City's Year in Review Video is a Little Phony

The City's published a "Year in Review" slideshow/video, and it's kinda phony!

Just generally it's oriented to friendly, smiling faces, oriented to a mood rather than anything more discursive and an attempt to sift and say "these are the most significant things." It's also a little loose on detail and fact. Without narration, the jazzy stock music is doing a lot of the work.

In an early slide for the bond projects, it shows a plan view of Silverton Road rather than McGilchrist. It's also a slip lane, which speeds turning autos and degrades safety and comfort for other road users. The City has not published anything on Silverton Road yet. So the image in the video is just a complicated, techy low-res picture that trades on our willingness to see "complete street." It's mood, not detailed claim.

The angled intersection is not McGilchrist!

As we've pointed out (here and here) the cross-section it shows for McGilchrist is not continued its whole length. It's short, in fact. The City wants us to think the image is representative and typical, but it is instead selective and limited. Again, mood rather than detailed assertion.

That's an old crosswalk and old bike lane

The slide on pedestrian safety is even more fake. The speed bump might be new, but the crosswalk on Mission over a decade old and bike lane on Church Street is from 2016. They have nothing to do with any new "safety" projects in 2023! This is misleading and probably intentionally so, trying to make it sound like the City has done more than it really has. It is not truthful.

And the video is full of copaganda.

Full of copaganda

You can go through in your own areas of interest and find other details and atmospheric imagery that ring false or oversimplified.

Rather than being a sincere attempt to review the year, good things and bad, it's an expression of spin and PR, designed to elicit pleasant feelings about the City.

We'll have our own Year in Review post later this month, and it will center something not at all mentioned in the City's video, something important, which should be in such a video, but not always popular and conducive to the fuzzy, warm feelings the video is intended to elicit.