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From a near-teacher strike to a boom in affordable housing, Salem has seen a year of change.
Here are the biggest local stories Salem Reporter covered in 2024.
A threatened teacher strike, followed by budget cuts
Months of tense negotiations between Salem-Keizer School District leaders and the district’s teacher union kicked into high gear in March, when the Salem-Keizer Education Association voted to authorize a strike for the first time in district history.
Teachers said they were prepared to stay off the job and out of the classroom over wages, concerns about safety and a need for more preparation time.
They reached a deal in the early hours of March 26 after a marathon bargaining session.
Three weeks later, Superintendent Andrea Castañeda announced the specifics of long-forecasted budget cuts, eliminating about 400 jobs across the district. Ultimately, about 112 educators were laid off in the spring, and hundreds more were shuffled to new jobs or schools in a chaotic, cascading process. By August, most had been offered another job with the school district or indicated they didn’t want to be rehired for available jobs.
Bush Park shooting
Gunfire erupted at Bush’s Pasture Park the afternoon of March 7, a school day.
Witnesses described mayhem as a teenage boy shot several others before fleeing. Jose Vazquez-Valenzuela, a sophomore at South Salem High School, was killed and two other boys wounded.
Police arrested 16-year-old Nathanael McCrae. He is accused in Marion County Juvenile Court of second-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault and three counts of carrying or using a dangerous weapon.
The shooting prompted chaos and a tense, terrifying lockdown for students three blocks away at South.
Salem-Keizer School District leaders reacted soon with a push for weapon detectors in schools. It became a focal point for efforts by Police Chief Trevor Womack and Mayor Chris Hoy to talk about stopping gun violence in Salem.
The case is still pending and the Marion County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to prosecute McCrae as an adult. That would require a judge’s decision.
Weapon detectors are now at South Salem High School, and rollout to other district high schools is planned this school year. That will likely begin in late January, Salem-Keizer School District spokesman Aaron Harada said.
City takes over private ambulance services
The Salem City Council voted in March to take over ambulance service from private company Falck in mid-2025, setting the stage for a year of transition and a major expansion for the Salem Fire Department.
The change means city-staffed ambulances will respond to thousands of medical emergencies each year, transporting patients to the hospital.
City leaders said they acted because of slow response times from Falck, requiring the city to spend millions of dollars on overtime to ensure residents got timely ambulance service. They said a city-run service would improve patient care and reliability during emergencies.
As of early December, fire department leaders said they were on track for full staffing and had ambulances ordered.
Salem rallies around library, splash pads
City budget committee meetings drew more public input than typical as Salem residents rallied against proposed cuts to the Salem Public Library, the closure of splash pads and the cancellation of parks events.
Budget committee members and Salem city councilors ultimately crafted a budget that drew on one-time money to preserve those services for another year, but cautioned deeper cuts were ahead. Now, the city is grappling with an expected $18 million budget deficit for next year and faces many of the same choices heading into 2025.
Julie Hoy elected mayor
After less than two years on the Salem City Council, Julie Hoy announced she would seek to unseat Mayor Chris Hoy. Both live in east Salem’s Ward 6, but the two are not related.
The race was in many ways a referendum on the unsuccessful effort by Chris Hoy and other councilors to impose a payroll tax in 2023 in an effort to raise more money for city services. Voters elected Julie Hoy with about 55% of the vote.
Julie Hoy campaigned on changing the city’s budgeting process, addressing homelessness and improving public safety, while offering few specifics on how she would tackle those issues as mayor. She raised significantly more money than her opponent, drawing large campaign contributions from real estate and business groups and developers.
More apartments, more affordable housing
Salem saw a boom in apartment construction, with several large affordable housing developments opening and more breaking ground.
Early in 2024, the first tenants moved into Sequoia Crossing, a complex intended for people who had been homeless. In October, Salem’s largest affordable complex, Mahonia Crossing, opened with 313 apartments in south Salem. And two buildings housing veterans opened — Courtney Place and the former Evergreen Church.
Salem Reporter explained what affordable housing means and how a project like Mahonia gets built.
And plenty of market-rate apartments opened too, including the Rivenwood Apartments on the site of the former Nordstrom in downtown Salem.
The boom will likely continue into 2025. From July to November, the city of Salem issued building permits for 462 apartments, valued at over $47 million, according to a monthly permits report. That’s more than the 356 apartment permits the city issued for the entire previous year.
Longtime nonprofit leaders retire
Four major Salem nonprofits that are focused on health care, community connections and domestic violence survivors are getting new leaders.
In 2024, longtime nonprofit executives with nearly a century of collective experience retired.
Paul Logan, who built Northwest Human Services into a hub of physical and mental health care for some of Salem’s most vulnerable people, left the organization in September.
Tim Murphy, who built Bridgeway Community Health into a giant of local addiction treatment and support for recovery, also announced he’s retiring in January. The agency’s behavioral health director, Carlos Texidor Maldonado, will be the next CEO.
Jayne Downing led the Center for Hope and Safety for 27 years and oversaw the organization’s growth from a cramped house to a large agency running several shelters and an affordable housing complex for domestic violence survivors. She’s retiring in January, passing the reins to Ashley Carson Cottingham, a state worker who’s focused her career on helping vulnerable adults.
Sam Skillern was named Salem First Citizen during his final year as executive director of the Salem Leadership Foundation. He’s helped build connections between local churches and their neighborhoods, encouraging civic involvement and volunteering.
Downtown Salem evolves
The revitalization of downtown Salem continued with several new projects announced and others opening. But the closure of several retail businesses also prompted concerns about the challenges facing small businesses and downtown.
Business owners and brokers said in interviews that downtown is still finding its footing after the downturn of the Covid pandemic. Some projects, like the remodel of the former Liberty Plaza into The Forge, are well underway. Others, like the development of the closed JCPenney store and the the city-owned Block 50 and Block 45, remain to be realized.
While not strictly downtown, The Cannery waterfront redevelopment project will also bring major changes as it gets underway along Northeast Front Street.
In 2025, the city will begin charging for street parking, relieving business owners of a fee they had paid to subsidize the parking. City-owned parkades downtown will remain free.
Charges against DEA agent to be dropped
A federal judge signaled on Nov. 25 that a U.S. DEA agent would have a criminal charge against him dropped after he caused a fatal collision with a Salem cyclist.
Agent Samuel Landis, 39, was pursuing a suspected drug trafficker when he sped through central Salem’s Gaiety Hill neighborhood and ran a stop sign just before colliding with cyclist Marganne Allen, 53.
A Marion County grand jury indicted Landis on a charge of criminally negligent homicide in September 2023. The agent’s attorneys successfully argued three months later to have the case moved to federal court so he could seek an immunity defense that doesn’t exist in state court.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane found that Landis’ role as a federal agent and his “reasonable” belief that he could safely run the stop sign granted him immunity from prosecution. McShane said at the time he would issue a final order in the coming weeks but has yet to do so.
The decision prompted Allen’s husband, Mark Meleason, to speak out publicly for the first time on behalf of his family. In a written statement, Maleason said that the agent’s driving conduct “was like playing Russian Roulette with his vehicle aimed at the public.”
Avelo’s ups and downs
This year was the first full year of commercial air service since Avelo began flying out of Salem in October 2023. The budget carrier provides flights to Burbank, California, and Las Vegas.
The years-long effort to restore flights has so far been up and down. Flights have generated millions in local spending at hotels and businesses, city consultants reported, but revenue generated for the city-owned airport remains below the cost needed to operate the terminal commercially.
Avelo has also been fickle, announcing a flight to Sonoma in February before canceling it a few months later. The airline abruptly shifted its Las Vegas route to a seasonal one earlier this month, canceling previously purchased tickets. Flights will resume May 1.
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.
