City Council campaigns in Salem usually don't sink to the level Jim Lewis displayed in a video where he claimed that his opponent in the Ward 8 race, Micki Varney, "wants miserable traffic."
I learned about this offensive lie in a comment Marcus Solomon left on a Facebook post of mine. Solomon captured this image of Lewis' video before the image was edited out:
Shame on Councilor Lewis for engaging in the sort of political crap that usually only rears its ugly head at the state and national level.
Obviously Micki Varney doesn't want miserable traffic. She has stated that she's all in on finding ways to reduce rush hour congestion in West Salem and the downtown area.
Varney simply wants to focus on immediate ways of reducing congestion rather than putting hope in a half-billion dollar Third Bridge that would take a decade or more to build, if even then.
In this Year of the Woman, politically and culturally-speaking, I find it surprising that Jacqueline (Jackie) Leung's Ward 4 City Council race against incumbent Steve McCoid isn't getting more attention.
Five seats on the Salem City Council are on the May 15 ballot, the Mayor's seat and the seats of the councilors occupying the four even-numbered wards: 2, 4, 6, 8.
Only two of these races are contested: Jackie Leung vs. Steve McCoid in Ward 4, and Micki Varney vs. Jim Lewis in Ward 8. Mayor Bennett is unopposed, as are councilors Tom Andersen (Ward 2) and Chris Hoy (Ward 6).
I also found it peculiar that Salem Weekly, this town's alternative paper that leans decidedly leftward, also failed to make a Ward 4 endorsement in the issue that hit the streets last Wednesday.
Given Salem Weekly's local perspective, I don't understand why the editorial board decided it was more important to make an endorsement in the statewide race for the Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner than in one of the two contested seats for the Salem City Council.
To its credit, a month ago Salem Weekly did run a story about Leung, "Progressive Salem in a kerfuffle over Ward 4 election." Aside from using "kerfuffle," a great word which definitely needs more exposure, I liked this excerpt from reporter Helen Caswell's piece (and not just because it mentions me):
Progressive Salem (PS), a local liberal political organization which focuses on Salem area races, has experienced some controversy this spring over the upcoming Ward 4 contest for Salem City Council.
The election is between incumbent Steve McCoid, generally considered a centrist moderate, and newcomer Jackie Leung, a progressive Democrat.
The matter erupted after Brian Hines, a local blogger and PS member, called for PS to endorse Ms Leung who he described as a “liberal dream candidate.” Hines has a point; Leung is a graduate of Willamette University Law School. She has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Iowa. She served as a member and Vice Chair of Salem’s Human Rights and Relations Commission and as a Commissioner on the Oregon Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs.
Leung is, in short a bright, educated woman with a minority background who might be a natural for PS, a group which has in recent years succeeded in putting progressive candidates in office.
The Statesman Journal, which pretends to be a newspaper that covers local issues, but really doesn't (at least not very well), ran opinion pieces by Micki Varney and Jim Lewis side by side a week ago in which the candidates made their case for why they should be elected by Ward 8 voters.
Which wasn't an entirely accurate headline, since the story mentioned that one of Leung's campaign issues is curbing the outside influence developers have in Salem.
Leung, who holds a law degree from Willamette University, is positioning herself as a reform candidate and emphasizes adding more women to the council.
"Let's embrace the diversity of our communities. Let's reach out and be inclusive," she told the Statesman Journal in an email. "We have only two women on the nine-member City Council, in 2018 — the Year of the Women."
Leung also expressed concern about developers holding an outsize amount of sway in City Hall. "The development community has more than it's share of influence on city decisions and I want to be a voice to add balance."
My suspicion is that one reason why the Leung-McCoid race isn't getting more media attention is an assumption that Jackie Leung stands little chance of winning.
Well, I don't agree.
Residents of the Creekside development make up a large share of Ward 4 voters, and many, if not most, aren't happy with how developer Larry Tokarski has been treating them. The Statesman Journal reported that the Creekside Homeowner's Association owes the owners of the Creekside Golf Course (Tokarski and Terry Kelly) $422,789 following an adverse legal decision.
And the saga of the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District continues to be a sore spot for Ward 4 residents. So I believe Leung has a decent chance of defeating McCoid, since McCoid has been supportive of the Reimbursement District and has gotten $2,500 from the Oregon Realtors PAC, which points to his pro-developer leanings.
The fact that McCoid has contributed $5,000 to his own campaign indicates that he doesn't think his re-election is a slam dunk.
Sure, McCoid has the advantages of incumbency and a considerably larger campaign war chest than Leung. But it wouldn't be a shocker if she's the winner of the Ward 4 City Council race on May 15.
Understand: I've got nothing against self-congratulation. I love to tell myself, "You're doing a great job, Brian!"
So there really wasn't anything all that unusual in Tom Andersen's 5-minute CCTV video where he asks voters to support his re-election to the Salem City Council, even though he is running unopposed.
But as I watched the video, where Andersen talks about his various accomplishments during his first four-years as a city councilor, I kept thinking, I wish he'd give more credit to those who set the stage for those accomplishments.
Of course, it is almost a given that politicians are going to wring every drop of credit they can from the wet towel of something positive happening during their term of office. I'm realistic enough to know that this is never going to change.
However, I'm also idealistic enough to wish that politicians would do a better job of thanking the citizens who, almost always, laid the ground work for a vote that put a needed policy into motion.
So below are my annotations to Tom Andersen's campaign video. Again, I'm not taking issue with anything Andersen said. I just feel a need to provide some context to his list of accomplishments.
I realize that five minutes isn't a whole lot of time, and Andersen needed to be succinct. But here and there I feel that he could have given some credit where credit is due, such as by saying briefly things such as, "Thanks to the hard work of ______, I was able to introduce a motion to do _______."
Now, Councilor Andersen does mention "citizens" in his opening remarks. After that, though, it is basically all about him. Here's a broader view of the accomplishments he mentions.
Inclusive City resolution. Andersen did introduce this resolution in February 2017. But as I noted in "Citizens strongly support Salem "Inclusive City" resolution. Conservative city councilors not so much," the vote on this resolution was preceded by passionate testimony from about 43 citizens. That outpouring of support provided the emotional backdrop for the vote. As I said in the blog post:
Last night the conservative members of the City Council had to go along with the unstoppable force of progressive public opinion, as manifested by the 43 outspoken people who testified during the public comment period.
Climate Action Plan. Much, if not most, of the credit for getting Climate Action into the City of Salem's strategic planning initiative goes to Linda Wallmark and others involved with 350 Salem OR, the local branch of the national 350.org movement. Andersen has been very supportive of a local greenhouse gas inventory and associated Climate Action efforts, but others paved the way for this, as I noted in "Salem moves closer to a Climate Action Plan."
Fortunately, today I learned that Salem is making good progress on having a citywide Climate Action Plan -- thanks to the efforts of our local 350.org chapter, 350 Salem OR, and supportive city councilors such as Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, and Matt Ausec.
Police Facility bond measure. Andersen said that he supported the second-try $63 million bond measure for a new police facility, but he didn't mention that he also supported the original $82 million bond measure that was rejected by voters. I led the fight against that over-priced proposal, so I'm well aware that it was a lonely battle -- since every city councilor endorsed the $82 million bond measure, and my Salem Community Vision colleagues were my main support.
Thus Andersen's statement that he helped reduce the price tag to $63 million is true only because I, along with Salem voters, had the good sense to reject the $82 million bond measure that Andersen supported before he got on board with the second-try bond measure. For more info on this, see my blog post, "How citizen activism produced a much better Salem Police Facility plan."
Third Bridge. Councilor Andersen has been a steadfast opponent of a Third Bridge across the Willamette River. But as I noted in "Salem City Council votes 5-4 against Third Bridge," it took four other votes to stop what I like to call the Billion Dollar Boondoggle. Credit for electing those anti-bridge councilors goes to Progressive Salem and the councilors themselves: Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, and Matt Ausec.
Also, Jim Scheppke and other citizen activists have worked tirelessly against a Third Bridge, facing long odds. Their legal win at the Land Use Board of Appeals made possible a related accomplishment cited by Andersen, formation of a Traffic Congestion Task Force aimed at reducing rush-hour problems without a new bridge, as noted in my "City Council plans to reduce traffic congestion without a Third Bridge."
It seems clear that this is how the Third Bridge will begin to die after opponents were successful in getting the Land Use Board of Appeals to remand approval of an Urban Growth Boundary expansion needed for the bridge back to the City Council. In other words, that expansion was negated, and the City of Salem basically needs to start over.
Sit-Lie ordinance defeated. I didn't follow this proposal very closely, but my impression was that Councilor Chris Hoy took the lead in opposing this effort to prevent people (meaning, homeless people) from sitting or lying down on a sidewalk between 7 am and 9 pm. A Statesman Journal story mentions Hoy's statement prior to City Council deliberations on this issue: ""I have rarely seen a positive outcome in my almost 29-year law enforcement career when we criminalize the human condition."
Ouster of Councilor Daniel Benjamin. The City Council voted unanimously to censure Daniel Benjamin after he shared a Facebook video showing Black Lives Matter protesters being rammed by cars. So Andersen didn't play a particular role in this, which occurred at a City Council meeting where citizens testified for two hours about the need to stand up against racism and bigotry.
As I said in "Citizens speak about racism and bigotry in Salem," the real heroes of the evening were the people who spoke passionately about the need to address the problems of which Daniel Benjamin was a symptom.
So the City Council's censuring of Daniel Benjamin, and the acceptance of his resignation, wasn't the Big Story last night. This happened at the beginning of the meeting and was marked by a dismaying degree of self-congratulatory excess from the Mayor and seven remaining councilors.
Each member of the City Council had to make a mini-speech about how intolerance won't be tolerated in this town; how disturbed they were by Benjamin's actions; how Salem isn't the sort of place where racism can take root.
When motions were made to censure Benjamin and accept his resignation, every city councilor frantically waved a hand in the air to indicate how badly they wanted to second it. Understand: there wasn't anything wrong with this display of political self-righteousness. It just struck me as an awkward attempt, aimed in part at the cameras from Portland television stations in the back of the room, to paint Salem as a town where These Sorts of Things Just Don't Happen, Aside from This One Time.
After which, the dozens of people basically replied, No, let me tell you how it really is.
Bottom line: it takes a village, as the saying goes, to produce City Council accomplishments in this town. There's nothing wrong with city councilors taking credit for their votes and introduction of motions to do this or that.
I'm just saying that rarely, if ever, does the Salem City Council produce something praiseworthy without a heck of a lot of preparatory work by citizens.
In a Statesman Journal piece, "Ward 8 candidate Jim Lewis shares reasons why he wants to continue work on Council," Lewis says he's against tolling on a new bridge across the Willamette River.
As a matter of clarification, I want to dispel a rumor that I in some way support tolls for the existing two bridges and the new bridge, nothing could be further from the truth and neither myself or the residents of West Salem would allow tolls to ever be a part of the formula for funding.
But at the April 24, 2017 City Council meeting, Lewis cast a vote in favor of including congestion pricing (another word for tolling) as part of the funding strategy for the Salem River Crossing, or Third Bridge.
As noted in the post, at that meeting Cara Kaser made a motion to reject an Intergovernmental Agreement that called for congestion pricing/tolling on a Third Bridge. It passed on a 5-4 vote.
Jim Lewis voted against that motion, which meant he favored congestion pricing/tolling. So don't be fooled by Lewis' attempt to deny his previous support of tolling.
City Council minutes don't lie.
The next day, April 25, I wrote another blog post that included a video of Public Works Director Peter Fernandez saying that "congestion pricing" indeed means tolling. So Jim Lewis has favored tolling, no matter what he says now.
These related to (1) secrecy, (2) use of Parking Budget funds, (3) managing of funds related to downtown Salem, and (4) current board members/leadership.
About six months later, with essentially zero Main Street Association accomplishments to their credit, I discussed the City Council giving the group a $32,000 grant in "Here's why Salem needs a genuine downtown association." In that post I noted:
Some six months after its public kickoff, Salem Main Street Association just has a blank "under construction" web site nor any other online presence other than a Facebook page with no postings since April 12. This isn't a sign of a vibrant group that is reaching out to Salem citizens and the downtown community.
Yet it just got $32,000 from the City of Salem.
Well, nothing has changed.
The Salem Main Street Association still has no discernible accomplishments, nor any online presence, or any sign that it is reaching out to downtown business owners or citizens in general. Here's what pops up from a Google search: a Salem Weekly story and links to my blog posts about the organization.
Carole Smith, a downtown resident and business owner, drew my attention to the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Salem Main Street Association in a recent email message.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the announcement of the new downtown organization. Are you thinking of doing a re-cap on all their successes?
So far I can’t find any website. The city gave them $30,000 several months ago -- what have they done with it? The business owners don’t even know the name of the organization. We have NEVER received any communication from them.
The Salem Downtown Partnership (SDP) only had 9 months of funding but we had over 40 businesses participating in First Wednesdays every month. We held customer contests with prizes. We had $5,000 Good Idea Grants (for businesses who work together to provide events, etc, that bring people downtown, or enhance the downtown environment).
SDP published a map showing downtown businesses on one side and downtown restaurants and bars on the other. We compiled over 200 email addresses of downtown business and property owners. We communicated regularly with businesses and property owners via US mail and via Constant Comment. We had a weekly newsletter.
We had monthly board meetings which businesses and property owners were encouraged to attend. We held four Mainstreet committee meetings each month on which downtown residents, business and property owners participated. We were a recognized Oregon Mainstreet Organization.
We realized downtown merchants wanted more lights in trees during the holidays (and winter months) but there was nowhere to plug them in, and we wanted a cleaner downtown, but there were very few water faucets available for power washing, so we had grants we gave to any business or property owner so they could install an electrical outlet and/or water faucet at no cost to them. We bought power washers and sidewalk scrubbers which the organization owned and used.
What has this new organization done over the past year? People don’t even know who they are and what their name is.
Remember, you asked me to give them a chance. Is one year enough of a chance? I think this group is a big failure, don’t you?
Yes, I do think the Salem Main Street Association is a big failure. A year certainly is enough to give them to show what they can accomplish, which is essentially nothing.
Their Facebook page has just 54 "likes" and only a couple of posts, the most recent being a December 2017 post about a Go Nuts Downtown promotion, which seems to be the only thing the Salem Main Street Association has been involved with since its inception.
And their web page continues to be Under Construction with no content.
Hopefully City officials will rethink its commitment to the Salem Main Street Association. The concerns I noted at its inception have been borne out. It isn't really an association, since it has no members, just a self-selected board of directors. And it is wrongly classified as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, which it clearly isn't.
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.
As was alluded to above, Salem needs a genuine downtown organization. After a year, it's become evident that the Salem Main Street Association isn't capable of filling that role.
If you love Salem's downtown -- I sure do -- you'll want to see these photos I took at last night's Downtown Salem Streetscape Project open house.
There's some exciting improvements in the works for downtown sidewalks, alley entrances, and Front Street crossings to Riverfront Park. Traffic calming features got me especially enthused, since whatever makes downtown streets less freeway'ish is a very good thing.
Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.
When a radio talk show lineup that includes Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck is viewed as too liberal for Salem, it's clear that we've veering into some really right-wing territory.
But this is the media ground KSLM is claiming, according to a front page story in the April 2018 issue of the Salem Business Journal, "KSLM and the Golden Age of Radio Returns to Salem and the Mid-Willamette Valley."
Hmmmm.
I don't see how the KSLM talk show lineup has anything Golden Age about it. These guys and gals are way out there on the rightward political spectrum:
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Alex Jones.
The story says that Don Wyant and his wife Cindy "had grown concerned that the only local news talk radio being broadcast into the Salem area was not true conservative news, having drifted into liberal positions on many subjects in the news."
(Cindy Wyant is listed as the owner, general manager, and program director for KSLM.)
So who is the other local news talk radio station that drifted into those objectionable liberal positions? It must be Keizer's KYKN -- which is the station that carries Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
KYKN also hosts the Gator & Denise show. Gator Gaynor and Denise Nanke are locals with a decidedly conservative bent.
I couldn't help but think of Gaynor when I read this quote from Don Wyant in the Salem Business Journal story (RINO is Republican in Name Only; CINO is Conservative in Name Only):
The staff and family of KSLM are true conservatives and like Don Wyant likes to say, "You won't find any long-haired RINOs or CINOs hanging out here and representing us. What you will find is a team of true Oregonians that love Oregon, love Salem and care about the community. We are all about family and values and believe that comes across on KSLM, every minute of every day".
Long-haired RINOs or CINOs? These two do fit the long-haired part of the description.
Seemingly it would make more sense for a news/talk radio station to be on the moderate side, given the political makeup of the Salem area. But liberal talk radio hasn't been much of a success, given the notable failure of Air America to survive.
The problem is that us progressives have a strong belief in facts, so news and talk tend to be redundant.
Extreme conservatives, on the other hand, have no problem talking about totally made-up crap, so I've little doubt that KSLM has an ardent listener base who eats up the right-wing conspiracy theories spawned by the likes of Sean Hannity and Alex Jones.
And since KSLM and KYKN are both seeking to attract the 38% of Salem citizens who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, it makes sense for KSLM to stake out the farthest right territory on the radio dial. Here's another quote from the story:
With so much fake news all around and compromised conservative news, it is comforting to finally have this level of true news that Salem area residents can count on. As Cindy puts it, "I thought the term RINO meaning 'Republican in Name Only' described only people... but we have come to realize it can mean organizations, media and much more. There is also a growing CINO group... meaning 'Conservative in Name Only.' CINOs and RINOs are becoming more common in news talk media, that has historically been conservative, and are attempting to influence conservatives towards liberal agendas, which is just wrong."
KSLM also is trying to set itself up as standing up to local liberals.
Being dedicated to bringing true news to Salem residents does come at a cost, however. Since it launched, it has been under attack from local liberals that have tried to discredit it and to harm it. That has not discouraged the family or staff, in fact they say it has made them more determined than ever to serve the Mid-Willamette Valley and continue to bring the one-of-a-kind format to local listeners.
This is a perplexing charge. I'm a local liberal, and I'm not aware of anybody in my "tribe" who has attacked KSLM.
This blog post is a first shot on that front, from what I can tell from a Google search that turned up exactly zero liberal attacks. I also searched Facebook for liberal criticisms of KSLM and also came up with nothing.
Naturally I was curious to see who was on the KSLM "sponsors" page. I wasn't shocked to see Capitol City Republican Women or Shilo Inns, but Enlightened Theatrics was a bit of a surprise.
Not that there's anything wrong with them advertising on a right-wing radio station. I just associate Enlightened Theatrics with a more inclusive political philosophy than KSLM advocates.
I've heard a believable news tip that the Statesman Journal will cease being a print publication in January 2019. So it now longer would be a newspaper, but a newsonline -- since an electronic publication would continue to be sold.
Reportedly some reasons are that millennials aren't reading the Statesman Journal, and substantial increases in the subscription price of the print newspaper have resulted in a declining subscriber base.
I've written quite a bit about the sinking fortunes of the Statesman Journal. Here's a sampling:
My wife and I enjoy reading the print newspaper every day, so we'd be sad to no longer be able to hold it in our hands. What's worse, this probably would herald the end of the Statesman Journal entirely.
Advertising in an electronic newspaper seemingly would be considerably less attractive to local businesses, so advertising rates likely would decline. And many readers who don't enjoy reading a newspaper online would cancel their subscriptions.
Now, if the Statesman Journal does go under, this would be a loss for Salem, but not a huge loss -- given how far the paper's journalistic standards have sunk.
There's very little local reporting compared to years gone by. (I've been a Statesman Journal subscriber since 1977.) What local reporting exists is generally "frothy," without a whole lot of substance. Coverage of Salem politics and goings-on at City Hall is virtually non-existent, giving readers additional reasons to stop their subscription.
Further, subscription rates are controlled by out-of-town executives with the Gannett Corporation/USA Today. So the Statesman Journal isn't able to control its own future in that regard.
And the paper's web site is horrible. It's a clone of the same Gannett web site design used by the other newspapers in the chain. I subscribe to the online versions of the New York Times and Washington Post, so can say from much personal experience that the Statesman Journal rates a "2," with the Times site being a "10."
If this rumor is true, and the Statesman Journal ceases its print publication in 2019, I've got mixed feelings.
As noted above, I like being able to hold a local paper in my hands. However, there's so little content that I care about in today's Statesman Journal, my hands don't hold the paper for very long most days. If the Statesman Journal went completely out of business, there'd be some chance that a better journalistic alternative would spring up.
Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.
Will the Statesman Journal survive? I'm betting that it won't, unless the newspaper somehow can break free of its Gannett Corporation chains and return to being a genuine local news outlet that people care about and find value in.
Well, there's either an innocent reason next Monday's City Council agenda contains a staff recommendation to postpone another vote on the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District from April 23 to June 11, or there's a hidden reason.
UPDATE: The City Council decided to continue deliberations on the Reimbursement District at its May 14 meeting.
The second option -- hidden -- seems more likely to me, so I'm going to run with that in this post. Plus, it's way more fun to engage in political conspiracy theories than take utterances from City Hall on controversial issues like this one at face value.
That said, here's the staid, boring, straightforward explanation offered up by City Manager Steve Powers for postponing further deliberations on the reconsideration of the formation of the Reimbursement District.
At the April 23, 2018, City Council meeting Council will be conducting a public hearing on the proposed move of the Union Gospel Mission and West Salem Zone Code Clean Up. Moving the deliberations of reconsideration of the formation of the Lone Oak Reimbursement District to June 11, 2018, will allow adequate time on the agendas for all three topics.
This postponement will also allow staff more time to prepare information for the deliberations.
OK, but City staff knew that the Union Gospel Mission hearing was going to be on April 23 at the time of the March 26 City Council meeting, which was when Mayor Bennett made a motion to postpone a reconsideration vote on the Reimbursement District after a public hearing resulted in virtually unanimous opposition to the District.
(The Union Gospel Mission hearing was listed on the March 26 agenda as an upcoming public hearing.)
So the Machiavellian aspect of my political mind is thinking along the lines I'll describe below. As background to my musings, here's the timeline of the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District proposal. Click here for my previous posts on this subject.
January 22: City Council votes 7-2 to form the District. Sally Cook and Cara Kaser are the no votes. Notably, Steve McCoid, the Ward 4 councilor who represents the Creekside area where the District is located, votes in favor of it.
February 12: After the South Gateway Neighborhood Association requests a reconsideration of the Reimbursement District approval, citing several reasons for this, the City Council votes unanimously to hold another hearing on March 26.
March 26: Opposition to the District clearly outweighs supporters of it. Following Mayor Bennett's motion, the City Council votes unanimously to continue deliberations on the reconsideration of the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District at the April 23 meeting.
April 3: The City Manager recommends postponing those deliberations for seven weeks until the June 11 Council meeting.
Thus if the postponement is approved at next Monday's meeting, the Salem City Council will spend almost six months on the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District. Which makes me think...
(1) Any time a controversial vote is put off until summer, there's reason to wonder whether this is being done to diffuse opposition to the issue. Sure, no more public testimony will be heard on the Reimbursement District, but the City Attorney said that citizens can convey their views to members of the City Council, and those members can discuss the District with interested citizens.
So one theory is that delaying the reconsideration deliberations for seven weeks is an attempt to pass it in the "dead of summer" when people affected by the District will be less likely to be lobbying against it.
(2) Steve McCoid is in a tough political spot. He voted for the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District, but the District isn't popular among his constituents. His opponent in the May election, when two-person City Council races are decided, is Jackie Leung. She is against forming the Reimbursement District.
It's possible that McCoid, and/or his allies on the City Council, pressed for the seven week postponement to get the next vote on the District to be after the May 15 primary election. However, McCoid is already on record as supporting assessing lot owners in the south Salem area between $2,464 and $9,212 when a lot was developed in order to fund construction of the missing sections of Lone Oak Road.
Why, then, would McCoid want to keep this issue on the Ward 4 political table through the primary election? It might be because another vote in favor of the Reimbursement District around the time ballots are being received and filled out would be a more visible campaign issue than McCoid's first vote to establish the District back in January.
(3) Complicating the political calculations for McCoid is the fact that his largest outside campaign contribution is $2,500 from the Oregon Realtors Political Action committee. The Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District basically is a giveaway to developers in the Creekside area who otherwise would have to pay for improvements to the road themselves. McCoid thus either would tick off his constituents if he votes "Yes" on the reconsideration of the District, or irritate Oregon Realtors if he votes "No."
(4) Lastly, Steve McCoid seems to realize that he's in a tough battle against Jackie Leung in his quest to be re-elected Ward 4 councilor. His largest campaign contribution came from himself yesterday, $5,000 (see below). As noted before, it's possible to argue both ways as to whether postponing a vote on the Reimbursement District helps or hurts McCoid.
But if we're concerned about transparency in City government and holding elected officials responsible for their votes, clearly it would be better if the City Council stuck to its original plan to have deliberations on the reconsideration of the Reimbursement District occur as scheduled on April 23 so that voters know where council candidates stand on this issue prior to the May election.
City Manager Powers said that postponing the deliberations until June 11 would give staff "more time to prepare information for the deliberations." Well, they've had several months to do this already, so it's difficult to see why giving City staff another seven weeks would make much of a difference.
On the whole I see the attempt to move the deliberations to June 11 as a delaying tactic. It'll be interesting to see which members of the City Council agree to this next Monday, and which say "let's get this over with on April 23 as previously planned."
Last Monday I attended a fundraiser for Jackie Leung at the south Salem McMenamins. She's running for the Ward 4 City Council seat currently held by Steve McCoid.
My beer was pleasingly cool, and Leung was wonderfully warm as she discussed issues facing Salem with the politically engaged attendees.
I'd met Leung before, but I hadn't heard her talk at length about her views on tough problems. She impressed me. A lot. Leung is thoughtful, informed, and an excellent listener.
The latter quality is particularly important for a city councilor, since the (unpaid) job requires attending to people who appear at Council meetings with an open, receptive, welcoming mind.
Leung's background in law and public health are great assets. As a woman of color she also would bring some much-needed diversity to a City Council currently dominated by white men (seven out of nine).
Here's her core campaign platform, as described on a fundraiser handout:
My legal education combined with my public health degree and experience in working in public health exposed me to a broad array of perspectives that enhance the work I do within the community -- from serving on commissions at the city, county, and state to my work in community organizing and community health work with local nonprofits.
As your city councilor, my work will be guided by these principles:
Accountable City Government. We need to hold the city management accountable to ensure transparency in their decision-making process.
Developer Obligations. We need to audit our planning and public works departments to ensure the city is supervising and holding developers responsible for development plans.
Housing We Can Afford. We must support housing options for all income levels and promote pathways to home ownership.
Reduce Homelessness. We need to reduce the number of houseless community members by implementing successful programs.
Public Safety. We need to ensure emergency response times are adequate for our growing community and bring CERT trained residents into the conversation.
Open Space and Flooding. We need to protect our open spaces and avoid actions that create flood risks to Salem's businesses, public facilities, and residents' homes.
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