Jeb Bladine: 2026 is showtime for Westsider Trail supporters
In 2026 — 14 years later — it’s showtime for Yamhelas Westsider Trail supporters.
County voters could face three trail-related ballot measures in November, and those issues will weigh prominently in elections for two positions on the three-member Yamhill County Board of Commissioners.
Community talks, perhaps dating back to the 1990s, evolved into the vision of a multi-use recreational trail from Saint Joseph, northeast of McMinnville, to Seghers Junction, near Gaston. In 2012, after Carlton winemaker Ken Wright created the Yamhelas Westsider Trail Coalition, commissioners unanimously placed Westsider into its Transportation System Plan.
In 2017, Yamhill County purchased the abandoned Union Pacific rail right of way. But unity soon dissolved when farmland owners and others waged epic 2018-2020 land use battles against the trail. Debates at the local courthouse generated five separate cases before the state Land Use Board of Appeals.
LUBA discovered significant county errors in land use style and substance. Four times, LUBA remanded county actions for reconsideration. Those process and policy ills might have been cured, but by then, well-financed trail opponents helped elect a majority board of commissioners committed to stop Westsider cold.
Commissioners dropped any pretense of reconsideration. They agreed to repay a $1.7 million grant used to purchase the land, and last month, amputated Westsider from the county’s Transportation Plan.
Trail supporters last year sprang into signature-gathering action to prevent any piecemeal disposition of the land, setting the stage for three potential 2026 ballot measures.
One initiative petition would retain public access rights on any Westsider lands transferred to others; another would require voter approval for a land transfer that impairs potential for future trail use. Each of those petition efforts has two years to gather 2,965 valid signatures of support, but the signature deadline is Aug. 5 this year to qualify for the November general election.
Approval of those initiatives, however, would not halt trail land transfers between now and the election. That’s why Westsider supporters filed a referendum petition seeking to overturn the county ordinance that scuttled the trail project.
That ordinance doesn’t take legal effect until June 17, which also is deadline day for submitting 1,977 valid referendum petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Submission of those valid signatures would suspend the county ordinance until after the election.
As if that weren’t enough, two other pieces of politics are in play:
Westsider Trail supporters have until April 9 — next Thursday — to file their own appeal to LUBA for review of the county ordinance. Today’s news story highlights fundraising by Trails PAC (political action committee) for pursuit of what PAC leader Matt Dolphin called, “all appropriate legal avenues, including a potential LUBA appeal, to ensure voters can decide the future of this public land.”
After years of lull in the Westsider wars, the ceasefire officially is over. Westsider Trail issues will dominate 2026 campaigns for the two county commission seats, and unfortunately, but inevitably, those campaigns will take on an aura of partisan politics. On that, there’s more to follow.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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