City Council, February 12th - Low-Income Housing

Council meets on Monday, and there's a cluster of items involving low-income housing.

But is Fisher Road Walkable Really?

The Urban Renewal Agency proposes to buy a building for low-income housing on Fisher Road. (They also propose to enlarge the nearby Urban Renewal Zone around Portland Road with an exquisite gerrymander in order to secure additional funding.)

4107 Fisher Road NE

From the Staff report it looks like the property's developer was distressed and unable to finance completion:

The Salem Housing Authority (SHA) has identified a 19,336 square foot multi-family building located at 4107 Fisher Road NE (constructed 2014) and adjacent 0.58 acre parcel of vacant land located at 4075 Fisher Road NE (Property) (Attachment 1) as an affordable site to acquire for housing using. Using a “housing first” model, the building will house and offer comprehensive services to residents....The building was built to house a senior citizen population in 19 suites on three floors in addition to a full commercial kitchen and first floor flex space, but was never occupied. The Property is within a mile of education, grocery, and medical facilities, and within walking distance to bus lines via walking and bicycle paths along major roadways.

The building is 80% complete, with the second and third floors in roughed-in condition and ready for finish work. The elevator shaft is in place, but requires installation of the elevator car and mechanicals. SHA plans to complete the finish work and convert the building to 38 single-room occupancy units with one restroom for every two units. SHA will seek resources from Oregon Housing and Community Services to finish the building and pursue a land banking tool for acquisition of the vacant land.

"walking paths"? - via Streetview

I-5, Lancaster, and Silverton Road together isolate this site
(Salem bike map: Bike lanes in blue; low-traffic streets in green;
yellow, orange, and red for increasingly high-stress roads)

But Fisher Road is zoomy and unfinished. You might remember that in their recent "Needs Assessment," Cherriots recommended passing on restoring service for Fisher Road because of "the lack of sidewalks," which you can see in the 4100 block of Fisher Road above. Back in December Council received a report on speeding on Fisher Road. And last year a drunk driver struck and gave fatal injuries to Sandra Hill while she was getting her mail on Fisher Road in a segment farther south also without sidewalks. Walkscore rates this address as "car-dependent" (but likely overrates its bikeability; the bike lanes are flat, but streets are zoomy). Fisher Road is problematic, uncomfortable, and even dangerous for those not in cars. The nearest east-west connection on Silverton Road totally lacks bike lanes. Lancaster has bike lanes but it's terrible.

Fisher Road: Needs Sidewalks

This is an example of the way a City rhetoric of "walking and bicycle paths along major roadways" is insufficiently related to facts on the ground, instead floating freely as words with their own autonomous being, likely derived from lines and crow-fly distance on a map, or from driving instead of actually walking or biking for first-hand knowledge. It's abstract and theoretical, not empirical.

So on the one hand, any housing is useful, but on the other hand if this address really is going to be part of an effective "housing first" strategy, more consideration ought to be given to how those without a car will actually get around. This is still too much of an expression for compulsory autoism. We exile people to the car-dependent edges instead of putting them at the comfortably walkable center of useful things.

Council will also approve the first round of low-income housing property tax exemptions:

• Four Oaks Housing, 1051-1099 23rd Street SE,
• Oakhill Associates, 3837 12th Ave,
• Sunnyslope Associates, 1000 Cunningham Lane, and
• Wallerwood LP, 1150 Waller Street

More Disconnects on Transportation?

As part of the Portland Road project, the City proposes to buy a wedge of land on which a car dealership had been operating. The parcel is between Portland Road and Silverton Road at Pine Street. The City proposes to pay $1.2 million for it.

The northern portion of the Property is the site of the proposed Pine Street NE extension related to the potential realignment of the Portland Road NE/Silverton Road NE intersection. The location of the intersection improvement and the Property are located within the North Gateway Urban Renewal Area and the Pine Street extension is listed as a project in the Urban Renewal Area Plan. When the Seller was completing due diligence to sell the Property, the Pine Street NE extension was discovered to be a hindrance to the marketability of the Property. The Seller contacted the City and requested that the potential right-of-way be purchased and removed from the Urban Renewal Plan or the entire property to be purchased.

The Urban Renewal Agency proposes to buy an awkward wedge

The idea of realigning the Pine Street intersection is concerning. By straightening out Pine Street to be more in line with Silverton Road, that will likely make Pine Street even zoomier. (I see "rationalizing" the intersection the same way the Charlie Foxtrot at Front, Commercial, and Division rationalized that intersection.)

At the same time, on the Winter-Maple bikeway, we are trying to calm and slow elements of Pine Street.

From the final Winter-Maple Bikeway recommendations

These two moves appear, on the surface anyway, to be at cross-purposes.

As a related digression, a reader sent along this interesting map and table. At next week's meeting of the Oregon Transportation Commission, ODOT is formally presenting on "2017 Oregon Traffic Safety Performance Plan" and in the presentation is a top 10 list of most dangerous city streets.

Salem is Second Worst!
Oregon's Ten Most Dangerous Cities for Speed Related Crashes
(Inset and yellow highlight added)
ODOT presentation to OTC

And Salem is infamous at Number Two! (ODOT and the OTC are unlikely to take real action, as that would mean driving less often, driving shorter distances, and driving slower speeds, very little of which ODOT and the OTC seem willing to contemplate in serious and systemic ways.)

Other Matters

More positively, back to Council agenda, there's a report about sole-source bidding on the Railroad Quiet Zone projects:

The original cost estimate for UPRR work was $1,122,337. The final actual cost was $701,527, which is 37 percent below the original estimate.

This work was done well after the peak of the Great Recession and is probably not just the artifact of unemployment and depressed construction activity. So that successful outcome from non-competitive bidding is something to note.

On the update from the Legislative Committee, there is no specific mention of the Cap & Invest concepts. Last time out on January 8th, Council adopted a non-specific endorsement of greenhouse gas legislation ("Establishing ongoing, comprehensive and robust program partnerships and commitments to the support of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in our community"), and this time they are not following-up with any specific comment on specific bills. That's a somewhat disappointing omission and refusal on the next step. Council does formally support appointed, rather than elected, transit boards. This bill would give Cherriots greater flexibility on funding mechansisms.

Looks like we'll be getting a new piece of public art, this time to commemorate the bottle bill of 1971. There is no location or artist yet designated, but the Oregon Environmental Council is donating $15,000 and the City will chip in another $15,000.

It's hard to know what to think of this. The last two murals, Mirror Maze and Waldo Stewards, cost $25,000 each. According to the Register-Guard,

The 2016 and 2017 mural effort, called the 20x21EUG Mural Project, has spent about $57,500 in public funds on 11 large public murals and 15 smaller pieces of public art, according to the city. An additional roughly $25,000 was provided by businesses or other private entities in money or goods.

On the one hand, it's true that we undervalue art. So maybe it is mean and cheap to question these amounts. But on the other hand, it sure seems like Eugene is getting a much higher return on their public art monies.

And bullets for the rest:

• For a new subdivision out on Michigan City Lane in West Salem, there's an information report on approval for a segment of street to get significantly steeper, from 8% to 12% grade. That's hard to visualize, but it seems like a lot.
• Council looks to initiate the West Salem Code Clean-up project. (There might be more to say on this later. See previous notes here. Parking requirements might in particular merit some comment.)
• They'll also engage the Priority Budgeting process (growing out of the Strategic Planning Process) with $85,000 in a budget transfer and to support that with an $15,000 match for support from ICMA Capstone Consulting and Peer Assistance Program. (This is all a little vague, and maybe others will have more interesting things to say about it.)