City's elected leaders facing times sure to try their souls

The hopes and dreams of passionate advocates have a bad habit of crashing into the realities of limited means, competing priorities and opposing views. Never has that seemed more evident, we must say, than the budding spring of 2025 in our bucolic hometown of McMinnville.

The yea-sayers are envisioning wholesale redevelopment of our downtown core; redevelopment of 1,340 acres along Three Mile Lane; development of a new Innovation Campus job-generator in conjunction with the Three Mile Lane project; replacement of the city’s community and aquatic centers, along with renovation of its senior center; and redevelopment of the Alpine District’s former Ultimate RB site for ambitious new residential and commercial uses, perhaps including another boutique hotel.

That doesn’t include, of course, more mundane pursuits like expansion of our park system to meet growing needs and development of a new stormwater system with its own, separate fee structure. The local appetite for improvements and replacements seems almost limitless.

Ahh, but each of these innovative ideas, all in some stage of painstaking staff, consultant and/or committee consideration, carries with it a price tag projected to prove substantial. Say, $150 million for new rec facilities, $80 million for Alpine private development and $25 million or so for the downtown improvement work.

Meanwhile, our city of dreams is facing a nightmare of a fiscal crisis. And while the dreams can be pared down, scaled back or put off — already underway in some cases — the nightmare must be faced forthrightly, on its own terms and timetable.

It seems the city amassed a 42% reserve during the 1990s and 2000s, began spending it down around 2010, and now, alas, has fully completed the process.

Coming into a new fiscal year in July, city coffers are as bare as Mother Hubberd’s legendary cupboard of English folklore. And in case you’re wondering, poet Edmund Spenser penned the acclaimed allegorical ode, originally published as Mother Hubberd’s Tale, as a cry for political reform.

The city figures it needs to pare at least $3 million to make ends meet in 2025-26, and that’s virtually certain to demand staff and service cuts of significance. Councilor Chris Chenoweth, champion of the Innovation Campus project, voiced the frustration of many when he said, “It’s kind of mind boggling how we could have all of the increases we’ve had and we’re still sitting in a $3 million hole. It’s difficult to grapple with.”

Yes, difficult. But also necessary.

To be clear, we’re not engaging in a direct apples-to-apples comparison here. Big projects typically rely more on state and federal funds, bond proceeds, urban renewal revenue and private investment than they do city staff time and general fund revenue.

However, the man and woman on the street will, you can be sure, juxtapose one against the other. They will see the city trying to squeeze another Mercedes into a three-car garage at a point where it’s having a hard time just completing Mother Hubberd’s modest little task of finding a bone for the dog.

Fresh off the 2024 general election, we have a new mayor and reconstituted city council in place, to no small measure due to a perceived disconnect between city goals and means.

They signed up for the job. Let’s just hope they’re up to it.

We have no grand plan to offer from the ivory tower of rumination and contemplation, far above the field of battle. However, we do have some advice designed to stand the test of time.

Proceed slowly, deliberatively and cautiously, without any undue bickering, finger-pointing or blame-shifting. Display seriousness of purpose as you go about right-sizing your ambitions and their timing, seeking to minimize the associated pains and inequities insofar as circumstances allow.

This is a time to summon your inner statesman and prove you’ve got the right stuff. If you succeed in that, grateful voters will reward you at the polls on down the line.