About Friends of Yamhill County
Our Mission
The purpose of the Friends of Yamhill County is to protect natural resources through the implementation of land use planning goals, policies, and laws that will maintain and improve the present and future quality of life in Yamhill County for both urban and rural residents.
A variety of activities will be used to implement this purpose including, but not limited, to the following:
a. Monitoring compliance with provisions of state, county, and local land use law;
b. Encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes relevant to land use and growth management;
c. Providing public information and education.
What We Do
The Friends of Yamhill County (FYC) participates in land use matters at the county and city level, including testifying at public hearings, mediating with applicants for land-use changes, and participating in committees (when invited) that develop changes to comprehensive plans and land use ordinances. FYC also participates in statewide land use policy development through testimony to the state legislature and the Land Conservation and Development Commission and through participation in rule-making advisory committees.
FYC works closely with 1000 Friends of Oregon, a statewide organization with a complementary mission. FYC helps 1000 Friends by sharing local knowledge and is helped by that organization through subject-matter experts and cooperating attorneys.
Board of Directors
FYC’s board of directors is comprised of four officers – president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary – and one to four additional members. The officers and one director are elected by the membership at the annual meeting. The board may select up to three additional directors. Each director holds the position until a successor has been elected or appointed.
Current Board of Directors:
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After an unconventional working life (shipyard welder, union activist, safety professional) Kathryn now lives on the family farm, established in 1891 by Swedish immigrants Frank and Anna Jernstedt, where she grew up. Ernest F. Jernstedt Jr, Kathryn’s father, credited Oregon’s land use program with holding back the pressures of development that otherwise would have made it impossible for him to pass the farm on intact. Kathryn has been President of FYC since 2017.
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Rob is retired after a 32-year career as an Oregon land-use planner, including five years for Yamhill County. He has lived in Yamhill county since 1990. He has served on various boards and commissions, including the Yamhill County planning commission, and is currently a member of the Dayton planning commission. Rob has been an FYC board member since 2020.
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Mark Davis is a retired accountant. His last job before retiring was developing affordable housing for the Housing Authority of Yamhill County. He has tracked land use planning issues in the City of McMinnville for more than 25 years, serving on the Citizens Advisory Committee for 20 years. Mark has been an FYC board member since 2021.
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Steve is a retired physicist and manager of an applied science group for a DOE contractor. He came to Oregon in 2011, becoming involved with FYC in 2012 due to its support of the Yamhelas Westsider Trail project, on which he was an active participant. Steve joined the FYC board in mid-2013.
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Sid Friedman has lived in Yamhill County since 1980 and is a former county planning commissioner. He also worked as a planning advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon. He was a founding member of FYC and served on the board from 1995 to 2000. He rejoined the board in 2011 and served three terms as board president. He and his wife Marilyn Walster raise hay and timber on their farm west of Carlton.
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Ilsa has lived between Lafayette and Carlton for 30 years; at some point in the early years, she met Milt and Merilyn Reeves and attended an FYC meeting. Before long she was attending County Commissioner meetings, and then came Measure 37. Ilsa became involved with in the effort to close the dump. Thanks to the Oregon Land Use program, Riverbend Landfill might finally close, once and for all, and FYC played a very important role in making that happen.
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Raised in Yamhill County, Anneka joined the Friends of Yamhill County board in 2021 to contribute to the community where she grew up. A graduate of the University of Oregon and a farmer, Anneka hopes to promote better understanding and critical thinking about land use with an eye to the future.
History
In the Yamhill County of the mid-1990’s, small groups of isolated citizens were all-too-often bulldozed by developers asking city and county officials to ignore or skirt the land use and zoning laws that protect our neighborhoods and countryside.
In 1995 these concerned residents got around a kitchen table, and in 1996 Friends of Yamhill County was formed to protect natural resources and improve the present and future quality of life in Yamhill County for both urban and rural residents.
Looking back over the last 25+ years, it is amazing what we have accomplished.
Here are just a few highlights:
As we were initially forming, we came together to defeat the siting of Sumitomo, a huge foreign corporation demanding tax breaks to locate a water-guzzling, pollution-spewing chip plant in Newberg.
In the face of an out-of-town developer threatening to inundate McMinnville with explosive residential growth, we successfully campaigned to give McMinnville and Newberg voters a voice in the annexation decisions that directly affect their communities. Then McMinnville voters decisively rejected a massive annexation proposal for the northwest corner of the city.
We stymied illegally aggressive urban growth boundary expansions in Newberg and McMinnville that threatened to pave over prime farmland. In the case of McMinnville, FYC and 1000 Friends of Oregon went all the way to the Court of Appeals to stop what at that time would have been the largest UGB expansion in state history.
We helped pass Measure 49 by a wide margin in Yamhill County, replacing the too-extreme Measure 37. We continue to fight illegal rural subdivisions spawned by Measure 37 and prevailed at the Oregon Supreme Court in the landmark case Friends of Yamhill County v. Board of Commissioners.
We’ve partnered with and supported other groups like the Dayton Prairie Water Association and Protect Grand Island Farms in their efforts to protect groundwater in Dayton Prairie and to protect Grand Island from threatened gravel quarries on our very best farmland.
We’ve successfully challenged too many applications for scattershot residential development in our exclusive farm use and forest zones, often with valuable assistance from the Cooperating Attorneys Program at 1000 Friends of Oregon.
FYC successfully challenged a Newberg comprehensive plan amendment to LUBA and the Oregon Court of Appeals, stopping what could have been an expansion of the urban growth boundary onto prime farmland for more industrial land than the city needed.
We have been at the forefront of efforts to stop the expansion of what is already the largest regional garbage dump in western Oregon. The expansion would allow an additional 15 billion pounds of regional garbage, mostly from Portland Metro, to be dumped on farmland next to the Yamhill River.
In 2021, FYC advocated for a moderate urban growth boundary expansion for McMinnville, and the city ultimately adopted a boundary that FYC supported.
Throughout, we’ve worked to educate; through regular meetings with dynamic speakers, and through numerous local candidate forums co-sponsored by the Farm Bureau, Small Woodlands Association, and Willamette Valley Wineries Association.
Looking ahead, it is clear that the pressures and challenges that face this county and its cities will not abate. But with the help of our many members, Friends of Yamhill County is ready to meet those challenges.
Donate to Friends of Yamhill County and support our work.