Just as the fight in Washington D.C. over the Build Back Better bill and related bipartisan infrastructure bill hit a crescendo the past few days, I started reading a book by Robert Talisse, "Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side."
I'd learned about the book by hearing an interview with Talisse on the POTUS channel on satellite radio. Even though it's a rather spendy Oxford University Press hardcover, I liked what Talisse was saying. (He's a philosophy professor specializing in democratic theory.)
The book is aimed at a general audience, thankfully.
I've only read the first two chapters, but that's enough to give me a decent feel for Talisse's central points, a few of which I'll try to summarize.
Since I'm a political junkie, I resonated with his observation that democracy can be undermined by people who actively participate in politics. That seems contradictory, but Talisse writes:
Democracy can be threatened from within by citizens who are taking the enterprise of self-government seriously and acting roughly, as they should. In a nutshell, some of democracy's ills are caused by citizens' sincere and earnest political activity. More democratic participation can't cure those ills.
How can this be? Well, a basic problem is the democrat's dilemma, keeping in mind that Talisse is speaking about those who participate in a democracy, not big "D" Democrats.
That's the term I use to capture the tension between the moral requirement to recognize the equality of political opponents and the moral directive to pursue and promote political justice.
Hmmmm. Equality of political opponents.
As a proud progressive, initially those words rubbed me the wrong way. Why should I view Trumpists who wrongly consider that the 2020 election was stolen to be the equal of those of us in the reality-based community?
But as I read on into the book, I realized that Talisse is correct: democracy demands that those of us who participate in it view our opponents as equal.
As is commonly observed, in a democracy the government must treat its people as political equals, as properly citizens rather than merely its subjects. It is somewhat less frequently noted, however, that this requirement applies among citizens as well.
As democratic citizens, we are required to recognize our fellow citizens as our political equals. They're to be regarded as equal partners in the collective project of self-government. Among other things, their equality means they do not merely get an equal say in political decision-making, but are entitled to one.
Democracy demands that we acknowledge that entitlement.
This is tough to do, but it has to be done. It doesn't mean that storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Biden's victory has to be tolerated. When our opponents go too far in their political protesting, they have to be brought back in line.
Furthermore, democracy never requires us to simply acquiesce in or accede to the views of our opposition; recognizing their equality is consistent with abhorring their political views.
So somehow we have to maintain our commitment to social justice, while accepting that our political opponents -- who may have a very different view of what that justice consists of -- are equally entitled to participate in our democracy.
In other words, we have to strenuously resist the temptation to demonize our political opponents, as much as we may feel this is deserved.
In a democracy, however, even though citizens are called upon to take responsibility for their government by standing up for justice as they see it, they must also recognize the political equality of those who would enact injustice. Such is the oddly conflicted moral stance that constitutes a central virtue of the democratic citizen.
If you drive past Trader Joe's on Hilfiker Lane SE, on your left you'll see a surprising urban sight: thirty acres of beautiful undeveloped land.
Unfortunately, there's a decent chance that before too long this property will become thirty acres of much less beautiful developed land.
But not if a group of people devoted to seeing the land remain as natural as possible succeed in their effort to stop the planned subdivision. Consider joining the Friends of The Meyer Farm Facebook group if you share their goal.
A proposal to turn nearly 30 acres of pastoral land in southeast Salem into a 138-lot, single-family residential subdivision has been filed with the city, and the public comment period ends at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 1.
The property in question, 4540 Pringle Road SE, is known as the Meyer Farm. A five-minute walk from one of the busiest thoroughfares in town, it features mostly open space with a large oak grove, a creek and views of the Cascades.
...Geoffrey James, land use chair for Morningside, posted its concerns on the "Friends of The Meyer Farm" Facebook Group page.
The group, created in April 2021, wants to save what it identifies as a historically significant urban farm, which includes an 1854 barn and a 1915 farmhouse. It is the last remaining parcel from Joseph Waldo's Donation Land Claim of 1852.
Complicating the proposal is the fact that the Henry A. Meyer Revocable Living Trust, which owns the property, has been mired in a trust dispute in Marion County Circuit Court for more than two years. The next scheduled proceeding is a status check hearing on Monday, Oct. 4, in Judge Thomas Hart's courtroom.
Henry Meyers' descendants, including five living children, have been split on selling the property, and complaints of trust mismanagement have surfaced.
The trustees were removed and the court appointed a successor trustee, attorney Michelle M. Morrow, around October 2020. Morrow's attorney, David L. Carlson, signed to authorize the filing of the subdivision application.
It's decidedly weird that what sounds like a caretaker trustee, Michelle Morrow, decided to take the side of the Meyer family that wants to develop the property, entering into an agreement with a Portland real estate developer, Martin Kehoe of Kehoe Northwest Properties.
This seems to almost guarantee a legal battle between Morrow, Kehoe, and the Meyer family members who favor the 30 acres becoming a subdivision, and the Meyer family members who want the land to remain much as it is -- perhaps becoming a city park.
I've recently started watching the streaming series Succession, which is about the intense family struggle to determine who gets to carry on the legacy of Logan Roy, a man in his 80's who founded the huge business that may or may not be wrested out of his control.
It'll be interesting to see whether the Meyer Farm saga reaches anywhere near that level of family conflict.
Descendants of Henry Meyer have been fighting over the future of the farm for more than two years, split on whether to sell the land or maintain their father and grandfather's legacy for future generations.
...The trust was supposed to be dissolved 20 years after his death — Henry died May 30, 2000, at the age of 84 — but began to unravel before then.
At the time, it was managed primarily by Tim Meyer, one of the sons, an international banker and co-owner of Salem-based Kettle Chips. He was a co-trustee helping plan for the dissolution in 2018, outlining options that included transferring the farm and trust assets to a family-owned LLC, according to one sibling.
Most of the siblings served as a co-trustee at one time or another.
Tim died in April of that year before he could implement any plan, and successor trustees allegedly made plans to sell the farm without consulting all siblings.
Peter Meyer, another son of Henry's who lives in New York, filed a petition in August 2019 in Marion County Circuit Court alleging the successor trustees abused their discretionary authority and engaged in "reckless misconduct" and "willful wrongdoing" in violation of the trust. The petition asked that they be removed and cease and desist all activities to sell the property.
Exhibits filed with the court include a redacted July 2019 letter of intent for the purchase and sale of the farm for a projected 240-unit single-family development for $5.75 million.
Multiple objections, counterclaims and cross petitions have been made in court since.
The court removed the trustees, with no finding of fault or liability, and named a new successor trustee in late 2020, an attorney not related to the family. Up until that point, the trust had been managed by descendants of Henry.
Even though the family drama adds some special spice to the Meyer Farm issue, the backdrop against which it will play out is familiar.
The 30 acres is within Salem's urban growth boundary. Oregon's pioneering land use system uses that boundary to protect farm and forest land near cities that otherwise would be overtaken by unfettered development.
(Witness Phoenix, Houston, and many other cities with a checkerboard style of sprawl caused by developers seeking cheaper land outside the city limits.)
So progressives like me are faced with a quandary about proposed subdivisions such as this one. We support dense urbanization because this is the most efficient use of scarce land inside an urban growth boundary.
But we also have a fondness for nature, and compassion for neighbors of the Meyer Farm who enjoy having all that nearby open space.
I speak as someone who has lived on ten acres in rural south Salem, about six miles from the city limits, for the past 31 years.
Nature is tremendously healing. My wife and I can walk out of our back yard onto trails that lead through our natural property, across a small creek, past a stand of large trees, to a nine-acre community lake.
It's wonderful to have all this close at hand. It helps keep me as (questionably) sane as I am.
I want city dwellers to also have easy access to semi-wild spaces like the Meyer Farm. There has to be a balance between dense urban development and making sure enough natural open space remains for people living in a city to enjoy.
The Meyer Farm property is special, maybe totally unique in Salem, given its size, beauty, and history. It shouldn't become a subdivision unless strong efforts to preserve it as a natural area end up failing.
Here's a screenshot I made of a satellite image of the Meyer Farm property using Google Maps on my iPhone. The 30 acres is the undeveloped square in the center of the image.
Comparing the image above with the proposed subdivision map below, you can see that most of the trees on the property would be cut down.
Open space is shown in the upper left of the subdivision map, so much of that dense stand of trees apparently would remain. Of course, Friends of the Meyer Farm are arguing that all of the trees should be saved by leaving the property natural. Or as natural as possible, if it were to become a park.
There are times when it makes sense to ignore the political mess that is Washington, DC. This isn't one of them.
Today may have marked a milestone in how our democracy died -- not through a violent coup, but through two Democratic senators refusing to do away with the Republican filibuster of the Freedom to Vote Act.
This is the replacement for the considerably more expansive voting rights act that started off as the first bill introduced in both the House and Senate, indicating how important it was to congressional Democrats.
However, Senator Manchin of West Virginia, who often sounds more like a Republican (and currently is rumored to be contemplating switching parties if he doesn't get his way on the Build Back Better reconciliation bill) objected to the original voting rights legislation.
Manchin claimed that if he was allowed to craft his own bill, he could find 10 Senate Republicans who would support it.
Well, today zero Republicans voted to begin debate on the Freedom to Vote Act, leaving it with 50 Democrats in favor and 50 Republicans in opposition.
(Majority Leader Schumer changed his vote to no so he could bring the bill up again, which is why the final tally was 49-51.)
Given how avidly Trump and his Republican cronies are working to steal the next presidential election if a Democrat ends up winning, it's super aggravating that President Biden is putting so much effort into getting the physical and social infrastructure bills passed, and so little effort in passing the Freedom to Vote Act.
All that's at stake is our democracy. Sure seems like that should be enough to light a fire under our overly complacent president and Democratic leaders in Congress.
They're acting like this is just the usual congressional gridlock and fighting between the parties. Not true.
The Freedom to Vote Act is urgently needed to slow down the Republican stampede of making it more difficult for people to vote -- especially black and brown people.
The bill would set federal standards for early and mail-in voting and make Election Day a national holiday, among other provisions. It would also mandate that voters provide some form of identification before casting a ballot, a requirement that many Democrats had previously resisted, although it would be far less restrictive than similar measures imposed by Republicans.
A Democratic fantasy is that once Manchin sees that the Freedom to Vote Act will never get 10 Republican votes in the Senate, he'll agree to doing away with the filibuster for voting rights legislation. I doubt that will happen.
Joe Manchin basically only cares about Joe Manchin, not democracy. He relishes his role as the conservative thorn in the side of Senate Democrats. And he wants to keep on being re-elected by West Virginia voters, which he believes will only happen if he acts like a Republican much of the time.
What's crazy is that Manchin likes to talk about how the filibuster is needed to preserve the Senate as "the world's greatest deliberative body."
That's a bunch of crap.
The Senate is one of the world's worst deliberative bodies, because the filibuster allows a minority of senators to prevent even discussion of a bill, much less a vote on it. And it's virtually certain that if Republicans ever regain control of the presidency and Congress, they'd do away with the filibuster in an instant if this was needed to pass right-wing legislation.
I realize that Biden and other Democratic leaders are in a tough position with Manchin. They can't afford to lose a single Democrat vote in the Senate. Playing along with Manchin is their only option.
But they need to play tougher if Manchin and Sinema won't budge on doing away with the filibuster for voting rights legislation. Every option should be on the table for pressuring these two Democratic senators.
Maybe this is too extreme.
However, I like the idea of telling them that their precious physical infrastructure bill isn't going to be approved unless both the Build Back Better reconciliation bill and the Freedom to Vote Act are also passed. I just hate the prospect of American democracy dying because a couple of senators wanted to keep the stupid filibuster rule.
Aside from West Salem, which is in Polk County, everybody else who lives in Salem is in Marion County. Unfortunately, when it comes to electing the county Board of Commissioners, too many Salem voters tend to forget the reality of this map.
For a long time -- I'm not sure how many years it has been -- the three members of the Marion County Board of Commissioners have all been Republicans.
Most recently, in November 2020 Republican Danielle Bethell handily beat Democrat Ashley Carson Cottingham 52-44.
It's possible that the non-affiliated voters skew decidedly conservative, which would explain why Republicans keep being elected to the Board of Commissioners.
But another possibility is that many voters in Salem, a liberal-leaning city, don't have much of an interest in Board of Commissioners races. The Bethell-Cottingham race had 10,598 undervotes by people who cast ballots in the election but didn't vote in this race.
That was 6.8% of all votes. Since the margin of victory for Bethell was 8%, if Cottingham had picked up most of the undervote, the race would have been much closer. Of course, I don't know how many of the undervotes came from Salem.
Regardless of the reason for Marion County consistently electing Republicans to the Board of Commissioners, this has real consequences for Salem.
A recent example is the Marion County board expressing no interest in giving Salem funds that came to the county for programs that have mental health workers and medics respond to some crisis calls, rather than police.
Salem City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke and other progressives on the council strongly support this sort of program, as I wrote about in "Setback for Salem mental health crisis response team." I quoted a Salem Reporter story:
The city of Salem paused its plans to start a program where mental health workers respond to some crisis calls, rather than police.
The program was intended to run through United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley and received broad support from Salem residents who testified as the city was planning its budget for the coming year.
But city plans hinged on receiving state money that’s no longer directly available to them.
The House Behavioral Health Committee in January voted unanimously in favor of HB 2417, which would provide matching funds to cities for mobile response units through a competitive grant process.
Salem city councilor Vanessa Nordyke said a change in the bill during the legislative process required counties - no longer cities - to request a piece of the $10 million the state allocated for crisis stabilization services, and cities could in turn ask for money from their respective counties.
“As I understand it, there is no such interest from the Marion County commissioners,” Nordyke said.
Not so much that I wanted to move there -- I've had a Salem address since 1977 -- but Portland seemed like the cool kid to our north, while Salem was decidedly geeky.
Now, though, I'll happily take Salem, even if termed So-Lame, over Portland's increasing dysfunction.
Every night my wife and I watch the Portland late night news on KGW. I used to fast forward through a couple of minutes of crime news, because I don't like the "If it bleeds, it leads" sort of journalism.
Throughout 2021, and especially recently, shootings, vandalism, business break-ins, and such have been consuming much more of the 11 pm Portland news.
On September 23 the Oregonian reported seven shootings in one day, with 837 shootings through August. Today KATU says the Portland Police Bureau announced there have been 1,000 shootings in 2021.
Salem has occasional shootings, but nothing like Portland. As of October 10, an Oregonian story, "Under the Gun," spoke of the very high number of murders in Portland this year: 69.
The survival rules posted by gang outreach worker Lionel Irving Jr. on Facebook starkly spell out the danger for people most at risk of dying in Portland’s daunting surge of gun violence this year:
1. Don’t sit in cars kicking it. 2. Get EVERYTHING you need and get to your destination. 3. Keep your eyes and ears open! Watch your surroundings instead of running your mouth. 4. Know who you’re hanging with and what they’re up to. 5. Google numbers, order your food ahead of time, don’t sit in local spots.
Irving’s advice reflects a pervasive unease that has settled over Portland this year as the city continues on a pace to surpass the most violent year in its modern history when 70 people were killed in 1987. So far this year, 69 people have died.
The victims since January range from an infant who allegedly died at the hands of his father to a 77-year-old woman killed in a hit-and-run rampage.
But a stunning pattern of sudden, sometimes indiscriminate shootings sets this wave apart. Guns have accounted for three-quarters of the homicides, according to an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Fatal shootings in almost all sections of the city have followed fistfights, social media disputes and drug deals gone bad. People sitting in cars, relaxing after work with friends in a bar, attending house parties or walking in a park have been shot dead.
Forensic analysis of spent bullet casings from crime scenes reveals connections between many of the shootings, pointing to gangs and retaliation as frequent drivers of the gun violence, investigators say.
The calls in Portland to "defund the police" after George Floyd's murder in 2020 now seem quaint, if not dangerously outmoded.
Certainly there's reason to question how wisely the Portland Police Bureau is being managed, but it sure seems like more officers are needed, not fewer, given the rise in violent crime and the inability of the bureau to stop vandalism of businesses both in downtown and elsewhere.
Then there's Portland's out-of-control homeless problem. Recently several people have told me about how shocking it is to see miles upon miles of homeless campers along the freeways in the Portland area.
One person told me that freeway signs now have graffiti. They have a relative who lives in SE Portland. Businesses are regularly vandalized there. The relative is afraid to go to downtown Portland.
A July 2021 opinion piece describes how bad the situation is.
Portland’s housing crisis is now in its sixth year. If it was a child, it would be entering first grade this Fall. With kids, the first six years are marked by enormous growth and advancement. With homelessness, these last six year have seen enormous growth but in the wrong direction.
The growing crisis is getting on the nerves of local leaders. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler says the homelessness crisis has hurt the city’s “brand.” In a recent Metro Council meeting, Councilor Mary Nolan suggested the crisis is a “visibility problem.” In some ways they are correct. But, in others, they are way off base.
The crisis has become unavoidable for residents as well. Wheeler and local officials are correct that homeless camps, cars, and RVs are a blight that harms the region’s reputation. Nearly every neighborhood in Portland has a homeless camp. Most residents are within a five-minute walk of one. It’s more than just the camps and campers, there’s the garbage, the piles of bicycles, and the burnt out hulks of shopping carts. Paraphrasing Mayor Wheeler and Council Nolan, it’s ugly.
But, it’s way more than just ugly. It’s a crisis of public health and safety. And it ought to be treated as such
In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, 113 people in Multnomah County had died homeless. Many of those deaths could have been prevented if our region didn’t have such a hands off approach.
Multnomah County’s latest count of the homeless population found that two-thirds have some combination of substance use disorder or mental health issues. Unfortunately, these are the people who are most resistant to treatment. Drug users want to use drugs. Many of those with mental illness either can’t get the necessary treatment or don’t want it. Shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars toward so-called wraparound services will do nothing if the people who need them don’t use them.
So far Salem's crime and homeless problems aren't nearly as severe as Portland's. Hopefully we can learn from the mistakes Portland has made.
There's plenty of room for discussing, or arguing, about what those mistakes are.
My view is that Portland has been hampered by an excessive liberal tolerance of destructive street protests. At first those protests garnered a lot of sympathy in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
But as the months wore on in the summer and fall of 2020, anarchists and other trouble-makers were allowed to engage in both property damage and attacks on police via fireworks, rocks, and other projectiles.
This contributed to a decline in police officer morale. I'm not saying that the Portland Police Bureau didn't deserve some criticism for how they handled the protests, just that the bureau found itself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Don't use force with protesters, but protect us from all the shootings and property damage.
Likewise, Mayor Wheeler and other city officials have been unduly passive as homeless camps spread all around Portland. It's easy to imagine that as word got out that Portland was allowing the homeless to do pretty much whatever they wanted, this could have led to more homeless people coming to the area.
One acquaintance told me that he thought Oregon's decriminalization of drugs in November 2020 could have caused our state to be viewed as a welcoming place by homeless people with drug problems. That's just conjecture, of course.
The good news for us here in Salem is that the Police Department seems better equipped to deal with our lesser crime problem, and the City Council is doing the right thing in setting up tiny home managed homeless camps in each of Salem's eight wards.
That won't be enough to do anything other than put a small dent in our homeless population, but it's a step in the right direction -- as was banning camping in city parks following a failed experiment that allowed this.
Racism is bad. This should be a uncontraversial position, but last night there was plenty of arguing about the pros and cons of a Salem-Keizer School Board resolution calling for a commitment to equity and antiracism.
I watched much of the public testimony online, along with the board's discussion of the resolution.
My main takeaway is that the school board did the right thing when it approved the anti-racist resolution on a 4-2 vote -- with the four recently elected progressive board members voting in favor, and two conservative holdover members voting against. A conservative member was absent.
There were good arguments made by reasonable people on both sides, along with some lousy arguments made by extreme people on both sides.
Here's the video of the meeting. I've made it start at the beginning of the public comment period. The testimony is well worth watching.
What I found encouraging was that the school board meeting served as a forum where people who ordinarily wouldn't be talking with each other because they belong to different political camps were able to listen to those who disagree with their position.
This is one purpose of education: to expose yourself to a variety of ideas that push you out of your comfort zone. Several school board members spoke about the resolution being just the beginning of a broader community discussion about racism and anti-racism.
Hopefully that will occur.
Salem, along with the rest of the United States, needs to take a big step backward from the political cliff where many on both the right and left view the other side as so utterly wrong, they deserve to be pushed over the edge into societal oblivion.
Yet I doubt that there were any genuine racists in the room last night -- just people who disagreed about the wisdom of passing an anti-racist resolution.
Opponents of the resolution correctly noted that sometimes "white supremicist" is used as an undeserved epithet. Just because someone disagrees with a BIPOC (black, indigenous, person of color) individual doesn't mean any sort of racism is going on.
And they espoused a goal that few would disagree with. As Martin Luther King put it, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
However, currently too many conservatives consider that racism is nowhere, while too many progressives consider that racism is everywhere. The truth is somewhere in-between. Much progress has been made with racial justice, while much work remains to be done.
Likewise, opponents of the resolution had a good point when they decried a push for equal educational outcomes as opposed to equal educational opportunities.
But this assumes that all students are able to make equal use of those opportunities. Disadvantaged students, either through systemic racism or some other unfortunate circumstance, deserve special attention until that hoped-for day when all young people have generally the same opportunity to thrive in school.
The so-called "school to prison pipeline" due to police officers assigned to schools came in for repeated mention. A woman who opposed the resolution said that she had researched this question and learned that less than 1/2 of one percent of student arrests were associated with School Resource Officers.
This points to the need for solid data to back up claims of pervasive racism in Salem-Keizer schools. It's easy to be swayed by anecdotes where a teacher or student acted badly toward a BIPOC individual. But in any large group of people, a few always will act like jerks.
So it was good to hear school board members and others say that they're committed to getting as much data as possible to inform the goals of the anti-racist resolution. I suspect that racism in Salem-Keizer schools isn't as widespread as those on the left believe, while it is more common than those on the right believe.
Lastly, I have to note school board member Chandragiri's curious comment that he has been told that BIPOC people like himself can't be racist. This can't be true. I'm not even sure that someone can't be racist toward their own racial group, not to mention others in the broad BIPOC category.
In India, for example, there's a longstanding bias against those with darker skin, as a New York Times story says:
Colorism, the bias against people of darker skin tones, has vexed India for a long time. It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
Here's the resolution that was approved last night.
RESOLUTION NO. 202122-2 COMMITMENT TO EQUITY AND ANTIRACISM
WHEREAS white supremacy is the upholding of white people as a superior race and systematically excluding other communities based on their ancestry, religious beliefs and/or country of origin, including those of Jewish and Islamic heritage, from services and opportunities such as housing, education, and migration; and white supremacy has no place in our schools or in our boardroom; and
WHEREAS an antiracist is a person who, by their beliefs and actions, supports and advocates for ideas and policies to dismantle oppressive structures and promote racial equality; and
WHEREAS it is a cherished asset that the Salem-Keizer Public Schools community is full of people with traditions from all over the world as well as the traditions held right here upon the land we live, through the Kalapuya, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; and
WHEREAS our students’ diverse learning needs and cultural values are an integral part of the learning community, we must create systems that are inclusive and celebrate our students' learning assets, and speaking a language other than English is an asset we celebrate; and
WHEREAS we collectively acknowledge that racism is real and is a threat to students’ and employees’ physical and psychological well-being; and the systems of structural racism have historically oppressed students from Black and African American, Latino/a/x, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American and Indigenous heritage; and
WHEREAS every student must feel safe, welcome, and fully included in their school community; and when students are alienated from their school communities and experience bias and discrimination, they are inherently less safe psychologically, emotionally, and physically and it hinders their ability to learn and grow; and we must build inclusive environments that empower students and employees to thrive; and
WHEREAS community engagement and involvement are paramount to achieving equity; and we will engage with respect, authentically listen, and have the courage to share decision-making, control, and resources; and
WHEREAS we must directly address the overrepresentation of students of color in special education and the underrepresentation of students of color in talented and gifted and college-prep programs; and
WHEREAS we know that students of color are overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions in our schools, starting at middle school, and this impacts their ability to stay meaningfully engaged and graduate successfully; and
WHEREAS hiring and retaining a workforce that reflects the diversity of the community we serve is an antiracist action, and we commit to ensuring this occurs; and
WHEREAS being antiracist means looking deeply at systems, policies, and curricula that oppress our diverse populations; and it involves making real changes so that we change biased yet predictable outcomes related to disproportionate discipline, achievement rates, and the school-to-prison pipeline;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED Salem-Keizer Public Schools commits to being antiracist, knowing we must continually work to do better by developing knowledge and bystander intervention will and skill; and we commit to routinely interrupt systems of oppression on behalf of the students and staff in Salem-Keizer Public Schools and in our community; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED Salem-Keizer Public Schools Board of Directors commits to support the district’s efforts to build a restorative model for discipline, to monitor discipline data and our key performance indicators disaggregated by race and ethnicity, and to develop a system for monitoring the diversification of our workforce.
The Salem Police Department wants people to take a survey about the strategic plan being developed to guide how the department operates in coming years.
I completed the survey today. And I could have completed it over and over, for as long as I wanted, because the survey allows people to respond more than once to it.
This alone makes the value of the survey dubious.
Letting people fill out the survey multiple times makes it vulnerable to vote manipulation by vested interests -- either pro-police or anti-police -- who want to skew the results in their favored direction.
The survey was designed using Microsoft Office. I'm a Mac user, but it was easy for me to Google "microsoft office survey multiple" and find instructions about either allowing or disallowing multiple responses.
So this is one major problem with the survey. Those responding already were going to be people especially interested in the police department. Letting them fill out the survey as many times as they want makes the results even more questionable.
Another problem is that the survey is decidedly bureaucratic. The questions don't relate to the lived experience most people have with Salem police. It's sole focus is on dry descriptions of goals and objectives, which isn't what most people care about.
Here's a screenshot of one question, which includes my response to it.
I used to design questionnaires and surveys back in my days as a health services planner/researcher. I got to be pretty good at it. This police department survey strikes me as poorly designed. It uses management language of goals and objectives even though as noted above, this isn't how ordinary people think about policing.
Further, this particular question is way too broad to provide useful feedback.
I said this objective was very important to me because how unsheltered (homeless) people are treated by police is very important to me. Otherwise, I don't think police should be much involved in traffic safety, since red light cameras and other automated means of detecting violations are more cost-effective.
As you can see from my response to the question, I also think police shouldn't respond to calls involving a mental health crisis or any other issue that could be handled better by non-police personnel.
The plan is being developed based on anindependent audit conducted earlier this year, community and staff input and the chief's philosophy. Womack said he emphasizes making "data-driven decisions," balanced with "community trust-building."
The results of the audit, approved by the Salem City Council and released in March, recommended hiring more officers to adequately address homelessness and mental health calls, and to better engage with youth and diverse populations.
Womack, who was sworn in as police chief in December, said the survey results weren't surprising as many of the department's shortcomings in community policing are due to lack of staffing.
Well, hopefully the Salem City Council will base police department staffing decisions on the sort of "data-driven" approach Chief Womack claims he wants to use.
Councilor Vanessa Nordyke spoke clearly in a recent Facebook post about the need for a crisis team to be staffed by non-police officers. This Cahoots-style program could markedly reduce the call volume handled by the police department based on data from Eugene.
Another problem is that the Statesman Journal story repeats a claim that the Salem Police Department is seriously understaffed compared to other similarly-sized cities in the Pacific Northwest. I'm assuming that the reporter got these numbers from the police department, which appear to be wrong.
The department currently has 190 sworn officers for a population of 169,580 — about 1.1 officers per 1,000 people. In 2018, the average ratio in a Pacific Northwest city similar in size to Salem was 1.6 officers per 1,000 people.
Jim Scheppke, a retired state library director who knows how to research questions like this, sent me his response to the Statesman Journal reporter who wrote today's story about the police survey.
Ms. Barreda: I would like to request a correction to your article today about the Salem Police Department. This statement is inaccurate or at best misleading:
"In 2018, the average ratio in a Pacific Northwest city similar in size to Salem was 1.6 officers per 1,000 people.”
And the general impression given by your article that the Salem Police Department is understaffed is just not true when you consider the entire staff and not just the sworn officers.
Attached is a spreadsheet with some tables that were derived from the latest data for 2019 collected by the FBI. There is a URL at the bottom of each table where you can go to verify the data if you wish.
The first table shows staffing for all Oregon cities with populations greater than 30,000. It is sorted by total employees per 1,000. It shows that only one other Oregon city had more police department employees per 1,000 than Salem did! It is true that many of these cities had more officers per 1,000 than Salem did, but Salem’s number is comparable to similar cities like Eugene and Corvallis and it is not that far off the average.
Another table widens the scope to cities between 100,000 and 200,000 in the Pacific Northwest. Again Salem has the second highest number of total employees per 1,000. The average number of officers per 1,000 is only 1.21, not 1.6 as reported in your story, though I realize this is 2019 data and not 2018 data.
Another table widens the scope further to include cities up to 300,000 in the Pacific Northwest and again the average number of officers per 1,000 is only 1.28. Here Salem has the third highest number of total employees per 1,000.
The last table is from 2018, with cities in the Pacific Northwest between 100,000 and 300,000. It shows the average number of officers to be 1.29 per 1,000.
The number you reported in your article may have included other cities, but I don’t see how an average of 1.6 officers per 1,000 could be accurate.
My spreadsheet also includes two smaller tables side by side that compare staffing at the SPD and that at our public library. While the SPD has the highest total staffing per 1,000 of these cities in Oregon, our library has by far the lowest!
The reality is that the Salem Police Department, while having a slightly lower than average number of officers per 1,000 in the Pacific Northwest (1.1 compared to 1.2 or 1.3), it has among the highest number of total staff per 1,000. Your readers should know this and not be left with the false impression that the Salem Police Department is understaffed.
Best, Jim
If Chief Womack or one of his staff was the source for the seemingly erroneous figure of 1.6 officers per 1000 population in cities comparable in size to Salem, Womack needs to explain where he got that figure, since it doesn't match up with the statistics cited by Jim Scheppke.
West Salem's city councilor wants the council to reconsider allowing a managed homeless camp on Wallace Road after residents objected to the plan.
At a Monday meeting, the council will hear a motion from Councilor Jim Lewis to reconsider the council’s previous approval of a managed camp along Wallace Road following overwhelming opposition to the project voiced during a Tuesday meeting at Salemtowne.
In council documents, Lewis explained that he wanted the council to withdraw its approval until city staff analyzed the site to determine if it’s feasible and met with west Salem neighbors to discuss alternate locations in that ward.
I can't be sure about this, but from the tone of the Salemtowne meeting -- lots of shouting and interruptions of those trying to explain how the homeless camp would operate -- this feels like a bunch of conservative Republicans taking a Trumpian stand against supposed government overreach.
A town hall over a planned managed homeless camp in west Salem turned vitriolic Tuesday night as hundreds of people gathered in a crowded room at Salemtowne to ask questions and voice concerns.
The gathering was tense, with audience members repeatedly cutting off or shouting over a handful of speakers from the city of Salem and homeless service provider Church at the Park who were there to answer questions over two hours.
What's decidedly strange is that so far as I know, there wasn't much (or any) opposition to the managed camps that have been set up in north Salem. I guess west Salem residents are just crankier about doing their part to deal with the homeless crisis.
However, City officials did screw up by not engaging in community outreach before revealing the plan for a micro shelter homeless camp on city-owned property on Wallace Road just a few days before the City Council was set to approve the camp.
On the whole, the micro shelter approach seems way better than letting homeless people camp in city parks or downtown sidewalks. The shelters are small, one design being just 64 square feet, but they're a heck of a lot better than a tent or cardboard box.
What's sad, of course, is that living in a glorified shed passes for progress in housing the homeless. This shouldn't be happening in a country as well off as the United States. Our social safety net has so many holes in it, it's better termed a Swiss Cheese approach to doing as little as possible for our most vulnerable citizens.
I'm no expert on homelessness.
But the reading I've done says that "housing first" is the best way to help homeless people break the cycle of living on the streets. Give the homeless a home, even a very basic one, and they're much more likely to find a job, stop excessive drinking or drug use, get healthier, and otherwise transition out of what's caused them to become homeless.
It sure seems like the federal government should be footing the bill for micro shelters. Absent that, there's a push to get people in Salem to donate the $5,000 cost of a micro shelter. A Statesman Journal story tells how to get involved with this effort.
Those wanting to sponsor a shelter or learn more can email:
Not surprisingly, city officials put a positive spin on the results in their Salem Connection email blurb.
Ah, note the mention of "core City services." It's true that most people, 70%, are satisfied with city services. But that's a big drop from the 86% satisfaction in 2020. Since Covid was with us in both years, the pandemic doesn't seem to be the reason for the decline in satisfaction.
Something else is. The report's authors note that satisfaction also is down in other Oregon cities and Oregon as a whole, but we don't know if there are special circumstances in Salem causing dissatisfaction.
That decline was across all city services (the water/sewer/stormwater plus 2 is within the 5% survey margin of error).
Thus it appears that Salem residents have become more cranky in general with how things are going in Salem. And a large percentage blame the City of Salem in whole or in part. The question asked was, "All in all, would you say things in Salem are headed in the right direction, or are things off on the wrong track?"
Almost two thirds, 65%, say "wrong track," up from just 41% in 2020. Those saying "right track" dropped from 38% in 2020 to 23% in 2021.
The survey didn't ask whether citizens specifically blame, or credit, the City Council, Mayor, or City Manager Steve Powers and other city officials for the direction Salem is headed.
Regardless, 91% say that whichever track Salem is on, this is either mainly or partially because of actions the City of Salem has taken. This is close to the 90% who said this in 2020, the big difference being an increase in those who say "mainly because of actions the City has taken" -- up from 22% in 2020 to 34% in 2021.
Even more striking is that of the 65% who consider that Salem is on the wrong track, 40% percent say this is mainly the City's fault.
This means 26% of Salem residents think Salem is on the wrong track and actions of City officials are the main reason (.65 x .40). Only a small percentage overall, 7%, absolve the City, saying that the direction Salem is going is mainly because of circumstances outside the City's control.
So what is the main concern of Salem residents? Homelessness, by a big margin. The detailed result is more interesting than the summary discussed in the report.
You can see that concern about homelessness has steadily increased from 7% in 2016 to 58% in 2021. Of course, people have different reasons for this concern. Some feel compassion for the plight of homeless people. Others focus on the ugliness of homeless camps and their effect on surrounding neighborhoods, including crime.
Whatever the reason, homelessness is by far the first thing that people in Salem think about when asked what issue is most important for the City of Salem to do something about.
Covid is the #2 concern at 8%. After that no concern was the first mention of more than 4%, though if you add together "roads, potholes, infrastructure," "traffic congestion," and "additional bridge," it could be argued that roads are on the mind of 5% of the population.
But "additional bridge" got only 1%, four people out of 400. This shows that the frenzy over the Third Bridge has virtually disappeared after the City Council voted to kill the project several years ago.
Likewise, "police reform" got exactly zero mentions, following 3% in 2020 when Black Lives Matter protests were in full swing. This goes a long way toward explaining why the City Council's efforts at police reform have been decidedly minimal. It's a big concern to a small number of people, but is the top concern of very few, maybe none.
Of course, it would be nice to know the top three concerns, say, of those who took part in the survey. Still, it appears that in next year's races for City Council and Mayor, candidates would be wise to focus on homelessness and income equality/poverty.
And obviously even if few people (1%) mention "environment" as their top concern, this doesn't mean the City of Salem should downplay the Climate Action Plan currently being developed. Some issues demand attention because of their evident importance, no matter how many people have it as a #1 concern.
The same could be said for all of the issues below, really. Each has passionate advocates. That's what politics and community involvement is all about -- allowing everybody to speak out about what concerns them, then sorting out which issues deserve the most attention.
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