A Scorecard for the City Council Boondoggle Worksession on Wednesday, 11/28, 5:30 pm

For reasons unclear, the City Council has moved their worksession away from Council Chambers (and the CCTV cameras) so you'll have to come out to the Anderson Room at the Salem Public Library this Wednesday, 11/28, at 5:30 p.m. to see whether the City Council intends to do its job and subject the most expensive public project proposal in Salem's history to the kind of serious, skeptical scrutiny that it deserves, or whether they just hope to let the Concrete Lobby roll by them.

Remember, this is a council that devoted HOURS and HOURS to public meetings and multiple public hearings to whether Salem residents could keep a few chickens in the yard.  This is a decision with a million times more magnitude, so this merits at least dozens of times the level of investigation.

Here's a scorecard for you for Wednesday night, so you can see which council members take their responsibilities seriously (by demanding serious, research-based answers on each issue):

How many of these critical issues does the Salem City Council address at its November 28th work session on the Third Bridge?

c     The Council discusses a plan to pay for the 3rd Bridge, acknowledging that it will involve considerable local revenue from tolls on all bridges, a property tax ballot measure, or a gas tax increase.

c     The Council discusses the fact that traffic on the existing bridges is at a 10-year low and that this trend is likely to continue with increasing gas prices and other changes in people's driving habits.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will require purchasing 75 acres of new right-of-way that will displace over 160 homes and businesses.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd bridge will create visual and noise pollution through neighborhoods for 2.7 miles from West Salem to Highland when these residents find themselves under the longest elevated freeway in Oregon.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will reduce the size of Wallace Marine Park and destroy the beauty and natural setting of much of the park.

c     The Council discusses the fact that planning for the 3rd Bridge is $5.5 million over its original $2 million planning budget and is four years late.

c     The Council discusses the fact that a financing package was promised in August of 2008 and that it is highly unusual to wait until a design is approved before deciding how to fund it.

c     The Council discusses the fact that after six years of meetings, the preliminary preferred alternative (4D) for the 3rd Bridge did not receive support from a majority of the Salem River Crossing Planning Task Force.

c     The Council discusses the fact that all three of the Neighborhood Associations that are in the path of the 3rd Bridge are on record as opposing it.

c     The Council discusses the fact that the 3rd Bridge will take retail business away from Salem by making it easier to get to Keizer Station and the Woodburn Outlet Mall.

c     The Council discusses the fact that plans for the 3rd Bridge plan ignore less expensive options to relieve peak hour congestion, such as off-ramps to fix the ends of the existing bridges with better traffic flow to Glen Creek Drive and Front Street north, and bike lanes and better transit to West Salem.

O.M.G. -- is there any better example of how catering to cars lobotomizes city officials?

The always-excellent Salem Heritage Network has a truly tragic entry today showing just how low Salem has fallen in terms of destroying its past -- our past! -- to cater to automobiles. Worse, living here now, one finds little evidence that anything has changed in City Hall.

See the pictures there for a truly horrific and revealing display.

In the late 1940s, Salem's downtown had spaces on the street for automobiles to park in front of stores, but did not have parking lots to accommodate the increase in personal cars since the end of the war. One innovative proposal was to demolish the Holman Building (top photograph above) and make room for parking above a new auto maintenance and repair shop. Those residents who were concerned by the loss of Salem's heritage which this building represented, formed the Marion County Historical Society with the mission of preserving it and, more widely, interpreting the city and county's cultural resources. Its first president, David Duniway, led the fight to preserve the historic Holman Building, reminding the public that for the first years of Oregon statehood (1859-1876), the legislature meet here and most of our basic laws were debated on this site. But he was not successful, the building was demolished and the Marion Car Rental and Park (lower photograph) was built this year.

When you visit
The Marion Car Rental and Park is located on the northwest corner of Ferry and Commercial Streets, a busy intersection for traffic entering Front Street going west from Ferry, or continuing south on Commercial. It is diagonally across the street from the Conference Center. To learn more about the Holman Building and the other historic buildings that were once on this important corner of the new city, read the interpretive panel on the stair landing inside the Conference Center.

Speaking of insanity: Why you should never back another Salem-Keizer Schools money measure

In the great tradition of the corporate pirates want to build monstrous boondoggles over the Willamette and Columbia Rivers and pave over French Prairie, the unguided missile known as Salem-Keizer Schools has condemned land in West Salem once owned by Governor Bob Straub (you might recall the gift he and his wife made that became the wonderful Straub Environmental Learning Center in the heart of Salem).

There is no justification for this project whatsoever except in the cozy world of contractor-school district relations, where spending money on boondoggle edifices and sports facilities is about the only thing administrators can do to feel like they've made a difference. The schools continue to operate on a model of a factory and a calendar of a farm, while failing to attain anything like the efficiencies of either.

A school district with its students' interests at heart would recognize that they are setting their students up for failure with their antiquated butts-in-seats-in-schools model of instruction and the huge expenditures on infrastructure -- shiny new buildings built with lots of shiny new money that ultimately does nothing but promote sprawl and the illusion that we're going to have a carburban future just like we've had for the past 50 years.

We won't. And the school district is guilty of gross malfeasance and willful blindness in condemning the Straub land. Of course, the present senior administrators will all be happily into their comfortable retirements before the chickens come home to roost on this one, and they'll get to be giving the tours for the shiny new buildings and they'll get to write the glowing press releases about how wonderful the buildings are and how they'll "facilitate enhanced world-class linkages and learnings" and other jargon-laden bs that is the distinctive hallmark of Edspeak, the language of a bankrupt elite. So it's all good for them -- even as Oregon and Salem's finances are swirling around the drain, they'll get to plow a bunch of money into shiny new buildings and when, later, there's no money for maintenance of the older buildings, their successors will cry poor and ask voters for more money "for the children."

Enough. The era of factory schools served by fleets of buses and armadas of parents ferrying their little snowflakes around is O.V.E.R. No more school buildings until the schools adopt a year-round, two-shift calendar and makes full use of the existing buildings and establishes small neighborhood school centers in the many vacant commercial buildings and school outposts in workplaces all over town.

"Sprawling from Grace, Driven to Madness" -- free viewing from 1,000 Friends

A New Documentary: Sprawling From Grace

In honor of Earth Day, in partnership with Cinema Libre Studio and Grapeflix, we would like to offer you the opportunity to view David M. Edwards' powerful new documentary, Sprawling From Grace: The Consequences of Suburbanization, online for free!

The film features Bill Clinton, former governor Michael Dukakis and many other leaders on the issues of suburban sprawl and the need for better public transportation, centralized planning and renewable energy.
For a preview, visit www.sprawlingfromgrace.com

Or check it out on Facebook.

So check it out -it's free- and once you've viewed the film, we ask that you consider making a secure donation for at least the same amount it might cost you to see the film in a movie theatre! The filmmaker and distribution company are allowing all donations to come directly to us so we can continue our important work.

The free online access starts Monday, April 20 beginning at 8:00am ET through Wednesday, April 22 at 11:59 PT and can be viewed at any time during that period.

So start watching it now – it's easy!
Go to http://www.grapeflix.com/Category/frmCategoryDisplay.aspx?CategoryID=3591
Click on the green "Play Online" button
Register for Grapeflix VOD (video on demand)

Test your system to make sure you meet the minimum requirements to view the film online. (After the test is complete, click 'Continue' to watch the film. If you get taken back to the Grapeflix homepage, just click on the link in step #1 of these instructions and then click "Play Online".)

A window will pop-up with the embedded video player

The film is viewable in full screen by clicking the full screen button on the video player or by double-clicking the video player in Firefox. To ensure you will not have difficulties viewing the film please –
Disable all pop-up blockers. (Enable Active X)
Use Internet Explorer
Upgrade Windows Media Player to version 11
Confirm that you have a stable high speed internet connection.
Allow time for the film to buffer after the video player pops up.
*Please note: the Grapeflix system work best with a Windows operating system and Windows Media Player 11.

Further help with Grapeflix can be found here: http://www.grapeflix.com/Index/frmPlayerHelp.aspx?QID=49#answers
Contact Grapeflix here: http://www.grapeflix.com/Index/frmContactUs.aspx

If you enjoyed the film, click on the orange button on the Grapeflix page to tell your friends about it.

The film will be available on DVD this week at Cinema Libre Store, online at Grapeflix and through other major retailers.

We hope you enjoy it and find it as enlightening and inspiring as we do. Again, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our organization by clicking here.

Enjoy!

The Team at 1000 Friends of Oregon

Excellent blog: The Infrastructurist

If you want to understand the (often self-inflicted) challenges Salem will face in the new reality of scarce energy and economic woe, there's a great blog for you: The Infrastructurist.

Here are two great sample items to start you off:

James Howard Kunstler: Investing in Infrastructure for An Age of Scarcity

Christopher Leinberger: How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the man who saw the whole thing coming

A crucial bit of information for Salem and the region

Guess what? Those hippies at RAND -- the DoD think-tank -- figured it out: the more you do to "fight" congestion, the more congestion you get for more people.

A most important study.

(Hat tip to Sightline.org)

Click on table to see all columns.

A history of what we've lost

Great two-part series in the Oregonian on what we've lost -- a rational transportation system that let people get around without having to own a car.

Part 1

Part 2