Reporting from Damascus
Voters in this Clackamas County town will get to choose this autumn whether to ask Metro for an unprecedented reduction in its urban growth boundary.
The Damascus City Council voted 6-0 Monday to send a binding measure to the November ballot. The question, approved by the council, asks: "Shall the City apply to Metro to amend the Urban Growth Boundary to remove land as warranted by population projections?"
If the voters say yes, Damascus would have to petition Metro to remove some land from the boundary.
It's the latest turn in the long and winding road for one of the most challenging expansions of Metro's urban growth boundary. The 2002 expansion to Damascus was so widely regarded as a failure that it prompted a complete overhaul of the state's requirements for Metro's boundary expansions.
Far out
There's little doubt that Metro bit off more than it could chew in the 2002 UGB expansion. State-mandated formulas told Metro how much land it had to add into the boundary, and forced it to annex in the worst farmland – hilly, rocky areas close to cities.
Those are also the hardest areas to develop. A decade ago, Metro brought Damascus into the boundary to help it meet its required 20-year supply of developable land. Now, halfway through that window, there's little optimism that new homes and businesses will start springing up in Damascus before 2025, and probably later in some parts.
The eastern third of the city is particularly stalled, beholden to infrastructure development in Gresham before new homes can have a sewer line to hook up to.
That's why some councilors suggested asking voters whether to pull an undetermined area – probably parts of Sunshine Valley – out of the urban growth boundary. With no urbanization coming, the Damascus City Council could de-annex those areas, alleviating property owners' tax burdens.
If the application goes forward, said Councilor Randy Shannon, the city could have some say in what areas are urbanized.
As for everything else? "This is the area that should not be in the urban growth boundary because it's not needed to meet the population forecasts and we're going to have trouble urbanizing those," he said.
"A lot of the conflict we're seeing is over the idea of urbanization, because it is different than what most of us moved out here for."
A modest proposal?
In an interview Tuesday, Damascus Mayor Steve Spinnett said he doesn't understand how his city or its residents would benefit from a reduced urban growth boundary. He thinks large property owners should be able to sell three or four lots on their property as a stop-gap until larger-scale development can happen.
He also thinks development should be allowed on hillsides, such as the lot he owns on a bluff in the northern part of the city.
"I think one house per two acres makes a lot of sense," he said. On a recent trip to Europe, Spinnett said he noticed that most development was on hillsides, leaving valley bottoms for agriculture. "This whole notion that you have to build your homes on the flats and not allow development on a slope, it's inconsistent with how things are done worldwide."
At Monday's council meeting, Spinnett wondered about gerrymandering, and pointed out Tuesday that he lives in an area that would likely be proposed for removal from Damascus if the November initiative passes.
Political consequences aside, though, he said he'd rather see the city finish its comprehensive plan instead of fighting for a UGB adjustment. Without a plan approved by Damascus voters and state regulators, development in the city is severely limited.
A change to the urban growth boundary, Spinnett said, would be a waste for those who were removed. "They paid eight years of property taxes (to the city of Damascus) for nothing," he said.
But Damascus City Councilor Diana Helm, a proponent of putting the measure on the ballot, looks at it differently.
"Quite a few people on the east side of the city should not be paying for growth that they probably won't ever see in their lifetime," she said.
Why things went wrong
The core of Damascus' problems aren't unique to that city – they're scenes that play out in once-bedroom communities all over America.
What separates Damascus from Pahrump, Nev., or McKinney, Texas, though, is Oregon's land use planning system. Cities in Oregon can make decisions about how they want to grow, but those decisions have to be approved by state regulators.
Those regulators, guided by court decisions and mandates from the Legislature, urge cities to avoid large lots for homes, typical sprawl and environmental impacts. That doesn't necessarily mesh with the values of a community filled with large homesteads, many in their second or third generation of ownership.
It's becoming increasingly evident that the 2002 UGB expansion won't lead to any land owners getting rich quickly, as some may have hoped when Metro voted to add Damascus at the time. The voters will decide whether to ask Metro to leave parts of the city should be left as if 2002 never happened.
But the Metro Council has to take the entire region's needs into consideration, not just one city's request. Politics have no official place at the Oregon land use table, but advocacy groups – some of which would be opposed to any move that could lead to more development on Washington County farmland – could fight any effort to take parts of Damascus out of the boundary.
Unprecedented move
There's a lot of uncertainty around a potential ballot measure. While the Damascus City Council is bound to ask for a boundary change if the voters approve it, the Metro Council has to weigh the desires of Damascus voters against the needs of constituents from Forest Grove to Wilsonville to Portland.
It's unknown when the Metro Council would consider a potential UGB reduction – Damascus would have until March 15, 2013, to apply for an out-of-cycle amendment to the boundary – but Metro Council President Tom Hughes said in an interview Tuesday that he thinks it might be better to consider a boundary change, if the voters request it, during Metro's regular UGB review starting in 2014.
Any boundary change would have to be approved by state regulators. Metro has never tried to reduce its urban growth boundary unless compelled by the courts.
And even state approval wouldn't keep the issue out of courts. Some property owners in the areas selected for removal could sue, saying their right to develop was taken away – however remote it might be that development could happen in the near-term. While those properties have yet to be zoned for new development, property owners could argue that the expansion of the UGB was a form of re-zoning, even if construction was decades from being feasible.