As y'all know, we had a very productive (and civil -- thank you, citizens) discussion about whether or not to allow crowdfunding posts and most of you would rather not see crowdfunding posts.
The city has a $4m budget hole that it disingenuously said is a $20M one.
The language in the city News letter says the new civic center cost will be $16M year. It's not $16M total.
To plug this gap, they've proposed a City income tax. And like the "City Services fee" that no one agreed to, they can increase this tax whenever they want. Over and over again.
Meanwhile, the city manager earns 2x more than most city managers in Oregon. The rest of the management team earns more than their Oregon counterparts too. These are the people responsible for keeping costs down, yet they keep paying themselves more, then blame the union. Most city employees working in this town can't afford to live here.
Pretty soon, given the level of mismanagement from the city manager and the abandoning of duties by the city council, a lot of the rest of folks won't be able to live here either.
But maybe that's the plan? To make Corvallis an elitist paradise, where only the "right kind" of people can live here, while offering up some word -salad specifying about diversity....
I made a little browser game: The Nogero Trail. It's the 1985 Oregon Trail, but backwards. It's 2026, your one-bedroom is $3,100, a four-bedroom in Independence, MO is $189K, so you load up the Subaru and drive the trail in reverse.
Some of what's in it:
You start by carrying your groceries across a Fred Meyer parking lot while the locals take an interest. Pool noodle, air horn, Narcan.
Multnomah Falls permits are sold out, so you view it from the I-84 shoulder.
You can trade with OREGON NATIVE bumper-sticker guys (since 2011).
Hunting is now a Costco sample raid. Wyoming tries to blow you off I-80.
River crossings are construction zones.
You can die of COVID (again), doomscroll despair, or occasionally dysentery. The dog is always fine.
It's free and runs in your browser, phone included. No ads, no signup. There's a tip jar if you feel like it.
This week's dare: play the Barista with an MFA (least money) and get all four people to Missouri alive.
Met this sweetie off of NW Satinwood today. Incredibly friendly, chased me meowing until I gave it pets. No collar, seemed well fed but a bit dirty and had what looked to be a scratch on its nose. Anyone know if this is an outside cat or an escapee?
No affiliation - just a fan who wants them to get more love! They've got a great sauna/cold plunge set-up, with a bunch of massage and recovery tools and are super-friendly.
I saw a pretty good size bobcat a little north of Chepenafa Park about 20 minutes ago, and it went down one of the trails. Just saying as a reminder to stay aware and keep pets indoors, or on leashes when you go for walks!
With Peak closing their Ski Shop I don't have any place local to get my skis serviced. I prefer to keep my business local (as well as don't want to have to drive to Eugene or further, not to mention the hassle).
The brown paper is off the windows of the old bike repair side of the old Peak Sports bike shop location. There are decals on the window saying “Fernline Bike Shop” (or something to that effect) which is a name change from what I saw 4 months ago.
The shop doesn’t appear to have any online presence yet, but I did find this article about it from a little over a month ago.
Today, the Union's full bargaining team showed up for a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement with Management and avoid a strike. Most of Management's team didn't even bother showing up (don't worry the $500/hour lawyer was there). In spite of the City clearly not taking today seriously, our team made yet another offer of compromise. Management rejected it, were unprepared to bargain any further, and just called it quits at 6 pm. It was a fitting end to "bargaining" that demonstrates the general disrespect shown to our unit for the last 10 months.
I'm going to attempt an undoubtably incomplete summary of the biggest sticking points driving the Union's bargaining. Since tomorrow is going to be a long day, I'll try to answer what questions I have the energy for, but I'm probably not going to engage any bad-faith dipshits with takes like "City workers don't even produce anything of value". (lol, lmao even) Here are some bullet points to consider:
Corvallis Is Falling Behind On Union Wages
Today our total compensation is about 5.5% below comparable cities. A 6% COLA in Year 1 would bring the median about even, but seven of our benchmark jobs would still be more than 5% behind, and COLAs of 2.5% and 2% in the later years trail what comparable cities have locked in, like City of Medford's guaranteed 5% in 2027 and 3% in 2028.
Our 6-step pay scale is no longer acting as 6 steps. Over the last 5 years the number of people hired above Step 1 has risen to more than half of new hires, meaning for most employees they cannot step up to 25% above their starting wage. If our Step 1 wage was competitive, as it used to be, Oregon’s Pay Equity law would not force the City to hire at higher steps. The below graph shows both the shift in starting Step and the dramatic rise in total new hires. The City has become a revolving door of people bailing for better pay, benefits, or working conditions.
But, Management makes a premium. Management got Steps 7-9 in 2020 and sits about 7.5% above comparable cities.
The Disrespect Is Palpable
Hazard pay makes sense to most people. If your job requires you to report to duty for a critical assignment during very dangerous conditions, getting paid a little extra for those hours seems right. That crazy ice storm from a few years ago that shut down most everything for a few days? Some of our vital workers had to risk their lives and vehicles to come to work anyway. We're asking for a little bump to the hourly wage for those hazard days. We costed it out; with how rare these events happen, and the relatively few positions that have to report to work, it would cost the City approximately $5,000 A YEAR, TOTAL, to show they recognize the extra mile these workers go in these situations. The City flat refuses this. Five. Thousand. A. Year. WTF?
We have reasonable requests that wouldn't cost the City a dime.
We'd like to set up a regular meeting every couple months for a quick check-in between Management and the Union, for proactive communication about what's going well, what could use some attention, etc. Management says, "Nah."
If one of our workers is denied a promotion, we'd like just a short, written memo on why that decision was made. Were they unqualified? Was a better candidate available? It could be literally two sentences! Management's response: *yawn* "Nope."
Our contract technically expired back in July. When a new contract is ratified, it essentially "began" back in July. It's normal for jurisdictions to give retro pay for the COLA's or raises that would have come into effect in July if bargaining was done sooner. Albany does. Philomath does. Lebanon does. Sweet Home does. Salem does. Dallas does. Stayton does. Eugene does. Springfield does. Corvallis refuses. This means the City has financial incentive to delay and waste our time in bargaining.
The Cut To Healthcare Is Just Too Much
The City claims in its press release it's only an extra $26 or so a month. Was Mark Shepard laughing as he typed that? That's only for the single person plan, and only the projected increase for the first year. The family plan would increase something like $69 a month. For some of our coworkers, that $69/month ($824/year) is as much as 2.3% of their wage.
And over time? It's estimated healthcare costs will increase around 12%! Management’s bargaining team is trying to claim this is not much money - in fact, they’ve omitted it from their costing entirely. Keeping our 93/7 split is significantly cheaper to the city than a 2.3% COLA across the board and will be *better* for our lowest-paid members than a 2.3% COLA would be, by next year.
We Don't Want To Strike
We don't get paid for the days we're on strike. It's a huge, stressful, pain in the ass! I will close by borrowing some of another member's words recently shared with us (edited slightly for length):
The process isn't perfect, it never will be, but unions and strikes are the old tools that served our parents’ generations well when other methods have failed. They have failed. Our bargaining team has been more creative than any one person could be alone, and Management hasn't moved an inch since July. Unless they change their tune in the final hours, they've made it clear that the only options left to us are to stop asking for better, or strike.
We keep saying “Management”, but most supervisors here are fully invested in their people and serving the city. I just mean Management's bargaining team, really the subset of them driving it. This story doesn't need a villain; the people across the table aren't out to harm us, they just have other priorities. True of almost all leaders at this city, is that they do try to solve problems for the public we serve. If we make it clear this is a problem they need to solve, solve with more than words, then I do believe they'll step up to address it.
The “low pay” isn't a new issue; it's about half a percent per year over the last ten years that we've dropped behind. I've seen people leave because of our payscale, because other cities pay more, because Corvallis was too expensive to live in at that wage. I've seen good candidates turn down jobs here because of it. I've heard from so many of my colleagues that it's a problem. The folks retiring say sadly that us new folks aren't earning near what they did when they started.
The morale issues aren't something we can fix directly with contract language, but the Benton County folks report an amazing shift in their management's approach after their strike. They began reaching out to collaborate on issues, setting up regular check-ins, acting on feedback from members instead of explaining away any request. Both sides engaged to take a training from the ERB for “interest-based bargaining”, to help things work better going forward. For our members who've been shut down and ignored, that's a goal worth fighting for.
I think there's a small group on Management's side that truly believes they can get by with high turnover, where only supervisors (and higher) stay long-term. I think they're too far from the work to realize how critical experience is, how much our teams rely on that deep knowledge. By the time it's a problem, that knowledge is already lost.
We deserve better than that. Corvallis deserves better than that. We have a chance here to make this a problem Management must solve, to make it clear this is unacceptable. But we can't make that happen by just accepting what Management has deemed we're worthy of.
Thank you for reading. The community's support means so much to us and has been helping get us through this maddening period. We truly love Corvallis and making it work for us all.
Hey guys, I recently was out of social event where there was a mix-up and somebody brought way too much food and now I have five huge bags of unexpired lettuce that I'm hoping to donate to somebody or somewhere. I can drop this off to anyone in the community who could use it or if you know of an organization who would accept unopened salad mix bags. Thanks so much I just don't want it to go to waste
Attention Corvallis! Super sick lineup at this event, its also at a rodeo so that's pretty cool. OSU students, come blow off some first term steam. All ages, ADA friendly and down to clown. Come hang! Ticket link below
Ive got an 07 prius (274000 miles) with a bad anti-lock breaking system actuator (a ~3000$ fix), needs new rear tires, and no AC. Not really safe to drive anymore but everything except for the above listed problems works great, im sure a lot of its parts could be very valuable. New spark plugs ignition coils and coolant system in the last several years, battery and all that still works. No external damage. Any advice is welcome, im hoping to get at least $800ish for it.
As a Corvallis community member, parent of young children and a spouse of a very dedicated, long serving and amazing City of Corvallis employee, I of course am very biased.
But…. At some point, management has to recognize that being fiscally responsible doesn’t just mean controlling what you pay employees; it also means accounting for the cost of losing them. If the difference between the city’s offer and the union’s proposal is roughly $233,000 (union estimate) or $867,000 (management estimate) a year , is holding that line really worth the risk of a strike, damaged morale, and losing experienced employees?
Turnover isn’t free. Recruiting, hiring, background checks, training, overtime to cover vacancies, and lost institutional knowledge all cost money, lots of money. And when employees leave after three, four, or five years, the city loses the experience it invested in. If better compensation, benefits and morale helps retain qualified workers and maintain consistent public services, it could pay for itself over time.
I understand the city has budget constraints, but management should be comparing the cost of settling with the cost of not settling. Sometimes the cheapest option on a spreadsheet ends up being the more expensive one in practice.
