Salem Political Snark

Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District is a bad idea

Below is an opinion piece about the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District that I submitted to the Statesman Journal a month ago. I never heard back from the editorial board one way or the other, which in itself is a sad commentary on how far Salem's so-called "paper of record" has fallen.

The Statesman Journal has published exactly nothing about this subject, even though it is a highly controversial issue that's consumed a lot of City Council time, and is of considerable concern to residents of the Creekside area, along with hundreds of lot owners in south Salem who would be required to fork out thousands of dollars when they develop their property to pay for Lone Oak Road improvements -- even if they rarely, if ever, would use the road.

One would think that since the Statesman Journal hasn't seen fit to devote any reporting resources to this issue, they'd be pleased to publish a written-for-free opinion piece. But these days one would think isn't a good guide to figuring out what the newspaper would do, given that one would think a local paper would care about reporting important local news.

Think again. Here's my opinion piece.

Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District is a bad idea

Lone Oak Road has gotten a lot of attention from the City Council lately. 

First the Council voted to form a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District. This would assess property owners in south Salem between $2,464 and $9,212 when a lot was developed. That money would pay for northern and southern extensions of the road, the size of the assessment being based on how close the lot is to Lone Oak Road. 

The South Gateway Neighborhood Association (SGNA) then asked the City Council to reconsider that vote. 

Their letter pointed out that (1) SGNA wasn’t given advance notice about the Reimbursement District proposal; (2) the District funding plan assumes the Creekside Golf Course will be converted to a subdivision even though this is an undecided legal issue; (3) City staff didn’t adequately inform councilors about the Creekside developer’s obligation to build the northern extension of Lone Oak Road. 

The Council then voted to reconsider its approval of the District. On March 26, a reconsideration hearing at which most of those who testified were opposed to the District resulted in a decision being delayed until the May 14 Council meeting. 

Property owners who live quite a ways from Lone Oak Road complained that they’d be required to pay into the District even though they’d rarely, if ever, use the road.

In short, it’s a fine mess the City of Salem has gotten itself into.

At the reconsideration hearing, Public Works Director Peter Fernandez revealed his role in saddling the public with the cost of completing Lone Oak Road. Fernandez admitted that before entering into a 2015 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Creekside developer in which the City of Salem assumed responsibility for building the Jory Creek bridge, he failed to get a estimate from his own engineers about how much the bridge would cost.

So the MOU contains the developer’s figure of $750,000 for the bridge, while the Reimbursement District proposal budgets $5.6 million. This roughly $5 million mistake means that money for the bridge would have to come from a future Streets and Bridges bond, because the District wouldn’t be able to raise $5.6 million.

Thus the plan is for property tax payers throughout Salem to pay for the Jory Creek bridge, then the City would be partially reimbursed by the District. This makes little sense, since property owners in south Salem would be reimbursing property owners in all of Salem. A better way is to simply include the northern extension of Lone Oak Road as part of a Streets and Bridges bond.

Building the southern road extension also doesn’t require a Reimbursement District. 

Two subdivisions planned for that area total 120 lots, and their developers should foot the bill directly for the Lone Oak Road improvements. Why should the City collect about $1.1 million from District assessments on those lots, then reimburse the developers for the money they’d just paid into the District? 

Bottom line: the Reimbursement District isn’t needed, and the City Council should kill this bad idea.

I've been blogging about the Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District since it first became a hot issue. Here's my previous posts on this subject:

City Council poised to make public pay for improvements, not Larry Tokarski
Why did Larry Tokarski start, then stop, construction of Lone Oak Road?
Larry Tokarski leaves the public with a $7.5 million development bill
Neighborhood association asks City Council to reconsider Lone Oak Road decision 
Salem City Council reconsiders making public pay for Lone Oak Road improvements
Is Larry Tokarski the developer of Creekside?
Salem Weekly delves into messy history of Creekside development
Statesman Journal reporter criticizes Salem Weekly for story his paper didn't cover
City staff ignore neighborhood association questions about Creekside development
City Council still confused about Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District
City Council poised to postpone vote on Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District again

Dennis Richardson talks about redistricting at Salem City Club

Secretary of State Dennis Richardson is an Oregon anomaly: a Republican elected to statewide office.


This probably helps explain why comparatively few Salem City Club members attended his talk about redistricting today, since most members lean leftward.

Another reason might be that the recommendations of Richardson's pet project, a Redistricting Reform Task Force, have been politically dead ever since, well, six months before the Task Force issued its final report in October 2017.

In April 2017 Oregon Democrats said Richardson's plan was dead on arrival. Which is sort of strange, given that the Task Force recommendations hadn't been released yet. 

According to a Bend Bulletin story, it sounds like Richardson attempted to spike the ball way before he was anywhere near the political goal line. 

Richardson, the state’s only Republican statewide officeholder, announced Monday that a task force he created in February would draw the district lines. An 18-page constitutional amendment would go on the ballot for voters to approve or reject.

Well, neither of those things happened.

As us City Club members heard today, the Redistricting Reform Task Force didn't recommend that it be the body to draw district lines after the 2020 census, and there is no way the Democrat-controlled legislature is going to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Nor, apparently, is there going to be an initiative to do this, since Richardson mentioned a possible initiative only in passing.

So I'm not sure why the City Club program committee decided that a talk about a redistricting proposal that was dead on arrival before it even arrived was warranted. That said, Richardson sounded reasonable today, and the questions that were asked of him were interesting.

One came from me. 

I noted that it doesn't seem fair when one side in a battle is expected to lay down its arms before the other side. Thus my question for Richardson was whether any red states, or better, deeply red states, had implemented independent redistricting commissions similar to those in Washington and California, which Richardson mentioned as good examples.

Richardson said he couldn't think of any. At the time, this confirmed my belief that progressives are more open to giving up the legislative power to approve redistricting maps than conservatives are.

However, when I got home and Googled this, I found that as of June 2017, six states had independent redistricting commissions:  Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. 

Maybe Richardson mentioned California and Washington early on in his talk to reassure City Club liberals that left-leaning states have gotten on board the independent redistricting commission train. Actually, though, more red states have gotten away from partisan redistricting via the state legislature.

A Eugene Register Guard opinion piece notes that the last time Oregon engaged in a redistricting process, in 2011, it went well. 

Oregon has been relatively immune to raw partisanship in apportionment, but suspicions linger after new lines are drawn every 10 years. Such suspicions are corrosive in themselves, undermining confidence in the fairness of the political system.

Oregon’s last reapportionment was generally successful -- for the first time in half a century, the 2011 Legislature succeeded in coming up with a bipartisan plan. In earlier decades, the secretary of state drew district lines because the Legislature could not agree, or the task ended up in the hands of the state Supreme Court. The 2011 success has led some, including Jeanne Atkins, the former secretary of state who now chairs the Oregon Democratic Party, to question the need for the changes recommended by Richardson’s task force.

The task force calls for redistricting to be placed in the hands of an independent commission made up of people who have no stake in the outcome and who are of varied political affiliations. California and Washington have both created redistricting commissions, reportedly with good results. Because such a change would require a constitutional amendment, the Legislature would need to place the question before the voters.

Which isn't going to happen, as already noted. It's tough for Democrats, who currently control both the state Senate and House, plus the Governorship, to surrender control of redistricting to an independent commission. 

And the fact that the impetus for this came from a Republican, Richardson, certainly didn't add to the appeal of the proposal. Richardson did his best to sound all bipartisan and non-political in his talk today, and mostly he succeeded. It wasn't a fluke that he was elected to be Secretary of State in blue Oregon.

Richardson can sound like he is above the political fray, even when he really isn't. There's little doubt in my mind that, deep down, Richardson saw an independent redistricting commission as being favorable to the interests of Republicans. 

Here's something else that was on my mind as I listened to Dennis Richardson today: unpleasant memories of his days as Oregon's "spam king." That 2014 Oregonian story says:

Opponents dubbed Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, the "spam king" in 2012 after he used public records laws to obtain – and use -- hundreds of thousands of personal email addresses.

That spring, he crashed the Oregon Legislature's server for hours by trying to send a newsletter with four large attachments to 475,477 people – the equivalent of one in eight Oregonians.

Now Richardson, the GOP nominee for governor, is back to his old ways.

Richardson's campaign obtained 418,958 email addresses in February through a records request to the Legislature, and has been generating complaints for sending unsolicited emails, often to non-supporters.

This made me whisper to a couple of fellow liberals at my table, "No way!" when Richardson asked people to sign up for his email list if they wanted to be kept informed about Secretary of State goings-on.

Statesman Journal endorses conservative white men and bridge tolling

Well, if you believe what people in Salem need is more conservative white men on the City Council and being charged a $1.50 each way toll to cross the Willamette River between downtown and West Salem, you'll love the Statesman Journal endorsements for the two contested council races on the May election ballot.

Because the newspaper's editorial board -- which is made up solely of three Statesman Journal employees, no community members -- just endorsed the re-election of Jim Lewis and Steve McCoid to the City Council. 

So the editorial board said NO to Micki Varney and Jackie Leung.

And the editorial board said YES to Lewis and McCoid.

This shows how out-of-touch the Statesman Journal is with the citizens of Salem.

The main reason the editorial board liked the two conservative white men more than the two progressive women, one of whom is a woman of color, is that Lewis and McCoid favor building a half-billion dollar Third Bridge (which would cost about a billion dollars with financing costs included).

Varney and Leung are committed to reducing rush-hour congestion, but they support what the City Council already has committed to doing: investigate and put into effect immediate ways to reduce downtown-area congestion instead of waiting a decade or more for the fantasy of a Third Bridge to possibly come to fruition.

And even if a Third Bridge was built, the official funding plan for it relies largely on a $1.50 each way toll on both the new bridge and the two existing bridges. So the editorial board effectively endorsed tolling along with endorsing Lewis and McCoid.

The editorial board failed to recognize two important truths. First, the last five city councilors who have been elected all ran on a platform of opposing the unpaid-for and unneeded Third Bridge: Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, and Matt Ausec. 

So since these five city councilors represent a majority of Salem residents (five of the eight wards), this undercuts the editorial board's contention that there is broad public support for a billion dollar Third Bridge and $1.50 each way tolls. 

Second, as already noted there is no source of funding for a Third Bridge.

The state legislature passed a transportation plan that prioritizes maintaining and improving existing roads and bridges, not building new ones. And the Trump administration has shown little interest in expanded infrastructure projects, aside from some talk about leveraging private investment (which means in part, tolling).

I'm hopeful that Salem voters aren't as focused on the single issue of the Third Bridge as the Statesman Journal editorial board is. It's disturbing that the board said it is endorsing Jim Lewis for re-election because he favors building the bridge -- but has been silent on how to pay for it, because he knows tolling is hugely unpopular.

And the board also endorsed McCoid largely because he favors a Third Bridge, with associated tolling. Bizarrely, the three Statesman Journal staff members said they recognize "getting a new bridge built and financed in less than a decade is iffy." So the immediate congestion relief favored by Varney and Leung is what everyone knows must happen.

The Chamber of Commerce hot line must have rung in the Statesman Journal editorial board office, because Cherril Crosby, Carol McAlice Currie, and Paul Nettland echoed the Chamber's fantasy that a billion dollar bridge can be financed almost entirely by local taxpayers, and that lower-cost ways of reducing rush-hour congestion can't achieve that end.

Bottom line: ignore the editorial board. Salem needs people with fresh ideas on the City Council, not more of the same. Vote for Micki Varney (Ward 8) and Jackie Leung (Ward 4). 

UPDATE: Hooting good news via Twitter! Salem's Angry Owl likes Micki Varney, a salmon biologist, in the Ward 8 City Council race. This is way more important than the Statesman Journal editorial board's screechingly bad endorsement of her opponent.