Lack of long-range planning continues to plague county
Seventeen years ago, we urged the city and county to engage in a round of serious long-range facility planning, designed to ensure they were positioned to anticipates foreseeable needs over the first quarter ...
People in glass houses should learn cooperation
A decade ago, Yamhill County launched a 10-year plan to end homelessness. Homelessness has since multiplied — especially around county government headquarters — to the point where irate citizens ...
Ken Austin leaves a long legacy of achieving, giving
The world can never have enough community-building giants like Ken Austin, a heralded inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist lost to us last week at the age of 87. An only child, Austin was born in ...
Fire threat demands community vigilance
It’s turned relentlessly hot and dry in Oregon, and we all know what that means. Wildfire season is upon us. Archaeological records show wildfire has helped shape our planet, for better and worse, ...
How can we return to an age of compromise?
“Come now, and let us reason together.” — Isaiah 1:18 Reasoning together sounds like a positive idea. Or we could just retreat to the furthest ends of any given issue and lob rhetorical ...
Hooting and hollering don't solve anything
The last two McMinnville City Council meetings have turned into something like “The Jerry Springer Show,” because some people believe being upset excuses them from basic manners. Anger over ...
Needle-exchange offers more up side than down
County Health & Human Services Director Silas Halloran-Steiner is defying public opinion in urging creation of a local needle-exchange serving IV drug users. Needle-exchange programs debuted in Amsterdam ...
Staff reports don’t need to be marathons
Oregon Sen. Wayne Morse filibustered 22 hours and 26 minutes in 1953. Don’t give the McMinnville Planning Department staff any ideas. They like to talk. People packed the April 18 planning commission ...
Workforce development key to fostering economic vitality
The sexy side of economic development is beating a bevy of rivals to land a new anchor industry — the kind not only becoming a rich new source of family-wage jobs, but also drawing an array of suppliers ...
Fire service consolidation being driven by necessity
Fred Hertel, joint chief of the Sheridan and West Valley fire districts, recently authored a guest opinion headlined, “Not your father’s fire service.” And that, in a nutshell, explains ...
Air show could propel airport to new heights
Not to get ahead of ourselves, but ... Wheee! We’re going to have an air show! OK, Settle down. It’s not a done deal, yet. Organizers of the Oregon International Air Show are conferring with ...
Dog control a vital function in society
Where is it etched in stone that the county’s dog control function has to be self-supporting, but its myriad other functions do not? This seems akin to the city’s baseless mantra that the airport ...
Homelessness demands immediate city action
Some 200 people packed McMinnville City Council chambers Tuesday, and 12 stepped to the microphone. Those representing the homeless community spoke about needing receptacles for both solid and human waste, ...
Housing crisis is not going to solve itself
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the 1932 commencement address at Oglethorpe University in Georgia, thousands of Americans were living in “Hoovervilles” — makeshift tent cities ...
Narrowing death penalty basis a cause whose time has come
Uncompromising advocates complain by redefining aggravated murder to exclude all but acts of terrorism, Senate Bill 1013 would effectively eliminate future executions in Oregon. Wrong. Shifting public ...
