Federal Grant to Fund Electric Buses for Cherriots

Here's some good news, a little old now, and you may already have seen it, but it's especially welcome this weekend.

Cherriots Board Chair - via Twitter

Keizer Times has a longer story. The Federal Transit Administration doesn't appear to have the announcement yet.

The Low or No Emission Vehicle Program has been around for a while, with the first round of grants announced in 2016. Cherriots may have submitted applications before.

Route 11 mainly on Lancaster Drive

New Station needs New Chief: Take City Survey on Next Leader

New Building, New Chief

The City's starting the public portion of a search for a new Chief of Police.

Ralph Andersen & Associates is beginning the recruitment process for the new Chief of Police for the City of Salem. The City of Salem invites you to take this survey regarding the future of the City of Salem Police Department. The survey will begin an open conversation about what is needed in the next Chief of Police.

Chief Moore has seemed like a nice and responsible fellow. Yesterday he published an open letter about Minneapolis saying "we do not teach any of our officers to control a suspect’s actions by kneeling on their neck." That is a good statement, but the initial frame of "tragic events across the nation" is not wholly adequate to the structural elements in play here. It's not some random tragic event, but is one instance of a deep and enduring pattern across the country. The frame of tragedy operates as something of a euphemism in this case.

Front page of Minneapolis Star-Tribune today

New Parkscore Misses Mark in Salem

Circulating on social media this past week there was a new "parkscore" from the Trust for Public Lands, modeled after the successful walkscore concept.

Salem rates a 70, and a map purports to show areas of need. But it does not pass the sniff test and I am not sure what the algorithm is actually assessing.

Here are areas in South Salem very near Woodmansee and Wendy Kroger Park that the algorithm says are in "very high need" of a park. But they are touching the park. The park is right there!

Two red "very high" need areas are immediately adjacent to parks
in South Salem, Wendy Kroger and Woodmansee Parks
(the color scheme also is awful)

There are other instances of red "very high" need areas actually being closer to a park than orange "high" need areas.

From a high level, the assessment of east Salem between I-5 and Cordon Road seems closer to the mark.

But the mapping project needs feedback and to go through another round of iteration and refinement before it can be really very useful. Its score of 70 does not seem reliable yet and Salemites should not be quick to cite it for or against anything.

SCAN Working on Bikeway Between Bush Park and Clark Creek Park

For a few months, even years, now SCAN has been talking about improved bikeways in the area around Bush Park and South Salem High School. They have intensified analysis of a southward extension of the Winter-Maple Greenway from Bush Park where it exits at Yew Street and Leffelle.

South of Rural Ave to Clark Creek Park

Existing signage stops at Rural Street, and they are looking to continue things to Clark Creek Park.

Friends of Marine Drive Contest City Survey and Plan for Marine Drive

I didn't catch up on Council over the weekend or last night, and mostly there wasn't much to say it seemed. But some comment in a late add to Council agenda on the Marine Drive purchases* deserves more attention.

Marine Drive hardly exists, and it already has a "Friends of Marine Drive" group advocating for it, like it's some wildlife, park, or historic property! I suppose it is imperiled in a way.

from "Friends of Marine Drive" last night at Council

They write to Council:

[In] November 2019 an alignment for Marine Drive was surveyed that is not consistent with the Council's June 10, 2019 motion....[the] surveyed alignment for Marine Drive swings outside of the Urban Growth Boundary to the east (red shading) and was the previous alignment in the Transportation Systems Plan that takes Marine Drive along Wallace Marine Park.

The context for this is a proposal and request from 2017 for a different alignment, which seemed to have been formally accepted at Council in 2019. The detail map above shows segments #4 and #5 on the proposed alignment.

Connection at #4 is being disputed now (diagram from 2017)

If the City intends to push through a segment outside the UGB, it will be interesting that they might employ an argument on "rural roads" used by SRC opponenents.

On the other hand, there are good reasons to prefer the connection to Cameo Street at Fifth Avenue, and if it is simpler because it is inside the UGB, all the better.

This also may be evidence that the LUBA decision did cause the City to revert the boundaries of the UGB to the pre-SRC state. This has not been addressed explicitly by the City so far as I know.

There will be more to say, especially as the City's Marine Drive concept has entailed some kind of connection across Wallace Road at Second Street. There are multiple moving parts here.

---

* Each lot and owner is its own Agenda item:

1. one
2. two
3. three

Decoration Day to Memorial Day: Change in 1920 under World War's Shadow

In 1920 Memorial Day was very much still "Decoration Day" and oriented to the Civil War. But the shadow of the Great War, World War I, continued a change in focus. We see both ways that Memorial Day was being reconfigured in the present of 1920 as well as shifts in ways the Civil War was retrospectively understood.

Civil War Memorial in City View (November 2019):
"Erected in memory of deceased brave defenders
of our country in the civil war of 1861-1865"*

The ad packages for Memorial Day with prepared grids for local businesses featured the Gettysburg Address.

Local ad grids, with "Gettysburg speech"
 Morning paper May 30th
Afternoon paper, May 29th, both 1920

The morning paper's featured a Union soldier on a plinth, very much like ours here, and called the holiday "Decoration Day."

The afternoon paper's graphic is more interesting and layered, and uses "Memorial Day." As I read it, it shows pair of Civil War Veterans, one Union, the other Confederate, saluting each other, and preparing to salute the Doughboys marching up in formation between them.

SKATS Ignored Public on Goal 7 and GHG Reduction. Tell Federal Regulators about That

The Policy Committee for our local MPO, SKATS, convenes on Tuesday the 26th by phone, and their main item is a Public Hearing and formal adoption of the 2021-2026 project list, the TIP.

This is mainly a formality, but it's nice to see that non-auto transport has the most support. (See note at very bottom.)

More interesting is formal review next month, in June, by Federal agencies "to assess compliance with Federal regulations pertaining to the transportation planning process" at the MPO.

Notice from the Feds

They are soliciting comments, which can be sent by June 18th to

Jasmine Marie Harris, Transportation Planner
Federal Highway Administration, Oregon Division
530 Center St. NE, Suite 420
Salem, OR 97301
Jasmine.harris@dot.gov

And/Or

Jeremy Borrego, Transportation Program Specialist
Federal Transit Administration, Region 10
915 Second Ave., Suite 3142
Seattle, WA 98174
jeremy.borrego@dot.gov

Specifically, one of the deficiencies that the Feds identified regarded public participation.

The formal Notice from the Feds
about deficiencies in public participation

Back in April, Kathy Lincoln, a former board member of Cherriots, who had sat on the SKATS Policy Committee during her tenure with Cherriots, and who is herself a lawyer, and someone familiar with regulatory requirements, suggested that SKATS was not in fact fully responsive to public comment. Here's how SKATS summarized it:

Summary from April

You might recall back in April of 2018, greenhouse gas reduction and a stronger Goal 7 was far more popular any "build it now" sentiment for the SRC. Yet the MPO largely ignored calls for a stronger Goal 7 and did as little with it as possible. Later, in pressing Salem City Council for a new Hearing on the SRC after the LUBA remand, they showed they were far more responsive to interest in the SRC than to interest in greenhouse gas reduction.