In reading a Salem Reporter story about the effort of city officials to get voter approval of a property tax increase in order to deal with a $8 million - $13 million gap between revenues and expenses, I was struck by the several mentions of communicating with the public about this problem.
Here's some excerpts from "City Council discusses possible next steps to address budgetary shortfalls" by Joe Siess.
Salem city councilors appear ready to put a measure before voters next May to raise property taxes to avoid sweeping cuts to city programs.
But councilors made clear during a work session on Monday, Aug. 19, that they want a clear signal the community would back such increased taxation before they seek formal approval.
The majority of the council gave City Manager Keith Stahley the green light to plan for polling likely voters on what city services they would be willing to pay for and how much they would be willing to pay.
...Stahley on Monday also suggested auditing city finances and a deeper look at the city’s financial forecast. Those would provide transparency for citizens and ensure they have a firm understanding of the city’s budgetary shortfalls, he said.
...Stahley told Salem Reporter after the meeting his perception is that while councilors support a tax levy going to voters next May, there is also tension about it in the sense that the city hopes to ensure the community both understands the problem and supports a possible solution.
Councilors agreed engaging the community and adequately communicating the city’s budget situation will be a key element moving forward.
...The city council largely agreed that it will take more time to gain community trust, especially after the payroll tax failure [in November 2023].
....City Councilor Jose Gonzalez said he believes nothing can be done about the budget situation if the council fails to gain public support and understanding.
So city officials are talking a lot about engaging the public, but aside from a poll of several hundred citizens in a city with about 178,000 people, there wasn't any mention of how those officials are going to communicate with the public.
This isn't easy in Salem. Unlike Portland, Eugene, Medford, and Bend, we don't have any television stations. Our "local" TV news comes from occasional stories on the Portland stations.
Newspaper-wise, our daily paper is the Statesman Journal. I couldn't find any current circulation figures for the Statesman Journal, but it's clear that the readership is way down in recent years. In December 2019 I wrote a blog post, "Statesman Journal print circulation is down 36% in last two years."
It's interesting that while Eugene and Salem have roughly equal populations, the Eugene Register-Guard had a 2019 print circulation that was almost exactly double that of the Salem Statesman Journal. And the Eugene paper had a much lower decline in circulation, 23.9% for the two years vs. Salem's 35.7%.
I was curious to see where the Statesman Journal ranked among the 200 daily newspapers. I looked through the searchable database and found that 6 newspapers had an equal two year circulation decline of 35.7%; 62 newspapers had a larger circulation decline; and 132 newspapers had a smaller circulation decline.
So the Statesman Journal was in the bottom third, approximately. Meaning, about two-thirds of the 200 newspapers had a smaller two-year print circulation decline than the Statesman Journal.
The 2019 Statesman Journal print circulation was 14,494. It's likely considerably lower now. Many people have a digital subscription, but I'm pretty sure there's no public information about the number of digital subscriptions.
The online-only Salem Reporter does a better job of covering City of Salem news than the Statesman Journal does. Again, there's no public information about how many digital subscriptions the Salem Reporter has.
So it's tough to reach the residents of Salem. It's no exaggeration to say that we live in a "news desert." A journalism school offered this definition:
We define a news desert as: a community, either rural or urban, with limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that feeds democracy at the grassroots level.
...Many newspapers have become ghosts of their former selves, both in terms of the quality and quantity of their editorial content and the reach of their readership.
That's certainly the case with the Statesman Journal. There's very little local news. There's no editorial page, so no letters to the editor, no opinion pieces. The Salem Reporter also doesn't have an editorial section, though it does a decent job with local news.
Thus city officials face a tough task in communicating with voters about the need for raising more revenue and why a property tax increase is the best way to do this. That would be a difficult job under any circumstances. It's considerably more difficult in a "news desert" city like Salem.
Comments