Letters to the Editor: Sept. 19, 2025

Parks for all

Thank you for your July 25 editorial, “County takes first step in making parks a priority.” The Yamhill County Parks Advisory Board deeply appreciates your recognition of how far our park system has to go — and how important adequate funding will be to realize its potential.

As your editorial notes, most of the 272 acres in the county parks system remain undeveloped, and many developed sites are in only poor to fair condition.

Despite heavy use by locals and visitors alike, our parks have operated for years on a very limited budget. Your editorial gives overdue visibility to this challenge, and we’re hopeful that the new Parks System Plan can help open the door to long-term solutions.

One clarification we’d like to offer relates to the 17-mile trail you referenced.

While individual board members may or may not personally support the Yamhelas Westsider Trail, it has never been part of the Yamhill County Parks system. The property has always been under the purview of the Yamhill County Transportation Department, not Parks.

It was purchased from the railroad using transportation funds. It was intended as a non-motorized, multi-use trail — hence the grant funding from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

We appreciate your continued coverage of local parks and trails, and look forward to seeing the county build on this momentum to create spaces all residents can enjoy, now and for generations to come.

Neyssa Hays

Chair, Yamhill County Parks Advisory Board

Yamhill

Heed your heart

What is happening to our nation’s unity?

We are becoming a nation filled with hatred, disrespect, selfishness and cutting words for all those who do not agree with their chosen way of life.

Now many Republicans, Democrats and Independents are acting like we’re re-fighting the historic war between the North and South.

What has happened to these ancient proverbs: Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. If anyone thinks of himself to be religious and does not bridle his tongue, he deceives his own heart.

Our hearts contain love, compassion and the innermost knowledge of right and wrong. Our minds give us the ability to make our own choices and decisions. So we should all be searching our hearts instead of our minds for the knowledge of right and wrong.

Our actions are subject to consequences. Consequences are beyond our control. It is written, whether you believe or do not believe, all will receive just consequences.

Ina Shenk

McMinnville

Gun fetishism

The professed ideology of gun violence perpetrators varies. The constants are the easy access to and fetishization of guns.

Peer countries have violent games and movies to contend with, and people with mental health challenges. Only in the United States do we also have the scourge of widespread gun violence.

I lament and condemn the manner of Charlie Kirk’s death, just as I lament and condemn the manner of death of victims of school shootings, church shootings, grocery store shootings, mall shootings, theater shootings and home invasion shootings.

The list of incidents and victims is endless. I don’t see an end in sight to this madness.

If the murders of elementary school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School didn’t spur reasonable, common sense gun-safety regulations, I don’t think anything will. That ensures there will be more lives sacrificed at the altar of gun fetishism.

Alisa Owen

McMinnville