Editor’s Note – This is an Op-Ed guest submission submitted by a resident of the City of North Plains, Oregon. He lives inside the City, and like all residents, is caught up in a situation where the City as an organization is in upheaval, both inside the City organizationally and in the Council and leadership. The main topics are mismanagement dating back for years, and urban growth expansions of the City boundary. Data Centers have been a regular discussion for expansions onto the farmland adjacent to the City boundary. A group or entity calling itself The Real Friends of North Plains has taken to social media and other methods to influence public opinion, placing blame on specific leaders, while sowing the seeds of distrust. That said, whoever it is will not verify who they are or who they represent, at least not as of yet. There are massive land holdings on the edge of North Plains, many parcels owned by non-residents and out-of-state interests. These parcels have been the subject of growth expansion initiatives until recently, when the new Council and leadership pushed back, and the citizens voted against growth in 2024 in a 70% majority. Land being added to a City boundary can be worth tens of millions or more, so this is a big-money game and has been for some time. One can imagine the lengths someone may go to for this lottery-like payday. The Herald has reached out to these Real Friends who have limited contact info, no membership list, or admins who show who they are. It is almost as if someone from outside North Plains is running a slick campaign to alter public opinion – let’s hope someone responds and clears this up! It appears once again that the good people of North Plains are being manipulated by outsiders who are using a local label to gain traction and create distrust. We will continue to follow this story as more news comes out. Here is a submission by Andreeas Trattner. We do not know him, nor are we affiliated in any way. His voice is one of many.
By Andreeas Trattner, North Plains Resident
Disclosure: I serve on the steering committee of Strong Towns North Plains. The views here are my own.
North Plains has had a hard eighteen months. Anyone who has sat through a council meeting lately knows it. But I don’t think what we’re watching is a city falling apart. I think it’s a city working through the consequences of a long-deferred argument about how it should grow — and that argument is finally being settled the way it should be, in public.
For decades, the pressure on North Plains has run in one direction: expand the urban growth boundary, and expand it well beyond what our housing needs require, to accommodate land- intensive uses like data centers. That pressure has repeatedly met resistance at the ballot box and in the courts. Residents have been consistent about this. The lobbying has been consistent too. In 2024, voters elected a council majority that ran explicitly on smart growth, financial accountability, and public engagement. What happened next is a matter of public record, and it’s worth laying out plainly.
After the November 2024 election but before the new councilors were seated, the outgoing council hired Bill Reid — then the city’s Finance Director — as City Manager. Over the following period, Reid also served as Acting Finance Director and Acting Planning Director. During his tenure, the city’s annual financial audits went uncompleted for four consecutive fiscal years, 2022 through 2025, while the city continued to spend on urban growth boundary planning.
I’m not going to speculate about anyone’s motives. I don’t need to. Four years without a completed audit is a failure of basic stewardship on its own terms, and concentrating the city manager, finance director, and planning director roles in one person left North Plains with no independent check on any of them and no continuity plan if that person left.
North Plains uses a weak-mayor, strong-manager model, which already makes the city manager’s office unusually consequential. In its final month, the outgoing council made it more so.
Until December 2024, the council’s meeting rules were part of the municipal code, and changing them meant amending an ordinance. That December, the outgoing council moved the rules into a resolution — far easier to alter — and repealed the code sections they replaced. Under the new rules, the City Manager prepares the agenda, a councilor cannot put a research question to the
City Attorney without the full council’s consent, and the rules themselves are to be amended “at the direction of the City Manager.” Two weeks later, that council was gone.
City Attorney without the full council’s consent, and the rules themselves are to be amended “at the direction of the City Manager.” Two weeks later, that council was gone.
The effect was to shift authority toward an unelected office and make the limits on it easier to change, decided by a council on its way out the door. Those rules are still in force.
The turnover since then has been real, and it has been painful. Councilors on both sides of the growth question have resigned, in some cases for serious personal reasons that had nothing to do with city politics. Blaming the new councilors for that turnover isn’t supported by anything I’ve
seen, and it isn’t fair to the people who left.
seen, and it isn’t fair to the people who left.
In June 2026, the council voted to part ways with Reid. I think that took resolve, and I think it was correct.
The fight over North Plains’ direction didn’t end at the ballot box, or with Reid’s departure. It moved to the mailbox. Residents have received a run of glossy mailings from a group calling itself “The Real Friends of North Plains,” criticizing the sitting council and the people who elected it. I have one request of them: tell us who you are and who is paying for this. That’s not an accusation — it’s the standard we should hold everyone to, including my own organization, which is why the disclosure line at the top of this piece is there. If you believe what you’re saying, sign your name to it. I’m signing mine.
That standard applies to City Hall too. On July 29, the city’s official communications channel published a statement about Mayor Aaron Dumbrow’s resignation. Alongside necessary information about service impacts, it named the political committee that funded his 2024 campaign slate, set the slate’s nickname off in quotation marks, tallied which sitting councilors were elected versus appointed, and passed along his charge that the council had committed “numerous legal and council rule violations.”
Then KOIN asked the city which violations. The city’s spokesperson said she didn’t know.
Read that again. The City of North Plains put its name on an accusation against its own elected council, and could not say what the accusation was.
The media contact on it isn’t a city employee, but an outside public relations consultant the city pays. I don’t know who wrote that language or approved it. Neither, it appears, does the city. Someone should ask.
A string of departures often follows the exit of an executive who had consolidated as much authority as Reid did. That’s uncomfortable, but it isn’t necessarily a bad sign. Rebuilding takes longer than breaking, and it looks worse while it’s happening.
So here’s what I’d ask of my neighbors. Come to a council meeting. Read Resolution 2285 and Ordinance 497 and the city charter — they’re short, and they explain more about why things happen the way they do than any mailer will. Watch whether the audits get completed. Ask hard
questions of every councilor, including the ones you agree with. Democracy is supposed to be messy. What it isn’t supposed to be is quiet.
questions of every councilor, including the ones you agree with. Democracy is supposed to be messy. What it isn’t supposed to be is quiet.
