Our Salem Open House on the 5th - Too much Spitballing?

Our Salem, the process to update the Comprehensive Plan, has an Open House and Workshop on Wednesday the 5th. (A little after, and overlapping, the ODOT Passenger Rail Open House, do note! Consider attending both.)

The public materials, however, aren't exactly clear. They are overwhelming and underexplained!

We are here! (Nov 5th presentation)

According to a timeline presented to the Advisory Committee "we are here": The consultants have reviewed the existing plans, and now, collectively, we are to choose indicators.

But the materials shuttle between values and metrics, and by being unclear about the difference between things we measure and things we value, and unclear about the way metrics are a tool used to help accomplish or retain things we value, we may end up with a muddle.

(November 5th presentation)

(November 5th presentation)

Right now we have lots of metrics that aren't sufficiently tied to values and to real plans oriented to realizing those values. They just float out there as vague hopes without any serious plan or attempt to attain them.

We aren't serious about any of this (Nov 5th audit memo)

A favorite one is bicycling mode split. In less than two years, in 2020 we are supposed to have doubled bicycling to work in Salem!

At this point that's just talk, just blowing smoke.

An important part of the problem is that we haven't actually decided that bicycling and reducing drive-alone trips is a real value or priority. So mode share is a metric that's not closely enough linked to a value. (All of our talk about and planning for reducing congestion for drive-alone trips is also evidence that we don't link things we measure to things we value.)

Now maybe choosing these indicators, and committing to a scheme that reports on them regularly, will help give visibility to our unseriousness about some of them and help formulate more serious plans to realize them.

But that requires some focus also, and the range of potential indicators is overwhelming. At the last Open House the posters had so many candidates!

And they weren't necessarily consistent, suggesting that we hadn't done enough work on the underlying values.

So many choices! Posters

If we have a positive valence on "parking spaces" and "road miles," we will have a difficult time with increasing "bicycle and pedestrian use." By merely putting stickers next to these, we will not have actually indicated a value.

At this point the whole exercise seems like there is too much spitballing on the wall to see what sticks.

It is possible that the meetings convey additional information that ensures this is not merely spitballing, but if so, the published materials for people who are not able to attend the meetings in-person should be more robust.

At the start of this process, the documentation is sparse, and it's hard to feel like the process will yield something focused and effective.

Scenario Planning

Another slide in the November 5th presentation sure makes it look like we've done an end-run on our MPO. The greenhouse gas assessment looks very much to be conducted under the "Scenario Planning" template. Just five years ago, both the City and MPO were doing everything they could to evade Scenario Planning. This change is important to recognize and even celebrate.

(November 5th presentation)

Back in 2013 the City opposed Scenario Planning

In 2015 SKATS insisted on "voluntary" compliance
as a way to carve room for non-participation

It's also significant that a just-released report from California, "2018 Progress Report on California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act," notes

Even if the share of new car sales that are ZEVs grows nearly 10-fold from today, California would still need to reduce VMT per capita 25 percent to achieve the necessary reductions for 2030.

We have to drive less often and drive fewer miles. Any plan that fails to face this squarely will be a sham.

EVs alone won't do it

Framing our Zoning Regulations

As we think about zoning and housing, it would be helpful to stop talking about zoning for "single-family housing" and instead talk about "apartment bans."

The multiplicity of zones also makes it very difficult to grasp general patterns, and this map from Seattle simplifies in a useful way - though I think the labels and framing is still off.

From Seattle Times (red comments added)

If we are serious about housing, we will want a map that shows where it is impossible to construct a four-plex or other missing middle type (and focuses on that variable alone). We need to talk more about exclusion.

Detail of the "missing middle" kinds of housing

The Open House and Workshop is Wednesday the 5th at the Court Street Christian Church at 1699 Court Street NE, Salem. It runs from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Addendum, December 5th

I see how this is supposed to fit together.

The values we've supposedly already inherited from the Strategic Plan.

"Safe Community," "Good Governance" etc
(from 2018 Progress Report in November)

So the headers under which the potential indicators are clustered, like "Safe, Reliable, and Efficient Infrastructure," are taken directly from the Strategic Plan.

So there's reason apparent there. Still, these "values" were never articulated with enough specificity; they really aren't values yet. They are banal platitudes, really. Who wants "Unsafe, Unreliable, Inefficient Infrastructure" right? This vagueness contributes to the scattershot nature of the potential indicators as metrics.

Addendum 2, December 7th

The City's posted some additional materials and a survey from the Open House on the 5th:

• Workshop Presentation, which includes a slide making explicit the way the Strategic Plan's goals shaped the potential indicators. The slide on greenhouses gases, which we'll revisit, uses US data rather than Oregon data from our climate commission.
• Some existing conditions maps. (The one on transit is discussed briefly here. Both the one on parks and the one on transit seem to use overbroad measures and overstate access to both parks and transit.)
• This round of the "indicator posters" has more information and context.
• And, finally, a survey on the potential indicators.