Council Creek Still Front Line of the Reserves Fight

By Christian Gaston
The Forest Grove News-Times
July 28, 2010

The long reserve saga is nearly over.

In October, the Land Conservation and Development Commission will decide whether to give Metro and three Portland-area counties the green light on setting aside land as urban or rural reserve – or send the planners back to the drawing table. When they do, the commission will weight the comments of nearly 50 individuals and groups that object to the reserves in one way or another.

Here’s a sampling of the objections filed with the state.

Coalition for a Prosperous Region

Who they are: A group of business and building concerns, including the Westside Economic Alliance and the Portland Business Alliance.

What they want: The coalition argues for more land to be left undesignated (especially reducing the number of rural reserves). The crux of the argument is that it’s difficult to predict the future growth of the region, so by surrounding urban reserves with rural reserves, Metro has constrained the flexibility that future policy makers will have.

And, the coalition argues, the rubber will meet the road in the future, when predictions are harder to make. The fact that Metro’s reserve effort is largely unprecedented in the United States underlines the stakes, the coalition argues.

“No one else has been successful in what Metro is attempting to achieve. Nonetheless, the decision builds in little margin for error due to the ‘hard edge’ of rural reserves,” the coalition argues. It also says more urban reserve land should be added to Washington County because it grows faster than Clackamas County.

Key quote: “The amount of designated land is far too little, and too lop-sided in allocation around the region [it is mostly in Clackamas County, even though more growth is projected for Washington County].”

1000 Friends of Oregon

Who they are: a statewide nonprofit arguing for land conservation and urban development inside the region’s Urban Growth Boundary.

What they want: While 1000 Friends was involved in the crafting of the state statute enabling the urban and rural reserve process, the group became crosswise early on with Washington County’s planning efforts. In their objection to the reserves, Mary Kyle McCurdy, the group’s policy director, argues that Washington County failed to follow the state statutes when analyzing lands for their potential as urban or rural reserves and, essentially, picked the wrong places for future growth. Instead of lands with low-value agricultural soil, such as the area between Sherwood and Wilsonville, county planners designated land in the central Tualatin Valley near Hillsboro, Forest Grove and Cornelius. McCurdy argues that the statute, as written, is meant to protect those very lands.

1000 Friends argues for a remand that would reduce the amount of foundation farm land included in urban reserve and instead designate foundation farmland as rural reserve; strip the large-lot industrial purpose from the plan; revert 3,000 acres of foundation land to rural reserve; throw out the Washington County reserves analysis; and remove the urban reserves north of Council Creek near Forest Grove and Cornelius, the North Hillsboro urban reserve and undesignated lands around North Plains and Banks.

Key Quote: “The land most threatened by urbanization in Washington County is now proposed as urban reserves.”

Thomas VanderZanden

Who he is: VanderZanden, a former planning official with Clackamas County, works as a private planning consultant.

What he wants: As the representative of the East Bethany Owners Collaborative, VanderZanden spent much of the past three years lobbying for the inclusion of a portion of land east of North Bethany and west of Forest Park in an urban reserve. His objection continues that work, arguing that Multnomah County didn’t adequately weigh the factors determining whether a piece of land should be designated as urban or rural because the county didn’t want to take on unincorporated urban land inside its boundaries that the city of Portland wasn’t interested in annexing.

Key quote: “Where cities were aggressive, like Cornelius, considerable acreage was designated urban. Where there was no city advocating for additions, nor a county advocating, very little urban reserves were designated.”

Carol Chesarek and Cherry Amabisca

Who they are: Chesarek was a member of the Multnomah County Reserves Citizens Advisory Committee and Amabisca is one of the leaders of the group Save Helvetia, a citizen-activist group working to reduce urban development north of Highway 26 in Washington County.

What they want: Late in the reserves process, Washington County switched the designation of what’s known as the Peterkort property, a piece of land on the edge of the planned North Bethany urban development area. The property was slated for a gravity-feed sewer line, but the property owners wanted an urban reserve designation from county leaders in order to hand over the right-of-way. They got one, and the Metro Council grudgingly (via a split vote) agreed. The objection from Amabisca and Chesarek is a continuation of their opposition to that Metro vote.

Key quote:”There is ample evidence to support designating this property as a rural reserve for both natural features and agriculture, especially given the valuable buffer that the Rock Creek floodplain provides between urban and rural uses, and its importance in the context of the West Hills, Forest Park, and wildlife corridors.”

Sam Adams

Who he is: As mayor of Portland, Adams was vocal during the reserves debate in his belief that the region was moving toward designating too much urban reserve land.

What he wants: Adams argues that there is more capacity inside the current UGB than the reserves planning documents account for. The reason? Future Max lines and other high-capacity transit corridors will lead to more dense development inside the core. Adams wants the state to remand the reserves package to the counties and Metro and instruct them to account for additional capacity for higher density development, essentially reducing the need for urban reserves.

Key quote: “The urban reserves process became too focused on rural land suitable for urban uses and not on efficiency measures to increase capacity inside the current UGB.”

To read the objections, visit www.lcd.state.or.us/LCD/state_review_of_metro_reserves.shtml.