Looking back instructive, looking ahead constructive

In Monday’s news space, we indulged in the deeply rooted newspaper tradition of looking back on the past year to assess its challenges, breakthroughs, warnings and revelations after the fact, in the clear light of day.

In today’s editorial space, we embark on the more perilous task of looking ahead at the coming year to assess the same elements before the fact, in the murky half-light of dawn. Our mission is to project the forces promising to generate some of 2025’s watershed stories.

- For starters, we can look to an infusion of new vision and leadership at both the city and county.

Swapping Remy Drabkin for Kim Morris in the mayor’s chair and Lindsay Berschauer for Bubba King in a county commission seat represents a much more than routine baton-passing. It represents a deliberate and decisive change of direction on the part of an electorate that had lost faith in a former favorite.

The change promises to be most pronounced at the city, because the mayor plays a unique and powerful role, and because changes in the composition of the council promise to lend support for themes Morris has embraced.

Those include broader public involvement, increased accountability and more conservative fiscal and regulatory policy. In short, she’s promising to listen more while taxing and regulating less.

At the county, the contrast is even sharper. Whereas Berschauer cut a theatrical, sharp-tongued and fiercely ideological figure, King promises to project a steady, measured and collaborative presence — and get a lot more accomplished in the process.

Granted, he occupies but one seat of three. However, there seems realistic hope he can find common ground with Commissioner Kit Johnston to get the county on a less strident and more productive track.

- In addition to undergoing a change in leadership, the county is embarking on a long overdue consolidation in new downtown quarters. It will shortly begin moving into two major office buildings acquired from Oregon Mutual Insurance, and at a price economical enough to avoid a potentially contentious bond issue campaign.

This represents a home run on multiple fronts.

It frees an affordable, close-in neighborhood from years of disruptive county intrusion; neighborhood streets from accompanying traffic congestion; the county from a long-term bonded debt obligation; county taxpayers from another tax bite; county employees and clients from the inefficiencies inherent when facilities are spread out in disoriented dribs and drabs.

It also frees McMinnville’s downtown from a barrier to northward linkage with the developing Granary and Alpine districts; Oregon Mutual from a burdensome office space excess; and the county’s crime and courts system from space limitations hampering its ability to meet ever-growing demands.

- The city isn’t destined to find suitable new facilities falling into its lap like that as it faces the need to replace aging aquatic center, community center and library facilities while also addressing park system and senior center needs.

Years of planning and effort culminated in shaping a bond issue for the May ballot to address the aquatic, community and senior center needs, along with parks system needs. However, a citizen tax and fee revolt that helped Morris and Councilor Dan Tucholsky mount successful election bids make passage increasingly problematic, to the point where we’re advocating a return to the drawing board.

The coming year promises to prove critical to this quest, no matter how things shake out. Here’s hoping the city’s new mix of leaders can collaborate in finding common ground, as future livability in our community may well depend on it.

- The city is also grappling with other development issues that promise to shape our community, for better or worse, for decades to come.

They include a massive downtown rebuild necessitated by urgent infrastructure needs; plans for redevelopment of the Three Mile Lane area, which include a business-incubating innovation center; another major new west-side subdivision and crucial affordable housing initiatives there and elsewhere.

- On other fronts, we will be adjusting to a new police chief, a new consolidated fire district, a new deflection program designed to help us address a fentanyl crisis, and a new Navigation Center designed to help us better cope with chronic homelessness, one of our community’s longest standing and most intractable challenges.

Meanwhile, developers are eying private projects that could enhance historic downtown appeal in communities around the county, particularly McMinnville, Dayton and Carlton. Major new lodging and events center additions are also being eyed at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum out on Highway 18 in McMinnville, further expanding a tourist footprint already looming very large in our home community.

Taken together, these developments give us the potential for a truly watershed year as we mark the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. Here’s hoping we’re able to report more successes than failures — much more — when we make our next year-end assessment.