Letters to the Editor: November 25, 2022

County quagmire

At its Nov 10 meeting, the Yamhill County Board of Commissioners spent another 2½ hours trying to concoct a loophole to advance the Newberg Bypass project’s Wynooski interchange without risking revival of the Yamhelas Westsider Trail.

In January 2021, the commission, with newly elected Lindsay Berschauer leading the way, forbade staff from responding to a remand by the Land Use Board of Appeals to address some lingering land use questions regarding the Yamhelas Westsider Trail project.

LUBA had insisted on the novel idea that a transportation facility -- i.e., the trail -- had to be specifically permitted in county ordinances. By failing to appeal, the county not only loopholed the trail to a standstill, based on false premises, but also unwittingly blocked approvals for other proposed transportation facilities.

With the Newberg Bypass, the shoe is on the other foot.

The commissioners have discovered that their terrible decision on the trail is equally applicable to the bypass. So they are now scrambling to create yet another loophole, this one aimed at ensuring the bypass can move forward unrestrained without reawakening LUBA or the trail project from its live burial. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

Meanwhile, Yamhill County roads continue to be death traps for bicyclists and pedestrians. No exaggeration.

Thanks to Lindsay Berschauer, Mary Starrett and their political sponsors, Yamhill County lacks any bike-pedestrian lanes or grade-separated bicycle facilities.

They should try riding a bicycle on any five-mile stretch of a Yamhill County road. They would find it a harrowing experience — riding along narrow lanes with high-speed traffic, blind curves, nonexistent or steeply graveled shoulders and yawning ditches.

Would they be willing to send their children or grandchildren out to do the same? The question is, why don’t they care?

Craig Markham

Dundee

Caring about future

They showed up for work through the COVID-19 pandemic, political upheavals and now an active shooting at the McMinnville High School.

Why? Because they care about the future of the U.S.A. They are unselfishly educating all the children in their classrooms, treating all the children the same, hoping to build the future of freedom and opportunity in America.

Bravo and thank you.

William Cleek

McMinnville

Address sustainable building

I have read the pro and the con articles regarding the Gwendolyn Hotel.

The most striking thought I had focused on something neither party addressed: What is the developer proposing with respect to the most important issue of our time, namely climate change? What will the developer do to mitigate the effects of its project with respect to climate change, from demolition to construction to operation?

Surely there are methods and means developed by now that will help in this regard. Even if costly, they must be imposed on the developer as a condition of approval.

If mankind does not address this issue at every level, beginning now, we will guarantee the destruction of our planet during our childrens’ lifetimes. Not some future time, but the times that our currently living children will face and suffer.

Dennis Isenberg

McMinnville

Calling all drivers

When making a right turn, please be sure to look to your right, where you are headed, not just to your left for oncoming traffic.

I was struck on my bike last week in downtown McMinnville by a car making a right turn. And I have had numerous near-misses as a jogger and pedestrian with drivers not looking in their direction of travel.

I was fine, though my bike was totaled. But I know that I and others won’t always be so lucky.

If you hear a tennis ball hit your passenger side window, it’s probably me trying to get your attention.

Christine Bader

McMinnville

More Republican nonsense

Congratulations. We have a new majority in Congress.

And its very first moves, its very first announcements, are investigations into Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice. That and a goal of releasing all of the Jan. 6 insurrection criminals.

What happened to crime, inflation, immigration and gas prices?

That’s what the Republicans said they’d be focusing on. After all, that’s what they campaigned on.

Who cares about Hunter Biden?

What I care about, and most people care about, is being able to buy groceries, heat the house and put gas in the car – along with safer streets and more realistic immigration policy. But what I see for the next two years is more Republican nonsense.

You’d think they’d have learned something from their disappointment in the recent elections.

Paul “Paulie” Angerano

Carlton