Salem Political Snark

City staff appear to be undermining Salem City Council policies

A seemingly insignificant item on the July 13 City Council meeting agenda is a window into a really important question: are City of Salem staff undermining City Council priorities through shadowy, if not sleazy, administrative schemes? It sure seems so.

Best undermining cartoon I could find.
Substitute city staff for tunnel digger and City Council for people standing on top.

On June 18 I wrote a blog post called "Shady stuff associated with Salem City Council agenda item." The agenda item was postponed, and a hearing on the appeal by E.M. Easterly of the city's purchase of a house at 298 Taybin Road NW was scheduled for next Monday's council meeting.

Easterly is one of those unsung heroes who cast light on dubious actions by government officials that otherwise would go unnoticed. He has dug deep into the geeky details of the Taybin Road purchase, forcing city staff to defend what may turn out to be indefensible.

With the passage of three weeks, the shadiness of the house purchase has gotten even darker. Here's four perspectives on this issue that provide a good overview of the various levels of concern the City Council should have about what city staff have done.

First, I got these thoughts today from a fellow citizen activist who prefers to remain anonymous. This is the highest level of concern -- whether city staff are deliberately undermining City Council policies regarding the construction of Marine Drive in West Salem.

A Race Between the City Council and the City Administration -- Operate in a Parallel Universe

 

Institutional resistance is common when new leadership takes over an organization, but what the Salem City Council faces with the current City management could be characterized as indifference or complete disregard. It is one thing for the Council to set policy, but it is another thing for management to interpret that policy as it sees fit.

 

Unless there is accountability, future City Council votes may be meaningless.

 

Since June 10, 2019 when the City Council voted to use $3.6 million to route a future City street called Marine Drive through one of two alignments, the City management has made more progress on the alignment that was not approved by the City Council. Here is the status update on each route.

 

Percent Surveyed --  The City has recently surveyed part of the alignment that the City Council voted against.

Percent Appraised -- The City has paid for appraisal reports on property the City voted against buying.

Percent Purchased -- The only property actually purchased so far is for the "wrong" alignment and is the subject of the appeal hearing on Monday. The City Council has approved three agreements to buy right-of-way, but none have closed other than along the 'wrong" alignment.

Houses Displaced -- City Administration 1 of 6 and Council zero of two.

Cost per SF -- City Council has approved spending no more than $5.10 per square foot on the Council alignment and City Administration paid over $8 (I will confirm exact amount) per square foot on their alignment.

 

It is a race between the unelected City administration and the elected City Council to purchase their own version of Marine Drive. As of the middle of July 2020 and 13 months into the race, the City administration is winning.

 

But how can the City bureaucrats be buying property for a street that is not supported by a majority of the City Council, when the City Council has the "power of the purse"?  The answer so far is that City management use another source of money and justify the purchase for a yet-to-be-identified other purpose related to stormwater.

 

The reason this is all coming to a head in front of the City Council on Monday, July 13, is because the City administration had to be "creative" in finding a source of money and a citizen activist, E.M. Easterly, is using state law to get the attention of the City Council in an appeal hearing to stop the City from using a dedicated funding source that might be inappropriate.  

 

Second, here's public testimony submitted by Mark Wigg on the Taybin Road house purchase appeal.

Dear Mayor and City Council,

The purchase of this property raises many questions that are not addressed in the staff report of June 2, 2020.

Staff learned of a development planned for this property in 2017 when it was owned by Charlotte Wilson, who was 74 years old at the time. Did Ms. Wilson submit plans for development to the city? The City hears many rumors of developments that do not proceed beyond rumor. What record does the City have that a development was imminent?

(1) In March of 2019, Ms. Wilson died. If the City was worried about a development on the property, why didn’t the City negotiate with the executor of the estate to obtain the property? The property sold in May of 2019 for $199,500. 

(2) The City agreed to purchase the property in October, 2019 for $401,765. Where is the City’s appraisal for the property? Did the City consider using condemnation to acquire the property for less than this amount? The City agreed to pay twice the purchase price of the property less than six months after it was purchased by JDV Investments.  Some people may think this deal smells a little fishy.

(3) The Staff Report states that the purchase was needed for immediate use for stormwater detention and stream bank conservation. Where are the City’s plans for making this a stormwater detention facility? How does the City know that this is the best property for a stormwater detention facility if no plans for the facility have been developed? The city could have required any development of the property to protect the streambank and slough?

(4) Who specifically at the City negotiated the price and determined the need to purchase this property?

(5) When purchasing right of way for Marine Drive north of Cameo, how often did the City pay over 200% of appraised or recent sales price? If 200% over appraisal is the new standard for property acquisition, the City should let everyone know.

The City should not be spending money foolishly. This purchase was not needed. The City Manager needs to follow up on this serious error in judgment by making the property acquisition process based less on whim and rumor and more on facts. This type of transaction makes people think that the City favors some people over others and may be corrupt.

Mark Wigg

UPDATE: It looks even more like City of Salem staff, in the person of Glenn Davis, the city's chief development engineer, are stonewalling attempts to find out what happened with the highly suspicious Taybin Road house purchase. Here's screenshots of an email exchange between E.M. Easterly and Glenn Davis. Easterly wants answers to pertinent questions. Davis says, in effect, get lost.

Third, here's public testimony on the appeal submitted by Linda Bierly. "SDC" refers to System Development Charges.

Mayor Bennett and Councilors:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Agenda Item 4.a, the Public Hearing on Appeal of System Development Charge Expenditure.

I support Mr. Easterly's appeal of the use of Stormwater System Development Charge (SDC) funds for the purchase of real property at 298 Taybin Road NW.

Public works staff makes the argument that this property was purchased for stormwater detention and streambank conservation. If this is true, project details have yet to be provided. This purchase is not identified in the 309 list of stormwater projects and the $400,000 price tag exceeds the 5% contingency allowance for small projects in the West Bank. 

The staff report also states "possible future use for Marine Drive NW construction."  

It is my understanding that City Council has rejected routing the future Marine Drive from Glen Creek Road NW to Cameo Street NW. Rather, Council has supported a more direct (and much more cost effective) route for the future Marine Drive utilizing the existing 5th Avenue NW to connect to Marine Drive at the Cameo St. NW / 5th Street NW intersection, thereby sparing Wallace Marine Park, Pioneer Village, and Willamette Slough the environmental, noise, and safety impacts that road construction and the road itself would inevitably bring.

I hope you will also look at the context of this transaction that appears to have cost the City far more money that it should have, was justified by vague and undefined stormwater plans and, inexplicably, includes the possibility of funding a defunct transportation project with Stormwater SDC monies. If the construction of Marine Drive through this property somehow materialized, the Stormwater SDC fund was to have been reimbursed with Transportation SDCs. 

Please support Mr. Easterly's appeal. It is to the public's advantage that transactions of this nature receive far greater public scrutiny than staff provided. It is to the public's advantage that the entire Stormwater SDC process and use of this fund is more transparent.  

Currently, it appears to be far too easy to hide motive and cost in bureaucratic legalese and without folks like Mr. Easterly calling attention to process, to simply slip an extra $400,000.00 into budgetary business as usual.  

Linda Bierly
Ward 8

Fourth, and lastly, here's a summary of E.M. Easterly's appeal sent to me by Easterly.

Executive Summary of Salem Stormwater SDC  Expenditure Appeal

• This appeal addresses the inaccurate policy assumptions and fuzzy procedural practices of Salem City staff seeking to use “unspecified” Stormwater SDC moneys to purchase land without actually affirming that the purchase complied with the Salem Stormwater Master Plan and State statutes. The recommendation and initial generalizations are described by Easterly as an abuse of staff discretion. See Easterly Document #7.
• November 2019: City of Salem staff recommended the purchase of land along the edge of Wallace Marine Park in West Salem with Salem Stormwater SDC funds.
• The Salem City Council authorized the land purchase.
• March 2020: E.M. Easterly reviewed the above staff purchase recommendation against the 2000 Salem Stormwater Master Plan. Easterly learned:
• (a) the recommended land purchase was not included in the stormwater project list for the West Bank basin,
• (b) the land purchase was not included in the 2019-2020 Stormwater SDC expenditure budget, and
• (c) staff claimed mid fiscal year Stormwater SDC “unspecified” moneys were an eligible expenditure resources and expendable without Council budget modification. 
• Easterly challenged the staff claim and asked for historical evidence of prior Council authorizations of  mid-year expenditure of Stormwater SDC funds on non-budgeted projects.
• May 2020: City Attorney Atchison identified the 2000 Salem Stormwater Master Plan 5% pipes and ditches conveyance allowance as the actual source of the SDC funds.  
• Easterly challenged the Atchison claim on multiple levels. 
• (a) The total West Bank Basin 5% conveyance allowance allocation was less than the land purchase price. 
• (b) The pipes and ditches project description in the 2000 Salem Stormwater Master Plan provided no evidence that a land purchase and dwelling removal qualified.
• (c) Questions were raised seeking evidence to support whether the Stormwater SDC expenditure met the requirements of the Stormwater Master Plan and State statutes. 
• June 2020: Staff issued a report to Council declaring the Stormwater SDC expenditure “... is consistent with the allowance for small projects …” by declaring the 5% allowance for small projects was system wide rather than a basin by basin allocation.  The Easterly Document #4 disputes that interpretation and raises additional questions staff has never answered.  

Looks like Salem City Council wants to reimagine the police

l understand why "Defund the Police" has become a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter protesters. But it can be misunderstood as calling for the abolition of police departments, which very few people really want to do. 

"Reimagine the Police" strikes me as both more accurate and more politically palatable. 

A Washington Post opinion piece, Don't "Defund the Police". Reimagine the Police. makes a case for the latter slogan.

“Defund the Police” is candy to the one-liner simpletons. It’s a cry that launched a thousand memes about the lawless anarchy to come. It’s a loping softball to the grumping Trumpers who swat it away with a red hat.

Just like the “Abolish ICE” outcry that followed our nation’s shameful treatment of immigrants meant “Open the borders and let every criminal in” to too many folks, “Defund the police” sounds like “Get rid of all police everywhere and let anarchy reign” to anyone who doesn’t want to figure out what’s really going on.

The needed change isn’t about defunding the police. It’s about reimagining the police.

And that's what two members of the Salem City Council are proposing at next Monday's (June 22) meeting. Here's the motions that Tom Andersen intends to make, as shared in a Facebook post.

Here are two motions I will make at Monday's Council meeting. I believe that the City IT will have arranged a way for citizens to speak via zoom. If not, send an email to the Council and we will read it. The agenda items are 5.a (first one) and 5.b. Each motion is just the starting point for serious discussions on these issues to be shortly followed by appropriate action.

First motion relates to police in schools:

I move that City Council schedule a work session to consider the issue of Salem Police Department officers in Salem schools.

DISCUSSION The work session may include as discussion of the City’s agreement with the District, statistics showing the number of contacts within the school system that result in criminal charges, statistics showing the percentage of officer contract between Caucasian students and students of color, and the percentage of students in each class whose contract resulted in criminal charges, input from the District administration, and any other appropriate issues.

Second motion concerns use of police for non-criminal matters:

I move that Council schedule a work session to discuss the use of City funds for various non-criminal matters that are currently handled by the Police Department.

DISCUSSION The work session may include items such as mental health services, addiction services, and any other appropriate topics, and the potential to shift these and any other appropriate responsibilities to agencies other than the Police, such as a Cahoots type service.

And this is the motion that Vanessa Nordyke is proposing.

I will be making a motion at the next City Council meeting for a performance audit of the Salem Police Department, to be completed by the next Citizen Budget Committee Meeting. Here’s why:

Around the country and right here in Salem, people are demanding change in policing. Our society faces multiple public health crises, like racism, homelessness, opioid addiction, mental illness, and more. Many times, these trigger 911 calls. But not every 911 call is best handled by a police officer. You need the right tool for the right job.

In places like Eugene, a mental health professional and a paramedic can be dispatched at a fraction of the cost of dispatching a police officer in a program known as CAHOOTS. It allows persons who are too traumatized to talk to police, to talk to someone else. And, it frees up police to focus on higher acuity calls.

The call for change is ringing loud and clear across the city. But how do we do it? How do we involve stakeholders? How do we get buy-in? How do we avoid unintended consequences? In other words, how do we get lasting, positive change? By having a transparent, accountable, and public process. We need time to do it right, and with the benefit of public input, especially from marginalized communities and others who have not been heard.

Change should be informed by a systematic, impartial, evidence-based review of policing in our city. Performance audits can do that. They evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs with the goal of making them work better. We can amend budgets as appropriate once we have reviewed and discussed results as a community.

Change is coming, folks. Let’s open the dialogue and decide, as a community, what we want public safety to look like in Salem.

I'm inclined to prefer Nordyke's approach, though Andersen's idea for City Council work sessions could be part of the Salem Police Department performance audit Nordyke is calling for.

Also, Councilor Jackie Leung said at the previous council meeting that she'd be making a motion to eliminate funding for school resource officers in the Salem Police Department budget -- which is part of the City of Salem budget for the next fiscal year that will be voted on at Monday's meeting.

It'd be great if the City Council approved each of the motions by Andersen, Nordyke, and Leung. 

Andersen and Nordyke want to take a measured let's-think-this-through approach to reimagining the Salem Police Department and reallocating funds that currently go to the police. That makes a lot of sense, but it will seem unduly bureaucratic to those who want to see immediate change in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.

After all, for many years there has been a lot of talk about reforming the police but little action. That's why I think the City Council would be wise to take a small chunk out of the Police Department budget -- money for school resource officers -- as a sign that councilors are serious about changing the way policing is done in Salem.

Then engage the community in a year-long Reimagine the Police effort, the performance audit Nordyke is calling for, that would be completed in time to make potentially big changes to the police budget in the fiscal year that follows the one being voted on next Monday.

Shady stuff associated with Salem City Council agenda item

By and large, I'm no conspiracy theorist. But I'm always ready to believe that when it comes to goings-on with the City of Salem, what appears innocent and boring at first glance may be the tip of a non-innocent non-boring "iceberg" below the surface.

So I said "sure" when someone asked if I wanted to learn the backstory behind an appeal of a Systems Development Charge expenditure for the purchase of a house at 298 Taybin Road NW in West Salem. The appeal is on the agenda of the June 22 Salem City Council meeting.

Before getting to the backstory, here's the first outrageous thing that caught my eye when I looked at the appeal agenda item. The staff recommendation to reject the appeal comes from Peter Fernandez, the Public Works Director -- who also happens to be the person at the center of the controversial decision to purchase the Taybin Road property. 

Sure, this is common in government bodies. The person who did something that you're upset with, and want to appeal, turns out to be the person who will initially review the appeal. But just because a practice is common doesn't make it right.

Hopefully the members of the City Council understand that when they see a staff analysis recommending denial of an appeal, often, if not usually, there is a decided conflict of interest at play.

Another outrage is that I've been told the City Recorder will not allow the appellant, E.M. Easterly, to appear for his hearing.  So the City staff get to address the Council using video but Easterly can only submit written testimony (currently City Council meetings are virtual, being streamed online, with no in-person audience).

This seems crazy. Zoom can handle dozens, or even hundreds, of participants. Other city councils are allowing people to testify online. Why isn't the City of Salem doing this?

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Just heard that the City attorney will overrule the City Recorder and will allow Easterly to speak via video. Good news.

At any rate, the appeal to be discussed next Monday involves whether the correct pot of money was used to purchase the house at 298 Taybin Road NW. More correctly, the house that used to be at this address, since I was told that Peter Fernandez had it torn down before closing on January 20, 2020.

The City of Salem paid $402,000 for the 832 square foot house, which Zillow estimates was worth $215,000. (City paid $375,000 for the house and $26,765 to have the house demolished.) I've heard that attorney Jim Vick bought the house for about $200,000 and resold it to the City for close to twice the price within six months, a pretty darn good return on investment. [NOTE: initially I had a "Bob Vick" as the seller of the property, but someone has sent me documentation that it was Jim Vick, also an attorney.]

(The City Council might want to ask staff why the price paid for this house was so high.)

A staff analysis prepared for the appeal says why the house was purchased. I've boldfaced a provocative part.

In October 2019, staff recommended to Council acquisition of this parcel for immediate use as stormwater detention, streambank conservation, and possible future use for Marine Drive NW construction. Given its immediate planned use, staff recommended use of Stormwater System Development Charge funds for its acquisition. Future use of the western portion of the parcel for transportation purposes would require reimbursement to the Stormwater SDC fund for that portion of the property.

That mention of Marine Drive NW leads into the most interesting part of the backstory, as expressed in the following theory.

A key question is why Peter Fernandez, the Public Works Director, authorized purchase and removal of the house, possibly using the wrong source of funding. Well, maybe because the house was in the path of an approach to the Third Bridge that the Chamber of Commerce was promising would be resurrected with a record amount of campaign spending in the May 2020 City Council primary election. 

However, the election ended up with the same 6-3 progressive majority on the City Council, which meant that, for the foreseeable future, the dream of the Third Bridge that still holds sway among key City staff, the Mayor, and several city councilors will not come to pass.

Yet in October 2019 that dream seemed like it could become reality, if enough progressives were defeated in the upcoming 2020 City Council elections to turn a 6-3 majority into at least a 5-4 minority.

What I've been told is that on June 10, 2019, the City Council directed City staff not to buy right-of-way that includes 298 Taybin Road when it adopted a motion from Councilor Kaser to buy property for Marine Drive from 5th Ave and Cameo Street to River Bend Road. 

So the nearly $3.6 million of 2008 Streets and Bridges Bond Funds could not be used to buy 298 Taybin. Thus, goes the theory, Peter Fernandez reached into his bag of funding tricks and picked a source of funding that, according to the E.M. Easterly appeal, is not appropriate.

Further, the Proposed Budget Book 1, page 204, that is up for final approval at Monday's City Council meeting still states that the approximate $3.6 million carryover funding for Marine Drive is to initiate street improvements from Glen Creek to Cameo, which is counter to Kaser's adopted motion.

 

This seems to show that City of Salem staff really want Marine Drive to go east of Pioneer Village and along the edge of Wallace Marine Park. It is as if those staff either did not notice the City Council decision on June 10, 2019 to purchase Marine Drive Right of Way between 5th Ave and River Bend Road, or they just want to keep ignoring the role of the City Council in setting policy for the City of Salem.

 

To me, what's most concerning about the purchase of the Taybin Road house is that on June 10, 2019, as the City Council considered what right-of-way to buy for Marine Drive, reportedly the Public Works Director said that the City will buy whatever right-of-way the Council decides on.

 

But that's not how it turned out. The City Council picked one route and the Public Works Director bought right-of-way at twice the market value in a different location that had a house on it which could have been available as affordable housing stock if it hadn't been torn down.

 

Here's some maps that make more clear the issues at stake here.

 

Below is a screenshot of a Google Maps image, with the Taybin Drive house address shown by the red marker. That address is considerably south of Cameo Drive, which Councilor Kaser's motion said should be the southern edge of the Marine Drive right-of-way acquisition. So why is the Public Works Department buying the Taybin Drive property for a possible future Marine Drive construction?

 

 

And here's a screenshot of part of a Salem River Crossing (Third Bridge) planning document that I found on Google Images. You can see that the plan was for bridge traffic to be funneled along Marine Drive, some of which would run close to and parallel to Wallace Marine Park -- right where the Taybin Drive house was located.

 

 

 

City Council should cut budget of Salem Police Department

Most people, including me, who favor "Defund the police" aren't calling for no police at all. We just believe there is plenty of room to reduce the amount of taxpayer money that is going into the budgets of police departments.

The first step toward doing this is getting away from the indefensible notion that police are so special, taking a close look at what they do and how they do it shouldn't happen.

Actually, and obviously, police officers are just people.

Their job can be difficult. So are almost all jobs. Their job can be dangerous. So are lots of other jobs. There's no reason to morally elevate police over other professions that also are important to society just because they generally carry a gun in this country.

With that first step out of the way, we can move toward considering the "why" and "how" questions that are basic to budgetary decisions in both the public and private sectors. 

Why is this program or policy important? Why is it valued? How are those goals best achieved? How could things be done more effectively and efficiently? 

As I called for recently, the Salem City Council needs to take a close look at the FY 2021 City of Salem budget for the police department because that's by far the largest line item in the general fund budget. Black Lives Matter protesters have raised valid questions about whether police budgets around the country should be cut, much less raised, as the City of Salem is proposing.

Here's a graphic shared by local activist Jim Scheppke that shows how public safety, police and fire, suck up about 60% of Salem's general fund budget. Sure, public safety is important. But is it that important?

As far as I know, only Councilor Jackie Leung called for a reduction in the police department budget at the June 8 City Council meeting where the FY 2020-21 budget was on the agenda. Leung said she would propose at the June 22 meeting that money for police school resource officers be removed.

But as a Salem Reporter story says, there were plenty of public comments calling for a partial defunding of the Salem Police Department, with that money being re-allocated to other community needs. 

Notably absent from the councilors’ discussion any reference to nearly 30 letters of public comment demanding to shift part of the police budget to community and social programs.

It’s part of a larger call nationwide to defund the police and instead use taxpayer money for other areas of need in cities.

Christine Shanaberger wrote in her submission that councilors should revise the budget to reduce police spending as the department takes about a third of the general fund.

A Salem-Keizer school board meeting about next year's budget was much more heated regarding police presence in schools, as another Salem Reporter story pointed out.

The school board postponed action on the billion-dollar budget until June 23 to give more time to consider the outcry to remove school resource officers.

It seems to me that on June 22 the Salem City Council would be wise to defund the Salem Police Department's participation in the school resource officer program for these reasons:

(1) It sends a message that the Council is committed to making changes to the police department in line with the nationwide calls for less militarization of police and more attention to concerns of people of color about how they're treated by police.

(2) Since students are leading the call to do away with school resource officers, and those officers supposedly are there to serve students, it makes sense to end that program.

(3) It appears likely that either the school board or Superintendent Perry will end the school resource program. So the City Council should take a stand before this happens, since taking a stand afterward would be an empty gesture.

Police Chief Jerry Moore announced his retirement at the end of 2019, but is staying on until his replacement can be hired. Some city councilors might be thinking that it would be better to hold off on changes to the Salem Police Department until a new chief is on hand to oversee them.

But a counterargument is that the city needs to hire a chief who is open to change, so any candidate who would refuse the position because some cuts have been made to the police department budget wouldn’t be someone who should be police chief.

Negative campaigning didn't work in Salem City Council races

I found a lot to like in how the four Salem City Council races on the May 19 ballot turned out.

Progressives won three of them, and narrowly lost the fourth, even though the conservative candidates had a lot more money to spend -- thanks to contributions from business related PACs (political action committees). 

Stapleton, Phillips, Oakes-Miller, and Nordyke were the progressive candidates. The * indicates who won.

So the four progressive candidates raised $70,231 as of May 22, while the four conservative candidates raised a whopping $158,350, well over twice as much. 

Yet three of the conservatives lost. And not by a little. By a lot. 

The most obvious reason is that Salem is a progressive town, despite its reputation as being a backwater between the swiftly flowing liberal currents of Portland and Eugene.

But in the two most hotly contested City Council races -- Nanke vs. Phillips in Ward 3, and Sund vs. Nordyke in Ward 7 -- I believe negative campaigning on behalf of the conservative candidates (Nanke and Sund) backfired. 

This was my guess back in December 2019 when I wrote "Sleaze warning: Reid Sund hires Chuck Adams in Ward 7 race."

Watch out, residents of south Salem's Ward 7.

A tsunami of sleaze could be coming your way as the City Council race between Vanessa Nordyke and Reid Sund heats up between now and the May 2020 primary election.

I say this because Sund's campaign finance reporting indicates that Chuck Adams' firm, New Media Northwest, is working for the Friends of Reid Sund committee.

...Now, hopefully Reid Sund will tell Adams that he wants to run a clean campaign against Vanessa Nordyke. But the fact that the Sund campaign is working with New Media Northwest, which is based in Salem, is a disturbing sign that Sund is prepared to go low when Nordyke goes high. 

If this happens, I think the tactic could backfire against Sund.

People are fed up with the never-ending rancor and divisiveness in Washington, D.C. and don't want to see this at the local level here in Salem. It's fine that Sund is a conservative and Nordyke is a progressive. This should make for an engaging battle of ideas and policy positions that Ward 7 voters would appreciate.

However, Chuck Adams has a lengthy history of stretching the truth beyond acceptable political bounds.

And that's what happened in both the Ward 3 and Ward 7 races, the truth was stretched by those supporting the Nanke and Sund campaigns. It's unclear how much this was orchestrated by Chuck Adams and his firm New Media Northwest. 

But given how much money flowed into the pockets of New Media Northwest, likely Adams' political consulting firm had some influence on the Nanke and Sund campaigns. 

Tonight I looked through the ORESTAR financial reports of the four conservative Salem City Council campaigns to see how much was paid to New Media Northwest. Here's what I came up with:

Jan Kailuweit (Ward 1): 0
Brad Nanke (Ward 3): $23,767
Jose Gonzalez (Ward 5): $3,087
Reid Sund (Ward 7): $55,131

So a total of $81,985 flowed into the coffers of New Media Northwest from the conservative campaigns, which is over half of the $158,350 contributed to those campaigns, 52% by my calculations

Pleasingly, there was a rough inverse relationship between how much money a campaign spent on New Media Northwest, and how well the candidate did.

Sund spent by far the most, and got 43% of the vote. Nanke was the next highest spender, and got 44%. Gonzales was the third highest spender, and got 52% of the vote. Kailuweit spent nothing on New Media Northwest, and got 42%.

The only reports I got of negative campaign ads were in support of the Sund and Nanke campaigns. They spent a heck of a lot of money on New Media Northwest consulting services. And they lost, big-time. Kailuweit also lost big-time, yet paid New Media Northwest a big fat zero.

To me, the lesson is that if negative campaigning ever worked in Salem, it didn't this time. Hopefully we will see less negativity in future Salem City Council races, since this doesn't seem to be a winning strategy.

Salem Reporter gets it right: this is a progressive town

It's wrong to think that Salem is a conservative backwater stuck between two cool progressive cities to our north and south, Portland and Eugene.

Sure, for a long time some have termed our town So-Lame. But if that moniker ever was deserved, it sure doesn't describe Salem now, either from a cultural or a political perspective.

As I noted on May 20 in a post-election post, "Progressives dominate in three of four Salem City Council races," progressives have made a great comeback in Salem. Back in 2015 there was just one progressive on the City Council. Starting in 2018, there have been six. 

And there still are six, since the "to be determined" Ward 5 race shown in yellow ended up going to Jose Gonzalez rather than Hollie Oakes-Miller. 

Today the headline of a story in the Salem Reporter spoke the truth: "Salem Council results indicate voters prefer a progressive agenda." Here's how the story starts out.

Salem continues to head down a progressive path if Tuesday’s election results say anything about the makeup of the city.

Salem city politics have gradually become more progressive in recent years. For the latest election, two councilors chose not to run for re-election and one resigned, but most of the seats they leave will be filled with candidates who follow in their ideology.

Councilor Chris Hoy said Tuesday affirmed where the council has been headed in recent years, with his election to council in 2018 tipping the political balance to progressive majority.

“This just reinforced that it wasn’t an anomaly. This is the direction Salem wants to go,” Hoy said.

For sure. 

The progressive handwriting has been on Salem's wall for quite a few years. But conservatives in our town, notably including the Chamber of Commerce, haven't been reading it.

In 2012 Salem went for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 10 points, 53% to 43%. Six of Salem's eight wards favored Obama, which happens to be how many progressive city councilors there are now in 2020, six.

In 2016 Salem went for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by 11 points, 49% to 38%. All eight of Salem's wards favored Clinton, though the margin in Ward 4 was just 20 votes.

So it isn't exactly a shocker that in 2020 voters favored progressives in three of the four city council races. Yet the Salem Reporter story includes some quotes that indicate how strongly political denial has taken root in the minds of local conservatives. For example:

Jan Kailuweit, a manager in the Oregon Employment Department, lost his second bid to represent downtown Salem’s Ward 1, getting 42% of the vote. His opponent, stay-at-home mom Virginia Stapleton, won with 57%.

“Ideology and partisanship won over pragmaticism,” Kailuweit said Friday.

He said partisanship has crept into city council races since a contingent of liberal residents known as Progressive Salem started helping elect candidates in 2014.

Kailuweit is fairly new to Salem, so I'll give him a pass on that last completely-wrong statement. Otherwise he'd deserve a failing grade.

Here's how I described the truth of political partisanship in Salem, which extends far beyond 2014, in a blog post titled "Chamber of Commerce no longer running Salem. Let's keep it that way." 

Back in 1998, though, the Salem Chamber of Commerce set out to elect a Mayor and City Councilors who would bow at the altar of job creation. This is from a March 2016 post on the Build Jobs PAC web site, where the PAC announced that it was endorsing Chuck Bennett for Mayor and Jan Kailuweit and Warren Bednarz for two council seats (both of whom lost). 

Eighteen years before 2016 gets us to 1998, when Mike Swaim, a progressive, was Mayor from 1997 to 2002. Janet Taylor was elected Mayor in 2003, kicking off a string of Chamber-supported candidates who controlled the City Council until this year, 2017.

Thus Chamber of Commerce-backed candidates wrested control of the City Council in the early 2000s, and lost control in 2017. Gosh, progressives have had the council majority for a whole three years, having worked hard to tilt the partisan pendulum back in a liberal-leaning direction.

Which is what Salem voters want, as the recent election shows. May three years turn into many more.

Campaign finance facts about Salem City Council races in 2020

If you're interested in how much is being contributed to City Council races here in Salem, you're going to love the reports that Jim Scheppke sent me -- which I've shared below in the form of screenshots. 

A post-election story in the Statesman Journal said that Councilor Tom Andersen is looking into the possibility of limiting spending on the races, which points to the relevance of these reports.

For five positions that pay absolutely nothing to have more than $200,000 for political campaigns is alarming, said Salem City Councilor Tom Andersen. 

"I think that's way too much of an influence of big money," he said in a meeting before the May 19 election.

Andersen said he was researching the option of amending the city charter and bringing the issue of campaign contribution limits to voters.

"It seems to me that it makes sense to let the citizens decide if we want all this money -- from whatever source -- funneled into city campaigns," he said. 

There's a lot to digest in the information Scheppke has provided. Here's some headlines.

(1) As of May 22, $228,582 was reported to have been contributed to eight candidates in four City Council races.
(2) That's an average of $28,573 per 2020 candidate.
(3) By contrast, for races in 2014-2018, $11,999 was contributed to each candidate on average.
(4) Five business-related groups contributed $99,250 to conservative candidates in 2020.
(5) Thus those five business-related groups accounted for 43% of all 2020 contributions. 
(6) Contributions to the four winning candidates averaged $7.96 per vote for them.
(7) Contributions to the four losing candidates averaged $13.06 per vote for them. 
(8) In losing, Reid Sund was at $22.87 per vote, and Hollie Oakes-Miller was at 88 cents per vote.
(9) In winning, Jose Gonzalez was at $12.13 per vote, and Virginia Stapleton was at $5.50 per vote.
(10) The four candidates with the highest percentage of small donations were all progressives.
(11) The four candidates with the highest percentage of business PAC donations were all conservatives.

Here's the information Jim Scheppke has put together. I'll also share the PDF files.
Download Campaign Finance Facts 5-22 PDF
Download Historical Campaign Contributions

 

Progressives dominate in three of four Salem City Council races

Last night progressives were heartened by the results of four Salem City Council races -- even one in which the liberal candidate is narrowly behind. Spending on these races set a record, about $220,000, with most of the money coming from individuals and groups aligned with business interests.

The Chamber of Commerce and builder/realtor PACs went all out to change the left-leaning political landscape of the City Council. And in the end, they ended up with at best, the same balance of power.

As the image below that a friend sent me shows, the election started with a 6-3 progressive majority on the council. Currently it is assured that the six progressive seats will remain, plus two conservative council members (Mayor Bennet and Councilor Lewis), with the Ward 5 race too close to call.

Progressives have made a great comeback in Salem. Back in 2015 there was just one progressive on the City Council. Starting in 2018, there have been six. 

Here's screenshots of the current election results for the four City Council races. I haven't shown the mayor's race. Mayor Bennett, who sits on the Council, won easily over Brooke Jackson, 64% to 35%. Scroll down for my comments on each race.

Ward 1: Stapleton (58%) vs. Kailuweit (41%) If there was a near-sure-thing in this election, it was Virginia Stapleton winning. This is the most liberal-leaning ward in Salem. Stapleton had the strong support of Cara Kaser, the progressive incumbent who decided not to run again. Kailuweit had run against Kaser four years ago and lost by a large margin. I give credit to Kailuweit for giving his candidacy a second try. However, the outcome was about the same as in 2016.

Ward 3: Philips (57%) vs. Nanke (43%) The Salem Reporter called this an upset, and the margin of victory by Phillips certainly was surprising. However, last fall Nanke had said that he wasn't going to run again after 20 years on the City Council, then decided to enter the race at the last minute after being pressured to do so. So he was a rather reluctant candidate. In fact, last night I observed in a Zoom election night get-together that Nanke probably was almost as happy with the outcome as Phillips is. 

Ward 5: Oakes-Miller (49%) vs. Gonzalez (50%) This is a very close race, with just 18 votes separating Oakes-Miller and Gonzalez. The Salem Reporter story says:

Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess said that race is too close to call and his office still has more than 1,000 ballots to count. He said final results could be two to three weeks away.

Few gave Oakes-Miller much of a chance. She was outspent by Gonzalez by a 12:1 margin. She's an avowed Democratic Socialist.

But Oakes-Miller was able to send out a mailing that apparently resonated with Ward 3 voters. Here's her positions as shown on the mailer. So I count this as a progressive-plus, even if Oakes-Miller doesn't prevail once all the votes are counted. She showed that a progressive in Salem with little money can go up against a well-funded business-backed candidate and hold their own.

Ward 7: Nordyke (58%) vs. Sund (42%) Since Nordyke had been appointed to the Ward 7 seat after Sally Cook resigned following the untimely death of her husband, Nordyke had the advantage of incumbency. 

Still, Sund broke a fund-raising record for a City Council race, raking in $71,715 while Nordyke raised considerably less than half that amount, $29,039. Clearly the Chamber of Commerce and business PACs wanted to squash Nordyke's political career in the bud, since she is a compelling candidate who, in my opinion, is well-suited to seek a higher office.

Sund ended up spending almost $30 per vote that he ended up getting, while Nordyke spent less than $9. (Hollie Oakes-Miller wins the thrift prize for cost per vote: $1.70.)

So the balance of power between progressives and conservatives on the Salem City Council will end up about the same. However, this is a win for progressives, since they were defending three seats and conservatives only one. 

And if Oakes-Miller ends up pulling out a victory, that would expand the progressive majority to 7-2 from the current 6-3. One interesting twist in this Ward 5 race is that to my understanding, write-in votes are counted in the vote total. So Gonzalez needs to get 50% of the total number of votes plus at least one more vote to avoid a November runoff election.

Currently he is at 50.3%. Thus it's possible that if Oakes-Miller narrows the margin but doesn't take the lead, she could still force Gonzalez into a runoff.

Thank you, Salem Mayor and City Council candidates

I've dusted off a blog post from May 2016. Changed the election day to what it is in 2020, May 19. Updated the names of the candidates.

Otherwise, left it the same, because what I said back then on election day eve is what I also want to say today, with the election tomorrow. Thank you, candidates. 

I offer a heartfelt Namas'cray to all of the Salem people running for Mayor and City Council seats in tomorrow's 2020 primary election.

Thank you for being crazy enough to put in so much time, effort, and money seeking an office that pays exactly nothing, requires a hell of a lot of work, and puts you in the firing line for constant criticism. 

Some of you, I heartily disagree with politically. Some of you, we're political bed-fellows. Doesn't matter. I honor your craziness, your fine madness:

Chuck Bennett and Brooke Jackson, Mayor; Virginia Stapleton and Jan Kailuweit, Ward 1; Trevor Philips and Brad Nanke, Ward 3; Hollie Oakes-Miller and Jose Gonzalez, Ward 5; Vanessa Nordyke and Reid Sund, Ward 7.

Politics really is a crazy sport.

At first I had "cruelest sport" in the title of this post, because there's also that side to politics. Putting up with the craziness/cruelty is admirable on any level of elective office-seeking, but it really deserves accolades on a local level like Salem's. 

Like I said, no pay, long hours, lots of aggravation. 

Of course, just about everybody happily volunteers to do things that are somewhat similar. Such as, competing in various kinds of sports as an amateur. 

In many ways, politics is a sport. But here's why I consider running for political office -- and specifically, Salem Mayor or City Councilor -- is a super-crazy sport. 

The "season" is one game. In golf, tennis, basketball, football, or whatever, losing or winning is temporary. Almost always another game is coming up soon. Next time... we'll learn from this loss... coming up with a better game plan. In politics, though, it's two or four years before another chance. And maybe never. 

In Oregon, the "final score" pops up abruptly. I really feel for candidates on election night, May 19. Since we have vote by mail, ballots are tabulated quickly on election day. Often, if not usually, results are available online a few minutes after 8 pm that stand up. Meaning, the winner is known. It's akin to playing a game hard for months, but not knowing if you're winning or losing. Then, when you're exhausted, the final score pops up. In most other states, returns dribble in, so you have time to adjust to the outcome. In Oregon, it's pretty much Instant Joy or Sorrow.

Rules are loose. Trick plays abound. All sports have rules. So does politics. However, the political game is played pretty fast and loose. Even more so than in football, say, where arguably holding or pass interference could be called on almost every play, if the referees were sticklers. So feelings get hurt. Sort of like when a team goes for a touchdown in the last 30 seconds even though it is ahead 48-0. Hey, you're supposed to take a knee! But the rules allow it.

The stakes are large. So is disappointment. Candidates for political office, especially in local races, run because they care about their community. When they lose, it must feel like more than a personal loss. Wanting to do something positive for their fellow citizens, they've failed. (Well, the way I see it, actually they've won, no matter the outcome, because running for office is such a positive thing to do; but I'm sure it hurts a lot to come up short at the ballot box.)

There's more crazy aspects to the sport of politics, but I'll stop here. With a final thank-you to the candidates, and a hope for the political scene in Salem:

Let's remember that politics is a game, albeit a serious and important one. Both teams going out together after a game for beers, pizza, and some laughs is a big part of many amateur sports. There's no reason politics can't be somewhat the same. 

Fight. Battle. Scream. Yell. Push. Argue. Leave it all on the field. 

Then, when the match is over, do our best to remember that the Bigger Game is life itself -- way beyond politics. 

Oregon Right to Life inserts itself in Salem City Council election

Oregon Right to Life has a nasty habit of sending out last-minute mailers in local elections that have nothing to do with abortion. Here they go again, with the mailer below urging a vote for Brad Nanke in the Ward 3 election for a Salem City Council seat.

Supporters of Nanke claim that he is a "non-partisan" member of the council. Not true. Nanke is deeply conservative. Oregon Right to Life says he is "an advocate for the unborn." 

Since I'm not aware that abortion has ever been discussed at a Salem City Council meeting, it's pretty damn clear that Oregon Right to Life simply is trying to energize right-wing voters to support one of their kind.

So if you're a Ward 3 resident who hasn't turned in your ballot yet, keep in mind that Trevor Phillips is the candidate you should vote for if you want someone who is looking out for the broad public interest, not narrow special interests.