Tomorrow on Monday, September 19, 2022 at 6:00pm Newberg City Council will hold an important session that will spend a considerable amount of the City’s money. According to multiple sources the agenda was added suddenly to the City’s calendar on Friday.
The purpose of the session is to vote on a number of things, but the most important is to permit the City to use a special procurement exemption to allow the use of the Construction Manager/General Contractor process for the construction of the repairs and upgrades of the Newberg water treatment plant, which will permit City officials to select the developer of the plant instead of the normal process where the Newberg City Council would review competitive bids from multiple contractors and allow for public comments about the project.
This special procurement exemption will allow the same company that designs the new facility to also be selected as the developer of it without having to conduct a competitive bid process against other contractors if city officials agree the designer has offered a “fair price” for construction (“fair price” being vaguely defined). The preliminary cost estimate created by City officials is that the new water treatment facility will cost $21 million dollars.
Residents of Newberg have only one opportunity to provide public commentary on this decision before it is voted on, which is at tomorrow’s City Council meeting at 6 pm.
Other Agenda Items
Another agenda item is to consent to Mayor Rick Rogers’ appointment of Casey Banks to the Affordable Housing Committee.
On her Facebook Profile Casey Banks identities herself as a pastor at First United Methodist Church and lists her gender identity pronouns on her profile.
She also has a post where she acknowledges she is doing a “piggyback” on Jefferson Mildenberger’s campaign for City Council. Banks is currently campaigning for Newberg City Council Position 2, and Mildenberger is campaigning to keep his position on City Council, Position 4 which he was appointed to earlier this year.
As previously reported by the Advocate, Jefferson Mildenberger is a member of Progressive Yamhill and its subgroup Newberg Equity in Education (NEEd) who was appointed in March to a vacant City Councilor spot with no disclosures of his pre-existing association to other members of the group on City council, Elise Hollamon and Stephanie Findley. It is also the opinion of the Advocate that Rick Rogers is aligned with Progressive Yamhill and its agenda based upon posts discovered within the secret Progressive Yamhill Facebook group.
Another Facebook post on Banks’ activity feed shows that since she became pastor at First United Methodist Church she has permitted PFLAG Newberg to have a “safe space” at the Church. As previously reported by the Advocate, PFLAG Newberg is ran by Progressive Yamhill members and promotes drag queen shows to children.
Banks has also performed “pride themed sermons” at the Church,
She is also apparently opposed to the 2nd Amendment that protects the right to own private firearms and thinks until the United States is invaded like Ukraine we have no need for the 2nd Amendment,
Banks is also a PCP for the Democratic Party,
Casey Banks is also, clearly, a supporter of the fired Superintendent Joe Morelock, quoting him when resharing a news article about his termination,
It appears that despite these easily identified connections being spotlighted by the Advocate, Mayor Rogers is continuing to stack the city committees with those who are associated with Progressive Yamhill and aligned with its controversial radical agenda without any disclosure of these associations to the public when making these appointments.
It is also worth noting that another agenda item is to provide grants in the total of $20,000 to the Downtown Coalition, which as previously reported by the Advocate is largely composed of Progressive Yamhill members’ businesses and the program is designed to benefit these businesses.
As reported by the Advocate, the City of Newberg has already awarded $68,519 in grant funds to the Newberg Downtown Coalition from the ARPA funds.
According to the documentation Elise Hollamon, who is a member of both Progressive Yamhill and the NEEd group, was contacted by the Newberg Downtown Coalition leadership for the grant request.
And whose names are listed on the letter to Hollamon requesting the money for the Downtown Coalition? Well, you’ll find that Mayor Rick Rogers is listed on the letter as one of those requesting the funds.
As we approach the Newberg City Council elections on November 8th, it appears to me that the current City Council and Mayor are trying to spend as much money as they can. Are they worried about losing control over the City government and so are now caring less about the optics of their obvious ties to those being awarded the public’s money?
Sentence structure error you should fix up: Banks is currently campaigning for Newberg City Council Position 2, and Mildenberger is campaign got keep his position on City Council, Position 4 which he was appointed to earlier this year.
thanks for catching the typo
The progressives on the Newberg City Council are just upholding their nonpartisan status.(Sarcasm)
Its ridiculous that a county that hasn’t voted for a Democrat for President since the election of 1964 has a bunch of liberal hacks running every city in the county. This must change.
My proposal is simple:: Any candidate for these positions, must have their political affiliation or the political party they’re registered with next to their names in the voter pamphlet election information.
In other words we get rid of this phony nonpartisan illusion that doesn’t exist in our highly political world.