Mayor Taylor Rides the New Sanyo Bike!

I can't seem to embed the video, so follow this link. It will resize your browser window!

Here's the Statesman article in pdf form.

Salem First U.S. City to Receive SANYO Hybrid Bicycle

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2008 at 12:30 p.m., in Salem’s Riverfront Park Pavilion, SANYO will unveil its hybrid electric Eneloop Bicycle and gift one to the City of Salem and one to the State of Oregon.

The new Eneloop bike concept stresses ‘looping energy’ or a lifestyle of reusing and recycling. With this new product, clean and reusable energy is “generated, recharged, and conserved” simultaneously. Energy is generated by the rider, recharging the auxiliary battery, and conserving the energy both from the main battery and the rider.

A brief acceptance ceremony will be followed by an inaugural ride in Riverfront Park and a chance for the public to see the Eneloop bicycle.

Tim McCabe, Oregon Economic & Community Development Department Director and Salem Mayor Janet Taylor will accept the bicycles and make the inaugural rides.

Newsbits and Revised Opening Date

In the Statesman today, Dennis Thompson, Jr., writes

Mayor Janet Taylor raised the possibility of condemning the property during her State of the City address last week....

"After two years, negotiations have broken down between the owners of Minto Island [Boise Cascade] and Oregon State Parks on the purchase of the 300 acres," Taylor said in her speech. "The city could consider exercising our right to eminent domain to bring this property into public ownership."

Officials from Oregon State Parks haven't met with Boise officials concerning the proposed deal since September 2008, state parks spokesman Chris Havel said.

"We do have an invitation out to Boise Cascade to continue those negotiations, but we don't have anything scheduled with them," Havel said. "There isn't any progress being made. There aren't any future meetings scheduled."

At the February 12 Community Meeting, city staff reported that it was "well attended."

The room was set up in an open house format with stations situated around the room covering topics like scope of the study, the tied arch design, concrete girder design, and schedule. The Friends [of Two Bridges] group also had a table.

[We were] impressed by the dialogue and the thoughtful questions.

Finally, in order to avoid Easter Week, and to make sure the bridge work is complete, the City and F2B decided to move the opening to Saturday, April 18. Construction remains behind, and regrettably it's possible there will be further changes.

Easier Links to City's Sites

The links to the City's pages to the two bridges are long & tricky urls. But they just got easier! The City created a couple of redirects so that the web pages can be shared easily in print or in plaintext emails:

http://www.cityofsalem.net/unionbridge

http://www.cityofsalem.net/mintobridge

Be sure to share them with your friends!

And don't forget about the Community Meeting tomorrow night!

Save the Date! April 4th

The end is in sight!

At our F2B event committee meeting today we got an update from the City on construction progress. The decking is almost complete. What's left is to place the railing and then to finish painting.

So how does April 4th sound? We can't wait for it to be done!