The Oregon Court of Appeals is set to release its ruling tomorrow on its landmark review of Metro's urban and rural reserves program.
That ruling, in the case Barkers Five LLC v. LCDC, could render moot efforts in the Oregon Legislature to bypass the Portland region's planning decisions and instead settle 50 years of growth plans in Salem.
A representative for the court has called Barkers Five the most complex case the court has ever tackled – 36,000 pages of reference material, dozens of litigants, all fighting over the legality of the region's plan to set aside 28,256 acres of land for urbanization in the next 50 years, and lock 266,628 out from development as rural reserves through 2060.
The system, created by the Legislature in 2007, replaced a cumbersome designation process by which Metro had to add the lowest-quality farmland to the urban growth boundary, regardless of how much sense it made to expand there.
Those old policies led to a massive urban growth boundary expansions in the early 2000s in Damascus and another expansion in Bethany, areas that have been hard to serve with infrastructure, difficult to establish governance and in some cases, are far away from job centers that prospective residents could work at.
Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties and Metro spent years debating what land to include in urban and rural reserves before reaching an initial agreement in 2010 and wrapping up the last parts of the plan in 2011.
Metro first used the new urban reserves for a UGB expansion in 2011, adding land north and south of Hillsboro, west of Beaverton and west of Tigard to the boundary for urbanization. But development in any of those areas is on hold while appeals of Metro's expansion – and the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission's approval of the expansion – work their way through the courts.
Courts have put off arguments on those appeals while waiting for Barkers Five to be settled. With the prospect of years of legal challenges, developers from South Hillsboro looked to the Legislature to help add the area to the UGB without court review.
Last week, Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, began pitching a plan to remove much of the area designated for future industrial growth north of Hillsboro in exchange for the Legislature unilaterally adding South Hillsboro to the urban growth boundary. Metro, Washington County and Hillsboro have all come out strongly against Clem's plan.
Tomorrow's ruling is likely to set the tone for land use conversations for the remainder of the 2014 session, which ends March 9.
"I look forward to the court's decision," said Metro Council President Tom Hughes in a statement, "and hope that it puts to rest the notion that our local growth management decisions need to be meddled with by the Legislature."
Reserves 'grand bargain' would push process over the finish line, legislator says (Feb. 14, 2014)