The state board tasked with reviewing the region's proposed urban and rural reserves put off its decision for a week, saying it still had questions about controversial proposed urban reserves near Forest Grove, Cornelius and Hillsboro.
The Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission is looking at whether Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, and Metro, adequately studied the suitability of their various proposed urban or rural reserves for either protection from or designation for future development.
But commissioners were grappling as to whether there was evidence in the record that the proposed urban reserves on farmland in western Washington County to support designation as urban reserves.
The commission scheduled a 1 p.m. meeting on Oct. 29 to make its final vote.
Brent Curtis, Washington County's planning manager, tried to make the case for the designation in more than three hours of testimony Friday morning. After the board put off its decision, he said there's "lots and lots and lots" of material that's "really the explanation of how we connected the evidence to the requirements of the law."
Not surprisingly, the lead lawyer in opposing the Washington County reserves disagreed. Mary Kyle McCurdy, attorney for 1000 Friends of Oregon, had a one-word answer when asked if the county could justify its case: "No."
The charge against designating the areas as urban reserves was led by Commissioner Greg Macpherson, a Lake Oswego attorney. He said he'd have a hard time finding "that any reasonable person could conclude the factors (for urban designation) have been met," particularly with regard to land north of Council Creek near Cornelius.
"To draw a peninsula is, I think, intrusive into the agricultural landscape and certainly based on my knowledge of agriculture, a risk of breaking down the separation and buffer of the factors," Macpherson said.
In testimony earlier in the day, though, Curtis encouraged commissioners to look past the proposed Cornelius urban reserve, which in earlier testimony had been referred to as a "megaphone."
"We have a supergigantic megaphone that predates the planning process. The city of Cornelius and the city of Forest Grove exist," Curtis said. "Those conflicts exist. They were there in the beginning."
Once the commission looks at the record next week, it can either uphold the region's first-of-its-kind urban and rural reserves designation, or it can remand all or part of it back to the region for a second look.
The western Washington County areas seemed to be the only parts of the proposal at risk of a remand. Commissioners had little further discussion on other hot-button areas, including a rural reserve in western Multnomah County, an urban reserve near Stafford, urban reserves and undesignated areas north of U.S. 26 and an urban reserve in the Tonquin Geologic Area near Wilsonville.
Still, Kathryn Harrington, the Metro councilor who led negotiations for the agency, wasn't celebrating yet.
"There is a lot of consensus, so there's a lot to feel good about with that regard," Harrington said. "But there are some very important areas of contention, so I'm not willing to declare victory."
The location for the Oct. 29 commission meeting has not been determined.