Council Creek still front line of the reserves fight

As the fight over where the region will grow in the next 50 years heads to Salem, nearly 50 objections to the adopted plan are filed

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Jul 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.”

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