Metro councilors said Tuesday they generally support an agreement, reached over the weekend, to settle years of land use debate and legal wrangling on the region's west side.
Several parties, including legislators, representatives from local governments, land conservation advocates, development interests, Metro Councilor Bob Stacey and Metro Council President Tom Hughes, met during the weekend to discuss ways to settle the region's urban and rural reserves designations, which were cast in doubt last Thursday after an Oregon Court of Appeals ruling.
The court ruled that Washington County didn't use legally acceptable criteria for deciding what land to designate as a rural reserve – and because the county didn't have rural reserves, it didn't have urban reserves either. Faced with years of process to re-designate reserves, the parties appear to have chosen to settle the case.
"Our state was founded on the premise that our land was the basis for our livelihoods and therefore warranted strong protection and thoughtful planning," the Metro Council said in a statement. "The proposed agreement reached by the leaders and residents of our region and endorsed by our Legislature is in keeping with our state’s founding premise."
The agreement would be put in place by House Bill 4078, which started this year's short legislative session as a way to speed up development in the South Hillsboro area.
The agreement has several key points:
- Hundreds of acres of land designated as urban reserves in Washington County – areas cities had planned to focus growth for the next 50 years – would instead be locked out from development until 2060.
- Almost all of the urban reserves in western Washington County would be immediately brought inside the urban growth boundary. Washington County would have some new urban reserves land added near West Union.
- Because a bunch of new industrial land near Hillsboro was being added to the UGB ahead of schedule, Metro wouldn't have to consider the impact of that land on the region's industrial land carrying capacity right away. That would allow other cities – chiefly those on the southern tier of the region, from Sherwood to Happy Valley – to make a case that the region needs more industrial land in the next UGB expansion.
- Metro's 2011 urban growth boundary expansion would be declared official by the Legislature, ending legal challenges to the expansions.
- No Metro UGB expansions into undesignated areas – neither urban, nor rural reserves – in any county could take place unless 75 percent of the urban reserves in that county have been brought into the UGB, annexed into a city and zoned for urban uses.
- Metro would change its UGB review cycle from five years to six.
- The Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission would have to issue its written evaluation of UGB expansions within 180 days of issuing a verbal ruling. The Oregon Court of Appeals would have to render a ruling on legal challenges to LCDC's decisions within 180 days of oral arguments, barring unforeseen difficulties.
The deal would mark an end to many of the key battles fought for years in Washington County over growth. Land north of a branch of Council Creek north of Forest Grove would be flipped from urban to rural reserves. Land north of Council Creek near Cornelius would be flipped from undesignated to rural reserve. And almost all of the land north of U.S. 26, considered by some to be part of the community of Helvetia, would be preserved as a rural reserve.
But the biggest change is north of Hillsboro, where about two-thirds of the land between U.S. 26 and Evergreen Parkway, east of McKay Creek, was blocked off from development and preserved as a rural reserve.
At an emergency work session Tuesday, the Metro Council endorsed the terms of the agreement, with some reservations.
"I'm concerned about my district," said Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette, who represents much of Clackamas County. "I'm concerned about where this puts us for the next urban growth boundary decisions."
Those concerns were echoed by Clackamas County Chair John Ludlow, in a letter to the House Rules Committee.
"If there is a need for additional lands, a case can be made for a UGB expansion in Clackamas County to bring in sorely-needed industrial land," Ludlow wrote.
The proposed amendment to the bill, released late Tuesday, appears to address those concerns – it calls the new UGB expansion area north of Hillsboro "employment land of state significance" that doesn't "count in determining the employment capacity of the land within Metro."
Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, said at a hearing Thursday that may not be enough for Clackamas County.
"Clackamas County wants to hear they're going to get some (land added to the UGB) next time around," Clem said.
Councilor Craig Dirksen said the agreement was not the council's preferred outcome. But, he said, "this is the best compromise we were going to get, and much better than the other alternative, which is no compromise."
The agreement only applies to Washington County – the group agreed to let the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development address the Oregon Court of Appeals' remand of urban reserves in Clackamas County and rural reserves in Multnomah County.
The House Rules Committee held a work session on the bill Tuesday, but was not expected to vote on whether to accept the amendments and move it forward. The Metro Council was set to meet late Tuesday in Forest Grove.