northern terminus at Browning Avenue SE, Lone Oak Road SE runs north-south parallel to, and roughly mid-point, between Liberty Road SE on the west and Sunnyside Road SE to the east, to its current southern terminus at Jory Creek. Attachment 6 contains photos taken on April 6, 2017, at various locations along the missing segment of Lone Oak Road SE.
In 2007, the Creekside developer initiated construction of the missing segment of Lone Oak Road. Construction plans were prepared by a private engineering consultant and permits were issued by the City. A box culvert was installed over Jory Creek and some preliminary earth grading along the alignment of Lone Oak Road was completed. Work on the project was halted by the developer and no additional work has occurred since 2007. At present, there is no timetable for constructing the bridge and remaining sections of Lone Oak Road SE.
So as Councilor McCoid asked in the video above, who let Tokarski off the hook for constructing the Jory Creek bridge and remaining sections of Lone Oak Road? And could it have been someone who benefitted from Tokarski's political contributions?
UPDATE: I've been watching tonight's City Council meeting via CCTV and have learned that the situation is even worse than I thought.
Because the City of Salem allowed Tokarski to walk away from his responsibility to build a portion of Lone Oak Road and the bridge over Jory Creek when he stopped construction on the bridge in 2007, after an adverse legal decision City officials supposedly were forced to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Tokarsi in 2013, I think it was. The MOU has Tokarski spending a million dollars or so on the road improvements, and the City supposedly spending a million or so on finishing the bridge.
Except, actually the cost of the bridge is $6 million.
So either Public Works Director Fernandez underestimated the cost of the bridge by about 600%, or the City of Salem decided to give Tokarski a sweetheart deal in the MOU. Bottom line: either Tokarski played the City of Salem for fools, or City officials willingly gave Tokarski what he wanted -- to be able to walk away from his responsibility to build infrastructure associated with his Creekside development.
Who is going to pay for the bridge now? The general public. Either lot owners in the Creekside area, or all property owners if, as sounds likely, the bridge over Jory Creek is made part of a future transportation bond measure.
Update to the Update: I had the date of the MOU wrong. It was 2015. This puts it a year before an adverse 2016 LUBA ruling that required the City of Salem to only consider a further small subdivision phasing of the Creekside build-out, not the entire development. After I asked City Attorney Dan Atchison about this, he responded thusly:
A few points of clarification on the MOU. First, I misspoke on Monday when I referred to the 2016 LUBA appeal as leading to the MOU, instead it was the 2015 LUBA appeal, as discussed below. Second, the City did not agree to construct or pay for the bridge in the MOU. As set forth in that document, City staff committed to recommending to Council that the project be included in the City’s capital improvement plan (CIP) up to $750,000. Council later adopted that recommendation, and the project is in the CIP today. In reality the MOU did not bind the City to do anything, or pay any money, that it was not already obligated to do if and when the project was constructed. The City was not an active participant in the 2015 LUBA appeal. The developer and the HOA, who intervened in the appeal, would be a better source on the background for that issue. Moving the project into the CIP simply made the $750,000 immediately available for reimbursement to a developer that actually constructed the improvements. The project is listed on page 32 of the CIP for $1,050,000 in Transportation System Development (TSDC) funds, and can be found at the following link:
Overall I give myself a C+ grade on the ten predictions, since at this point five seem True, four are equivocal, and one is absolutely False.
Here's what I said Trump would do, along with comments on my soothsaying.
While it certainly feels as if those four years should be up by now, in much the same way that a painful root canal seems to take forever, obviously my first prediction merits an Incomplete:
(1) There's a good chance Trump won't be president for his full term.
This still seems likely to me. Mueller's investigation probably will turn up some incriminating stuff that hasn't been revealed yet. And the chances of Democrats taking back at least the House of Representatives seem increasingly likely, which would bring the possibility of impeachment.
(2) Trump isn't going to accomplish most of what he promised.
I generously gave my second prediction a True. A President's first year in office tends to be a high-water mark, accomplishment-wise. The Gorsuch appointment to the Supreme Court was a win, and the tax bill was a major victory for Trump, but it only passed due to the use of the arcane reconciliation process, and with only Republican votes.
The chart above is the Politifact Trump-O-Meter that tracks his campaign promises. He's not doing very well so far, judging by the smallness of the blue "Promise Kept" slice.
(3) The Affordable Care Act will be altered, yet survive.
I'm giving myself a True, since Trump and his GOP allies only have been able to weaken the Affordable Care Act, not kill it. Optimistically, I continue to think it will survive through Trump's first (and hopefully last) term, if only because doing away with the Affordable Care Act completely would cause so much havoc, pressure for a single payer health care system would rise in response.
(4) So I can see Trumpcare as being closely akin to Obamacare.
This rates an Incomplete, since I really have no idea what Trump wants for an Obamacare replacement. In fact, it's hard to tell what Trump wants in any other policy area either. He's been way less reasonable and presidential than even my low expectations for him a year ago.
(5) Foreign policy will be a disaster.
To my mind this prediction deserves a True. Sure, so far Trump hasn't gotten us into a new war or done anything exceedingly horrendous. But it's hard to see how something really bad isn't going to happen with North Korea, Iran, or some other part of the world given Trump's incapacity for strategic thinking and cooperation with allies.
(6) Scandals will rock the Trump administration.
Bingo! I nailed this prediction! I did so well, I'll quote myself in full:
It's hard to see how this won't happen. Trump himself is a walking Scandal Machine. Many of his top appointees are cocky, rich, and used to doing what they want. If investigative journalists do their job, a big "if," the next four years could make Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton look like presidential scandal amateurs.
(7) Existing trade agreements like NAFTA won't be changed much.
Well, to date this gets a True. I said that Trump will make a few modifications to NAFTA, but won't pull out of the trade agreement. He did pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that wasn't an existing agreement.
(8) Few undocumented immigrants will be deported.
Half-True, I'd say. PolitiFact reports that overall, deportations are less than in the last two years of the Obama administration, though deportations of people already living in this country are higher. Trump hasn't shown any sign of deporting millions of people, and as I predicted, "He'll build some fencing, but not a wall. And Mexico won't pay for it."
(9) The United States will remain in the Paris climate change agreement.
I blew this prediction. False. Well, perhaps False, since the United States has just given notice of an intent to leave the agreement and can't actually do so until November 4, 2020 -- the day after our next presidential election.
(10) Trump will do a few good things.
I'm giving myself a False on this last prediction, since I can't think of anything that Trump has done that's clearly good from my progressive perspective. He's been much more of a traditional conservative than I thought (and hoped) he would be, given his populist, "drain the swamp" campaign talk.
I predicted such things as "getting pharmaceutical prices down, simplifying the Byzantine tax code, and possibly getting a massive infrastructure spending bill through Congress," none of which has happened.
Trump has been a much worse president than I expected, and my expectations a year ago were damn low.
He's had lots of opportunities to work with Democrats on policies that both R's and D's basically agree on, such as protecting the DACA/Dreamer undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, which today has led to an apparent federal government shutdown.
The United States will survive Trump, there's little doubt about that. The question is, how much damage will he and his Republican cohorts do to this country before Trump is either forced from office, or fails to be re-elected in 2020?
I wish the organizers of the Salem Womxn's March that will be held on January 21 would stop criticizing the 2017 Salem Women's March for supposedly not being inclusive enough.
This is flat-out wrong.
The speakers at the 2017 event included an African-American woman, her daughter (who sang), and a lesbian woman. Sign language interpreters were on stage for the hearing-impaired. Special seating up front was reserved for those in wheelchairs, or anyone needing those seats.
I filmed the entire march of 4,200 people who filled the streets of downtown Salem. The video is part of this web page I made to memorialize the event:
So I know that a marvelously diverse cross-section of our city attended the event. Everybody was invited. No one was excluded. And since my wife, Laurel, was a lead organizer of the 2017 Women's March, I know that she wasn't aware of any complaints about how inclusive the march was.
Yet in a case of women criticizing women, this is part of the description of the 2018 Womxn's March on the event's Facebook page:
There was controversy from last year's march in that there was a lack of inclusivity. Many people, from Salem’s own underrepresented communities expressed their disappointment that the 2017 Salem Women’s March did not feel inclusive and that care was not given to their issues. This was discussed in several forums before and after the actual day.
Well, I don't understand how someone can feel excluded from an event before it has happened.
What I do know, because my wife just reminded me of this after I told her what I was writing about tonight, is that the organizers of the 2017 Women's March had never put on an event of this magnitude, and they worked extremely hard to make the march a big success -- which, for sure, it was.
If anyone had contacted them before the day of the march with concerns about how the march was being planned, they would have done their best to address those concerns. So for the 2018 March organizers to criticize these women (and some men) for a "controversy" they weren't made aware of strikes me as decidedly unfair.
It would have been better if the organizers of the 2018 Womxn's March had simply said something like, "This year's march is going to be better than ever!"
That would have been positive, and honored the success of the 2017 march. Instead, they're making a big deal out of the 2017 Women's March supposedly not being inclusive, even though they don't directly say how it wasn't inclusive. The only clue I could find to this is in a description of next Sunday's march in the issue of Salem Weekly that just hit the streets.
Featuring diverse speakers and encouraging blind and disabled activists to participate... "Wheelchairs, scooters, and ponchos will be provided for the disabled," says Kendall, and "signs and materials available in many languages."
OK, that's great. People who need wheelchairs don't have to bring their own. And even though one would think that disabled people who live in Oregon have their own rain gear, it doesn't hurt to have ponchos on hand.
These just strike me as relatively small improvements to the 2017 Women's March.
I see no reason to call the 2017 March uninclusive just because the hard working organizers of that event weren't able to think of some of the things that, in hindsight, could have made the event even better.
I'm sharing an email message that Carole Smith, a downtown business owner and resident, sent to me recently. She isn't happy with how the City of Salem streetscape project is being conducted, to put it mildly.
The whole emphasis is on sidewalks. As shown above, "alleys and roads not part of [project] scope." So they really should have called this a Sidewalkscape project, which is much more limited than a true Streetscape plan -- such as the one proposed for Salem several years ago.
This is disappointing.
Someone I talked with at the open house put it nicely: "City of Salem staff like to decide on their own what the scope of a project should be, then tell citizens that nothing outside of the bounds of what has already been decided can be talked about."
That someone wasn't Carole Smith, by the way. But the quote above echoes what Smith says below.
I asked Carole if it'd be OK with her to share the message. Sure, she said.
I was glad to hear that, because she was one of the originators of a downtown streetscape planning project that generated a lot of enthusiasm. I made an Adobe Spark web page describing this effort that has gotten over 8,500 views -- which shows that many people in Salem are interested in streetscaping the downtown area.
Unfortunately, the bold vision of the initial streetscape project has fallen by the wayside, as you'll read in Carole Smith's critique of the current effort. I admire how frankly Smith lays out her concerns. You may disagree with her, but for sure you will know where she stands.
Well, its been 30 hours since the last meeting of the Streetscape Work Group. We met yesterday to tour the downtown with the new consultants to talk about what ideas we have for streetscape.
Lets start at the beginning:
At the first meeting of the Streetscape Work Group we were told the following about Streetscape.
1. These streets are off-limits: Liberty, Commercial, Front, High, Center, Marion, Trade, Ferry. That only leaves State, Court and Chemeketa Streets.
2. We will build this project in phases that might take 15 years to complete.
At the second meeting we were told:
1. Riverfront Park is NOT part of our program. 2. Alleyways are NOT part of our program. 3. Any new sidewalks in the past 10 years are off limits. 4. All bulbed-out sidewalk corners are off limits. 5. Connecting Riverfront Park to the Willamette University campus and the Capitol building via streetscaping is not happening.
Yesterday I found out the City did not include any reduction of any traffic lanes downtown.
When I asked the consultants about it, they responded with “Well, maybe you should do this project first, then later, when you change the Traffic Study you can take away lanes of traffic and fix the rest of the the plan." WHAT? We don’t want to do this project twice. That doubles the cost and doubles the interference with downtown businesses.
So everything the citizens wanted to do downtown is dead. The City staff decreased the project to the point they are only “redecorating” downtown, not changing how it is used as a strategy to entice new businesses into our community. This is like “redecorating” a slum in hopes no one notices it is a slum.
The retail rental rates downtown are the lowest in all of Salem. That means only weak businesses locate here because they cannot afford market rate rents that are changed everywhere else in Salem. We have all the money we need to do a major project and change how Salem uses its downtown and how it functions as an economic driver in our community.
The streetscape project the citizens have visualized over the past five years included reducing lanes of traffic, possibly removing traffic signals (and installing stop signs), and connecting Riverfront Park, the downtown, State Capitol, and Willamette University to encourage more foot traffic downtown for our businesses.
In the past, a former manager of Salem Center told me the hardest problem to overcome when chain stores visit Salem to decide whether they want to open a store in Salem Center is the negative condition of our downtown. The chain store representatives love the neighborhoods, the schools, and the community, but they baik at the condition of downtown and the number of vacant spaces there. Our downtown is dirtier and more vacant than ever today.
Will the streetscape project the city is envisioning help downtown? Probably, for awhile. But we are missing the bigger opportunity to really make our downtown reflect who we are as a unique community. We could be on the cover of magazines and be a Mecca for other cities wanting to do what we did. Now we will just have a mediocre downtown again.
And, 15 years to complete the project?
We know from past experiences that when we phase projects in downtown they never get past the first or second year. In the streetscape we did in the early 1990’s we did one project, then the next year we hired consultants to design “stage 2” but it was never constructed. That was the end. Once the City Council changes and priorities change, streetscape will fall by the wayside and never be completed.
So who made the decisions to exclude so many items from citizen discussion?
Why are we allowing city staff who don’t live here or pay any property tax here to dictate to our citizens what they can dream about for our downtown? Why can’t we make our downtown unique by making it reflect us? The City of Salem only wants to copy what other cities have done. That will not make us unique. When we have the ideas and money to be great, why should the citizens settle for mediocre just because City staff have no imagination or courage?
During the Streetscape Work Group meetings we were not allowed to talk among ourselves, and even when we emailed each other outside the meetings we were required to "cc" City staff. We were not privy to any communications between City staff, but they could spy on our discussions outside the meetings. This is supposed to be a democracy, not a dictatorship. If one group has to share their communications, why aren’t all communications shared?
How did the City staff get so much power? Where are the City councilors? Why are they allowing staff to limit our dreaming and the expenditure of our funds?
Our accountant told me, “All the assets and funds the city has are OWNED by the citizens, held in trust through the City of Salem, for the CITIZENS' BENEFIT." To understand how we want to “benefit” the City staff need to hear from us on what WE want. If that is true, what right do the city staff have to tell us what we can and cannot talk about? It is our money, so we should be allowed to talk about anything we want.
Yesterday one of the consultants asked me what the City could do to get my support.
Without thinking I replied, “Respect, the city could show us respect." That would change everything. Respect not to force a non-functioning downtown assocation down our throats, respect to listen to what we want for streetscape, respect to listen to us and work WITH us, all of us, not just the “young people” downtown.
Every time I attend a City of Salem meeting I feel like we are told what we will get, instead of being asked what we want. That is a huge difference. It is our money, this is our city, why can’t we get what WE want?
I don’t understand.
If the City would sit back and let the citizens design this project, Salem would benefit by building a unique streetscape that would give us national attention and could show other communities how to design a similar streetscape that reflects them, the way our streetscape reflects us, our culture, our unique history, and how we want to guide our future.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Who doesn’t want to be successful and attract positive attention and accolades? Why do we strive for and feel comfortable with mediocrity? We have great people here with great ideas for free. Yet we continually hire people and staff from Portland to come tell us what we can have, supported by City staff with no vision, voted on by a City Council that doesn’t understand.
It is a sad state of affairs. Is it too late to change this trajectory? What if people stood up in the upcoming Streetscape meetings and said they support what we want? Would it mean anything? Is it too late?
I agree with the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger who said Something's amiss here in a Tuesday post that is more interesting than the title portends, "At the MPO: Work Program and Rule-Making Updates for the TAC." Here's the juicy part of the post.
The Technical Advisory Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization meets today, and there is no important action item.
But the agenda does have a couple of other things to note.
Work on the formal Work Program continues, and if there is any sign that the remand by LUBA on the land use matters had any real consequences, I'm still not seeing them. On the SRC it says:
"The final planning work on the Salem River Crossing Study EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) should be concluded in 2018. The lead agencies for the EIS are ODOT and city of Salem with SKATS staff on the project management team. As of December 2017, many of the technical sections of the FEIS were going through their final review; the City of Salem and Polk County are coordinating on the land use and Urban Growth Boundary issues with the state. SKATS staff will continue to coordinate with ODOT, the jurisdictions in SKATS, FHWA, and FTA on any needed planning work before and after the FEIS and Record of Decision (ROD)."
What the heck does "the City of Salem and Polk County are coordinating on the land use and Urban Growth Boundary issues with the state" mean? That sounds like a sneaky work around!
There's nothing to coordinate until the City holds a new set of hearings! But apparently the LUBA decision is not very consequential, and there seemingly is much to coordinate.
Something's amiss here.
Agreed. But what exactly is amiss, and why? I'm pleased to speculate on these questions. Back in November I said this in a post called "Ding, dong, the Third Bridge is dead."
Regarding the draft Environmental Impact Statement, approval of it is a must if the Salem River Crossing project is to move forward. But this can't happen, since the Land Use Board of Appeals remanded the City Council's approval of an Urban Growth Boundary expansion needed for construction of a new bridge, thereby negating the original approval.
I asked Bob Cortright, an expert in land use matters related to transportation and an opponent of the Third Bridge, if the Urban Growth Boundary expansion had to be accomplished before an Environmental Impact Statement could be approved. Yes, Cortright said, it does.
No, the EIS cannot be finalized without an approved UGB expansion and TSP [Transportation System Plan] amendment. ODOT has an adopted rule that describes how it will plan for projects in a manner that is consistent with state land use laws. In essence, the rule says that ODOT will not issue a final EIS until the local government has amended its comprehensive plan to allow the project to be constructed. In this case, that means that until the UGB is expanded and the 3rd Bridge is included as a "planned" transportation facility in the city's TSP, ODOT may not move [to] finalize the EIS.
So there are two seemingly contradictory facts at work here:
(1) Local transportation planners, including staff at the City of Salem, are busily working away on an Environmental Impact Statement for the Third Bridge that they apparently think will be finalized in 2018; (2) an adverse legal ruling by the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) means that an expansion of Salem's Urban Growth Boundary needed for a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) can't happen unless a City Council majority agree to deal with issues in the LUBA decision.
What's peculiar is that City of Salem staff are continuing to work on the draft Environmental Impact Statement even though the Third Bridge project no longer has the backing of a City Council majority.
Well, let's back up a bit.
This would be peculiar in a city like Portland that has a strong City Council where councilors actually manage City departments, such as Public Works.
But Salem has a strong City Manager/weak City Council form of governance. Thus Steve Powers, the City Manager, apparently has given his go-ahead for staff to continue working on the Third Bridge project even though five of the nine City Council members are opposed to this.
Though I hate to use a Trumpian term, this is sort of a "deep state" situation.
Meaning, City of Salem staff (along with Mayor Chuck Bennett) are committed to the Salem River Crossing/Third Bridge project. They're continuing to work on the draft Environmental Impact Statement even though several recent 5-4 City Council votes have made it clear that the Third Bridge doesn't command majority support on the Council.
Now, seemingly this would be dangerous for City Manager Powers, since he serves at the pleasure of the City Council. And five of the nine council members wouldn't be pleased to know that City of Salem staff are doing their best to keep the Third Bridge project moving forward.
The reason I added seemingly is this: so far the five progressive councilors haven't thrown their political weight around to the degree they could, and perhaps should, when it comes to the Third Bridge. I alluded to this in the above-mentioned post about the City Council taking steps to relieve rush hour congestion without a new bridge.
Watching the City Council meeting on my laptop via the CCTV feed, I had the feeling that this was one of those times where a lot is not being said, even though many words were spoken.
My suspicion is that the Third Bridge supporters on the Council still hold out hope that future elections will change the composition of the nine-member City Council (which now has five progressives, all opposed to a Third Bridge) and the bridge can get back on track, but they didn’t want to say this explicitly, while the Third Bridge opponents on the council were being careful to not gloat about the bridge being blocked to avoid bad feelings.
Back then I thought this subtlety on the part of the five progressives made sense, in part because Third Bridge supporters want to take back a City Council majority and not making this a more public issue than it already is seemed like good political sense.
However, the downside is that City Manager Powers and other City of Salem staff haven't gotten a clear message from the City Council to stop putting any more time, money, and effort into the Environmental Impact Statement for the Salem River Crossing.
Maybe the time is right for this to happen.
As the Breakfast on Bikes blogger said, Something's amiss here.
Given that the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Bennett, and other card-carrying members of the Powers That Be club here in Salem strongly back a Third Bridge, there's little doubt that a bunch of scheming to keep the bridge project alive is happening outside of public view.
So the five progressives on the City Council should make their view crystal clear via a Council motion directed squarely at City of Salem staff: no more work shall be put in on the Third Bridge project, and no more money shall be spent on it.
First, it's peculiar that this group remains so secretive, since the kickoff event had some lofty goals: (1) Advocates for downtown Salem businesses, property owners and residents (2) Implements marketing and promotion of downtown Salem (3) Manages funds related to the economic vitality of downtown Salem
Yet the Salem Main Street Association still doesn't have a web site, aside from the one above. The small print says, "We're under construction. Please check back for an update soon." That's what it said nine months ago, as I recall.
The Association has a Facebook page with a grand total of 52 likes and 4 actual posts, with only a single reference to anything having to do with promoting downtown Salem: a Go Nuts Downtown event.
Yet the City Council bestowed $32,000 in Parking District funds to the group last October, as I wrote about in "Here's why Salem needs a genuine downtown association." What bothered me then, as now, is that the Salem Main Street Association actually isn't an association, since it has no members.
Rather, it is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a self-selected board of directors. Meaning, the board established by the founders chooses new board members. Since there aren't any members -- such as downtown business owners -- Salem Main Street Association isn't at all like a real downtown association.
...None the less, they asked for $32,000 from Parking District funds. And last night the City Council passed an ordinance that allows the City Manager to give grants that "further economic promotion activity." Download Resolution Economic Promotion
Interestingly, the resolution doesn't mention the Salem Main Street Association. I have to assume that a separate budget document authorizes the $32,000 to go to that group, rather than being available to other organizations that might want to engage in downtown economic promotions.
The Salem Main Street Association shouldn't be a 501(c)3 organization. Rather, it should be a 501(c)6 organization. I've concluded this after looking at IRS descriptions of the two sorts of non-profit organizations.
A (c)3 organization is what usually comes to mind when people think of a charitable organization. Here's how the IRS describes the exempt purposes of a (c)3 organization:
The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.
None of these purposes is even close to the stated goals of the Salem Main Street Association. So the City of Salem shouldn't be giving money to a group that has wrongly classified itself as a 501(c)3 organization instead of a 501(c)6 organization.
Here's part of the IRS description of a (c)6:
Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the exemption of business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues, which are not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.
A business league is an association of persons having some common business interest, the purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.
...Chambers of commerce and boards of trade are organizations of the same general type as business leagues. They direct their efforts at promoting the common economic interests of all commercial enterprises in a trade or community, however.
Now, this accurately describes what the Salem Main Street Association is all about. It should have been organized as a 501(c)6 organization, since it seeks to promote the common economic interests of all downtown businesses, property owners, and residents.
So you might be wondering, why is this a big deal?
Well, once I was the executive director of a genuine 501(c)3 organization, Oregon Health Decisions (a bioethics organization). These are some of the problems with the Salem Main Street Association being wrongly classified as a 501(c)3.
Donations to a c(3) are tax-deductible, while donations to a c(6) aren't. Thus the Salem Main Street Association is competing for tax-deductible donations that are only supposed to be available to genuine charities, not business leagues.
Also, there's the potential of business owners getting a tax deduction for a contribution to the Salem Main Street Association, which then engages in promotional activities that benefit those same owners. I'm not saying this has happened, or will happen, but the possibility of it happening is another reason for concern about the Salem Main Street Association being wrongly classified as a 501(c)3 organization.
Another way of putting this is that charitable contributions are supposed to broadly benefit people in a community, not specific business owners.
As noted above, the City of Salem needs to reconsider its policy of giving money from Parking District funds to the Salem Main Street Association, at least until the Association reorganizes itself as a 501(c)6 organization.
Bestowing those funds simply isn't right given that the Salem Main Street Association isn't an actual association, lacking members, and that the Association has wrongly incorporated as a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
Here in Oregon there's only one thing on the January ballot, Measure 101. And it's a no- brainer: VOTE YES
I say this after spending an hour today hearing both sides make their best cases for "Yes" and "No" at a Salem City Club meeting. Even though I came in expecting that Yes would have the better arguments, I was surprised how weak the No arguments were.
Measure 101 asks Oregonians to decide if $210 to $320 million worth of assessments on insurance companies, some hospitals, the Public Employees Benefit Board, and managed care organizations go into effect, as passed by the 2017 legislature.
This money leverages $630 to $960 million, or more, in federal Medicaid matching funds. So we're talking about the possibility of a billion dollar shortfall in payments that provide health care to low-income people in Oregon.
That would be a disaster.
So it's no wonder that Tonia Hunt, who argued the Yes side, said that 155 organizations are supporting Measure 101. This notably includes the entities that would pay the assessments, plus doctors, nurses, and a whole bunch of other groups in Oregon.
Organized opposition to Measure 101 apparently is limited to a few tax-hating legislators. Lindsay Berschauer, the No advocate, didn't mention a single organization that's on her side.
I guess taking health care away from tens of thousands of Oregonians and forfeiting up to a billion dollars of federal money that would have to be made up by Oregon taxpayers isn't all that popular.
Berschauer tried to make a big deal out of the fact that 90,000 people signed the initiative petition that got Measure 101 on the January ballot. Well, given that Oregon has 4.1 million people, it isn't surprising that 90,000 would support a really bad idea.
The moderator of the debate, Bill Mainwaring, asked a great question of Hunt and Berschauer. He said that if Measure 101 failed, logically one of three outcomes would result.
(1) The legislature could decide to reduce the health care budget by about $210 million, which would mean an additional loss of about $640 million in federal funds, thereby necessitating cutting off people from the Oregon Health Plan, reducing benefits, or both.
(2) The legislature could take the $210 million out of somewhere else in the state general fund budget, like schools or public safety.
(3) The legislature could enact a different tax, such as a surtax on the Oregon income tax. He figured that an increase of 1.2% would raise $210 million.
Neither of these options is very appealing.
Yet Berschauer couldn't come up with any other ways of finding $210 million, other than talking in some pretty vague ways about how state government has wasted money in the past -- which obviously has zero relevance for how money could be found now to fund health care for low-income people should Measure 101 be voted down.
So all of the persuasive arguments were on the Yes side at today's City Club debate.
Like I said, it's a no-brainer. Vote YES on Measure 101. Children and others needing health care will thank you.
Even if you love Hobby Lobby for its craft supplies, here's some very good reasons not to shop at the Hobby Lobby store that just opened in the Willamette Town Center mall (which used to be called Lancaster Mall).
After hearing Moss talk about some Hobby Lobby horror stories that I'll summarize below, at about the 21:14 mark Mike Pesca, the interviewer, says that the engine of all that Hobby Lobby sets out to do is their stores.
So, he said, "When you shop there, you're giving directly to their efforts." Moss agreed, saying that the company's evangelical owners are the religious equivalent of the Koch brothers.
Here's what Hobby Lobby shoppers are supporting.
(1) Denying contraception coverage to women employed by corporations owned by religious zealots. This is the best-known Hobby Lobby "accomplishment." In 2014 the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, won a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that allows them to deny some forms of contraception to their employees because of their religious beliefs.
In a deeply divisive case pitting advocates of religious liberty against women’s right’s groups, the Supreme Court said today that two for profit corporations with sincerely held religious beliefs do not have to provide a full range of contraceptives at no cost to their employees pursuant to the Affordable Care Act.
...The decision is a victory for the Green family that owns Hobby Lobby, an arts and crafts chain, and the Hahns who own Conestoga, a cabinet making company, who had challenged the so called contraceptive mandate saying it forced them to either violate their faith or pay ruinous fines.
(2) Teaching the Bible in public schools as "true" and "good." Steve Green, the Hobby Lobby president, has a goal of introducing a Bible curriculum in public schools that goes far beyond a secular treatment of Christianity.
If successful, Green, whose family’s wealth is estimated at upward of $3 billion, would galvanize the movement to teach the Bible academically in public schools, a movement born after the Supreme Court banned school-sanctioned devotion in the 1960s but whose steady progress in the last decades has been somewhat hampered.
...In an award acceptance speech last April before the National Bible Association, Green explained that his goals for a high school curriculum were to show that the Bible is true, that it’s good and that its impact, “whether (upon) our government, education, science, art, literature, family ... when we apply it to our lives in all aspects of our life, that it has been good.”
(3) Smuggling artifacts from Iraq, an act that supports terrorism. Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit 5,500 artifacts that were smuggled out of Iraq. In the above-mentioned podcast, Moss said that this is a big deal, because selling artifacts has been used by terrorist groups to fund their activities.
In 2010, as a deal for the tablets was being struck, an expert on cultural property law who had been hired by Hobby Lobby warned company executives that the artifacts might have been looted from historical sites in Iraq, and that failing to determine their heritage could break the law.
Despite these words of caution, the prosecutors said, Hobby Lobby bought more than 5,500 artifacts — the tablets and clay talismans and so-called cylinder seals — from an unnamed dealer for $1.6 million in December 2010.
In addition to the complaint, the prosecutors on Wednesday filed a stipulation of settlement with Hobby Lobby that requires the company to return all of the pieces, and to forfeit to the government an additional $3 million, resolving the civil action.
(4) Supporting the election of Trump. In September 2016 David Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, endorsed Donald Trump for president, after failing to do so during the GOP primaries. His reason was scary (at least, to those who don't believe the United States should become a Christian nation).
Now, with election day only 67 days out, Green is talking politics again, and he's endorsing Trump. He says he's doing it because he doesn't trust Hillary Clinton to choose judges who will preserve America's religious liberty.
...Like Trump, Green is a billionaire, and he built an empire with his Hobby Lobby business. The founder and CEO is a leader among social conservatives, an area where Trump struggles to gain support.
According to a Gallup poll, at 53%, the majority of Republicans are social conservatives. So having as big of a voice as Green behind him could give Trump an edge he's been needing all along.
(5) Helping fund a $500 million Museum of the Bible. Half a billion dollars of Hobby Lobby money has paid for a museum dedicated to a decidedly slanted view of the Bible. I heard Moss say that even other evangelicals are disturbed by how the Green family is pushing a one-sided Biblical perspective. And a Newsweek piece gives more reasons to be concerned about the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
Scholars also have a larger concern: the truth. They know too well that “biblical archaeology” is rife with amateurs desperate to prove the people and stories in the Bible are historically accurate, with many grand claims but little proof. Academics are also troubled by the résumé of the man hired to run the Bible museum; he used to head the Creation Museum, which states as fact that the Earth was created just 6,000 years ago and that humans were around when dinosaurs ruled the planet.
Also troubling is how the museum handles much more recent history. A fundraising video for the museum shared with Newsweek declares that the Founding Fathers intended the Bible to be the center of American government and culture and opens with a spurious quote from George Washington: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” The nation’s first president never said that, but Green insists the Bible was central to the creation of the United States and is now imperiled. In an interview at the Vatican in 2014, he declared, “The fact of the matter is, the book is under assault today.”
So please think twice, or even five times, once for each of the 5 reasons I've given here, before you shop at Hobby Lobby in Salem. Or anywhere.
I liked this letter to the editor in the Salem Statesman Journal, "Store owners have rights; shoppers have rights to take their business elsewhere."
When I was a girl walking home from school with friends, we liked to stop in the one local drugstore, sit at the counter, and order a soda pop. We hurried to be first because there was a sign in the window that read, “Only four kids at the counter at a time.”The owners could make whatever rules they chose.
Things are very different today. It seems to me that, right or wrong, business owners might be within their rights to put up signs that read, “We have the right to refuse service to anyone.”
And I have the right not to do business with them if I am offended by their choice.
A new craft store (Hobby Lobby) is opening in town. I once happened by another branch of that store in a nearby town. It looked very nice. However, I noticed a prominent sign in one of those windows. “In order to allow our employees and customers more time for worship and family, we are closed on Sundays.”
This gave me pause. In fact, it offended me on several levels. Do they only hire people who have families and whose holy day is Sunday? It is their business and it’s none of my business. Nevertheless, I will take my business elsewhere.
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