I don't live in the city limits, so won't be voting on the $300 million infrastructure bond measure on the November ballot. But if I was able to vote on it, I'd sigh, grit my teeth, roll my eyes, and then reluctantly mark "Yes."
The Salem Reporter has an informative story about the bond measure.
Salem voters next month will decide whether to fund repairs to streets and build new roads, replace aging fire trucks, improve parks and buy land for branch libraries and affordable housing over the next decade.
The city is seeking voter approval in the November general election for a $300 million infrastructure spending package, which would be paid for by issuing bonds paid back with property taxes over the next 30 years.
Salem has other bonds from older projects that are being paid off, so the measure won’t raise property tax rates if it passes. The city’s bond rate would remain at $1.20 per $1,000 of assessed value for Salem property owners.
If the measure fails, property owners would see their city bond tax rate fall to 75 cents per $1,000 of assessed value as voters continue to pay off other city projects.
One reason -- and its a big one -- why I half-heartedly support the bond measure is that it contains money to pave the parking lot of the Minto Brown dog park. Laurel, my wife and frequent user of the dog park with Mooka, our Husky mix, has worked to have this happen, so she'd be irked at me if I urged a "No" vote.
This personal anecdote points to both a strength and weakness of the bond measure: it has something for everybody, but fails to deliver on much-needed improvements in Salem. Meaning, it reflects what bothers me about the Salem City Council and city officials.
They're overly cautious about rocking the boat, even when the boat needs some rocking to get rid of serious problems sloshing around. The bond measure could have been transformative in its effect on Salem.
Instead, it's better than nothing, yet nowhere near as good as it could have been.
The Salem Reporter story says, "The bulk of the money, $157 million, would be spent to repair bridges and roads, improve signs, add pedestrian crossings and bike lanes on some streets and repair sidewalks."
In an August post, the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger, who has a keen eye for policies that sound like they're doing something to deal with the key 21st century problem, climate change, yet actually aren't, had some cogent observations about the bond measure.
Here's some excerpts from "A Disappointing Bond Proposal - Council Work Session August 15."
Framed up as an ostensibly responsible thing for "maintenance" and "community improvement," the proposed City bond doesn't really meet our moment. It looks to a backlog of wants and needs, formulated in largely 20th century modes, but does not do enough to sift the true needs from legacy wants, and then to identify what our 21st century needs might be.
...All in all the project list and total package is not very inspiring.
At the same time, as we see in the diminution and reconfiguration from Build Back Better to Inflation Reduction Act, making the sausage is rarely inspiring. If the proposed bond package isn't inspiring, it's not terrible either. Maybe this was the best that was possible. But enough seams, gaps, and questions remain in it to make boosting for a hard sell.
The way the City is selling it as something for walking and biking is mainly puffery and does not inspire confidence. The transportation section leads in the City marketing materials with a bicycle and pedestrian category. But that's misleading, suspicious even, and evidence the City is doing a little bit of the bamboozle.
...The State Street project is $13 million for four blocks. It's not at all mainly a bike/ped project. It's a remodel for a "complete street" and a 4/3 safety conversion, and should be categorized instead as an "Urban Upgrade."
The Pringle Creek Path is a parks project, and belongs in the parks section.
That the McGilchrist project lacks a full set of protected bike lanesshows the City is not trying very hard.
The evidence for strong walking and biking projects is considerably weaker than the City's rhetoric suggests.
...The whole doesn't look like anything designed to make meaningful progress on our climate needs. Sure, contemporary "urban upgrades" include sidewalks, bike lanes, and crosswalks, but these are generally legacy, 1980s style paint-only bike lanes and they are what the law requires on rebuilds anyway.
There's not a lot of "above and beyond," and the City is trying to position the bond as if it were full of "above and beyond" for walking and biking. It meets the minimum, but they want to say it is the maximum. It may not qualify as outright dishonest, but they are spinning when they could be concretely doing more.
So there's good reason for liberal environmentalists to view the bond measure as deserving of a "No" vote, and also good reason for conservative small-government types to view the bond measure as wasteful spending.
It probably will pass, since there's no organized opposition to it. But Salem could have done a lot better with the $300 million.
My pet peeve is that the bond measure contains $26 million to replace Salem's entire fleet of fire trucks. This includes those giant trucks that race around town going to medical calls, which account for the vast majority of fire department calls.
It's ridiculous that the City Council didn't demand that the Salem Fire Department conduct a serious investigation into alternatives to the current highly inefficient way medical calls are responded to. A big reason why Salem's fire trucks are worn out is that they're rarely used to fight fires, and mostly used for medical calls.