At Monday night’s Salem City Council meeting, councilors zeroed in on a familiar complaint from residents and nearby business owners: state-owned highway corridors and rights-of-way that collect trash, debris and the aftermath of unauthorized camping — and a sense that the city is left answering for messes it doesn’t control.
In response, the council voted unanimously to direct city staff to coordinate a formal maintenance and cleaning plan with the Oregon Department of Transportation. Mayor Julie Hoy introduced the push as a way to create clearer expectations and a more reliable schedule for state cleanups on ODOT property inside Salem.
City Manager Krishna Namburi told councilors staff had met recently with ODOT leadership and that the talks, while initially constrained by state budget pressures, produced a new near-term cleanup schedule just hours before the meeting.
“The good news is ODOT has given us the cleanup schedule from February 5th through April 9th,” Namburi said. She described the update as fresh, noting the city received it around mid-afternoon Monday.
Namburi said the schedule includes several high-visibility areas that have drawn repeated complaints, including sections along the I-5 corridor, the Indian School Road area, and locations around the Marion and Center Street bridges. The immediate focus, she said, is basic maintenance and cleanup — while longer-term site changes remain uncertain.
Those longer-term measures, which can include fencing, landscaping designed to deter camping, or other physical changes to the corridors, are still “on hold due to budget challenges” at the state level, Namburi said.
For several councilors, the discussion highlighted a practical tension: the city is expected to keep Salem clean and safe, but significant stretches of some of the most visible gateways into town fall under state ownership.
Councilor Shane Matthews compared the situation to a neighborhood problem the city can’t fix with its normal enforcement tools.
“I kind of liken this to if you own your… home and right next door… you’ve kept it clean… and then your next door neighbor has a million code violations,” Matthews said. “It’s pretty frustrating… we’re doing our part for our properties, but our neighbor isn’t.”
City Attorney Dan Atchison said the city’s options for forcing compliance on the state are limited. While councilors raised the concept of issuing code violations, Atchison explained that even if the city pursued that path, the standard way to compel payment or action doesn’t translate when the “property owner” is another government.
“Our way to enforce and get collection on a civil penalty is to lease the property, which is where it becomes a problem because we can’t lease the state’s property,” Atchison said.
As the discussion moved forward, councilors asked how the upcoming work would affect specific hotspots in their wards.
Councilor Micki Varney pressed for clarity on areas along Highway 22 and near Wallace Marine Park, locations that have repeatedly come up in complaints from park users and nearby neighbors. Community Services Director Gretchen Bennett said those sites — including areas under the highway near the edge of the park — are included in the upcoming cleanup cycle.
Still, some councilors questioned what happens after the spring schedule ends, and whether the city is being pulled into an ongoing role without the budget to sustain it.
“As much as I appreciate you and your team, I just… struggle with this being on our shoulders again, knowing that we do not have the funds to take care of it,” Councilor Irvin M. Brown said.
Hoy acknowledged the issue is tied not only to maintenance, but to the human reality behind many of the cleanups.
“The people creating the need for cleanups are real people with real life struggles. That does not go unnoticed,” Hoy said. She added she wants clearer direction on how the state views its responsibility when encampments and cleanups intersect, and said she looks forward to the plan staff will build with ODOT and other partners.
City staff are expected to return to council with more detailed next steps as coordination continues with ODOT and Marion County.
