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:

• Kroc Center Path and ConnectOregonV. Fussing over the irony in funding a Salvation Army project with gambling proceeds isn't likely to do much: The project has already been identified as a priority and if this particular funding source was rejected, another one could be found, and maybe that would bump a different project off a different funding list.
• Courthouse Square and Transit Mall adjustments. The Courthouse Square rehab requires fiddling with the transit mall, so there's some shifting and adjustments going on in the public right-of-way.
• New CATC appointments. At least one bikey member has moved out of town and needed to be replaced. But if you look at the agendas for the Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission, you'd see the committee meets infrequently, doesn't actually doesn't do a great deal, and the City doesn't utilize it as much as it might.  So the composition of the committee may not matter all that much.

• 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!