Concepts create controversy: Mayor aplogizes to staff

By Brenna Wiegand

No wonder they’re cracking and crumbling!

In recent months, especially since city officials unveiled the first set of ideas for downtown renovation, folks from all walks of life have roamed Silverton streets.

Citizens and city staff; elected officials and business owners – even Marion County Health Department and Oregon Department of Transportation – have pounded the pavement in their respective quests to assess the downtown’s overall condition and appearance. It has been mapped, graphed and photographed, criticized, conceptualized and cherished. The process, with its petitioning and postulating, has been, for the most part, geared toward finding the best was to improve Silverton’s central business district.

More specifically, to carry out the goals of Silverton’s Downtown Master Plan: making the town more conducive to business, recreation, pedestrian traffic and civic life; encouraging its economic vitality and diversification while developing a coordinated streetscape design throughout and making Silverton a safer place for all.

Local resident Lawrence Stone platted a comprehensive map with his extensive, neutral findings report that impressed Silverton City Planning Director Steve Kay, who found it useful.

Somewhere in the all walking and talking, however, the community began splintering. Folks now traced sidewalks to post anonymous and sometimes inflammatory flyers and posters. Eventually some, contending the city manager and community development director were “pressuring Silverton’s Urban Renewal Agency to eliminate cars from Main Street and make it into a ‘pedestrian plaza’” were personally maligning and even threatening city staff.

While all options include downtown amenities such as lighting, benches, bike racks and curb markers, Concept 5 of those presented at a Jan. 27 community workshop, generated the most debate. It entails the creation of a pedestrian plaza dotted with new trees and outdoor art.

Efforts to revitalize downtown Silverton go back to the formation of the Downtown Revitalization Committee in 2001. Since then, several groups formed to generate ideas, gathering community input along the way.

By 2006, the process of formulating Silverton’s Downtown Master Plan began in earnest and over the next year, the city held numerous open house events, public hearings and task force meetings.

In September of 2007, the City Council unanimously approved a final plan which cites “Open Spaces, Public Places” as a key component for downtown life and mentions the idea of a plaza for events, vendors, and festivals, along with possible locations.

While an anonymous flier has been circulated which claims that creating a plaza is akin to killing downtown, local historian Gus Frederick considers the idea a restoration of the old Town Square around which Silverton built.

“A lot of the folks at the historical society are in favor of it; a lot of the oldtimers, which is telling of their understanding of the paradigm of it,” he said.

“I think the bigger issue is that those little handbills had no attribution on them; they have nothing saying who made them,” said Frederick, surmising that the goal was to send angry, misinformed people to public meetings.

“There’s not even ‘We the citizens against…’ it’s just boom, here it is; ‘Fact: city is trying to kill something’ . I’m sorry; I have a problem with that.”

Molly Ainsley was part of a group of citizens who met in March to try to create consensus on the issue, after noting the futility of various individuals using public testimony time simply to criticize ideas rather than offer suggestions. They presented their written preferences and suggestions to the City Council.

Ainsley feels that the city’s formal input gathering process could benefit from regular Town Hall meetings.

“Public discourse is open conversation where people not only get to express their views and concerns, but get the opportunity to hear others speak,” she said. “We want to know what other people are thinking, we want to be connected; it’s how we are hardwired as human beings.”

In response to more tangible suggestions that came in, Kay went back to the drawing board to create more concepts, only to suffer a fresh barrage of accusation – that city staff leads the council rather than the other way around, with the goal of obliterating Silverton’s charm.

“We need to keep in mind that this is a 50-year plus investment in our downtown,” Kay said. “It’s important to realize that these funds, expended over that period of time, need to be invested in the best solution, not just for now, but for future generations as well.”

At the conclusion of Kay’s latest presentation of options at the May 26 community meeting, as was becoming a pattern in other public forums, a number of audience members stood up to demand a plethora of answers, declaring outrage at the city’s perceived intentions.

Kay, whose role does not include conducting that sort of forum, joined community members in the next room to provide what answers were available and allow citizens to vote on concepts or give their comment. Many attendees expressed vehement frustration, going so far as to use their Post-it Notes for comments such as, “You all should be hanged.”

Kay expressed concern that citizens wanting to voice different opinions could have felt intimidated by “the angriest, loudest individuals” and felt that some bullying was going on.

But what transpired at the June 6 City Council meeting may have marked the  turning of the tide and a movement toward reconciling Silverton’s citizens to a civil process for dealing with the issues at hand, for another nature of citizen turned out en masse.

The emphatic testimony began with direct statements of disapproval to City Council for putting Kay in such a vulnerable position throughout the input gathering process, saying that the elected officials lack of accessibility to field questions in these group settings contributed to the appearance of staff leading council. Every council member who responded to such testimony apologized and expressed the wish that they had provided support at that meeting and during earlier ones.

Several came to exhort Mayor Stu Rasmussen to provide better leadership as an elected official.

Rayann Alger urged Rasmussen to “lead by example.”

“Our town should not be divided; we should be working together to make it a better place and right now we have citizens against citizens … You represent all of us,” she said. “I’m asking you just one last time – stop this. Stop fighting with the city council; stop fighting with city staff and stop fueling the fire with your 20 or so people that have all the private meetings and are arguing with people.”

Looking back over what has unfolded during his last five months as Silverton City Manager, Bryan Cosgrove said it’s normal for community members to get involved once a process goes from the vague and general to the more concrete, “where the devil’s in the details.

“To me the thing that is a bit abnormal is if there’s an orchestrated effort out there by a group of citizens to whip people into frenzy with misinformation,” he said. “That’s hard to combat because we’re not downtown every day and, as staff folks and as city government, we can’t engage in that sort of thing.”

While civility and constructive input had increased a bit from the April URA and council meetings to May’s council meeting, June’s meeting had a hard-hitting impact – on citizens, city leaders and city staff. Perhaps the most prevalent refrain was in defense of Kay, who had endured abuse at the hands of both citizens and elected officials.

The beleaguered Kay was visibly encouraged by the outpouring of support and outcry in his defense.

“I was surprised to receive that level of heartfelt support,” he said. “After the last five months, that really meant a lot to me.”

Perhaps the night’s crowning glory was when the mayor apologized to Kay, expressing the hope they could work together amicably and cooperatively on future projects.

“I’d like that,” Kay said.