The leaders of the Metro Council and Washington County Commission said Thursday they were ironing out final details on a new plan for urban and rural reserves on the west side of the region.
Washington County Chair Andy Duyck said he was ready to bring the proposal back to county commissioners to see if they were ready to vote on it; Hughes said a few more details remain to be worked out, "but we're close."
Representatives from Washington County and Metro met Thursday afternoon in Portland.
The proposal could go before the Washington County Commission on March 15, inside a procedural window that allows for changes to the county's comprehensive plans.
The discussions come in the wake of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission rejecting parts of the region's landmark plan for 50 years of growth.
Both sides emphasized no formal map showing new urban and rural reserves had been created, and the agreement was based upon broad understandings about whether to include specific geographic areas. Metro and Washington County have been focusing on finding new urban reserve areas to replace the 624 acres north of Cornelius the state commission rejected in October, Hughes said.
"We're looking at some sort of approximate replacement for the Cornelius land in terms of what would be at least as usable as the Cornelius land would have been for industrial growth," Hughes said in an interview Monday, before the latest conversations with Washington County. "Washington County's proposal had that north of (U.S.) 26 and west of Helvetia Road. I'm not sure that's a bad place to set it."
Hughes said the area's status as undesignated was another reason to think it could pass state review if brought in as urban.
"LCDC did not raise any issues about it," he said. "It was not one of the areas they flagged and said 'You can't leave that area undesignated, it's got to go rural reserve.'"
The plan wouldn't create any new undesignated areas north of U.S. 26, instead removing rural reserve designations from one area south of Hillsboro. Most of the proposed urban reserves north of Cornelius and Forest Grove would become rural reserves.
The new urban reserve north of U.S. 26 isn't likely to sit well with land conservation advocates, who are still pushing Washington County and Metro to scale back their urban reserves proposal.
Mary Kyle McCurdy, the staff attorney for 1000 Friends of Oregon, said the Washington County Farm Bureau has offered a compromise to Metro to keep the reserves designation out of the state Court of Appeals.
Establishment of rural reserves north of Council Creek near both Cornelius and Forest Grove, rural reserves near Helvetia and a switch of land north of Waible Creek from urban to rural reserves – or even undesignated – in the Evergreen Parkway area would satisfy the bureau, McCurdy said.
"There's some willingness to settle on making some of that rural reserve undesignated," she said. "The farmers are truly interested in avoiding having to appeal it."
Hughes said final adoption of a reserves plan in March would set Metro up to decide whether to expand the urban growth boundary later this year. The Metro Council seemed close to expanding the boundary into the South Hillsboro area last year, before Washington County's reserves were rejected by the state.
Adoption in the next six weeks, Hughes said, doesn't mean the public won't have a chance to offer feedback on the final proposal, which has yet to be released. But "there are no surprises," he said, adding that "we're not going to suddenly look at a piece of property or an area of the region that nobody has ever thought would be a good idea before."