A vote tonight could play a key role in deciding whether Clackamas County moves forward with a request to ask Metro to study potential urbanization in an area near Stafford.
The Stafford hamlet board will be voting on what to say in a letter to Clackamas County Commissioners, giving the commission guidance on whether to sign off on a study of the Borland area, near Interstate 205 and Stafford Road.
"We are waiting on the Stafford hamlet," Clackamas County Chair Charlotte Lehan said Monday. "They will decide whether to make a request to the county commission."
Lehan came to Metro last week to notify the regional government's planners that the county could ask for a study of the area's potential for urbanization. A report, "Borland: Clackamas County's 21st Century Urban Center" has been circulating at Metro, but it erroneously gave the impression that Clackamas County was behind the document. Officials stressed the county was not involved in generating the 32-page report, and have asked that the county logo be removed from the front cover.
Dave Leland, the managing director of Leland Consulting Group, apologized for listing the county as a co-presenter of the report.
“Our client is the Borland Neighborhood Association. We understand that the request for any study needs to come from the governing body, which in this case is Clackamas County," Leland said. "The purpose of the document was to inform Metro and to inform Clackamas County. If the cover of the report appeared as though it was prepared by Clackamas county then that is not the case at all. I apologize for any confusion. The placement of the logo and the language on the cover was an error."
Update April 18: This story has been updated to include quotes from Leland and Clackamas County about the county's lack of involvement in the report. Clackamas County was not involved in creating the report.
The Stafford hamlet board is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. Monday at Athey Creek Middle School, 2900 SW Borland Road.
"The board is going to determine if we're actually going to be sending a letter to the county and what we may or may not recommend that letter says," said Dave Adams, one of the hamlet's board members.
Adams, who emphasized he was speaking for himself and not the board as a whole, said he thinks that any study of urbanizing the Borland area should include a look at Stafford as a whole. Adams pointed to a memorandum of understanding that said any potential urbanization of the area would be studied on a larger scale.
"We need to honor the integrity of the (memorandum) and study everything or study nothing," he said. At a recent town hall, Adams said, "the integrity of the hamlet as a whole seemed to be the theme that everyone seemed to feel far more important than studying one area.”
The planning regulation, adopted as part of the 2010 urban reserves agreement between Clackamas County and Metro, says "Concept planning for (the Stafford area) must be coordinated so that Area 4C (Borland Road) is planned and developed as the town center serving the vast majority of Area 4A (North Stafford) and Area 4D (South Stafford)."