Members of a Portland sustainability organization raised serious concerns about Metro's growth plan, including how the plan will create equitable neighborhoods and its coordination with local governments, and questioned Metro staff's projection techniques.
"We know that creating livable communities involves a lot of details and details get left to local jurisdictions," said Phil Selinger during a meeting with the Coalition for a Livable Future. "It's hard for us to know when those details are being given lip service."
The coalition met Wednesday with Metro Councilors Rex Burkholder and Robert Liberty, both former members of the coalition, to discuss Metro chief operating officer Michael Jordan's growth report, "Making the Greatest Place: Strategies for a sustainable and prosperous region." The report encourages channeling most growth inside the existing urban growth boundary, investing in repairing and maintaining existing buildings and infrastructure, and holding Metro and its local government partners accountable for the goals they put in place for themselves and the region.
Sue Marshall, a Lake Oswego consultant, took Metro to task on how the growth plan will make equitable communities, saying that measuring equity doesn't seem to be addressed in the report.
"I'm pleased that it's one of your six desired outcomes, but what are the metrics related to equity?" Marshall asked. "How will we know when we're there?"
Councilor Liberty said the coalition can help Metro in evaluating equity in the region. He said the report came with growth predictions in about two dozen areas in the region, but did not say what income levels would be represented in that growth. Though income levels are now included in the report, they don't paint a pretty picture when it comes to communities' equity. "We remain fairly polarized [in the projections]," Liberty said.
"We're not getting a result we like [from the projections]," Burkholder agreed. "The question is, looking at that data, what are the policies we should be adopting?"
Another item the coalition focused on was Metro's strategies for prediction, specifically the assumption that regional zoning would stay the same for the next 40 to 50 years. Mary Kyle McCurdy, an attorney with 1000 Friends of Oregon, said it would be more sophisticated for Metro to assume increased zoning capacity, as local governments are likely to increase zoning as population increases.
Councilor Liberty said it's best to use caution when making predictions, and Councilor Burkholder said the council is aware that zoning can change in the future.
"We can't predict how we might change in the future, but that we might have to change is something we should recognize," Burkholder said.
But for Fred Nussbaum, aiming for goals nearly half a century into the future is unreasonable.
"That's been one of my pet peeves," Nussbaum said, instead encouraging the councilors to plan for a variety of scenarios 10 to 25 years into the future. "That's going to be an art in itself, trying to plan these scenarios."
The coalition also brought up urban and rural reserve areas, focusing on open space inside the existing urban growth boundary. Mike Houck, executive director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute, said the Coalition should weigh in on the best way to protect existing floodplains and river corridors within the growth boundary. Houck said the strategy of "urbanizing them in order to protect them" isn't working.
Councilor Liberty said the projections assumed that those areas would not be developed. But Sue Marshall said those lands should be put into rural reserves, and said provisions in Metro's Urban Growth Management Functional Plan could not be relied upon to protect those areas.
"If there's money to be made, those lands are still in jeopardy," Marshall said. "We really need to figure out a regulation that keeps streams out of urban reserves and gets them into rural reserves."
Nick Sauvie, executive director of Rose Community Development, said Metro needs to develop an "affirmative action plan" for areas that are growing but aren't getting investment that's proportional to their growth. As an example, he cited East Portland, which he said has 25 percent of Portland's population but received less than 1 percent of Portland's federal stimulus money.
Councilor Burkholder said analysis of where public investments go is a good thing, but federal stimulus dollars aren't a good measurement because the stimulus package is a one-time anomaly.
Mara Gross, policy director for the coalition, said she worried that expansive local road projects could contradict Metro's plans of reducing greenhouse gases, maintaining existing transportation and encouraging more sustainable modes of transportations like biking or using transit. She wondered how Metro was going to reconcile their plans with projects at the local level.
Fred Nussbaum echoed Gross' concerns.
"If [local governments] start building by the time they're supposed to conform their local transportation plans to the RTP, the horse is out of the barn," Nussbaum said.
Houck also complained that Jordan's recommendations on reserves were written out, not illustrated on a map. Councilor Liberty said that was done purposely to not lock the Metro Council into specific reserve areas before the councilors had a chance to formally weigh in on the recommendations.
The coalition plans to release a written response to Jordan's recommendations, Gross said.
– by Sean Breslin, Metro staff