Rent to budget gap needs addressing
This year’s edition of “Oregon by the Numbers” has just been released, and we earned a top ranking among the state’s 36 counties in one category. Unfortunately, it was average ...
City must take lead on local after-school front
From all the kudos Kids on the Block and its successor after-school programs have garnered over the years in McMinnville, you could be forgiven for thinking we developed something wonderfully unique and ...
Maybe it's time our planners revived mobile home option
According to MHVillage, a national mobile home brokerage, a dozen mobile home parks were developed in McMinnville in the quarter century extending from 1972 to 1997. Together, they served to accommodate ...
Be a voter in November; better yet, be a candidate
Yamhill County’s Nov. 5 general election ballot will feature voting for America’s next president and congressional representative from District 6; for attorney general, secretary of state and ...
School supplies and resource help come to local families
As the marketing constantly reminds us these days, it’s “back to school” preparation time. A list of online jokes by parents making the rounds includes one submitted by Instagrammer “NotMyThirdRodeo.” “School ...
Dog control a necessity; given will, there's a way
The earliest recorded use of the expression, “It’s a dog’s life,” dates back to the 1500s when it meant short, brutish, subservient and miserable. But times have changed. These ...
Let’s be careful about cutting the public out of the process
There are few things this newspaper deplores more than the self-serving not-in-my-backyard nonsense that seems to surface every time public or private entities attempt to address a compelling community ...
It takes a village to fight a forest fire
Here we go again. After two weeks of scorching heat sent fire danger soaring, especially on Oregon’s dry east side, Gov. Tina Kotek declared a statewide wildfire emergency Monday, effective through ...
Sideline holdouts forfeit say about way game is played
In a June 19 letter to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, nine Senate Republicans proclaimed, “It is essential that we work together to find solutions that benefit all Oregonians,” ...
Don't look to the courts; we're in this on our own
In the end, the wait for Supreme Court clarification of the legality of outdoor camping by the homeless, via a case arising from the Southern Oregon community of Grants Pass, produced a lot more waiting ...
Multnomah poster child for failed drug policies
Oregon’s unsuccessful experiment with decriminalization of user-quantity possession of hard drugs was put out of its three years of abject misery last year via passage of HB 4002. At least it was ...
Summer festival season offers opportunities to get involved
If you missed McMinnville’s annual UFO Festival, a mid-May fixture in these parts since 1999, not to worry. The doings, which drew thousands of elaborately costumed space-alien look-a-likes to town, ...
Woes befalling Newberg should sound alarms here
Any time political and ideological purity become the coin of the realm in local school and city affairs, making qualifications, competence, character, experience and integrity all but irrelevant, disaster ...
The skies aren't falling but the trees sure are
We love our downtown trees. That is, we do as long as they don’t grow too tall, shed too many leaves, create too much mess, clog too many gutters, bust up too many sidewalks or threaten too many ...
No asset in the area offers more potential than airport
McMinnville Municipal Airport is nearing the mid-point of a two-year process designed to produce a new 20-year master plan to guide its future development. And as at least 20-year advocates of greater ...
