Letters to the Editor: Jan. 24, 2025

Transit looking up

Thank you, Cynthia Thompson and the Yamhill County commissioners, for approving a two-year plan to use state funding to improve local public transportation.

Adding more routes between McMinnville and Newberg is very much needed. It will still be affordable, even when fares are re-instituted, compared to a taxi fare of $53 each way.

Dial-a-Ride can certainly use some improvement, making it more widely available. Special thanks, Ms. Thompson, for listening to the many complaints about the Transit Center’s dire need for more safety and order.

P.S. The newspaper of Friday, Jan. 17, was the best yet! It was well written with impressive investigative reports and a great tribute to Paul Daquilante. Were there only more like him!

Bev Montgomery

McMinnville

In the dark

When someone declares an intention to accomplish something, the declaration is noteworthy. But what most people really care about is the follow-through — in other words, what was actually accomplished and how did it differ from what was planned.

From that perspective, I think the whole discussion about city of McMinnville budget transparency that Jeb Bladine wrote about in his Whatchamacolumn misses the key information necessary to intelligently discuss city finances — namely, the lack of regular monthly financial statements allowing the city council and citizenry to compare what was budgeted to what was actually spent.

It’s been more than 10 years since the city published monthly financial statements. As a result, the first and essentially only look back at how we did financially comes when the audit report is issued about six months after the June 30 end of the fiscal year — and we still haven’t seen the report for the fiscal year ending last June 30.

This report is issued under different accounting requirements than those the budget is presented under, so it would take an extremely dedicated and knowledgeable person to actually compare details accurately. It just doesn’t happen.

When it is presented in the spring, the budget itself includes a column listing the current year’s budgeted amounts and two more columns with actual data for two and three years ago. Even that data is hard to compare to that of the proposed budget, because, as Mr. Bladine pointed out, the presentation often changes year to year.

The city’s financial reporting is neither illegal nor deceptive. But it is incomplete.

We need regular financial statements to inform both the council and public about how our tax dollars are being spent.

Mark Davis

McMinnville

Issue is safety

Katherine Gladhart-Hayes, in her letter “Trans targeting” of Jan. 17, says, “House Resolution 28, amending Title IX to ban trans participation in sports, represents a dangerous attack on trans athletes.” But nothing could be further from the truth.

The San Jose State women’s volleyball team has received six wins by forfeit this season because opposing teams refused to play against a trans SJS athlete. But these forfeits were not due to some religious belief, political agenda or biases against trans people.

The fact is that the trans athlete on SJS team, who grew up male, seriously injured a female athlete on an opposing team due to overpowering strength and speed. So teams are willing to forfeit games rather than take a chance of injury to one of their players.

One quick example:

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team won World Cup and Olympic gold medals for many years. Yet in a tune-up game played against the U.S. National U-16 boys team, consisting of boys 15 and 16, it lost 3-1.

Girls and women are at risk of injury when competing against trans athletes who grew up male, pure and simple. I have put in 50 years coaching women and men in various sports and 30 years serving as a certified athletic trainer, thus speak from long experience.

Byron Shenk

McMinnville

For the billionaires

The founding document of our country begins with the familiar phrase, “We the people of the United States.” The notion that the government is comprised of the citizens of a nation, who rule themselves, was repeated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when he expressed resolve that the government “of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

One wonders if, in light of the incoming federal administration, Lincoln’s fear has been realized.

The 47th president is a self-proclaimed billionaire. A dozen of his newly appointed cabinet members are also billionaires.

The swearing-in was moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda, where billionaire businessmen enjoyed proximity to the president, while the people who elected him were left, quite literally, out in the cold.

One of the businessmen, Elon Musk, spent a tiny fraction of his obscene wealth to help get the new president elected. He is heading DOGE, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, with the sole purpose of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget.

Musk has stated that these cuts will cause “temporary hardship” for the majority of us. Yet the wealthy will suffer no hardship at all.

Indeed, the incoming administration intends to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts, which benefited primarily wealthy corporations and individuals. It will be paid for by us through the budget cuts Musk and the new administration promise to enact.

It’s obvious that “we the people” are not represented in the current government of the United States.

Adrianne Santina

McMinnville