Get ready to roll on May 15! Union St. Bike/Ped Bridge Reopening

A real improvement and a giant step towards getting Salem ready for the inevitable return to a car-free city. Image via Wikipedia

Salem’s Union Street Railroad Bridge Re-Opens May 15

Residents are invited to participate in a family-friendly “Passport Adventure” May 15
and “Bridge to Work” Day May 18.

Sat., May 15, 2010 – Salem, Ore. – After a brief [!?] closure, Salem’s historic Union Street Railroad Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge will officially re-open to the public on Sat., May 15. The Friends of Two Bridges, a local non-profit organization, has planned a special Passport Adventure for Salem residents in celebration of the re-opening.

On May 15, residents are encouraged to join the fun between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. in Salem’s Riverfront Park and Wallace Marine Park. Passport participants will begin by picking up event “passports” at any of the passport stops and then wander throughout the parks and across the Union Street Railroad Bridge collecting stamps in their “passports.” Passport stops include:

• A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village,
  
• the Tom McCall statue,
  
• the boat dock,
  
• the Eco Earth,
  
• the future site of Minto Bridge,
  
• Salem’s Riverfront Carousel,
  
• the Pavilion/Spray Fountain,
  
• the Union Street Railroad Bridge historical signage, and
  
• the new trails at Wallace Marine Park.
  

When “passports” are full of stamps, they are good for FREE one day admission to A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village over the weekend of May 15 and 16. Event attendees may park at Riverfront Park or Wallace Marine Park to participate in the festivities. [OR, BETTER YET, RIDE YOUR BIKE OR WALK TO THE PARK.]

The new pedestrian and bicycle bridge provides a critical half-mile link in the bicycle and pedestrian circulation systems for the community, the region, and the state. Two urban-area parks: Wallace Marine (114 acres) and Riverfront (23 acres), book-end this bridge and the conversion connects their trail systems into a single, safe, and family-friendly network. The project improves bicycle and pedestrian safety and accessibility in Salem, encourages the use of alternative transportation modes, and promotes healthy forms of exercise (like running, cycling, skating, and wheelchairing) for both local and out-of-town users.

The Union Street Railroad Bridge was built across the Willamette River in 1912-13 by Southern Pacific Railway to connect Salem to the West Willamette Valley. The bridge was acquired by Union Pacific Railroad in 1996 and was purchased by the City of Salem for one dollar in 2004. The bridge was put on the National Register of Historic Places in January of 2006.

During the recent six month closure, lead-based paint abatement and repair of the upper portion of the bridge was completed thanks to a generous contribution from ODOT’s Transportation Enhancement Program. The Oregon Transportation Commission approved $3.5 million of economic stimulus funding, the City of Salem’s first stimulus funds, for the repainting of the bridge. This final phase is being completed by S & K Painting.

As a follow up to the event, the City will also be hosting a Bridge to Work Day on Tuesday, May 18 from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Salem workers and residents are encouraged to bicycle or walk to work utilizing the re-opened bridge.

For more information on the Union Street Railroad Bridge, the Friends of Two Bridges, or bridge related events, please refer to www.cityofsalem.net/unionbridge.

OregonHelps.Org!

Marion-Polk Food Share sent out a services flier and a notice about the upcoming Letter Carrier Food Drive (last big drive between now and November --- May 8!). The website below caught my eye. Given how many people in Salem are struggling, this should be much more widely known. If you know someone who has had some economic struggles or reversals, this is a worthwhile site to check out:

Oregon Helps is a free, fast and easy to use web-based tool that asks visitors a few simple questions about their income and expenses and then estimates their potential eligibility for 33 federal, state and local services. Any information provided is completely confidential and anonymous. It is available in English, Spanish, Russian and Vietnamese.

Perhaps Salem taxpayers could clean your pool too?

A lot more people bowl in Salem than fly. Why haven't we got a municipal bowling alley? Image via Wikipedia

A SkyWest employee thinks it's cool that the City of Salem wants to keep throwing money at airlines, while it's cutting back on parks, libraries, police and fire.

Now Matt's probably a cool guy, but what would be really cool is if Matt and his employer and all the other airport users got together and offered to buy the airport so that Salem, which is cutting basic services and amenities available to all, wouldn't be subsidizing the airlines and the general aviation folks any more. Salem needs to own an airfield just as much as it needs to own a bowling alley. Back in the 1920's, publicly owned airfields might have made sense, but now, 90 years later, not so much. Or at all, really.

Let's let the market decide whether it actually makes sense to try to run scheduled air service out of Salem -- oil's at $85 a barrel now, we could easily see another run towards $200 this summer, the airlines are losing billions annually and can't make any money with oil over $60, and Salem's downtown is inching towards that scary tipping point where the disinvestment is going to prompt more disinvestment. We need every taxpayer dollar invested here in the basic services and amenities that are offered to everyone, not just those who travel using the method that pollutes the most per mile.

The Lazy Walker's Guide to the Ballot

Image via Wikipedia

Note that this means that energy efficiency upgrades for schools would make a lot more sense than new construction in many cases -- long overdue. Hat tip to Onward Oregon for writing all this down, saving me the trouble.

High Marks for Measures 68 and 69

Ballots are in the mail and the primary season is in full swing, but did you know a pair of ballot measures face Oregonians that would amend the state constitution and greatly impact the future of the state’s education system?

Don’t worry if you haven’t done your homework on Measures 68 and 69, because you’re hardly alone: They frankly haven’t gotten much attention because opposition to these measures has been scarce — and for good reason!

The writers of Measures 68 and 69 have earned extra credit in our books by simply (and smartly) correcting a longstanding law that's prevented Oregon schools — from K-12 to community colleges to universities — from using their funding most effectively.

For instance, under current law, when Oregon’s local school districts, colleges and universities need to improve or expand a facility, they’re restricted from using voter-approved bond funds to purchase or repair existing buildings. Bond funds, current law goes, can only pay for new construction, which hamstrings local school districts, our community colleges and universities by blocking modernization of existing facilities, an approach which would save money and more briskly create jobs.

Measures 68 and 69 would change this outdated law and allow local school districts, colleges and universities to use bond funds more effectively, flexibly and smartly.

Measure 68 would allow local districts to pass bond levies to pay for repairs, maintenance and upgrades to school facilities in order to protect the health and safety of K-12 students (think adequate bathrooms and alleviating dangerous molds, pests and wood rot). The measure will also allow the state to issue matching funds to make local dollars go further, and help take pressure off schools bursting at the seams with increased enrollment.

Measure 69 will fix the law to allow colleges and universities to use the lowest-cost bond funds for existing buildings, saving money and preserving historical treasures in the process. The measure will allow a college or university to expand — for more classroom space, career and guidance counseling and worker training programs — and use the lowest-cost bonds to bring back to life older buildings that are in sound shape and often historically meaningful. Cash-strapped colleges and universities would also avoid the expense and use of natural resources required when building entirely new structures.

So, now that you know a bit more about Measures 68 and 69, we urge you to join the wide-ranging support of the American Federation of Teachers-Oregon, Stand For Children, the Oregon Education Association, the Oregon School Employees Association, the Oregon Business Council, Associated Oregon Industries, Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council and media outlets like The Oregonian, Medford Mail Tribune, Eugene Register-Guard and Willamette Week and vote YES on Measures 68 and 69.

For more information, visit www.yeson68and69.com.

Onward,
The Team at Onward Oregon
www.OnwardOregon.org

Get a Fresh Start on your gardening with Fresh Start Market this weekend!

One of the best things in Salem, the Fresh Start Market at 3020 Center Street NE, is having a big plant sale all weekend. There are a lot of plant sales this time of year -- this is one that very much deserves your support. Fresh Start is the kind of program that actually helps young offenders straighten up and fly right instead of just hammering them. Get Mom a beautiful hanging basket, or get yourself some veggie starts, or take a look at the creative crafts that these kids make. It's all good, it's all pretty inexpensive, and it's all important to building the kind of community where kids who make a mistake can get back on track instead of being sent on the fast track to a hard life.

MARION COUNTY JUVENILE DEPARTMENT

505-585-4956

Join us in celebrating the arrival of Spring

Fri. April 30^th, Sat. May 1^st and Sun. May 2^nd

Special Operating Hours

Friday 7:00am to 7:30pm

Saturday 7:00am to 6:00pm

Sunday 7:00am to 5:00pm

Come and enjoy a variety of food specials, a large assortment of colorful flowers, hanging baskets, and healthy bedding and garden plants. We also have several varieties of tomato, pepper, squash and other vegetable plants. Additionally, program youth have created unique wood and metal art, most from recycled materials; all these and more at reasonable prices. Enjoy a free bag of fresh-popped popcorn with your $5.00 purchase of plants or art.

Rain or Shine, we’re firing up our grill to offer Lunch Specials
(Friday, Saturday & Sunday, 11:30 - 3:30)
BBQ HAMBURGER $6 / HOT DOG $5.50
Special includes 2 side dishes & beverage.

Silly rabbit

Image by VickyvS via Flickr

Breakfast on Bikes asks a great question: Why has the SKATS "Alternate" mode study only posited an 8% reduction in single-occupant-vehicle trips over the Willamette in Salem?

Silly rabbit, you should know, if the planners had any thought of allowing "alternate" modes to reach their potential, there'd be no case for a $600 million bridge!

And for the Road Gang pushing this fantasy, that's all that matters --- justifying the fat construction contracts and years of consulting fees all aimed at demolishing even more of Salem's heart to serve the automobile. The Road Gang is in a race against time - they know that the Carburban Era is drawing to a close and that if they don't force commitments to a third Salem auto bridge soon, it will never happen because (a) auto usage is declining; (b) there won't even be enough traffic to justify two bridges pretty soon thanks to $4 and then $5 and then $6/gallon gas.

Why is Salem S . . . L . . . O . . . W?

Everywhere but Salem, this is the symbol of enhanced transparency. Here's it's the symbol of missed opportunities. Image via Wikipedia

SLOW, as in Salem . . . . Lags . . . . Outrageously . . . . Why?

Salem's Community Development Department sends out a "Community Connections" newsletter --- it's a pdf, of course, because there is a huge paranoia among government types who seem to live in fear that if you make information easy to forward and share, people might forward and share it! So we use pdfs to prevent that.

What's weird is that Salem finally tiptoed ever-so-gingerly into the late 20th Century recently, creating an RSS feed for the public so that Salem residents could keep up with what's going on. Note the most recent flash announcement here at Salem's "City of Salem News" site -- that's right, it's an announcement that the replacement fire chief would be the fire chief for good. Great -- that's a fine thing to report. But is that really all that the official city has had to share with the public since April 6??? What about all the articles in this multi-page Community Connections?

Whomever ascends to the Mayor's throne next month should make fixing the retarded public outreach office a top priority. We're going to be cutting budgets for as far as the eye can see, and that's going to be a very painful process -- the only thing that will make it worse is if the city keeps using the equivalent of carrier pigeons to share information and keeps choosing to use information formats that are all about preventing people from getting the information quickly and sharing the parts that are of interest.

HINT to Salem: quit with the paranoia and the "We have to use pdfs or someone might change something and make it look like it came from us" -- believe me, if someone wants to spoof a City of Salem communication, it would be child's play to do. But nobody wants a pdf as the front-line communication media. The only thing you're communicating when you communicate via pdfs is that you aren't really much interested in communicating.

Documentary on environmental causes of breast cancer

Image via Wikipedia

Given the huge spike in breast cancer since WWII and the fact that human genetics haven't changed in that time, perhaps it has some other cause . . . hmmm, what could that be? Hmmm . . . must ponder that.

Response to Dean Baker's "The Deficit and Our Children"

Long-term oil prices (yellow line is inflation-adjusted) 1861-2007. The recent price spikes will soon be recalled as "the good old days." Image via Wikipedia

I really like and admire Dean Baker and have greatly valued his sharp insights over the years. I put no stock in anything the shysters in the Concord Coalition are selling, and despise the transparent efforts by them and others to repeal the New Deal in the name of deficit reduction (while leaving the military and Wall St. riding high on the hog, naturally). His article (linked below), "The Deficit and Our Children" is a fair attempt to counter the faux hysteria of the right over deficits (now that a Democrat is in the White House).

However, I fear that, like most economists, Baker has entirely missed something that will have a profound effect on his rosy projections of great future wealth thanks to the magic of growth: the end of cheap energy, often referred to in shorthand as "peak oil."

I like to summarize it for people this way:

(1) essentially all our great wealth in the US reflects not our industry or ingenuity or Providential favor but rather our dumb luck at conquering a land richly endowed with abundant and essentially free energy. Our economic growth parallels exactly our increased consumption of these fossil fuels.

(2) Coal is a health disaster, not only in miners killed directly but in catastrophic direct and indirect environmental consequences of coal use, particularly in climate change. We must stop using coal, leaving nearly all of what remains in the ground or else be doomed by our own poisons.

(3) Oil has reached or is just past its point of maximum abundance now -- meaning that, from here on out, it will inexorably decrease in availability, forcing prices up to bring supply and demand into equilibrium.

(4) The relentless increase in oil prices -- even aside from the great price volatility we can expect, which is very destructive to our complex economic systems -- make Baker's growth projections absurd. We are going to learn that ultimately economic wealth depends on natural resources, and that tying everything in our economy to an assumption of endlessly available cheap energy was a disastrous (albeit easily explained) blunder.

(5) Because our entire economic system is based on continual growth and because our economy is very unlikely to grow and is instead highly likely to shrink relentlessly to reflect the steady decrease in the availability of energy and the total absence of the kind of cheap energy we've come to expect (and upon which we've set up everything in America, from suburbia to health care), we can expect a wrenching change in the next decade. When we're facing persistent and ineradicable unemployment at 40-50%, we're going to find out that arguments about the health of the social security trust fund in 2043 are about as relevant as the price of tea in Lilliput.

(6) To bring this back to health, the point is this: Just as our public health demands are going to be climbing --- thanks to climate disruption, the huge "baked in" amount of obesity-related diseases, and collapsing civil infrastructure (clean water) and peoples' inability to afford the medicines we've taught them to expect --- our resources are going to be shrinking steadily.

For a good menu of stories exploring the connection between health and the end of cheap energy, you can go here

http://energybulletin.net/taxonomy/term/67

For a concise explanation of the mechanics of peak oil and a good introduction to other resources, try here: http://energybulletin.net/primer

For a good attempt to explore the health consequences of trying to use coal to maintain the high-energy lifestyle, see here:

Climate Chaos: Your Health at Risk What You Can Do to Protect Yourself and Your Family (Public Health)

http://www.powells.com/biblio/71-9780275998585-0

Baker's column is here.

ODOT hammers Salem and its own greenhouse gas reduction goals

Image by Jason McHuff via Flickr

What is up with the State of Oregon trying to kill Salem's downtown?

At the north end of town the state has been busily filling up the Capital City Business "Center" -- the center of nowhere, actually, -- with hundreds of office workers, in a "center" that has no direct bus service from downtown Salem.* And now ODOT is planning to permanently move hundreds of high-paid white collar technical jobs out of downtown and into an area suited for manufacturing!

So even as the state makes a big show out of its greenhouse gas reduction goals, it keeps moving workers out of the bike-able and walkable core area that has the best service by bus. Instead, it's going to fill prime industrial space in a transit-inaccessible area with office workers, which means expensive interior refits and more driving by all those workers, plus starving downtown businesses of vitally needed customers.

But hey, who cares if Oregon's capital starts to look like Michigan's (Lansing's downtown is a scary, depressing vision -- something that Salem does NOT want to emulate). Something about these deals stinks.

-At the former Tyco building at 4040 Fairview Industrial Drive SE, ODOT wants to take 75,000 square feet of space on a 10-year lease, Miles said. The 4040 Fairview site will become the permanent home for ODOT's Technical Services and a section of Information Services. In all, about 300 workers will be based at the former Tyco building.

The building was built as a sister manufacturing site for Tyco's now defunct circuit board plant in the Polk County town of Dallas. Tyco broke ground on the project in autumn 2000, but Tyco never used the building for manufacturing and it became a symbol of the downturn in Oregon's high-tech industry. The vacant building is now owned by State Investment LLC, a local investment group.

-ODOT's plans call for about 220 employees to go to the former SUMCO building at 3930 Fairview Industrial Drive SE. The agency wants a two-year lease for about 65,000 square feet of space.

Employees at the old SUMCO building will return to the Capitol Mall building when the renovations are complete.

In 2004, SUMCO phased out its local manufacturing operations. The shutdown marked the end of an era that started in the 1980s when Siltec, a predecessor to SUMCO, began making silicon wafers in Salem.

Cascadia Canyon LLC, a group with ties to Sunwest Management Inc., controlled the SUMCO property for several years. Past attempts to bring new businesses to the property came to a standstill when Salem-based Sunwest's financial problems spun out of control in fall of 2008. New owners, who are affiliated with Salem developer Jack Fox, have recently acquired most of the former SUMCO campuses.

There's something that Oregon seems to struggle with that world-class organizations figured out a long time ago: you can't let divisions optimize their own corner of the world at the expense of the whole organization. You have to optimize as a whole. Meaning that, even if we think the move of 300 prime workers is strictly on the up-and-up and has no hidden ulterior motive behind it, it still allows one division (ODOT) to make it's own numbers look better by making Salem's and the State of Oregon's look worse. Only by ignoring the impact of the move on Salem and on the state's own goals for reducing vehicle trips can you are argue that this pencils out, and it would only pencil out for ODOT management. It's going to hurt Salem as a whole, hurt those 300 workers who are losing their options for biking or walking or taking the bus to work, and it's going to hammer downtown businesses.

Funny, there's some prime spaces in the very heart of downtown that could be refitted to serve office workers much easier than refitting manufacturing space ... but apparently no one is keeping an eye on how the state as a whole treats Salem -- especially sad given how much property tax revenue the state doesn't pay. The Legislature loves to badger the feds for timber payments in lieu of taxes for federally owned land, but apparently sees no connection with Salem's starved budgets and all the state-owned property in Salem.

(* Amusingly, Cherriots uses a photo of CCBC in some of its promotional materials with a caption along the lines of "Cherriots, We Take You There" -- irony at its finest. CCBC sits at the far end of the little northeast-pointing appendix grafted onto the otherwise circular Route 14 -- a route almost fiendishly well calculated to be useless.)