Bennett for Mayor

Amazing that we're still slogging through the process of legalizing urban hens in Salem and that the proposal being considered is the most bureaucratic, top-heavy, and burdensome thing imaginable. This WWII poster reminds us that, until places like Salem bought into the plastic, TV-imposed, suburban ideal, Europeans and Americans have always kept poultry nearby.

At least Chuck Bennett has seen the error of his ways and wants to bring the issue back to City Council so that his blunder can be rectified -- his mayoral race opponent has treated the issue with derision, contemptuously dismissing all the people who are trying to make Salem a better, smarter, less wasteful place (Word document). Pitiful:

I watched the city slog through this for months and months. It gave me a stomach ache, I’m sensitive to chickens, can’t even eat them anymore. I haven’t taken a stand on this issue. But I don’t think it is a major concern when our city’s budget is shrinking and we are laying off firefighters, yet we are consumed week after week with the chicken issue at city council. The process should be changed, it took way too much time and there are more important issues to be concerned with.

Any mayoral candidate who doesn't see the connection between our just-starting budget troubles and peoples' need to start learning to care for hens at home has a huge blind spot and a huge gap between their rhetoric about sustainability and any practical action. Because of his past opposition to urban hens and his role in the year-plus-and-still-going foolishness at city hall over this issue, Bennett was very vulnerable on this. A smart challenger would have jumped on the urban hens issue hard, rather than sniffing that it's just not important. But instead Bennett is in the odd position of being the much stronger candidate, even though he opposed urban hens. Weird.

[No, I'm not saying that you should decide who to vote for in the mayor's race based on urban hens. Rather, I'm saying that this is a very useful issue for distinguishing the candidates because it shows, on the one hand, a candidate who took the wrong position, has figured it out, and is working to fix his mistake vs. a candidate who hasn't bothered to think the matter through at all and is unhappy that people insist on sticking with the kinds of citizen involvement that politicians all claim to favor . . . until it happens. There may never be hens at LOVESalem HQ -- but whether there are or not, we're far better off with a mayor who can admit having made a mistake than with one who wants to double-down on it by complaining that proponents ought to just go away and leave the poor city council alone. Blaming the urban hen advocates for the gruesome and dysfunctional process that the Salem city council imposed on them is totally clueless about how city government works, or fails to.]