Letters to the Editor: Nov. 26, 2025

Time to stand up

Ramming people’s cars is illegal. Assaulting people is illegal. Kidnapping people is illegal. Refusing due process for people — including immigrants — is illegal, and in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Yet all of these things are happening in our county, according to Sheriff Sam Elliott.

Asked to intervene, Elliott recently wrote, “This is an impossible position to ask the men and women of local law enforcement to operate in.”

Law enforcement officers are provided with training, bullet-proof vests, helmets, tasers, guns, and legal immunity for actions taken in the course of their duty. They are paid to put themselves in harm’s way, to protect the public.

Members of the public, with none of these advantages, are risking violent assault, arrest, deportation and even their lives to aid the victims, while police and sheriffs say they cannot be expected to act.

So, is it open season for crime in Yamhill County and its cities? Can anyone who kits himself up in tactical gear and drives a black vehicle get away with crashing into cars and assaulting and kidnapping people, while law enforcement officers stand by, afraid to act lest they offend the feds?

Why, then, are we paying so much of our limited city and county funds into their substantial budgets? Why aren’t we redirecting some of those funds to things proven to prevent crime — adequate housing, food and treatment for mental illness and drug addiction? Why aren’t we redirecting funds toward protecting our residents who are most at risk from this state-sponsored terrorism?

Perhaps it’s time to review what the Nuremberg Trials made of the “just following orders” defense. I’m sorry — genuinely — that things are difficult for law enforcement. They are not, however, more difficult than they are for the people being assaulted and kidnapped.

Nicole Montesano

Amity

Brutal and unlawful

As a retired educator, who taught English Language Learner students at McMinnville High School for 10 years, I am outraged that ICE has violated the sanctity of the high school community by detaining a high school senior.

It is absurd that a law-abiding 17-year-old American citizen was picked up Friday during lunch period. He was taken without due process or notification to his family of his whereabouts.

Christian was doing the right thing — going to school and working toward graduation. He was not a threat to the community, not a drug dealer or felon. Yet, he was the latest victim in the current administration’s war on its own citizens.

This insanity has to stop.

The only way to stop it is to vote out the current administration. Otherwise, your sister, brother, cousin, mother or father may be next.

No one is safe with untrained thugs running rampant in our communities. Let’s send a clear, resounding message: ICE is not welcome here, or anywhere in the United States, conducting brutal and unlawful abductions.

Liz Hodgins

Sheridan

Local angle

I very much appreciate the News-Register including articles from statewide sources, such as the Oregon Journalism Project’s series on public education. I’m writing to advocate that such articles be accompanied by locally specific coverage.

News-Register readers want to know not just what the issues are, but how they affect our community and how our local leaders are responding. Some impacts and responses are the same in Yamhill County as they are statewide, but many are not.

For example, following the Nov. 20 article about reading instruction (“Head of nonprofit school finds flaws in how Oregon students are taught to read”), some families and community members might wonder about the curricula and instructional strategies in our districts. The McMinnville School District, whose board I serve on, has embraced the science of reading for years, with literacy levels above state averages to prove it, though we still have much more work to do.
Thank you for continuing to provide robust local coverage of the issues that matter to our community.

Christine Bader

McMinnville

Immigrants all

Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Oct. 8 in The New York Times:

“ … President Dwight Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, a militarized campaign of intimidation and harassment aimed at the millions of Mexican immigrants who had entered the United States, many of them legally. Then, as now, federal agents crowded immigrants, legal and illegal, onto buses and planes for quick removal from the United States. Then, as now, all of this is marked by the unmistakable scent of racism.

“And the immigration raids themselves, such as the one in Chicago where federal agents detained citizens, including children, for questioning, are reminiscent of the Palmer raids under President Woodrow Wilson during the first Red Scare in 1919 and 1920. The raids, ordered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, saw federal agents sweep through cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, where they made warrantless arrests of thousands of suspected radicals, many of them recent immigrants.

“Hundreds were detained in makeshift camps with abysmal conditions. At one such location, the historian Beverly Gage observes in her biography of J. Edgar Hoover, who was involved in planning the raids, 600 men were ‘jammed into barracks planned for 300, with no heat and dwindling food.’ At another, ‘800 prisoners had been stuffed into a windowless corridor with only one working bathroom and no beds.’”

What I would like to see now is the Native Americans rising up and kicking everyone but them out of the country. They’re the only ones who have the right to do so:

First inhabitants of the continent — and migrants/immigrants, all.

Sheila Hunter

McMinnville

Actual democracy

Don’t get fooled. Sign the referendum to kill the gas tax hike.

Oregon drivers are already paying some of the nation’s highest fuel prices, and now politicians want another 6 cents a gallon — on top of the 40 we already send ODOT — every time we fill up. That’s the centerpiece of the $4.3 billion transportation package Gov. Tina Kotek and legislative Democrats rammed through in a rushed special session after their bigger plan crashed and burned.

They call it a maintenance package. We call it another blank check.

This isn’t about fixing potholes on Highways 18 or 99W. Those repairs were supposed to be covered by the taxes and fees we’ve been paying for decades.

ODOT has burned through billions on pet projects, bloated bureaucracy and cost overruns, while letting maintenance slide. The agency was facing nearly 500 layoffs, not because roads suddenly became unaffordable, but because it couldn’t live within its means.

Raising taxes to avoid accountability is not a solution. It’s a reward for failure.

The package entails:

A permanent tax increase to 46 cents per gallon, the nation’s 8th highest. Higher vehicle registration and title fees that hit every family, farmer and small business owner. A doubled payroll tax to keep TriMet and Cherriots afloat. The first steps toward per-mile road-use taxes.

And ODOT still can’t tell us where all the money is going. It’s “new accountability measures” echo what we heard the last three times taxes rose.

A grassroots referendum backed by Rep. Ed Diehl and taxpayers, not special interests, is collecting signatures to put this package on the November 2026 ballot. If it qualifies, the increases remain frozen until the people vote.

That’s exactly what Salem fears most, actual democracy. Let’s bury this once and for all.

Barbara Kahl

Yamhill

Trails a big asset

During a recent visit to Utah’s great natural areas, I discovered a state covered with easily accessible pedestrian and cycling trails. I also discovered something else of importance.

Paralyzed and severely handicapped people can get out and share Utah’s lengthy trails with the aid of a foldable, ultralight, carbon-fiber Advenchair, which allows them to traverse trails with the freedom of a bicycle.

This device gives them an opportunity to ride thousands of miles of recreational trails crisscrossing the United States. However, none of these trails are to be found in Yamhill County.

I’ve also talked to mothers and fathers who have asked me when the Yamhelas Westsider Trail will be completed because they want to teach their kids the basics of riding a bike on it.

A Yamhill County woman who gives vocal lessons to clients from all over the country views the Trail as a place where her clients can run and cool down after a training session. The captain of a small local running club I talked to can’t wait for completion of the Yamhelas so his club doesn’t have to drive some other place to run.

My experiences like this go on and on. Citizens of our county can’t imagine why someone might be opposed to such a valuable resource, especially in light of the extensive input from adjacent landowners and members of the general public.

There is a rumor floating through our county that the commissioners are excited about the opportunity to sell the property cheaply to their friends and financial supporters, once the trail is permanently nixed. I hope this is not true.

I would like to invite you to a walking field trip along the Banks-Vernonia Trail to see how valuable, clean and refreshing it is for the entire adjacent community to have such a resource.

Every time another walker or rider decides to brave Highway 47 and is hit by a car or truck, especially after the citizens of Yamhill County have pleaded for this trail, we’ve missed an opportunity to save a life.

Steven Harloff

Yamhill

Better balance

I want to thank the News-Register for adding conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg to these pages. I probably won’t agree with him most of the time, but he is thoughtful and reading him will help me sharpen my own arguments.

In fairness, though, a liberal columnist also ought to appear in this newspaper.

The paper used to run the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. He wrote on many topics, not just the politics of the moment.

Although Pitts has left column-writing to concentrate on books, there must be someone of comparable stature to counterbalance Goldberg. Otherwise, the paper appears tilted in favor of conservative views.

Brad Thompson

McMinnville

Save the trail

Please help save Yamhill County’s 15-mile Yamhelas Westsider rail-to-trail project by attending a county planning commission hearing set for 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, in Room 32 in the courthouse basement. You can sign up to testify in person when you arrive or e-mail comments in advance to planning@yamhillcounty.gov by 5 p.m. Dec. 3.

A little background:

On Oct. 2, County Commissioners Kit Johnston and Mary Starrett outvoted Commissioner Bubba King to support removal of the trail from the Transportation System Plan. The nine-member planning commissioners must first hold a hearing to allow citizens to submit comments and testify.

Citizens and businesses have indicated repeatedly they want the trail, and funding is once again available. The state Parks and Recreation Department just announced $1.6 million in grant funds for work on trails, and this one would qualify.

The trail does not set the stage for light rail in the future. County commissioners took care of that with their vote of Oct. 2 to repeal Ordinance 880.

Rail-to-trail projects exist all over the United States. There are 23 in Oregon.

The trail is not an unfunded mandate. It is an independent project aimed at opening railroad right-of-way in Carlton and Yamhill for foot and bike access.

Yamhill County purchased the corridor from the Union Pacific Railroad, except for three parcels now in private ownership. Two the owners have agreed to allow trail access and a potential workaround is available for the third.

There would be no cost to add a measure to the ballot in a regularly scheduled primary or general election, but the county has so far not been willing.
For a list of county planning commissioners, visit https://hhs.co.yamhill.or.us/DocumentCenter/View/18557/Planning-Commission-PDF.

For more information about the trail visit yamtrail.com.

It is said there is strength in numbers. Please get everyone you know to submit comments, attend and testify.

Janice Allen

Newberg

Keep politics out

I am writing in support of keeping the Yamhelas Westsider Trail alive and preventing it from being cancelled and sold off by Yamhill County Commissioners Johnston and Starrett.

This trail should not be about politics. It should be about livability and providing a healthy and safe pedestrian option for generations to come.

It’s disheartening to allow two people to decide against what the vast majority of county residents want.

I lived in Bend for 22 years, beginning in the early 1980s, and I remember how people were confused about or opposed to the first traffic roundabout. Concerns included navigation and safety.

There are now roughly 55 roundabouts in Bend. Why? Because they work.

Aside from being efficient, they reduced accidents. It is progress.

The Yamhelas-Westsider Trail offers similar benefits by providing safe and active options for cyclists and walkers away from our congested roadways.

I have biked on many roads in Yamhill County, and it horrifies me how often I see people looking down while they drive, no doubt on their phones. We all know that rails-to-trails offer myriad health benefits, along with opportunities for families and young children to get exercise and be together. It’s simply good for our community.

I have biked and walked on rails-to-trails in Ohio, Virginia and Colorado, as well as Europe. Rails-to-trails are important, so ought not be dismissed.

Please support keeping the Yamhelas Westsider Trail out of the hands of two misdirected county commissioners. Sometimes politics and the well-being of people simply don’t mesh.

Karen Willard

McMinnville