Frustrated by the tone of dialogue across jurisdictional boundaries, several Portland-area mayors have convened in their own forum with hopes of improving understanding across the region.
Much of their anxiety is directed at the Metro Policy Advisory Committee, a panel of regional representatives created by the Metro Charter and charged with advising the Metro Council.
About 20 local mayors attended the first meeting on Nov. 16. The group is set to meet again on Dec. 14, and its organizers are working on setting an agenda for the gathering. Coincidentally, that's the same date as the last scheduled MPAC meeting of 2011.
Tensions between cities, counties and Metro have been building for about two years, since the closing months of the regional urban and rural reserves designation process. Many Clackamas County representatives were frustrated with attempts by Washington County to set aside prime farmland for development; Washington County representatives thought Clackamas County overstepped its bounds in the negotiations by trying to block specific urban reserves in the Tualatin Valley.
That simmered for about a year, blowing up when Portland Mayor Sam Adams introduced a resolution at a September MPAC meeting, recommending the Metro Council require any residential developments in urban growth boundary expansion areas have at least 20 housing units per acre.
The resolution passed but was ignored by the Metro Council.
Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden is convening the mayors' group, and in an interview last week compared MPAC to a death penalty trial, a case of road rage and the Civil War.
Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden
When two reasonable people bump into each other in a doorway, Ogden said, one will naturally pause to allow the other to walk, maybe even holding the door for the other individual. It's a polite, pleasant experience.
"But we get out in a car, it's altogether different," Ogden said. "You see a little bit of white space, and you're going to cut in front of me, then I'm going to cut in front of you and I'm going to say 'Don't you ever do that to me again or I'm going to throw my banana at you!'
"Same people, different environment, acting irrationally – that's kind of what happens at MPAC," Ogden said.
The group isn't scheming on the UGB or plotting new priorities for transportation funding, Ogden said.
"I just want to talk about, for now, what's important in Milwaukie, what's important in Troutdale, what's important in Cornelius," Ogden said, and he plans on sharing Tualatin's priorities too, with hopes of finding areas where those priorities overlap.
"Screw the MPAC table, screw the JPACT (Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation) table, forget about that," he said. "Let's just talk about how I can support you, how you can support me, what is that we can collectively do together that's going to collectively raise the tide for all of us?"
Troutdale Mayor Jim Kight said there's disenchantment with MPAC, and the effect is that MPAC just isn't being listened to by the Metro Council.
"If we could all coalesce around the issues and speak as one voice, that would be pretty powerful," Kight said. "We want to keep it with the mayors, and make sure we're all speaking with one voice as the mayors of the region. After we have a discussion, we're going to look for a consensus."
Metro Councilor Carl Hosticka, one of the council's liaisons to MPAC, said he's happy the group is convening, and hopes it'll be an effective way for the mayors to deliver their message to Metro and the legislature. But he wondered whether the forum would inevitably be faced with the same challenges as MPAC.
"The same frustration they have with MPAC may show itself in that meeting," Hosticka said. He added that MPAC has been contentious for some time, going back to when Metro was considering nature in neighborhoods requirements – when Ogden chaired MPAC. Frustrations are likely, Hosticka said, "any time you take on a contentious issue where there isn't regional consensus."
Forest Grove Mayor Pete Truax said he thinks the broader forum, where every mayor has a voice to speak to their concerns, might make conversations less tactical and overtly political.
"We're going to go in and say 'This is what we feel is important, this is our stand,' and make the best case," Truax said. "I don't think every city in the region gets an opportunity to make that case at MPAC."
The Metro Charter says the largest city in each county gets a seat on MPAC, as does a representative of the remaining cities. In the 1990s, MPAC was expanded to include representatives from each of the counties' second largest cities.
The group does not have a name yet, and not every mayor of the region was invited – very small cities like Rivergrove were left off the list.
Portland's mayor, the source of some of the frustration, was invited to the first meeting but was unable to attend. His staff said they have been working to try and find a time for Adams and Ogden to talk about the group.
Ogden said it's an approach he's seen with Washington County's work on implementing Metro's Title 3 wetlands planning rule and with the county's urbanization forum, which led to Metro's Title 11 urbanization rules.
"Those are examples of what I think we can do regionally if we get everybody in the room together and say 'Forget about the argument. Let's not argue about the UGB expansion or the density units per acre, let's talk about our real local aspirations and how we can support each other, and if we understand those better those will translate into initiatives we can discuss broadly among ourselves and at the MPAC table,'" Ogden said.
Truax said another problem at MPAC is the charter-mandated non-elected representatives on the committee, including citizen representatives and appointed members from boards like TriMet.
"Non-elected people at the table share the same voice as those of us who have election certificates," Truax said.
Nathalie Darcy, a citizen representative to MPAC from Washington County, said she didn't know about the group, and was surprised to hear about it.
"If there are concerns by the mayors, come talk to us," she said.
She also agreed that the Metro Council might not be following the advice of MPAC.
"That's a fact, and on reserves and on the UGB, the recommendations of MPAC pretty much fell by the wayside," she said.