The city of Salem can sell bonds to fund voter-approved infrastructure projects after omitting a legally required sentence about tax impacts from the ballot, a Marion County Circuit Court Judge ruled Wednesday.
City voters in November overwhelmingly approved a bond measure authorizing the city to issue up to $300 million in bonds to fund a decade worth of street and sidewalk repairs, new fire trucks, land for new fire stations and other infrastructure projects.
The new bonds would replace city bonds from previous ballot measures that are expiring, which means the measure won’t raise property tax rates. But the city erred by leaving a sentence off the ballot explaining to voters that bonds are payable by property taxes which are not subject to limits spelled out in the Oregon Constitution.
Judge Donald Abar found that despite a city error on the printed ballot, the impact of the measure on property taxes was clear to voters through a summary of the measure and explanatory statement.
“Voters were given notice of the effect passage of Ballot Measure 24-474 would have on property taxes in the published ballot title, which contained the statutorily required statement, the summary of the Ballot Measure and the Explanatory Statement, which described the impact of passage of the measure on property taxes,” Abar wrote in his ruling.
Nobody appeared in court to object to the sale of the bonds, Abar’s ruling says.
The city’s attorneys on the bond sale discovered the error in December and notified city officials, who issued a public statement Dec. 1 announcing the error and their intention to seek a ruling allowing the sale to move forward.
Courtney Knox Busch, the city’s strategic initiatives manager, said the error would not delay the sale of bonds to fund projects. An initial sale is still planned for February.
“While that process was moving through the court, necessary work and public notices related to the bond continued to assure that bond funds would be available once the issue was resolved,” a city news release Thursday said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
