About that 2024 “Public Movement.” Let’s Look at the Clipboards.
An embattled majority of city council appointees continues to claim legitimacy from a two-year-old growth referendum. One problem with that: the signature sheets show that 91 percent of signature entries were by people living well outside of North Plains.
Friends of North Plains Smart Growth recently declared that the effort to recall Councilor Mark De Forge was “never a public movement.”
That is quite a pronouncement from an organization whose own referendum appears to be entirely orchestrated and implemented by a far flung activist network.
Yesterday, we said to hold the confetti. Today, let’s look at the clipboards. ✏️
The petition drive that led to the May 2024 urban growth boundary referendum began in 2023. A circulator worksheet reviewed by TRFNP contains 320 signature entries. Only 28 are credited to collectors registered with a North Plains 97133 address.
The other 292—91.25 percent—are credited to a curious mix of regional "friends."
Circulator location recorded | Signature entries |
Hillsboro | 113 |
Mountaindale | 91 |
Portland | 66 |
Gaston | 22 |
North Plains | 28 |
Total | 320 |
The concentration of players is striking. Katie Miller is credited with 88 entries. Aaron Nichols has 74. Together, those two collectors—listed as Mountaindale and Hillsboro—account for more than half the entire worksheet.
Can it get any more obvious? Let's talk about who collected the 2024 signatures.
Nichols identifies himself as a founding member of Friends of North Plains Smart Growth and a vegetable farmer "near" North Plains. His adventures over the past two years have ranged from North Plains-focused political action committees to drafting memos on how to replace the North Plains City Attorney. We find these to be curious hobbies for a Hillsboro farmer.
Nellie McAdams, for her part, represented Friends of North Plains Smart Growth before the Legislature, and is or was the board chair of land use group 1000 Friends of Oregon.
Faun Hosey is a founding member of activist group Save Helvetia and a longtime stalwart of regional land use battles. At the time the signatures were being gathered, she was a government official with CPO8. TRFNP has documented a long list of serious questions about the activities of Galas Merten, Hosey and CPO8.
These were outside advocates pursuing a shared ideological objective, but they themselves appear to have tried to muddy that distinction dating back to 2024.
Before the Oregon Legislature, McAdams argued that “the referendum is not being brought by outside forces” because the city’s own residents had signed the petition.
The signature sheets, however, show that Ms. McAdams did indeed manifest an outside force through her own person as a signature gatherer on doorsteps throughout North Plains. Repeatedly.
Apparently, the public’s credentials require periodic approval.
The connection to the political network TRFNP has covered extends beyond a collection tally. Our reporting documented Galas-Merten’s December 2, 2024 email coordinating pressure on City Hall with more than 50 recipients, including Nichols and the incoming mayor and three incoming councilors.
That later email shows overlapping people continuing to organize around North Plains government well after the referendum campaign. And they're still here today.
Residents deserve to understand that history when the same network presents itself as the authority on whose political participation is authentic. The people who signed the referendum deserved to have their choices respected. So do the people asking for a vote on De Forge.
Friends of Smart Growth can oppose the recall all it wants, or cling to a delusional mandate that long ago went cold. It can argue its case. But let's at least make them explain why the "local signatures" it celebrated in 2024 count as public participation while today’s are waved away.
North Plains residents do not need permission from a handful of outside activists to count as "the public."
