Also on Monday Council will consider a pricing update for airport parking:
At the Salem Municipal Airport, there is parking available for customers. The current daily rate is $15 per day and this action would decrease the rate to $10 per day to encourage more customers to use available parking spaces.
The Planning Division of the Community and Urban Development Department proposes adding a fee to comply with State of Oregon rules around Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities....
The new fee will set a charge of $1,500 per parking space for the proportion of climate mitigation not resolved with solar power generation and / or tree canopy.
Later in the Council agenda for Monday is the Second Reading for enactment of the new parking lot rules that include the provision for the fee. So the City is getting ahead of the new rule and somewhat voluntarily applying it.
 |
| Last week's Community Report and this week's Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan |
But consider it this way: The City encourages driving and parking and
more emissions by reducing the price to park, and then adds back a
climate surcharge, as if that somehow reduces the emissions you instead
induced? Not to mention the fossil fuel and emissions from the air
flight itself.
That's hard to embrace sincerely and whole-heartedly.
The point is to reduce emissions, not to increase them and then by a dodgy bookkeeping move somehow to offset and "mitigate" them.
 |
| Some headlines this month |
The move looks like some greenwash for the airport. It is implicit recognition of a trade-off, but is a little glib and superficial, even BS.
Also on the agenda is adoption of the Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan. And — how curious! — it has a section on climate specifically (and of course many other hazards in it are intensified by climate). |
| Increasing temperatures |
 |
| High confidence: Flood, wildfire, heat waves |
We should be reducing emissions period, not raising them and then trying to offset the increase. The City has it backwards.
The City also looks to reclassify Landaggard Drive and reconfigure Colorado Drive at the large apartment complex proposed near Doaks Ferry and Orchard Heights.
A citizen, associated with the Glenn-Gibson Watershed Council, which has tried to alter the project, has submitted a detailed list of objections.
The most serious objection seems to be that the City granted an exception for a steeper than usual grade of 12% on a part of Colorado Drive. While that may or may not meet the technical requirements of ADA access, and the City believes it does, it's probably a violation of the spirit of them.
But in the total context of the proposed development and its neighboring developments, including the high school, the reclassification seems reasonable, and it will be interesting to learn if any of the objections stick.
More briefly, the City proposes to purchase for $1.5 million an area in the former mushroom plant redevelopment ultimately to be a park.
 |
| Park area near Cordon & State (mushroom plant) |
Over on FB there is some punny commentary and more substantial commentary:
When the East Park Estates was platted they had to dedicate 7 acres to a park. They paid over a million dollars in park SDCs when they proposed to build this subdivision. So the money the City is paying is essentially pass through back to the developer.Previously on this Council agenda:
No comments:
Post a Comment