Don't forget: Community Energy Strategy Skull-Session Tomorrow, 12/1

Image via Wikipedia

Ahhhh, it becomes clear at last. Salem finally sets about doing what it should have done long ago -- because that came as a string tied to a grant.

Tues., Nov. 24, 2009
CONTACT: Nicole Wahlberg, Public Information Manager
City of Salem – Urban Development Department
Tel: 503-588-6178, ext. 7552
Email: nwahlberg@cityofsalem.net Website: www.cityofsalem.net

Help Shape a Community Energy Strategy for Salem
Community Energy Forum Dec. 1 at Salem Conference Center

Tues., Dec. 1, 2009 – Salem, Ore. – Join City of Salem staff, business leaders, and industry experts at Salem’s Community Energy Forum and learn about energy trends, technologies, and tools that Salem businesses and residents can employ to reduce energy use, cost, and spur economic growth. The Forum is being held at the Salem Conference Center on Tues., Dec. 1 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The public is invited to attend. The classes and lunch are free, but a lunch RSVP is required.

Climate Solutions, a Washington-based company [sic -- actually a non-profit] that specializes in energy, will lead morning informational sessions with support from Portland-based ECONorthwest.

Session topics will target ways to prepare our community for future energy needs including efficient buildings, renewable energy, transportation options, next generation energy infrastructure, finance, and community engagement. Information will also include an overview of Salem’s current energy use, relevant energy policies and programs, and practical tools for preparing Salem to meet future energy demands and capitalize on opportunities for economic growth.

Afternoon sessions will provide an opportunity for stakeholders and interested citizens to provide input on draft goals and actions to be included in Salem’s Community Energy Strategy (a road map for implementing energy savings measures next year and beyond). Short term action items may be included in the City’s December submission to Department of Energy and eligible for funding in 2010-11.

In May 2009, the City of Salem became the recipient of a $1,521,000 formula grant from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. Development of an Energy Strategy is the first grant requirement. Having a Strategy in place will also position the City to compete for future funding.

A final Community Energy Strategy will be completed by March 2010, at which time staff will seek Council’s adoption of the document. The strategy will include actions the City can take to improve energy efficiency and save cost in its own facilities and as well as goals, projects, and programs designed to improve energy efficiency, conservation, and cost savings in the industrial, commercial, transportation, and residential sectors, promote sustainable industry and jobs, and related activities as appropriate.

RSVP is required for those attending lunch on the day of the Community Energy Forum. For questions or to RSVP, please contact Annie Gorski at 503-588-6178 or agorski@cityofsalem.net

Tuesday 12/1 -- A chance to untangle the tangled web some

If you're a cat with questions, this meeting might be for you. Image by silgeo via Flickr

Every week we hear something new about the debate on reforming our broken health care system. As we gear up for the home stretch, its important that we are all on the same page. So, we are holding a series of meetings to clear up any confusion, frustration, or misinformation that comes with following the process in Congress. Come join us and your fellow health care activists for an evening of lively discussion.

Salem - Tuesday, December 1st
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Salem Central Library
585 Liberty St, SE, Salem, OR

If you can't make it to a meeting, but still have questions please feel free to email me and I will do my best to get back to you by the end of the week. Hope to see you soon.

To your health,

Betsy Dillner
Oregon Health Care for America Now

An important example for Salem from the 90s . . . the 1890s

Give people access to land for growing food. It's what's for dinner.

For your pre-New-Year's-Eve tax-planning

You probably already support one or several of the 1,200 arts and culture groups in Oregon that, collectively, look to the Oregon Cultural Trust for support. Thanks to a unique law, you can turn your support for those groups into a zero-cost-to-you donation to the Oregon Cultural Trust.

It works like this. Say you gave ten $100 gifts to arts and cultural organizations in Salem, such as

• Camerata Musica, PO Box 2782, Salem, OR 97308 Tel: 503-364-8263, Email: gstruble@willamette.edu, Web: www.cameratamusic.org
  
  
• Friends of the Historic Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, Salem, OR 97301 Tel: 503-990-0150, Email: manager@historicgrandtheater.com
  
  
• Historic Elsinore Theatre, 170 High St SE, Salem, OR 97301, Tel: 503-375-3574 Email: HET-info@elsinoretheatre.com Web: www.elsinoretheatre.com
  
  
• Marion County Historical Society, 260 12th St SE,Salem, OR 97301-2287, Tel: 503-364-2128, Email: mchs@open.org , Web: www.marionhistory.org
  
  
• Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society, 3995 Brooklake Rd NE, Salem, OR 97303,Tel: 503-625-5758 Web: oregonelectricrailway.org
  
  
• Oregon Library Association, Inc, PO Box 2042, Salem, OR 97308, Email: ola@olaweb.org Web: www.olaweb.org
  
  
• Pentacle Theatre Inc, 145 Liberty St. NE, Salem, OR 97301, Tel: 503-485-4300 x20, Email: info@pentacletheatre.org Web: www.pentacletheatre.org
  
  
• Salem Folklore Community, 187 High St. NE, Suite 218, Salem, OR 97301, Web: www.salemfolklore.org or www.kmuz.org
  
  
• Salem Public Library Foundation, PO Box 14810, Salem, OR 97305-5010, Web: http://www.open.org/~splfnd
  
  
• Salem Repertory Theatre, PO Box 12707, Salem, OR 97309, Tel: 503-838-8310 Email: david@salemrep.org Web: www.salemrep.org

That means you gave a total of $1000 to supported groups -- now, give another $1,000 to the Oregon Cultural Trust and it costs you nothing because you get a $1,000 Cultural Trust Tax Credit. Thus, you can give a total of $2000 to support arts and culture in Salem and your net cash outlay, after tax deductions and credits will be range from only $210 to $410, depending on your federal tax bracket -- so you get to support arts and culture in Salem with real dollars that only cost you dimes. It's the best deal in town. Check it out.

Celebrate the IKE BOX's 5th Anniversary

One of the unsung gems in Salem is the Isaac's Room program and its coffee house, music room, and video production studio known as the IKE BOX. If you get downtown much you will have noticed the amazing transformation of this beautifully restored and spiffed up icon at Chemeketa and Cottage where they help directionless or struggling youth "Get a Life."

Isaac was our first son. Born in October 1998 with a heart problem, he only lived for two months before we lost him on December 29 of that year.

Isaac's Room is our effort to extend the family love and support that we would eagerly have given Isaac throughout his life to the young people in our community who have suffered from a shortage of it throughout theirs. Just as the room that Isaac was supposed to live in is physically empty and therefore available, the space we make in our lives for our own kids is now available through Isaac's Room.

So IKE is a nickname for Isaac, and the IKE Box is the street name and "storefront" of Isaac's Room in the community. The IKE Box is a place where we look after each other and encourage each other to pursue our best life possible, just like we would have done for Isaac. It is, appropriately, like a family.

Our family tree has a lot of branches - we do concerts and coffee and event hospitality, we offer a life-development program called IKE Quest, and we are home to many other interesting groups and cool projects - but bringing it all together is this place in town called the IKE Box, named after this space in our lives, a creatively devoted space for fellowship and belonging one to another, a space we call Isaac's Room.

We hope that when you walk into the IKE Box, you can feel that you’re walking into a story. And we hope you walk in sometime soon.

Mark and Tiffany Bulgin

They are having a 5th Anniversary party on Wednesday, December 16, with desserts and coffee at 6:30 and a video and some speakers at 7:30. Join them and help this unsung gem find a few more fans.

Urban hens update

Barb Palermo sends this encouraging update, which ends with some optimism for the makeup of the post-May-2010 council. On that note, there has been a disquieting silence from Anna Peterson, mayoral candidate, who has not replied to several inquiries (to the email address listed on her website and via her campaign website email contact form) about how she feels the urban hen debate was handled, whether there was anything she would do differently. We know that Jordan Blake is good on urban hens and that Chuck Bennett is terrible on the issue -- but at least Chuck gives you the courtesy of letting you know where he stands and why.

And a sincere word of thanks are owed to Barb, Dana, and all the others who have worked so hard to make it possible for people to keep a few laying hens as pets and self-sustainability assets. The economy is only going to get worse, so all the many reasons for allowing residents to keep a few urban hens will all become more and more salient as time goes by. Most of the objections raised are absurd, and the rest can be handled by responsible owners being responsible neighbors.

Our documentary is finally finished! This professional-quality film is about 75 minutes long and chronicles our efforts to join the Urban Chicken Movement here in Salem. We explore the Northwest and interview chicken-keepers in Eugene, Corvallis, and Portland where backyard hens are allowed. We also visit the Urban Farm School in Vancouver and the Avian Medical Center in Lake Oswego where they host classes to teach pet chickens how to do tricks.

The film features a trip to a farm in Canby to emphasize the difference between traditional chicken-raising and urban hen-keeping. Throughout the film, you will see a variety of backyard coops, including one made of straw bales, and those featured in the Portland and Eugene coop tours. We interview illegal chicken-keepers in Salem (with faces blurred) to find out why take the risk. Our travels are intermingled with clips from the nine City Hall presentations we made and reveal the ineptitude of some of our elected officials.

Our documentary will be shown on CCTV local cable channel 21 a total of ten times, beginning at 1:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. For a complete schedule, go to http://www.cctvsalem.org/programs/schedule.php and click on "The Chicken Revolution."

We are hoping to have the film featured on OPB's "Oregon Lens" and through other media outlets. The documentary can be purchased on our new website www.Chicken-Revolution.com (remember to include the hyphen) for just $12! Your help in distributing this film will be greatly appreciated.

Please take the time to explore our new website. It is dedicated to helping people in cities across the country who are interested in trying to change an ordinance. It has a wealth of information to help people get started and they can learn from our experiences by watching the film. Our 60-page research packet is available on the website for anyone to use, as well as exact ordinance wording found in a variety of chicken-friendly cities. There is a table on the website that shows the current status of chicken ordinances throughout Oregon. You will see that Gresham will re-consider a chicken ordinance on December 1st and Hillsboro and Beaverton are expected to consider one in January. We are currently helping people in Independence prepare for their first City Hall presentation, as well.

When I first set out to try to change the law here in Salem, I felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin. Remembering that feeling, we put together a website that we think will help people in that very same situation.

While our efforts may not have worked here (yet), they are paying off for citizens in towns nationwide who have consulted us, used our research, and learned from our experiences.

I believe our chances of passing a chicken ordinance next year are very good because the election in May will bring at least three new people on the council board, and if just one of them is interested in a chicken ordinance, we will have the majority vote. I also anticipate a quick and easy process next time because all of the work has already been done.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you enjoy the film!

PS: If you haven't heard yet, there is a new magazine I highly recommend called "Urban Farm: Sustainable City Living" featuring articles about urban chickens and related subjects. You can find a link on our website under the `Resource' page.

Beware of Gifts Bearing Strings

Image via Wikipedia

Well, here we go, the "gift" that bankrupts you. The Salem City Council is getting set to decide whether to accept a "gift" to create a "Teen Library" in the old CCTV studio space.

Salem City Council also will:

-Consider accepting a $121,338 gift from the Salem Public Library Foundation to pay for renovations to an area that would house the teen library.

It's not just that a "Teen Library" is a truly terrible idea, offering little but a way to further isolate and segregate young people from the adults that they need more exposure to, not less.

It's also that the library budget is in dire straits, and we're whittling away at core library services. And that this "Teen Library" will require new staff to supervise the place, which means removing staff from elsewhere, which will further the deterioration of our already-shrinking library.

Essentially, the goal of the "Teen Library" crowd appears to be creating something like an Ike Box within the dank interior of a windowless basement (because if there's anything our teens need today, it's MORE time spent inside with gadgets and "hanging out" with other teens). (SEE CORRECTION BELOW.)

For teens actually interested in what the library has to offer, the whole library is the teen library. And what's really needed in Salem is a lot more libraries in a lot more segments of the city -- not a wasteful boutique for teens in the basement that comes out of the services that should be made available to everyone of all ages.

Want a far better use for $120k invested to help teens? Forget the renovation and hire a bunch of teens to bring seven-day-a-week library book pickup and delivery services to every neighborhood center across the city so that every Salem resident is within walking distance of a neighborhood book drop/pickup point.

Also: the library is without a librarian right now. Salem should not be embarking on a "Teen Library" project before a new librarian is hired--instead, the candidates for the job should all be asked to prepare a brief analysis of the Salem Public Library's needs and the means it should use to meet them. There's no way that a professional librarian could look at Salem's declining services and conclude that it makes sense to spend any money on a boutique library hangout for teens within the main library.

The Council should refuse this burdensome gift and direct the City Manager to get a librarian hired before anything else. If there's any value to a "Teen Library" then it will wait.

CORRECTION: A library friend sends:

I wanted to send you a link to the full staff report so you can see how the project has evolved. Probably the biggest change is that the proposal no longer put the Teen Library in the CCTV area. Instead, we're looking at relocating the collection and services into the area currently occupied by Technical Services. It's much brighter and more accessible. We've also developed a plan to ensure that the collection is available and accessible to anyone who wants to use young adult materials during all open library hours. Here's the link:
http://www.cityofsalem.net/CouncilMeetingAgenda/Documents/169/4.3d.pdf

Well, thank goodness for that --- although whomever gets shoved into the CCTV space will probably regret the change . . . it's quite the dungeon down there.

However, the central issue is not about the ambiance of the "Teen Library." The problem is the whole notion of a "Teen Library" separate and apart from the library for everyone. What teens most need is an opportunity to interact with and learn about being an adult, not more segregation into ghettos of teendom, where everything is provided for them and nothing is expected of them.

If only gay sex caused climate change (instead of dapper gents like this)

That dapper gent is Salem's own M. Lee Pelton, President of Willamette University and one of about a dozen Oregonians who are most responsible for

• creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees,
• melting the polar ice sheets,
  
• eliminating glaciers we depend on for drinking water,
  
• acidifying the oceans, destroying the ocean food chain,
• driving species extinction on a historic scale,
  
• further impoverishing the already impoverished, and
• causing Biblical-scale droughts, fires, and floods.
  

That's because Pelton and his accomplices on the PGE Board continue to imagine that "cheap" electricity from the Boardman coal plant -- Oregon's single largest polluter and greenhouse gas emitter -- is more important than a livable planet. Just as the banker-gangster class drove the global financial system into the ditch by failing to understand risk and pursuing profits today without a care for tomorrow, utilities like Pelton's PGE are doing exactly the same: misunderstanding and minimizing the risks for tomorrow to pursue higher profits today.

"If only gay sex caused global warming" instead of handsome, dapper gents like Pelton.

Airline industry has lost almost $60 billion in last decade

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-11-23-airpanels23_ST_N.htm

Now why would Salem think that ANYTHING Salem could do would make a difference as far as airline service goes?

Remember that oil is now more expensive than ever on an average annual cost basis -- the spike to $147 and collapse to $33 showed people how volatile prices will be now that Peak Oil is here, but the grinding reality is that, under the volatile spikes and collapses, is an inexorable upward trend . . . and that's even before the carbon taxes kick in that the article talks about.

Bottom line: It's time to privatize Salem's McNary Field -- Give the feds the portion they use and get the rest onto the tax rolls as an airfield or for whatever other purpose an investment group wants to use it for. An industry that loses $60 billion in a decade of historically very cheap oil prices will never make money again. The only thing that public subsidies do is take money from public purposes and allow airline executives to lavish it on themselves.

My Jobs Plan suggestion

Metal roofing with integral water collection features should be mandatory in the building code. Image via Wikipedia

A commenter at The Oil Drum asked for suggestions for a national jobs plan. Here's a low-tech, high-value, project that could benefit virtually every community in America and be funded and started tomorrow:

And don't forget a national program to do millions of add-on insulated white metal roofs with water collection features.

1) Insulated -- most energy loss in a home/apt is out the roof; but adding insulation in the attic is labor intensive (not a minus in your project, but if your money all goes to labor, you get fewer roofs done -- better more roofs, more saving)

2) White -- see Secy. of Energy Chu's presentations

3) Metal with water collection features -- most American homes have toxic roof shingles where the rain washes a steady stream of the asphalt away; it is possible to collect and use the water, but to unknown result. Rather than tear these off (wasted labor, creation of landfill waste), leave them all on there, under a nice insulating blanket and metal roof that drains into an integral guttering/collection spout system that flows into barrels or cisterns.

Imagine all the energy saved (1) from the added insulation; (2) from the reduced air-conditioning load in summer; and (3) from reduced water pumping. And the nice increase in global albedo doesn't hurt either.