Counties split up on urban reserves talk
With discussions at an impasse, counties decide to negotiate directly with Metro over which land to keep rural
It’s not exactly what people wanted to hear.
When the “Core 4,” a group of elected officials tasked with figuring out which lands in the region should be set aside for future urban development met on Monday, it was supposed to be their big show.
And in a way, it was, but instead of agreeing on a final proposal that would put a two-year-long planning process on a countdown clock, they agreed to disagree.
The idea behind designating urban and rural reserves was to add future certainty to which areas in the region would remain “open” – for agriculture or other uses – and which would be developed for housing and industrial intentions.
At the heart of the latest disagreement were three areas that have been hotly contested throughout the process: land north of Cornelius stretching over Council Creek, the Stafford Triangle, and a piece of land on the western edge of Multnomah County.
“We are beyond close,” said Core 4 member Jeff Cogen, “we are really, really close.”
But it was clear that Cogen’s fellow Core 4 members were reaching an impasse over the last two weeks when tensions began to develop between Clackamas County Core 4 member Charlotte Lehan and Washington County’s representative Tom Brian.
Lehan felt that the Stafford Triangle should be set aside without a designation, instead of being put into an urban reserve, and she wanted Washington County to pare back its urban reserve designations.
All told, the land left up in the air (not counting the Stafford Triangle) amounts to one half of a percent of the total reserve designations, which includes 270,937 acres of rural reserves and more than 27,000 acres of urban reserves.
While the meeting didn’t result in a decision about the final acreage, it did set up a plan. Over the next two weeks, Metro and each county will hash out a plan for the remaining land and the whole trio will wind up voting the plan into effect (or not) at the end of the month.
Metro and the three counties need to come to some sort of agreement by the end of February in order to meet a number of deadlines later this year. If no agreement is met, Metro has to revert to its old process of planning for growth based on soil types and slopes, rendering reserves an academic sideshow.
But as Washington County Commissioner Andy Duyck pointed out following the meeting, for all the grousing over Washington County’s urban reserve proposals, at this late stage in the process, Clackamas County is poised to end up with more land in the bank, 13,489 acres, than Washington County’s 12,783.
Even so, Duyck said, land use rules don’t change for property inside urban reserves. Since its still outside the region’s Urban Growth Boundary, the land is locked down by Oregon’s strict land use rules.
“The real important decision is when and if the urban growth boundary is actually expanded,” Duyck said.
That fight will come at the end of this year.
What does this mean for Beaverton?
Don Mazziotti, community development director for the city of Beaverton, said it’s too early to tell if the city’s goals were met in the reserves planning process.
He said the city was concerned about making sure Beaverton had room to grow. He said the city’s population has been expanding by about 700 people a year.
“Beaverton continues to grow and we anticipate that growth will be substantial,” Mazziotti said. “If we are unable to accommodate it, that obviously creates a problem.”
Because the reserves recommendations set aside far more rural reserves than urban, Mazziotti said he suspects Beaverton’s housing will grow more dense, especially in the central city. He also said that he believes that the reserves designation process will be seen through to the end. Some have voiced fears that minor disagreements of a small portion of reserve designations could derail the entire process.
“The participants in this process, which have been many, have simply worked too hard to forgo all of that,” Mazziotti said.
–Ed Johnson