City Manager Powers lying about Climate Action Plan

Infuriating.

That's the least profane word I can come up with to describe how Steve Powers, Salem's City Manager, is acting toward a Climate Action Plan that is one of the City Council's priorities, yet Powers is doing his best to kill.

Steve Powers

In a staff report for Monday's City Council meeting, where the budget for the next fiscal year will be discussed, Powers describes the Climate Action Plan in a way that shows he is either astoundingly clueless about what it is, or he is deliberately lying.
Download City of Salem Budget Supplemental Report

Given what follows, lying seems by far the most likely.

Here's what Powers said in a section about three amendments proposed at a Budget Committee hearing that received support, but not enough votes to be included in the budget proposal.

This is completely and utterly false. It's the sort of falsehood that would be par for the course for our incessantly-lying President, but which is shockingly shameful when it comes from a supposedly professional city manager of Oregon's capital city.

A May 17 Salem Reporter story, "Salem councilors favoring new revenue for climate action plan," accurately describes what a Climate Action Plan consists of.

A climate action plan would more closely study Salem’s carbon emissions, waste management and planning policies, and set goals to curb carbon emissions for decades to come.

City Manager Powers must know what a Climate Action Plan is, since this has been discussed by city councilors and others for several years, being part of the Strategic Plan for the City of Salem that was adopted in October 2017. Here it is, on page 20: 

So not only is Steve Powers failing to act in accord with the Strategic Plan that's supposed to point the way for City of Salem actions, it sure seems like he is knowingly trying to mislead citizens about what a Climate Action Plan is.

And there isn't any doubt that the $50,000 Powers wrongly says is for "tree planting" and other immediate actions actually is intended to be money to get a Climate Action Plan off the ground.

Here's another excerpt from the Salem Reporter story. Andersen refers to City Councilor Tom Andersen.

Andersen believes the city could at least start the work. He proposed the budget committee to give an extra $50,000 for a consultant to get started on a climate action plan.

It's really disturbing that City Manager Powers is acting in such a duplicitous fashion. This should make city councilors, and indeed everybody in Salem, wonder what else Powers is deceiving about. If he's willing to knowingly mischaracterize a Climate Action Plan, how can he be trusted about anything else he says?

This certainly shows that Powers doesn't care about global warming and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That alone makes him a poor fit for Salem, where people do care a lot about preserving the Earth for both ourselves and future generations.

Hopefully members of the City Council and other citizens will grill Powers about why he chose to lie about the Climate Action Plan in his supplemental report concerning the budget.

i say "lie," because it is extremely difficult for me to believe that Powers is clueless about what a Climate Action Plan consists of, given that it is part of the city's Strategic Plan.

NEXT DAY UPDATE: I got this email response from Steve Powers. Pretty lame. Powers ignores these facts: (1) He ignored the fact that Councilor Andersen and other members of the Budget Committee want $50,000 in the next fiscal year budget to begin work on a Climate Action Plan, and (2) He ignored the fact that he totally mischaracterized what that $50,000 was to be used for, instead substituting his own notion that planting trees is equivalent to beginning work on a Climate Action Plan, which obviously it isn't.

Brian,

Thank you for the email. 

The Salem Strategic Plan adopted in 2017 is a five-year plan to guide progress on City Council priorities.  Annual Policy Agendas flow from the Salem Strategic Plan. 

The 2019 Policy Agenda includes a greenhouse gas inventory.  The inventory has been completed.  The 2019 Policy Agenda does not include a climate action plan. 

Development of the 2020 Policy Agenda will begin later this year.

Steve Powers

[email protected]

503-588-6255
City Manager
City of Salem
Salem, Oregon

 

Comments

[Jack Holloway]

Brian --

As you and I both know full well, from our individual attempts to get information from city departments or executives, and from the outrageous fees that they charge when they do -- grudgingly -- give out information -- many if not most city departments are opposed to serving the needs and interests of the population of Salem. My experiences with the Salem bureaucracy inform my opinion that most city departments and executives serve the interests of well-heeled individuals and corporations, and work to prevent both the council and the citizenry from learning facts that are needed for the construction of fair and necessary policies.

Keep firing!