It’s not surprising that business leaders from the southern metropolitan area were laden with big-picture questions about how Metro can help them encourage, and manage, growth.
After all, the southern Interstate 5 corridor has three burgeoning cities – Sherwood, Tualatin and Wilsonville – and a swath of urban reserve land in Stafford that is decades from becoming a new community of its own. Where other cities will refine themselves from growth on the edge, these places will define themselves with the growth that’s to come.
Thus was the context of a Wednesday morning meeting of the South Metro Business Alliance, about 15 members of which were briefed by Metro Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan on his proposed Community Investment Strategy.
Within the Metro jurisdiction, alliance members were concerned with Jordan’s plans for a regional investment strategy task force. Outside, they were worried about the infrastructure pressures – particularly traffic – caused by growth in satellite cities like Newberg.
That concern was initially expressed by Yvonne Addington, who wondered what Metro was doing to try and solve congestion caused by Yamhill County commuters trying to get from Highway 99W to Interstate 5.
A connector is planned, but Addington wanted to know what Yamhill County was doing to help deal with problems in the Metro region.
“Is the area looking more and more like Los Angeles?” Addington asked.
Jordan said the comparison to the sprawling California metroplex of 18 million people might be a bit of an exaggeration. But he used the question to illustrate how Metro needs to ensure satellite cities from Newberg to Vancouver experience economic growth.
“We should care as much about how many jobs can be created in Newberg as we do inside the boundary,” Jordan said. “Only if those communities can get closer into balance will we be able to help alleviate this commute issue.”
Metro Councilor Carl Hosticka, who represents southern Washington County, said that’s a message that resonates outside of his agency’s jurisdiction.
“My impression is they all would like to be more self contained and not be satellites,” he said. “We don’t have to persuade Newberg they want to be a complete community.”
Linda Moholt, the executive director of the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce, was concerned about complete communities within the region. She said economic development wasn’t enough of a priority in Jordan’s proposal.
“If you have a job, you pay taxes and the rest will follow,” she said. “If you don’t have a job, then there’s nothing we can talk about.”
Jordan said there’s a case to be made that economic development is a huge priority, because the region has 20 different economic development plans. Everybody thinks it’s a priority, he said.
“They’re not working together,” Moholt replied.
Jordan agreed.
“How would you know how to weigh a transportation investment, in terms of economic development, if there are 20 different priorities?” Jordan asked. “That’s where we’re ineffective.”
And that’s where Jordan is hoping to convene a group of regional leaders to talk about how public sector investments can spur the most private sector development. He criticized current mindsets around region-wide investments.
“It’s up to these elected officials who get put in an incredibly difficult box to cut a baby up and if they did it really well, everybody’s equally ticked,” Jordan said. “That’s not a way to solve complex problems.”