In any business — public or private — there are only two ways to manage budgets responsibly:

1. Cut costs, (deliver the same at lower cost, scarcity mindset) or,

2. Expand revenue (deliver more with more resources, growth mindset)

Well-run organizations do both, but they never abandon growth. They control costs carefully while relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to deliver for their customers.

County government is no different.

Without raising tax rates — which is a non-starter — Yamhill County has only two realistic levers to grow revenue:

• Widening the tax base, particularly through non-resident revenue generation like the Transient Lodging Tax (TLT)

• Aggressively pursue grant funding

Instead, current leadership eliminated the county’s grant writer and rejected grants because they came with “strings attached” — in other words, accountability.

That decision to fire the grant writer is analogous to firing the sales force.

A struggling business, or county, fires its sales team and battens down the hatches maintaining the status quo.

A thriving business and county invests in growth.

Yamhill County should be thriving.

I am not interested in relitigating the past for its own sake. I am focused on building a county government that works better going forward — one that supports the aspirations of the people who live here.

I bring real, relevant experience to that work.

For the past five years, I have served on the McMinnville School District Budget Committee. The district’s budget is comparable to the county’s in:

• Total dollars

• Organizational complexity

• Number of employees (both exceed 700 employees)

The difference?

The school district operates with robust adult supervision, financial controls, and accountability — while county government too often makes decisions driven by political considerations most residents do not care about, and by special-interest campaign payback that the majority of citizens reject.

Public health should never be treated as a political afterthought.

In May 2021, the County Commission voted to cut $615,000 from the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, eliminating the county’s grant manager position in the process. As reported by Kirby Neumann-Rea, News-Register, the budget committee simultaneously directed HHS to replace the lost funding by securing grants from the Oregon Health Authority and Yamhill Community Care Organization — even though the department already receives the majority of its funding from the state.

This decision highlights a troubling inconsistency:

• The county eliminated the staff position responsible for pursuing and managing grant

• Then required the department to backfill cuts using grants anyway

That is not strategic budgeting — it is setting departments up to fail.

If public health funding depends on grants (as leadership itself acknowledges), then the county must:

• Invest in professional grant management

• Support accountability and reporting requirements

• Treat grant funding as a core revenue strategy, not an inconvenience

I will prioritize stable public health funding, professional oversight, and a realistic approach to bringing outside dollars into Yamhill County — not hollow directives unsupported by staffing or strategy.

Yamhill County deserves leadership that treats basic public safety responsibilities with clarity, accountability, and results — not patchwork stopgaps and frustrated residents. Our dog control system today suffers from unclear responsibility, structural under-funding, and contracts that too often cost taxpayers more without delivering predictable outcomes.

Dog control exists to protect the health, safety, and welfare of residents and animals alike, but in practice it has been treated as an “orphan function” of county government — starved for meaningful oversight, stable funding, and clear performance expectations. *Reference: News Register*

Over time, this has produced:

• confusion about who responds to roaming or dangerous dogs,
  
  

• a budget built on temporary backfills rather than sustainable revenue, and
  
  

• contracts that pay for unused capacity without measurable results.
  
  

This is not good public safety policy — and it’s not good fiscal stewardship.

As Commissioner, I will push for sustainable funding, transparent contracts with real performance standards, clear responsibility across jurisdictions, and modernized licensing and enforcement so dog control works reliably for public safety, animal welfare, and taxpayers.

Public safety depends on professionalism, transparency, and accountability — regardless of which agency an officer represents.

If federal immigration officers operate in Yamhill County, they must be held to the same standards of conduct as our local sworn officers. No agency should be above the rules that protect our community.

Federal officers must:

• Not endanger people, regardless of immigration status

• Identify themselves by name, agency, and badge number

• Be accountable for property damage

• Provide basic information to detainees’ families and employers

• Coordinate with state and local law enforcement

Enforcement actions should be based on legitimate warrants for actual criminal behavior, not uncoordinated or indiscriminate operations that undermine public safety and community trust.

I will insist that any agency operating in Yamhill County does so transparently, responsibly, and with accountability to the people who live here.

I am running to make Yamhill County work for all of us.

As Commissioner, I will:

• Prioritize parks, because quality of life matters

• Prioritize public health, because prevention saves lives and money

• Prioritize bringing grant dollars back to Yamhill County

Whether you agree with the policies coming out of Salem or not, one thing is certain:

You pay state taxes.

Those dollars are already gone. Leaving them on the table out of spite or political posturing is not principled — it is foolish.

I believe in repatriating the maximum possible dollars back to Yamhill County.

It is our money. Let’s go get it.