Salem Political Snark

Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District is a bad idea

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

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

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

Think again. Here's my opinion piece.

Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District is a bad idea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statesman Journal endorses conservative white men and bridge tolling

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

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

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

And the editorial board said YES to Lewis and McCoid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rumor: Statesman Journal will stop print publication in 2019

I've heard a believable news tip that the Statesman Journal will cease being a print publication in January 2019. So it now longer would be a newspaper, but a newsonline -- since an electronic publication would continue to be sold. 

Reportedly some reasons are that millennials aren't reading the Statesman Journal, and substantial increases in the subscription price of the print newspaper have resulted in a declining subscriber base.

I've written quite a bit about the sinking fortunes of the Statesman Journal. Here's a sampling:

Statesman Journal outrage: New subscribers charged half of what loyal subscribers pay
Cancel your Statesman Journal subscription for 30 days to save $500 a year
Breaking news: Michael Davis is out as Statesman Journal executive editor
Salem Statesman Journal -- the incredible shrinking newspaper
Ugh! My review of new Statesman Journal web site
Truth Bomb #8: the Statesman Journal is trying to trick Salem
Layoffs at Statesman Journal tied to worrisome "Gannett" newsroom of the future
Truth Bomb #1: The Statesman Journal newspaper is failing Salem
How will Gannett restructuring affect Statesman Journal?

My wife and I enjoy reading the print newspaper every day, so we'd be sad to no longer be able to hold it in our hands. What's worse, this probably would herald the end of the Statesman Journal entirely.

Advertising in an electronic newspaper seemingly would be considerably less attractive to local businesses, so advertising rates likely would decline. And many readers who don't enjoy reading a newspaper online would cancel their subscriptions.

Now, if the Statesman Journal does go under, this would be a loss for Salem, but not a huge loss -- given how far the paper's journalistic standards have sunk.

There's very little local reporting compared to years gone by. (I've been a Statesman Journal subscriber since 1977.) What local reporting exists is generally "frothy," without a whole lot of substance. Coverage of Salem politics and goings-on at City Hall is virtually non-existent, giving readers additional reasons to stop their subscription.

Further, subscription rates are controlled by out-of-town executives with the Gannett Corporation/USA Today. So the Statesman Journal isn't able to control its own future in that regard.

And the paper's web site is horrible. It's a clone of the same Gannett web site design used by the other newspapers in the chain. I subscribe to the online versions of the New York Times and Washington Post, so can say from much personal experience that the Statesman Journal rates a "2," with the Times site being a "10."

If this rumor is true, and the Statesman Journal ceases its print publication in 2019, I've got mixed feelings. 

As noted above, I like being able to hold a local paper in my hands. However, there's so little content that I care about in today's Statesman Journal, my hands don't hold the paper for very long most days. If the Statesman Journal went completely out of business, there'd be some chance that a better journalistic alternative would spring up.

Anyway, we'll have to wait and see.

Will the Statesman Journal survive? I'm betting that it won't, unless the newspaper somehow can break free of its Gannett Corporation chains and return to being a genuine local news outlet that people care about and find value in.

Statesman Journal reporter criticizes Salem Weekly for story his paper didn't cover

I've got no problem with reporters dishing dirt on stories from another news outlet. But it sure seems that if they do this, their own coverage of the issue -- or in the case of the Statesman Journal, non-coverage -- becomes open to critiquing. 

Yesterday Statesman Journal reporter Jonathan Bach tweeted about a follow-up story regarding the Creekside development and Lone Oak Road in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly.

Gordon Friedman, who used to be a Statesman Journal reporter and now works for the Oregonian, chimed in with a comment on Bach's tweet, as did another person.

Here's my problems with Bach, Friedman, and Ms. Matzo Ball Soup.

First, the Statesman Journal has engaged in exactly zero coverage of an important issue that has consumed a lot of City Council time and is a big concern of the South Gateway Neighborhood Association that represents the Creekside area, along with other south Salem residents.

Namely, who is responsible for leaving a bridge over Jory Creek and an extension of Lone Oak Road uncompleted, and should a Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District be established that shifts the cost of these projects from the Creekside developer to the public?

Salem Weekly has run four stories about this, including a front page opinion piece that I wrote.

So a reporter from a "glass house" newspaper that is doing a spectacularly lousy job covering local news, including City Hall goings-on, shouldn't be throwing stones at an alternative paper that is printing stories the Statesman Journal is ignoring.

Second, Helen Caswell, who wrote the Salem Weekly piece Bach tweeted about, is indeed a journalist. And for that matter, so am I in a very real way. We both write factual, carefully researched pieces, Caswell for Salem Weekly, me for the blogs that I've posted to regularly since 2003 (I also had a two-year stint as a columnist for Salem Weekly).

I don't know what Friedman is referring to when he tweeted, "Lol at all of this. Totally sums up everything that is wrong with the Salem Weekly."

Salem Weekly, along with me, got a letter from an attorney representing Creekside developer Larry Tokarski after the paper published my opinion piece. Caswell's follow-up story addressed several issues raised by the attorney, James Vick. She reviewed a bunch of documents relating to the Creekside development and spoke with City of Salem staff, along with Tokarski's attorney, I believe.

Which gets me to...

Third, if Jonathan Bach had been covering the Creekside/Lone Oak Road story with anywhere near the diligence Caswell and I have, he would have known that this mess (that's the way the Mayor and city councilors describe it) is a highly complex tangled web of voluminous documents, failed commitments, and a notable lack of straight talk from all concerned -- City of Salem staff and people involved with the Creekside development.

Caswell's story, "Opinion run by Salem Weekly is both sound and problematic," reflected this confusion. She basically found that I correctly identified Tokarski as the Creekside developer, though I didn't highlight several legal entities led by Tokarski that carried out the many phases of the Creekside development. 

Tokarski's attorney seemed to claim that the reason construction by the Creekside developer of a bridge over Jory Creek and the northern extension of Lone Oak Road was started in 2007, then stopped, was because of what amounted to a "change order" that markedly increased the cost of the bridge owing to environmental requirements. 

But Caswell notes:

Although Mr. Vick asserted to Salem Weekly that costs shot up because City staff chose at some point to require a more robust bridge or a bridge with a different design or function, this is something we haven’t seen documentation on.

So it's no wonder Caswell couldn't come to firm conclusions about some aspects of the letter from Mr. Vick, Tokarksi's attorney. Even though there are hundreds, and likely thousands, of document pages relating to the Creekside development, somehow supposedly there isn't anything relating to the start/stop 2007 work on the bridge and road.

Like I said, this whole Lone Oak Road issue is a mess.

And who is casting light on it? Well, it sure isn't the Statesman Journal, nor the Oregonian. Below is what a Google search of "Lone Oak Road Reimbursement District" turns up in the top five results. A Salem Weekly story. A City of Salem document. Two of my blog posts. A post from the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog.

Nothing from the Statesman Journal, which used to be called our "paper of record." Now, it's Salem Weekly and bloggers who are writing about local issues that the Statesman Journal isn't covering. So let's ease up on criticism of the work others are doing in your stead, Statesman Journal reporters. 

 

City of Salem's downtown traffic congestion survey seems screwy

Look, I love surveys. Properly done, they're a great way to find out how people feel about some issue. But the City of Salem's survey about ideas to relieve downtown traffic congestion strikes me as a simplistic, poorly-thought-out effort.

(Paper version is here; online version can be found here.)

First, the survey is weirdly open-ended. It consists of a single question, with other queries being background information about the person taking the survey.

Well, it isn't a bad idea to ask people this open-ended question. But as I noted in a comment on a Statesman Journal editorial about the congestion survey, failing to ask people about how they feel about various ways that have been identified to improve downtown traffic flow seems like a missed opportunity.

The City of Salem's Congestion Survey is curious. Also, suspicious. It basically only asks one open-ended question, what's your idea for reducing downtown congestion?

I've never seen a similar survey by the City of Salem. Usually, as with the recent Riverfront Park and Streetscape surveys, citizens are asked their opinion about various discrete policy options.

In this case, it seems as if City officials wanted the single open-ended question to elicit cries of "Build another bridge!"

Already several ways to reduce congestion around the exsiting bridges have been suggested. For example, adding a lane to the current bridges and making the approaches flow better.

So why didn't the City survey lay out these options and ask people their view of them, along with an open-ended question? Instead, it's predictable that the Salem Bridge Solutions group will pack the survey results with "Build a third bridge!"

This really won't advance the cause of reducing congestion, since there is no money for a new bridge, there isn't majority political support for it on the City Council, and other ways of reducing congestion can be implemented much more quickly at a far lower cost.

Here's how the editorial, "Group urges community to complete survey on traffic congestion," which sounds like it was written by the Chamber of Commerce, starts off.

Salem is asking residents for ideas to reduce traffic congestion in downtown and West Salem, and the Salem Bridge Solutions group is hoping the community will tell it that a new bridge was needed a decade ago.

However, a new half-billion dollar bridge across the Willamette River isn't what the City of Salem's Congestion Relief Task Force is supposed to be considering. This fact was made clear in the staff report that preceded the City Council voting to form the task force., which I quoted from in "City Council plans to reduce traffic congestion without a Third Bridge."

Over the past decade, regional transportation experts, City staff, and the community have been considering options and alternatives related to a new Willamette River crossing. The process has been lengthy and controversial. When completed, the process will yield a Final Environmental Impact Statement for a new facility, not the facility itself. We understand that even with a Final EIS in place, it may take another decade or more to fund, design, and begin construction of a new bridge.

In the meantime, congestion and vehicular mobility continue to plague the downtown and inner west Salem areas around the existing bridges. There is a need to address vehicular mobility and traffic congestion immediately and independent of decisions related to the Willamette River crossing. If approved by Council, the charge of the Task Force will be to study the issues and develop a list of short-, medium-, and long-term projects and a funding strategy that-when implemented-will reduce traffic congestion and improve vehicular mobility.

So the goal of the task force is to study traffic options independent of what happens with the Salem River Crossing or Third Bridge. Yet given the fact that the only question on the congestion survey is entirely open-ended, the pro-bridge Salem Bridge Solutions group sees this as an opportunity for its members to write in "Build a new bridge!" 

Which is at odds with the information provided in the survey itself, which speaks of the task force coming up with near-term options to improve traffic flow in the downtown area.

I'm worried that after Salem Bridge Solutions supporters flood the survey results with "Build it now!" this will become a distraction from the actual purpose of the Congestion Relief Task Force -- to identify ways to improve traffic flow in the downtown area that don't involve the fantasy of constructing a Third Bridge.

The Statesman Journal editorial is remarkably off-base in several regards. 

First, it praises the grass-roots activism of the pro-bridge Salem Bridge Solutions group while ignoring the longstanding grass-roots activism of people opposed to a new bridge. In recent years five city councilors have been elected who oppose spending half a billion dollars on a Third Bridge that would mostly be paid for by tolls on both the new bridge and the two current bridges: Tom Andersen, Cara Kaser, Sally Cook, Chris Hoy, and Matt Ausec.

So that's a pretty clear sign that people in Salem aren't enamored with building a new bridge. Another sign is the result of a scientific survey mentioned in the editorial which found that traffic congestion and roads were "less urgent concerns" that homelessness and affordable housing.

But the Statesman Journal editorial board appears to view facts as just irritants to be ignored. For the board said:

We disagree with those conclusions. All three issues are of paramount concern to residents and deserve the city's attention.

Hmmmm. A phone survey says that traffic congestion and roads aren't a big concern of Salem residents. But the editorial board somehow knows otherwise, saying homelessness, affordable housing, and traffic congestion are all of "paramount concern" to residents.

Well, there's no evidence of this, except in the half-billion-dollar bridge-loving minds of the Statesman Journal editorial board. And they're forgotten the cardinal rule of transportation planning.

 

Cancel your Statesman Journal subscription for 30 days to save $500 a year

I've subscribed to the Statesman Journal for 40 years. Today I cancelled my subscription (for 30 days), because this will save me $510 in 2018 -- following the outrageous Monday-Sunday home delivery rate increase from $44 to $59.01 that takes effect December 1.

(What's up with that one cent?)

That's a 34% increase, which is on top of a 14% increase last March.

In June I wrote a pissed-off blog post, "Statesman Journal outrage: new subscribers charged half of what loyal subscribers pay." Now the situation is even worse. New subscribers are being charged a bit over a third of what us long-time subscribers are paying.

New subscribers are still getting the same sweet deal: $11 a month for Monday-Sunday home delivery for the first six months, then $22 a month after that. 

So I decided to stop being a ripped-off old subscriber and switch to being a new subscriber. Here's how I will save $510 next year on our Statesman Journal subscription.

I cancelled via chat after being told I'd have to unsubscribe for 30 days before being able to get the new subscriber rate of $11 for the first six months, and $22 a month after that. So I figure we'll save $510.12 in 2018, compared to paying the ridiculously high rate of $59.01 a month that would have started on December 1.



I don't want the Statesman Journal to go out of business. I don't want any newspaper to go out of business.

But I can't tolerate being ripped off by Barbara Smith, VP Customer Service for Gannett/USA Today, who sent the notice that our subscription is going to cost that weirdly precise $59.01 come December 1.

I'll probably buy a paper at a convenience store for 30 days, then happily sign up in January as a new customer who will start off by paying $11 a month rather that $59.01 a month.

I couldn't resist commenting on a woman's praise of Salem

Yesterday the Statesman Journal published a "Your Turn" piece by Emily Skelding that began as a post on her This Is Just to Say blog, and ended being titled either "Salem a fabulous place to raise family" (print edition) or "Salem transplant proud of her new hometown; wants community to stop apologizing" (online edition). 

I liked Skelding's praise of Salem. I also can't resist commenting on it. 

First off, notwithstanding the online title the Statesman Journal gave to her piece, Skelding's blog post says that she grew up in Salem, then lived in other places before returning here. 

I must add a caveat to this tirade: I had the unlikely and strange experience of a happy childhood. And that childhood was in Salem. And so, maybe I like Salem more than other folks I grew up with here. I understand needing to get away and see the world or needing to escape the painful ruts of childhood. Place and experience weave together.

This could indeed influence how she currently looks at Salem. Most of us have fond memories of where we grew up. I sure do. Anyway, here's my decidedly personal reaction, in red, to what Skelding had to say about Salem in her Statesman Journal essay. 

Salem, please stop apologizing. Calm your insecurities. You are a fabulous place to live.

No disagreement from me on this.

Your landscape surprises me every day, a natural beauty who needs no make-up.

Well, parts of Salem are beautiful while some are ugly. Lancaster Drive and South Commercial are soul-crushing streets, filled with tacky strip malls and garish signs, monuments to our culture's primacy of the automobile over people.

While the tourists are directed to our wineries and historic sites, it is the air that catches my attention: crisp and fresh, earthy and leafy.

OK. I've never thought of Salem air this way, but Skelding could have a more sensitive nose than mine. The global-warming exacerbated forest fires last summer made Salem's air smoky and unhealthy, but mostly she's right about our air quality.

Your big open spaces dot the city: parks and farms and hills too steep to build on. You beg me to climb out of my minivan and slip on my rubber boots to tromp around, discovering the trees while my dogs run freely and I help my girls add thistles, pine cones, and chestnuts to their collection.

Um, we have a dog. The City of Salem says that only Minto-Brown, Orchard Heights Park, and Cascades Gateway Park have off-leash areas. Salem could use more. Compared to Portland, we suck at dog-friendliness. 

You have trees, all sorts, lining your streets and covering your hills. And what about the ingenious play structures around every turn? They remind me of Paris. My husband takes long bike rides. He marvels how quickly he can get to your outskirts, and be on the country roads, pedaling by sheep and goats and Christmas tree farms and fields cleared for the winter.

Salem does have lots of beautiful trees. City government also has had a nasty habit of treating trees badly. Hopefully this is mostly in the past. I'm not aware of ingenious play structures, but I don't have children of playground age. Maybe they do indeed exist. Regarding cycling, Salem doesn't have enough safe, family-friendly bike paths. Salem Bike Boulevard Advocates is trying to change this. As Skelding implies, Salem is fine if a cyclist is of the "fearless" variety, unafraid to ride on roads that give most people qualms. But the majority of people much prefer dedicated bike paths to riding on the street.

It reminds him of his time in Oxford, England, a city of about the same size. The ease of living in Salem cannot be understated.

Salem indeed is less stressful than larger cities. Our rush-hour traffic would bring a smile to those who live in the Los Angeles area.

You are practical, affordable and manageable, but not a suburb on the end of a freeway originating in the center of a metropolis.

Yes, our home values are much more reasonable than Portland's. And we do have a wonderful downtown that is steadily improving as a place to live, work, and play. However, City of Salem resources are still unduly devoted to promoting growth in the suburbs of far West Salem and far South Salem. We have too much sprawl and too little central-area improvements.

You are a community that stands on your own. Don’t be like Oakland and Baltimore, cowering in the shadow of your nearby, cool sibling cities. Envy does not become you. This isn’t a race to be the best, just settle into being you.

I sort of agree and sort of disagree. We need to look upon the best of what "nearby, cool" Portland has to offer, while avoiding the worst of Portland. I've come up with the saying that Salem should be Portland without the problems. 

My father has always explained to me that Salem has a larger-than-average middle class - state workers and teachers and regular folk.

This appears to be true. We also have a lower per capita income than Portland, Eugene, Bend, Medford, and Corvallis. And there are marked income disparities by both geography and ethnicity.  North and East Salem are considerably poorer than West and South Salem; Whites and Asians have considerably more income than Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, and American Indians.

You aren’t a rich, bratty snob looking for the best avocado toast in town. One of my daughter’s surprises when she moved here? The number of fundraisers the student organizations at South Salem High School host.

I'd never heard of avocado toast. Now I want some! Fundraisers do teach students some things. However, I'd rather see students doing less fundraising and more regular learning. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but back in my high school days we had very few fundraisers (perhaps because we didn't have many student organizations).

They work for their privilege to participate. All of the places I’ve lived other than Salem are becoming less diverse, both racially and socio-economically because of policies encouraging gentrification.

Gentrification certainly has both pluses and minuses. It could be argued that the above-mentioned income disparities in Salem are due in part to this town being viewed as a less desirable place to locate a business with well-paying jobs,  compared to Portland, Eugene, and other large cities in Oregon. But this does leave Salem more affordable, though housing costs are pricing many out of both the rental and purchase markets. So I worry about Salem not enjoying the benefits of gentrification (such as revitalization of our close-in neighborhoods) while still becoming less and less affordable for middle and lower class families.

Not you, Salem. You are becoming more diverse every year. This trend is likely to continue. Let’s make sure to make city policies that continue to support your diversity. 

Well, several years ago Salem was slightly more ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse than Portland. An updated 2017 report showed that Portland was slightly more diverse than Salem. So it's unclear if Salem is becoming more diverse. Having moved to Salem in 1977, my view is that this town is decidedly more accepting of diversity than it used to be, which perhaps is more important than small changes in how diverse Salem  is.

Finally, Salem, embrace your grime and call it grit. Appreciate your home-grown habits and call it culture.

Interesting idea. I just wonder if this is stretching the definitions of "grit" and "culture" too far. Maybe. Maybe not. I do like Skelding's provocative writing style. She makes me think.

A woman I saw at Costco who still does her bangs with a curling iron and mousse followed by Aquanet? She’s your emblem, not an embarrassment.

Nicely said. I just can't quite picture what the bangs look like from my clueless male perspective. 

Stop by Happy Curry and get a dozen samosas. Thrift at your safe and steady Value Village or Goodwill by the pound on Portland Road NE or the higher-end Assistance League Shop and know you’re getting a deal and recycling.

I like samosas. Shopping at thrift stores, not so much. But I know people who really enjoy finding good deals at them.

Instead of looking away as you drive by Magoos, stop by and raise a glass to yourself.

Not sure what to make of the Magoos mention. I find it appealingly bar-like, and yes, gritty. (From the outside; I don't think I've ever been inside.) Skelding's blog post put it this way: Be impressed that Magoos is still open, instead of looking away as you drive by.

Salem, I pick you. You surprise me and I love you for it.

Ditto. I love this photo that was shared by Travel Salem.

Statesman Journal outrage: New subscribers charged half of what loyal subscribers pay

If you're a loyal Statesman Journal subscriber like I am -- I've subscribed since 1977 -- here's some disturbing news for you: us existing subscribers are being charged double what new subscribers are paying. 

I consider this not only a rip-off, but an insult to those of us who have stuck with our local Gannett newspaper as it has steadily declined in quality, reporters, and, yes, subscribers. 

Back in March I got upset about receiving a notice that my Monday-Sunday (7 day) home delivery subscription was being increased from $36 to $41 per month.

As I said in "Salem Statesman Journal seems to be scamming subscribers," what concerned me even more than the rate increase was the $22/month new Monday-Sunday subscribers were paying after an introductory offer of $11/month for three months (now six months, as shown above).

WTF?!

I've been a Statesman Journal subscriber for 40 freaking years, and my loyalty to the newspaper is "rewarded" by charging me double what a new subscriber is paying?! 

I couldn't believe this was true, or if it was true, that it was ethical, so I filed a consumer complaint with the Oregon Department of Justice.

After an exchange of correspondence with a Gannett/USA Today executive who got my complaint,  Barbara Smith (VP Customer Service), it turns out that the Statesman Journal regular rate for Monday-Sunday new subscribers is indeed $22/month, even though the posted Monday-Sunday rate on the second page of the print newspaper is $46/month.

(I'm not sure why I'm paying $41/month. Maybe my "reward" for being a 40 year subscriber is paying $19 a month more than a new subscriber rather than $24 a month more.)

Here's the last correspondence I got from Smith where she responds to questions I asked her. In her letter she confirms that $22/month is the regular Monday-Sunday rate for new subscribers, while $46/month is the regular rate for existing subscribers.
Download Barbara Smith letter 6-2-17

This is like a bar charging its regular customers double what somebody who walks in off the street and orders a drink for the first time pays.

My experience is that businesses usually reward customer loyalty with discounts. But the Statesman Journal, and the Gannett Corporation which owns the newspaper, has decided to screw over long-time subscribers by giving new subscribers a much lower regular subscription rate.

At first I couldn't believe that the Statesman Journal had two regular Monday-Sunday home delivery subscription rates: one for current subscribers ($46/month) and one for new subscribers ($22/month). 

But after Gannett executive Barbara Smith confirmed this was the case, my next thought was, "Hey, how can us loyal long-time subscribers get that $22/month rate?" I figured I knew the answer. So today I sent this message to the email address shown on the "subscription" section of the Statesman Journal web site.

I got this response.

So it sure seems like any Statesman Journal Monday-Sunday home delivery subscriber who currently is paying the $46/month regular rate could get the $22/month rate if they cancel their subscription for 30 days, then re-subscribe as a new customer. 

Since they'd be paying $24/month less, that's a $288 annual savings. Pretty good deal. All you have to do is cancel your subscription for 30 days and either not read the Statesman Journal for a month, or buy papers on the street.

Look, I realize that newspapers are in deep financial trouble. Gannett's newspaper earnings are dropping, as reported in "Gannett earnings forecast a bleak 2017 for newspaper companies." I want the Statesman Journal to survive.

But it's damn irritating to learn that us long-time subscribers are being screwed over on our subscription rates.

If the Statesman Journal can make money on the $22/month Monday-Sunday subscription being offered to new customers, the paper should give this rate to its current subscribers also. Making us pay double the regular rate that new subscribers are paying is an insult to our loyalty.

Which, I've got to say, is wearing thin for this 40-year subscriber.

 

Salem Statesman Journal seems to be scamming subscribers

I've been a Statesman Journal subscriber for 40 years. Recently I got a notice that my 7-day subscription price will go up from $36/month to $41/month.

At first that didn't bother me. Yeah, it's a 14% increase in an economy where inflation is running under 3% a year. And I was paying only $205 a year back in 2009, which translates into a Statesman Journal subscription price of $17/month. 

So that's a 140% subscription increase over eight years, an average of 17.5% a year. 

I was curious to see if the $41/month our subscription was going to cost starting in April 2017 was the regular price. Or the price a new subscriber would pay.

What I learned has led me to conclude that the Gannett Corporation, in the guise of the Statesman Journal, appears to be scamming new subscribers and confusing current subscribers.

Here's what the Statesman Journal says a 7-day a week subscription costs: $22/month.

There's an introductory offer of just $11/month, 50% off the usual rate -- which my razor-sharp senior citizen mind was able to calculate equaled the above $22/month rate.

OK. I now knew that the regular advertised subscription rate for 7-day home delivery is $22/month. Which led me to wonder, why the heck is my subscription going to cost $41/month? 

Optimistically, I figured that if I phoned the toll-free number on the rate increase notification that came from the Statesman Journal, a customer service person would give me the $22/month rate after I told them my story.

But that didn't happen. Instead, the person I talked with said that the $22/month rate was just an introductory rate that would jump after the first three months were over. 

I replied, "No, the introductory rate for 7 day delivery is $11/month. That's shown as a 50% savings from the regular rate, which is $22/month. So why can't I have the $22/month rate?" 

Her response was to reiterate that the introductory rate would jump up to the regular rate, which apparently was my $41/month rate, after the first few months were over. Since that was her final offer, I thanked her and tried a different approach. 

The other customer service option on the rate increase letter: "log in at StatesmanJournal.com/customer service for a live chat with a Customer Service representative."

Result: same answer. This is most of our chat exchange. What's missing is my initial question, which isn't shown on the thread. But I repeated that question in my first chat message (in blue) below.

Well, this was disturbing.

The way I see it, Kevin had told me that the $22/month rate actually was a "promotional" rate, and the $11/month rate was an "introductory" rate (or maybe the reverse), even though nothing I could find on the Statesman Journal site indicates that $22/month is anything other than the regular rate. 

When I log out of my Statesman Journal account and visit the SJ web page as a non-subscriber, I'm met with an invitation to subscribe in the upper right corner. This is what pops up when I click on it.

Again, the Monday-Sunday 7 day a week option says $11/month for the first three months, "save 50%." Fifty percent of $22 is $11. When I click on "subscribe," I'm led to a page where I took this screenshot:

Now, this page doesn't say what the price will be after three months. But the previous page said that I'd pay $11/month for three months, a 50% saving. So this sure seems to mean that the regular price will be $22/month.

Except... I'm paying $41/month starting in April. And I was told by two different customer service people that I couldn't get a lower subscription rate. 

So it appears that the Statesman Journal is misleading people with the $22/month Monday-Sunday price offer. Or, I was misled that there is no lower price than $41/month. 

Either way, somebody is getting scammed. 

I'll ask Statesman Journal staff to comment on this blog post. Also, I'd be interested to know if anyone else is paying a different amount for a regular Monday-Sunday subscription. Again, I've been paying $36/month, which is going to jump to $41/month in April 2017.

It's difficult to get comparable up-to-date figures on newspaper circulation these days. A few years ago I presented evidence that from 2008 to 2014, the Statesman Journal had a 41% decline in daily circulation (excludes Sunday). 

Thus it is understandable that Salem's daily newspaper would be both raising subscription prices and trying to attract new subscribers. I just wish the Statesman Journal would be more open and upfront about its pricing, because it looks like the paper is attempting to suck in new subscribers with an approach that arguably is a scam.

Meaning, making it look like $22/month is the regular Monday-Sunday price, even though I was told by two customer service representatives that the price I'm paying, $41/month, is the lowest non-promotional price.

Update: I tried to find the email address of Barbara Smith, VP Customer Service, who signed the oh-so-personal letter addressed to me with a Statesman Journal return address. But it turns out that Ms. Smith is a Gannett executive who signs letters that go to Gannett subscribers all around the country.

A bit of Googling turned up a marvelously snarky 2013 piece from the Nashville Scene, "Dear Customer: Pay More for Less. Love, Barbara." Some excerpts:

In a move that truly merits a place of honor in the corporate hallucination hall of fame, the "customer service" wing of The Tennessean dropped me (and presumably all 16 other remaining print subscribers) a line this week informing me that the paper's utter fabulousness warrants an arresting 26% hike in the subscription price. This big an increase all at once would be irksome on its own given a low-inflation economy and the ever-declining quality of Gannett's product, but coming as it does on the heels of multiple rounds of newsroom layoffs it's downright appalling.

Of course, the missive from Customer Service VP Barbara Smith doesn't bother to mention the old rate or the scope of the increase. The hope, obviously is that we won't notice its magnitude, nor recall that subscription prices rose big time as recently as mid-2012 when the paper unveiled digital apps and an online paywall. In all, the cost of my seven-day home-delivery subscription in the last 15 months has jumped a whopping 68 percent, from $17.25 in May 2012 to the new rate of $29.00 starting next month.

...Look, we readers get it that the newspaper business is economically dire, and that over the long run, daily dead-tree home delivery is becoming an expensive luxury. Many news organizations are confronting their uncertain future by struggling heroically to maintain the mission and the quality while bracing against the gathering storm. At The Tennessean the approach is a little different: deplete the staff, kill morale, dilute the quality of the product, jack up the prices, and hope nobody notices.

Sounds familiar. This is the Gannett modus operandi. It's being done here in Salem, and also elsewhere. For example, check out this report, "Layoffs in Local Newsrooms," which describes recent cuts at Gannett newspapers in New Jersey.

 

Statesman Journal staff stunned by theft of their opinions

UPDATE, a note to the humor-impaired: it seemed pretty damn obvious to me that the notion of opinions being removed from the minds of newspaper staff through a supernatural means fell into the genre of SATIRE. But a few reactions from people on social media indicates that some are taking this post seriously. Which makes me wonder: has someone removed a sense of humor from the minds of certain readers of this blog? I may need to expand the reach of this story...

Breaking news: I'm hearing reports that staff at the Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem, Oregon are shellshocked by the abrupt absence of opinions from their psyches.

When asked to confirm this, Ryan Kedzierksi, President of Statesman Journal Media, said "I don't know what to say. Like everybody else here, I don't have an opinion... not just about this, about everything."

Evidence that opinions have disappeared from the minds of the 32 remaining staff at the newspaper has been accumulating since the sudden firing of Editorial Page Editor Dick Hughes last Tuesday. 

Since, the Statesman Journal has had no opinion section on three days, and merely a collection of letters to the editor on one day. No pieces by national or local columnists. No editorials or other opinions written by newspaper staff.

My sources are telling me that suspicion is falling on Hughes, who may have more magical powers than was previously suspected. Many readers of Statesman Journal editorials have wondered how Hughes conjured up conclusions from an absence of facts, but this did not involve the sort of supernaturalism now suspected to be in Hughes' bag of journalistic tricks.

"Newspaper staff suspect that somehow Dick Hughes deleted the capacity to opinionate from the minds of all remaining Statesman Journal staff," I was told by a highly anonymous source. "Of course, they don't feel strongly about this, because they no longer can feel strongly about anything, lacking opinions."

Subscribers who have been wondering, Where's the damn opinion section? I'm not getting my money's worth!, now have a plausible explanation for the absence of a significant part of the newspaper -- especially for anyone who embraces the possibility that a disgruntled ex-Editorial Page Editor could remove the capacity to opinionate from the minds of remaining Statesman Journal staff.

Whether this is part of a plan by Hughes to get his job back, or just spite, is unknown. Stay tuned to Salem Political Snark for updates on this breaking story. 

We'll do our best to figure out why, with less than two weeks before Election Day, nobody at the Statesman Journal has been able to manage an Opinion Section after the Editorial Page Editor was laid off -- not the remaining members of the editorial board, nor anybody else.