MILWAUKIE – A briefing for the Clackamas County Coordinating Committee about the proposed Community Investment Strategy started with a wheelbarrow full of complaints about urban reserves.
It didn’t get much less contentious.
About 35 members of the committee were on hand for a briefing about the strategy, roughly the 25th such briefing in the past month. Metro Deputy Planning Director John Williams gave the briefing, filling in for Chief Operating Officer Michael Jordan, who is out of town.
A few minutes into the meeting, West Linn City Councilor Teri Cummings rolled a wheelbarrow full of reports into the ballroom at Milwaukie’s Grey Gables Estate.
“What I brought here is my collection of all the material that I’ve collected in just this last year, and from all the meetings as a citizen and as a Clackamas Advisory Committee person with Metro,” she said. “I don’t think it makes economic sense to have all this staff time that went into all this, with the illusion we would keep with the factors.”
The factors she referred to were the factors that were applied to designating urban and rural reserves. The point of the wheelbarrow exercise was to protest the inclusion of the Stafford area in urban reserves, areas Metro will target for urban growth boundary expansions for the next 50 years.
About 28,000 acres of urban reserves were designated in February; Metro staff reviewed about 8,000 acres as a potential first tier, so to speak, of land that could be included in the first batch of urban growth boundary expansions.
Cummings asked for a show of hands of how many people in the room supported the inclusion of Stafford in the urban reserves – eight hands went up, but one Damascus city councilor pointed out that he was uncomfortable voting on something he wasn’t familiar with.
“The important thing is that five of them are on the Clackamas County Commission,” quipped Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden.
Acting Metro Council President Carlotta Collette, who represents Clackamas County, pointed out that Metro’s staff and consultants didn’t even study expanding the growth boundary to Stafford this year.
“It’s important to let people in the room focus on the areas we’re actually considering expanding the UGB in to,” Collette said. “That decision (reserves) was made last year. We really need to move on.”
After another brief back-and-forth, Williams returned to the question-and-answer format that’s been prevalent at most of the presentations about the Community Investment Strategy so far.
But the tenor of the meeting remained contentious.
Tualatin City Councilor Jay Harris questioned Metro’s planning goal of 15 units per acre.
“I grew up on a half acre lot, which isn’t huge,” he said. “At 15 units per acre, there’d be seven houses where I grew up.”
An acre is slightly smaller than a football field.
“We need to get a ground based effort to find how how do people really want to live? Do you want a garden in your backyard? The possibility of having a chicken?” he said. “People may be getting forced into housing choices and types they wouldn’t do normally.”
Williams pointed to restrictions in Metro’s charter which prohibit it from increasing density in existing neighborhoods.
“If you look at the 2040 map, there are centers and corridors identified for dense growth in the future – places we think should have compact form,” he said. “The vast majority of it is yellow, which is neighborhoods. They’re huge lots that are going to stay single-family lots for a long time.”
Jim Needham, a Molalla city councilor, wondered whether that compact urban form was attainable with the current (and planned) transportation system. He reminded the Metro representatives that the scenarios they’ve planned for have yet to actually happen.
“You’re disregarding the fact that we have existing communities of people who can’t move,” he said. “They’re going to continue to commute back and forth to their jobs.”
Collette responded that it’s hard to find an answer for everyone.
“But you can begin to solve it for more and more people,” she said.
Transportation also was a concern for Paul Savas, a member of the Oak Lodge Sanitary District. He pointed to commercial and industrial zoning in areas that haven’t developed, and compared that to industrial development in Washington County and Wilsonville.
“They’re waiting for roads. They’re waiting for the network. They’re waiting to see that investment,” he said. “Until then, our economy’s suffering.”
Diana Helm, a Damascus City Councilor, responded that her city is trying to focus on solving its own transportation problems.
“We realize it’s going to be our biggest issue going forward,” she said. “We’re hoping to get help from Metro as well.”
Jobs and connectivity were also a concern for Michael Read, another Oak Lodge Sanitary District representative. He pointed to the Springwater area southeast of Gresham as an example of a place where transportation funding hasn’t followed industrial designation, limiting growth.
“You can do all the industrial planning you want to do and no one’s ever going to come,” Read said. “It’s an exercise in futility. If our plan says this is where industrial goes, then we have to find a way to fund infrastructure.”
This story was not subject to the approval of Metro staff or elected officials.