Proponents of saving the 15.25-mile corridor of land that would become the Yamhelas Westsider Trail must convince the voters of Yamhill County to back the plan now that the county’s top elected officials have determined it will not come to fruition.
The board of commissioners voted 2-1, with Bubba King the lone nay vote, on Jan. 29 to remove development of the trail corridor from the county’s transportation plan. The commission can now declare the property surplus, sell it and apply the proceeds to repaying money spent from a $1.7 million grant it received from the Oregon Department of Transportation to develop the trail.
Proponents of the trail now have one recourse to counter the commission’s action: place and pass two measures on either the May or November ballots to preserve this and other county-owned parcels for public use.
Hearing takes up where it left off
The hearing, continued from Jan. 22, saw King and Commissioners Kit Johnston and Mary Starrett exchange vastly differing points of view on the viability of constructing the trail from McMinnville to Gaston on land the county purchased from the Union Pacific Railroad in 2017…