You know you have a problem
when your main street
has more lanes than your Interstate

Downtown Salem had another meeting with an out-of-town expert, that was attended by the Usual Interested Parties  (past and current elected officials, long-time involved citizens and downtown business persons). It left me wondering why we spend decades brainstorming the same great ideas we agree will make downtown better when the elephants in the room – our current political system – is let off the hook.

I’ve heard the same bright suggestions for more years than I can remember.  They’re excellent.
You’ve herd them, too.  Here are a few:

Downtown should be a place you go to, not just a place you go thru.  A place where autos pass through a pedestrian area – rather than where pedestrians scramble to get across auto lanes. We need some traffic calming.

Our Downtown needs better public places, pedestrian amenities such as raised crosswalks, drinking fountains, benches and foot-friendly signage.  It needs two-way, tree-saturated streets and more alternative transportation options, like bike amenities and a trolley.

New beautiful streetscapes.

Fresh street art!

It needs, in short, to become the kind of place that’s fun and inviting, because we know a healthy downtown core means better health for the rest of the city

Nan Lawrence, senior planner for the City of Eugene, was speaker at the May 4th event “A City Center: Rethinking Downtown” sponsored by 1000 Friends of Oregon and part of Oregon Humanities Statewide Conversation Project.  She reminded us of some of these ideas, and citizens pitched in with more.

It was a stimulating and inspirational pow-wow.   Reminding me of many others, and reminding me how we seldom really achieve the great ideas we talk about.
Here’s an example: After citizens asking for years to change the one-way grid we suffer with, the city finally changed one block of State Street to two-way traffic.

Mind you; only one block.

It’s worked out well, too.  But at this May 4th meeting Chuck Bennett (city councilor for downtown) said it’s been very difficult for him to get another block changed to two-way traffic.
When asked what’s so hard, Bennett said “bureaucracy.”

So the city’s finally planning to change another block of State Street back to two-way traffic.

And I think; Really?

One block every few years?

How about we do it now, before the streets are torn up and repaved and stripped with one-way traffic grids again.

Another example: Salem Futures was an effort started in 1998 by then-mayor Mike Swaim and thousands of citizens. Designed to change the city for the better it had an extensive framework for a community vision.  The plan was shelved when a new mayor came in.  She replaced it with another plan called Vision 2020.

After the recent pow-wow, Tara Sulzen, Outreach Coordinator with 1000 Friends of Oregon said that her takeaway was “Salem needs to cultivate leaders (whether an organization or elected official) to legitimize and catalyze the process of building a stronger sense of place for downtown Salem.”

She’s talking to YOU, dear Reader, and to City Hall.  She’s saying, “don’t assume there are people already looking out for your best interests.”

We already know the changes, the things that would make people say, “Did you see what Salem is doing?”  Changes that aren’t even about tourists but are about making our town a place that our own people will want to be.

We’ve put in more than enough hours consulting with experts and stockpiling great ideas.

We already know the techniques. We don’t have a technical problem – we have a political problem.

I don’t want to sit through another meeting where we talk like the problem is simply that we don’t know what to do.

it’s time we stop attending meetings to teach us how to design a better downtown and start attending ones that teach us how to build a political system that actually works.

We’ve been denied that, big time, in Courthouse Square. 15 years ago we had a beautiful active historic city block in the center of downtown Salem. Crammed with the kind of buildings you see in vintage photographs that people point to and say, “Why don’t they build like that anymore?”

A theater from vaudeville days, signatures from long-dead performers scrawled right there on the wall. The notable Senator Hotel, where important Oregonians laid their heads.  A significant piece of yesteryear: Oregon’s very first liquor store, a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Irreplaceable stuff. Ask any old-timer. Ask anyone vaguely interested in our history, our heritage.

It turns out that Marion County owned certain buildings on this charming block, and its policy for years was to neglect them. To leave old paint to blister, to let bad wiring hang. To lock the door on rubble when tenants moved out and throw away the key.

Then they argue their buildings were in disrepair and should be torn down.  The people said, “We trust you.”

So the county proceeded to push out thriving businesses on this well-positioned location. They condemned other buildings that were in the way.  They brought in the wrecking ball.

Gone! Was the historic Senator hotel. Gone forever! The vaudeville theatre. Gone entirely! Oregon’s historical speakeasy. All in the name of the civic good.

A hole was dug. But darn it, a lapse in forethought came to light: Marion County couldn’t afford to build there.

Our showcase “Courthouse Square” stayed a fenced-in hole. For years. Smack dab in the middle of Oregon’s state capital, and a recipient of national and international visitors. A blight no one could be proud of.
Thanks.

To the rescue, smart county people figured out how to scale the project back. They figured out how to build on the cheap.

And it turned out to be hideous. In 2000, an ugly brick rectangle came to squat on the block: a monstrosity of a complex complete with fake bridges poking out. Bridges to Nowhere lacking any amount of loveliness and style.

And never sound. Architectural problems as early as 2002.

Thanks a lot.

Ten years later, $20 million still owed on the $34 million project, the eyesore is actually condemned for cracking, buckling, lots of scary stuff.

Built wrong. Not usable. Oops.

Move out, everyone! You’ve got 60 days!

Except that – in a recession, with downtown office space in need of leasing on every hand – the county moved its employees out of downtown.

No more throngs of county employees to support downtown shopping, eateries, nightlife.

That was two years ago. Experts say Courthouse Square will take between $16 and $53 million to fix. Marion County has vacated the area. And they still don’t’ know what they’re going to do with that there majestic block.

We all deserve better.

If you’d like to express your gratitude to the Marion County powers-that-be for Courthouse Square, or participate in the discussion of this or any other story, please leave us a comment.

Parents deserve iron clad assurances that their children will not encounter covert or overt efforts by school staff or volunteers to promote any religion.

In general, evangelizing children is problematic – they haven’t reached levels of cognitive development that enables them to make informed, mature choices about religious affiliation, and they are vulnerable to seductive appeals for fun, fellowship and to peer pressure that pulls them into religious systems of belief whose deeper theological implications are unknown to them.   Thus, doing end runs around parents to entice children into religious community – a fairly widespread practice among Christian evangelicals in America – is just not kosher, to borrow the Jewish term.

Speaking of which – recently I was talking with a Rabbi who told me of the ongoing frustrations of Jewish and other non-Christian students in public schools.   They are often made to feel marginalized because they are not members of the dominant faith – Christianity.

Some of this is the result of old habits – dating from times when church/state boundaries were not widely observed – being hard to break.  Yet there are those who believe that NOT teaching religion in schools is an implicit endorsement of the religion of “secular humanism,” and they are determined to counter this by finding any small crack or opening to evangelize to children and youth in public schools.

Recently an Episcopalian acquaintance asked for my support in her efforts to get the Salem Keizer School district to seal a crack in their section of the wall between church and state.  Earlier, her daughter came home with pamphlets from a conservative Christian evangelical organization -  the Child Evangelism Fellowship  (CEF) – which had been distributed to her class by the teacher.   School officials told the mother that this never should have happened, and assured her it would not happen again, and yet it did.  She was once again told that the matter had been addressed.   At last report it appears that the school district is implementing a policy that forbids distributing religious literature during classroom hours.   Yet the question lingers:  will school staff throughout the district get the word, remember this policy and abide by it?   Past history is not reassuring.  Furthermore, should religious literature be allowed on public school premises in the first place?  NO.

Thankfully, this concerned mother was willing to demand a response from the school district.  This will not be the end of it.  In 2001 CEF prevailed in Supreme Court case that granted it the right to establish after school “Good News Clubs” in public schools, and they have since increased exponentially.   So, those of us concerned with creeping theocracy need to stay tuned and be prepared to speak up.  In this case, silence is not golden.

Rick Davis is the pastor at Salem’s Unitarian Church. You can reach him at RevRick@uusalem.org.

Many forget that city councilors and the mayor control expenditures of a billion dollars for streets, water quality, sewer lines, sewage treatment plants, swimming pools, baseball tournaments, parks development, summer recreational programs, treescape, riparian corridors, wetlands, urban redevelopment, land annexations for future development, housing and zoning, nuisance abatement, street lighting and signals, police and fire services, and libraries, among other things- all for free.

What business requires this level of responsibility for no pay?  If the city is to be run “as a business” then let’s pay the people elected to run it.  City councilors routinely work 20-30 hours per week on city business, in addition to reading reams of documents, and helping constituents. Nearly all serve on multiple committees and task forces.  Besides council sessions, there are executive sessions, work sessions, budget committee meetings and neighborhood association meetings. Most councilors are still working full-time paying jobs, but service on city council comes with a high cost in lost wages and time.  This alone discourages and precludes many people who could be good representatives from serving.

20 hours per week at the 2012  minimum wage of $8.80, is $704 a month before taxes.

Eugene, Salem’s closest comparison, pays its councilors $1000 a month, and its mayor $1500, with no reported negative effects.  Salem councilors receive no money at all, not even to cover gas or parking or a cup of coffee with a constituent.  A fast food worker or a pizza delivery person makes more than city councilors.  The most recent League of Oregon Cities survey notes that  many smaller cities offer mileage, health coverage, travel expenses and other benefits, even if they don’t pay a monthly stipend. Salem, the second largest city in Oregon, provides none of these.  The City should be ashamed to set such a poor example.

For the last decade, Salem has been in a budget crisis. There will never be a good time to implement a modest stipend for city council. A reasonable stipend will hardly break the city’s finances.  It will encourage accountability and commitment.  Paying our elected representatives shows that we respect and  value their time and efforts on behalf of us all.

Kasia Quillinan is a retired lawyer, former city councilor, is active in numerous civic organizations and currently teaches law.

This is the International Year of the Woman, and a world of opportunity waits. 20th century job-equality gains and social parity are not inherited. They must be won individually.

Current American culture, encouraged by ever competing-for-attention advertising gimmicks, marketing techniques and television theatrics, often dismisses, demeans and dis-empowers the efforts, abilities and worth of women, especially younger women. Sports illustrated much heralded annual Swim Suit Edition has left its mark and message: Women are valued for their physical attractiveness before being valued for their intelligence and talents. It is more important to be blond than bright.

To hold the ladder for our country’s daughters, we must fight the on-going political avalanche of male domination, proposing laws attacking the rights of women, more than 51% our population.

Women’s health care freedom is at risk today, especially in the area of reproductive rights. Even for something routine, a PAP smear or a mammogram, some women fear losing personal control and privacy over their own bodies in making health care decisions.
Often women are not heard, even in the Board Room or at City Council, or not credited when they do speak. So ladder climbers, speak again! Voices that are ignored must speak louder, with the strength of conviction, truth and knowledge.

Our politics have become increasingly paternalistic. There are fewer women elected and serving in Congress today than in the 1970s, yet this fall Emily’s List is supporting more new spirited women candidates in every state and county than ever before. The Year of the Woman is heralding a change in perception as well as encouraging activism.

What should women do if they wish to be leaders? Work to lead yourself. First, focus on what matters, ignore the negative, refuse to be categorized by the swim-suit mentality. Set priorities and take charge of your own life, regardless of any one else’s opinion of your abilities or attractiveness. Stand tall and say what you mean to say. Be who you are and aim for what you want to be. Challenge the labels which limit you to a stereotype. Speak up, speak honestly, and speak loudly. Refuse to be sidelined or disengaged. Come out from behind any self-imposed walls of silence or of compliance.

Face the future with optimism and excitement. The bikini era has come to an end with you. It is your ladder. Just take charge

Britta Franz is a long time community activist in The Arts, Retailing Business,  Theatre Management, Women’s issues and “Rail Now!”  She can be reached at brittafran@aol.com

I found this infuriating and patronizing and made my displeasure very clear to this upstart whose lip and brow piercings looked a little like he’d had a head-on collision with my dad’s tackle box. What was it about me that suggested I didn’t know whether or not I owned a Blu Ray player?  Was it the DVDs I had chosen?  Was it my Ren & Stimpy slippers?  What an outrageous assumption, how insulting to be subjected to such a hideous and demeaning stereotype. I stalked out the door clutching The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Say Anything and a shred, no more, of dignity.

When I got home, I asked my husband casually, “We have a Blu Ray player, right?”

So watching TV is not a priority, so sue me.  Media technology crashes forward at breakneck speed; plus I have a teenager, the enabler, who saves me from having to keep up.  I do remember hearing something recently at the dinner table about switching over to the cable for our TV and internet, so now we get something like two hundred and fifty thousand channels.

I checked it out one day when I stumbled into the TV room and it was already on.  A quick surf of the expanded array of channels revealed that several hundred are dedicated to televised sports, some are for programming in Russian or Spanish, and there are several “adult” channels.  Luckily, I had already confirmed that our service comes with Parental Controls, something I was told by other mothers that we should have, and I am told my husband had taken steps to ‘lock’ the inappropriate channels, like ESPN and The Golf Channel.

Now, I am woman enough to admit that, yes, I like documentaries and public broadcasting programs (and Pop Tarts, and Bon Jovi) sometimes.  So when I came across what sounded like an interesting program called Hand Jobs Across America, I imagined it was a program that featured artisan products and American folk art made by hand, in the way of the Amish, who make those really nice fireplaces you see advertised all over.  I tried to select Hand Jobs Across America, but discovered I was locked out.

My husband was not home at the time, but fortunately, my teenager was.  For the purposes of this disclosure, I will call the teenager “Pookums” in order to save said teen the embarrassment of having its existence acknowledged by an adult.  I asked P to help me, handing over one of the six remotes, as I usually do.  The Pookster then hit a few buttons and handed it back to me. “You have to put in the secret four-digit security code, Mom,” it said, and returned upstairs.  Pookums has no interest in quality television.

It turned out that Hand Jobs Across America was not at all what I thought it was going to be about.  I’m not suggesting it was uninteresting, but seeing as how it was Sunday afternoon, I had to go finish the ironing.  So I turned off the TV, the one thing I can do without help.  Mostly.

Apparently, the parental controls are designed to protect parents (aha!), which makes perfect sense, since I really prefer movies made for kids anyway.  It’s a genre that almost always guarantees a reasonably happy ending, low body count and less full frontal nudity than other genres of modern film.

I particularly like the Pixar movies like Finding Nemo.  When Pixar’s movies are released on DVD, I usually pick up a copy to watch when my family is home and can help me operate the equipment.

Around Christmas, I noticed that DVDs of Pixar’s Toy Story movies suddenly appeared on a lot of store displays near the cash registers.  I was in line with my groceries behind an older man and an adorable little boy, about five.  He turned to look at me, and I said hello.  “Guess what,” he said. “This is my grandpa!”

Picking up a Toy Story DVD, I pondered aloud who might be my favorite character, Buzz Lightyear or Woody the cowboy.  Okay, yes, I was trolling for preschoolers.  I like little kids.  They tend not to make fun of my clothes, or try to teach me how to program my cellular phone to solve cold fusion.  And whammo, fish on.

“Guess what,” he said, “I like Woody best.”

I responded that he just might be right, but I also liked Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.  He thought about that for a minute.   Then he said, “Guess what?  Grandpa and me both want the same thing for Christmas – a little Buzz and a big Woody!”
Looks like someone forgot to set the Grandparent Controls.

Kristen Grainger is a Salem writer, musician, and university administrator.  
She can be reached at graingerwetzel@comcast.net.

The growth of our stark income inequality is shown in CBO statistics on income growth: Between 1979 and 2007, after tax income grew 275% for the top 1% of earners, 60% for the next 19%, about 40% for the middle 60%, and 18% for the bottom 20%. This meant that the top 20% increased their share of the country’s post tax income by 10% while every other group’s share of the total income declined by about 2 or 3 percent. Keep in mind that “after tax-income” is the income that someone has after all federal taxes have been paid and all federal benefits, such as Social Security, unemployment benefits, and Food Stamps, have been received. This means that income growth has been grossly unequal in spite of the evil, Godless, Marxist redistributive effects of food stamps.

This leave an important question: What should we do to reduce income inequality without harming economic efficiency? This is a difficult issue to deal with, especially in a political environment hostile to the idea that we should deal with income inequality. An obvious first step would be to end the Bush tax cuts, which would increase the redistributive effect of the income tax while halving the deficit. Beyond this, other policies that could ameliorate economic inequality include investment in public infrastructure, policies to promote an economic recovery with more jobs, the maintenance of a moderately progressive tax code, a moderate expansion of social assistance, programs to promote small business, and investments in health and education.  An example of a policy we could pursue to these ends would be a massive program to update and repair infrastructure, which would provide jobs, an economic stimulus, and badly needed improvements to public goods.

Nathaniel Quinn is a student in the Willamette Democrats at Willamette University, and can be reached at nquinn@willamette.edu.

Melanie Zermer is a massage therapist and instructor at the Oregon School of Massage.  She can be reached at melbelle57@hotmail.com

Attorneys representing the Keep Our Water Safe committee kept telling Milne and Brentano what the law required of them. Yet fellow commissioner Janet Carlson kept finding herself on the losing end of 2-1 votes. Her colleagues, who never met a piece of farmland they didn’t want to pave over, kept ignoring the law, water experts, and common sense. We and our neighbors had to spend over $30,000 on the subdivision fight.

When the case got to Circuit Court, Milne and Brentano were slapped down by Senior Judge Nely Johnson. The would-be developers of Ridge View Estates never appealed the decision, wisely. The Oregon Court of Appeals and Supreme Court have issued rulings favorable to our position on other Measure 37 cases where a developer wanted to continue building even after Oregonians said “stop” by passing Measure 49 in 2007.

The courts have understood that if you build three rooms of a five-room house, you could justifiably say “I’m about 60% done.” But if you’ve built three rooms of a 500-room apartment building, you’ve barely begun.

Milne and Brentano owe our neighborhood an apology because they wilfully ignored this common sense. In our written appeals, oral testimony, and letters to the Marion County commissioners, we kept telling Patti Milne and Sam Brentano what the law said – and they kept ignoring it.

In our case, just as in a Clackamas County case recently decided by the Court of Appeals, the subdivision developers planned a high-end project with expensive homes that would cost around $500,000. Yet after Measure 49 put an end to development, suddenly the developers claimed they’d had a change of heart and planned to build cheap homes.

The Oregon Court of Appeals and Supreme Court didn’t buy this argument. It was obvious to us that they wouldn’t, just as it should have been obvious to Milne and Brentano if they hadn’t chosen to be blinded by ideology, rather than being clear-eyed about what the law demanded of them.

We and our neighbors spent a lot of time and money in court undoing the mistakes made by the Marion County commissioners. If Milne and Brentano had followed the law, rather than their personal “pave it over” right-wing political mentality, this could have been avoided.

Makes me wonder what other bad-decision skeletons lie under Courthouse Square…

————————-

Brian Hines is a Salem land use activist, writer, and blogger at www.hinesblog.com.

You can reach him at brianhines1@gmail.com.

Mr. Argulo’s organization fights for equity in our schools. It helps poor families, immigrants, and others to meet the educational needs of their children by teaching parents how to advocate for themselves within the system, and trains them to train each other. It partners with schools, community organizations, churches, and businesses to reduce dropout rates, promote literacy, provide access to computer technology, and present positive alternatives to gang life. The Coalition helps many families, but like similar organizations around the country, it is fighting an uphill battle in a social and economic system designed to promote even more inequality.

As a major study by the non-partisan Bertelsmann Foundation recently showed, when measuring indictors for social justice among the top 31 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranks 27, far behind most of Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan and slightly above Greece, Chile, and Mexico. Focusing on poverty prevention, access to education and the labor market, levels of social cohesion and discrimination, health care, and intergenerational justice, the United States fared poorly across the board. While we are good at generating great wealth, but not at distributing it, many countries, especially but not only in equally rich northern Europe, pursue social policies designed to promote greater equality. As a result, they also provide greater opportunity for upward social mobility. Contrary to the myth cherished by many Americans, moving up is more common in Scandinavian countries, Canada, and a number of others.

Capitalism generates inequality because it is a system in which only a small minority controls the levers of economic and political power. Disparities in wealth can be reduced, however, through political action that makes the economy serve the broader society rather than only a few. For decades the Republican and Democratic Parties pursued similar economic policies serving elite interests rather than the population at large. The only way to reverse the resulting disgraceful and deepening inequality is for people to organize in the streets, in their workplaces, and in new political parties to win sweeping changes that would create economic as well as political democracy. Otherwise the work of groups like the Coalition for Equality, admirable as it is, will truly be the labor of Sisyphus.