Sunday, November 17, 2013

City Council, November 18th - Trumping Data by Personal Anecdote

"Don't be mislead by statistics," says the Mayor!

Income by Census Block:
Salem River Crossing
Draft Environmental Impact Statement
Chapter 3.4, Environmental Justice
From today's Paper:
The Post ranked every zip code in America based on median income and education level, measured by what percentage of adults have college degrees. West Salem falls in the 73rd percentile nationally, which means it is wealthier and better educated than 72 out of 100 zip codes in the country.

Meanwhile, downtown and North Salem are in the 17th percentile, and northeast Salem falls in the 19th percentile. They are in the bottom one-fifth of all American neighborhoods.

Salem Mayor Anna Peterson was skeptical that Salem exhibits such stark income inequality.

“(West Salem) is a microcosm of this entire community. Don’t be misled by statistics,” she said. “There are millionaires that are downtown.”
SJ graphic on income by zip code
Council meets on Monday, and there's little of interest for transportation.  So, bullets again - and a  history pendent:
  • There's a stormwater project at Waln Creek, totally unrelated to transportation, and the google turns up an interesting claim about it.  Another blogger suggests it was the original Pringle Creek and notes that a very early Pringle claim and homestead appears to have been alongside it, just north of the old Battle Creek Golf Course and very near the current site of Battle Creek School.  Without digging too deep, there's little on the history of the name "Waln Creek" and the history chapter of the Pringle, Glenn-Gibson, Clagget, and Mill Creeks Watershed Assessment slips curiously between Waln and Pringle for the same length of creek:
    The Pringle lands were gently rolling hills, mostly white oak savanna and upland prairie covered with perennial grasses. Hills rose to the south and east. On higher ground stood open groves of Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine, remnants of which are quickly disappearing with current development along South Commercial Street. There was an aspen grove near the John Minto Donation Land Claim northwest of the confluence of Waln and Battle Creeks, according to the General Land Office survey maps of 1850-51 (Marion County Public Works Department 2000). One fir tree was noted as being 40 inches in diameter and one white oak was 36 inches in diameter.

    Pringle land stretched from a point near Fabry Road midway between Sunnyside Road and Commercial Street SE south to Neakanie, east across I-5 and Battle Creek Road, and north as far as Marietta Street and Reed Road. Much of the southwest corner of Sam Clark’s/Octavius Pringle’s land was covered by extensive wetlands just upstream from the confluence of Battle and Waln Creeks (Marion County Public Works Department 2000). According to Oregon Geographic Names, “Pringle Creek, Marion County... This stream arises in the hills of South Salem, and it flows through the southern part of town. Virgil K. Pringle, who arrived in Salem on December 25, 1846, took up a Donation Land Claim near the stream, which was accordingly named for him” (McArthur 1982).
    The McArthur bit seems to support the notion that what we now know as Waln Creek was originally known as Pringle Creek.  Do you know anything about the history of the Waln name for the creek?

    And in passing it is interesting to note that the straightening and widening  and dredging of creeks is a lot like the straightening and widening of roads, and in fact road engineering is dominated, I think, by hydraulic metaphor. New-school stream restoration, the emphasis on meanders and deltas and swales, looks more than a little like the distributed system of a streetcar-era street grid (or the "chaos" of a premodern network). What's old is new again!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In the paper's preview -

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20131118/NEWS/311180020/Salem-City-Council-could-discuss-parking-meeting

"The Salem City Council may explore downtown parking problems today, although it’s not on the agenda.

Salem City Councilor Chuck Bennett said Friday that he will ask the city manager to send out another round of notices to downtown business owners asking them to submit employee license plate numbers....

By one estimate, about 12 percent of downtown businesses comply with the city’s requests for employee license plate numbers. Providing the information is voluntary. Bennett suggests that sending a new form for business owners to fill out might encourage cooperation....

A half-dozen businesses recently contacted Bennett with complaints about on-street parking.

From Oct. 15 to Nov. 1, city staffers issued 60 employee parking citations, according to city records. Eleven of those were issued to employees who had been ticketed at least twice.

In comparison, from January to just before the two-hour limit ended in October, the city issued 98 employee parking citations."

Salem Breakfast on Bikes said...

Thanks!