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Potholes
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of asphalt on top. More rock is required
if ground conditions are poor.
Nicholas said Kenwood was original-
ly a gravel road.
“And then somewhere along the way,
the neighborhood got together and
somebody paid a paver to put about four
inches of asphalt down, a strip down the
middle of the road, and that’s pretty
much how it sat for years and years and
years,” Nicholas said.
The pandemic may have accelerated
the decline of the street.
With people shut in their homes, they
had more products delivered. Now the
large, heavy trucks from Amazon, UPS,
DHL and FedEx vie with cars delivering
food from Jimmy John’s, Door Dash and
Uber Eats multiple times a day.
“There’s at least three different food
trucks that drive up and down the street
selling ice cream. One of them sells ta-
males,” Andrew Davis said.
Residents tell of large trucks with
trailers regularly traveling the street to
pick up workers or supplies.
None of that has helped the condition
of the street.
Julie Stone, a medical assistant,
moved to a house on the street two years
ago. She figured she could live with the
condition of the road. After all, how
much worse could it get?
Stone cares for her mother, who lives
with her. She’s afraid if a medical emer-
gency befell her mother that she
wouldn’t be able to get timely medical
attention for her.
“If anything really bad was to hap-
pen, I don’t think I would want to call an
ambulance to even come down my
street,” she said. “I think I’d have better
luck either meeting them halfway or
taking her there myself.”
How bad is Kenwood Avenue,
really?
When Christine Davis was looking to
purchase a house on Kenwood Avenue
in the early 2000s, her biggest concern
was the nearby PictSweet Mushroom
factory.
To say that it smelled bad is drasti-
cally underselling it. Located about a
quarter-mile away, it perfumed the
neighborhood – and every house within
miles – with the smell of manure.
That closed for good in 2001 and was
demolished in 2002.
Davis decided the house on Kenwood
was worth it. The road, at that time, was
bad. But it wasn’t that bad.
“It’s probably all right. I can probably
deal with it,” she recalls thinking.
But now, four-wheel-drive trucks
have problems navigating the street. A
monster truck would struggle on it.
Honda Accords stand no chance.
It’s impossible to determine how
many potholes are on Kenwood. Many
potholes grow until they consume other
potholes.
Marion County Sheriffs who patrol
that area of East Salem do so in Ford Ex-
plorers. The Dodge Chargers in the fleet
would have a hard time getting down
Kenwood.
“The bumps and potholes that are on
Kenwood make it more like one of the
rural roadways we would go to where we
are accessing farm communities,” Mar-
ion County Sgt. Jeremy Landers said.
Oregon Department of Transporta-
tion classifies roads based on condition
with “very poor” being the worst. It only
ranks roads in state, county and city
systems.
The worst stretch in the state is a
five-mile span of Highway 255 in Curry
County, according to ODOT spokesper-
son Angela Beers Sydel. But that’s pass-
able, by any definition. Kenwood
wouldn’t be considered passable by any
objective measure.
Marion County reported 14 miles of
road in poor condition to ODOT and Sa-
lem reported six miles.
Since Kenwood isn’t in the county
system, it’s not included.
Some people say Elma Avenue –
about a quarter-mile west – is worse.
The section of Elma between State
Street and Hudson Avenue is gravel and
has never been paved. But there are
three houses on the street – a church
and power substation make up most of
the frontage – and those houses have
entrances off other streets.
Kenwood, on the other hand, has
over 30 residences, home to people who
have no other way to get in and out.
“I think ours is probably the worst
I’ve seen in Salem,” Sean Smith said.
Is anything being done to fix
Kenwood?
Matt Fipps has hcolllectosted birth-
day parties for his children and holiday
family get-togethers at his house.
“At first, it was kind of jokingly, natu-
ral speed bumps, but as it gets worse,
it’s harder and harder,” Fipps said.
The residents recognize the potholes
have won. For now.
Some residents started a crowdfund-
ing campaign a few years ago. It raised
about $50.
“We got a quote for about $22,000,
and that was just to (pave) up halfway,
just to the worst of it. And nobody want-
ed to put any money into it,” resident
Dave Beane said.
A couple years ago Fipps talked with
a company that lays asphalt. A coat of
asphalt was quoted at about $100,000.
“We looked up grants, trying to see if
there was something,” he said. “We’d
heard some rumors of it, but never could
find anything on it to get help.”
According to Oregon law, money the
state and county get from gas taxes can
only be used to build and maintain
roads.
But the county can only maintain
roads that are in a county system. So
money meant exclusively for roads can’t
be used to fix Kenwood Avenue.
In the summer of 2020, Nicholas, the
county public works director, ap-
proached the Marion County Commis-
sioners and asked if they wanted him to
put together a list of solutions for non-
county roads in unincorporated East
Salem like Kenwood.
Commissioners said yes. But after
the wildfires in September 2020, the
county’s attention went elsewhere.
Nicholas was also in charge of public
preparedness and emergency response.
When Marion County Commissioner
Kevin Cameron lived in an unincorpo-
rated neighborhood in South Salem be-
fore being elected, he and neighbors had
problems with similar non-county
roads.
He said they formed a local improve-
ment district. In that, Cameron and his
Public Notices
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2022
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3B
neighbors agreed to pay for improve-
ments to their street with increases in
their property taxes. The street was
paved and adopted into the county’s
roads system.
“Those LID’s are the way to go, and
then the county still has a responsibility
after that,” Cameron said. “It would
have been in the cost of the house to be-
gin with if the contractor built it, so
those people got a discount at some
point in time.”
A simple repaving is likely not
enough to save Kenwood. It might have
to be dug up and the proper 12 inches of
aggregate put down. Then it would be
paved in accordance with Marion Coun-
ty standards. But it probably needs
curbs, sidewalks and storm drains, too.
That isn’t going to be cheap.
Nicholas said if a local improvement
district is formed, the county can use
road funds to pay up-front costs, and
property owners pay that back as an as-
sessment on their property taxes.
“The end goal is it has to result in the
road being adopted into the county road
system,” Nicholas said.
For a local improvement district to be
formed, half of the property owners
must agree on it.
Some of the residents are fine with
that. It would allow them to pay for the
improvements to Kenwood Avenue over
a period of 10 or years or so.
“I know for a fact that we’ve got some
low-income people on this street, and
I’m concerned,” Christine Davis said.
It could take a while, too.
The Marion County Commissioners
want to have a work session with home-
owners along the street.
In the meantime, Darrell Sharp’s 87-
year-old father hasn’t been able to visit
him in five years. Friends of many resi-
dents won’t visit them.
The residents want to see their
friends and loved ones again.
“I’m restoring a couple trucks and
one of them I’m going to sell when I get
done and buy a tractor so I can fix my
street. That’s my plan,” Sharp said. “A
tractor and a box drag, it would be gold-
en.”
Bill Poehler covers Marion County for
the Statesman Journal. You can contact
him
at
bpoehler@StatesmanJour-
nal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler
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March 30, 2022
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