PORTLAND – Seemingly drained after days of technical testimony, members of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission and the final witnesses slated to testify agreed to recess early on Thursday afternoon.
The commission is through with three days of a four-day hearing on whether to accept the region's proposed urban and rural reserves. Thursday's testimony was some of the most detailed so far.
Much of the afternoon, and part of the morning, was spent on a laundry list of objections to the reserves designations in Washington County.
Many of the objections were about the land north of Council Creek near Cornelius, and many came from 1000 Friends of Oregon, represented by attorney Mary Kyle McCurdy.
"It is difficult to conceive of an area more qualifying of rural reserve designation than the farm land at the heart of the Tualatin Valley agriculture industry, north of Council Creek," she said. "If this area doesn't qualify as rural reserves, then the discretion of Metro and the county has no real boundaries."
In one of the few instances of a commissioner asking a question of a witness, Chair John VanLandingham asked McCurdy what urban reserve areas she would suggest the commission remand back to the county for review. McCurdy said the areas north of Cornelius and Forest Grove and some lands north of Hillsboro should be removed from the urban reserve area.
"You've indicated you would not make a new urban reserve to make up for that?" VanLandingham asked.
"The region would still be well within its requirement to have a 20 to 30 year urban reserve," McCurdy responded.
A few hours later, Cornelius development manager Richard Meyer defended his city's aspirations.
"The question really is, is there enough evidence that 600 acres of conflicted land needed by Cornelius over the next 50 years will really break the back of our great agricultural industry?" Meyer asked.
For Jim Johnson, the land planning coordinator for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the answer was yes.
"This finger points out into agricultural land," he said. "Combined with what could happen over in the Forest Grove area, you put those two together and you start to have pincers going around a large part of agricultural land in this area."
He said traffic going north to U.S. 26 from the proposed urban reserve would diminish the quality of the farmland surrounding the area's rural roads.
Jim Irvine, a principal at The Conifer Group, had another take on the Council Creek area. He compared it to a megaphone going out into the prime farmland, and instead recommended the commission link Cornelius and Hillsboro with an urban reserve that spanned Council and Dairy creeks.
Council Creek wasn't the only Washington County topic of Thursday's discussion. Members of the group Save Helvetia appeared, asking the commission to keep land north of U.S. 26 as a rural reserve. That includes the so-called Peterkort property, a parcel north of Rock Creek added late to the urban reserves.
"Our objection requests you remand this area, with the recommendation to designate the Peterkort property as a rural reserve," said Cherry Amabisca, one of Save Helvetia's leaders. "The region can add additional urban reserves later. But once they're designated, we can't undo them."
Other objections raised included a landowner in the Bendemeer Road subdivision near West Union who wanted to be in the urban reserve, and concerns about land near North Bethany.
The recess sets the stage for the closest thing Oregon land use law can have to a dramatic conclusion. Washington County planning manager Brent Curtis will testify beginning at 8 a.m. Friday, followed by Metro attorney Dick Benner.
Once they're done, the six members of the commission – Commissioner Tim Josi is absent from the hearing after the Oct. 11 death of his wife – will deliberate and decide whether to accept reserves or send part or all of it back to Metro and Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties for a re-evaluation.