Competing visions in urban reserve talks
Two competing maps show the latest political battle lines in years-long planning effort
Chase Allgood / News-Times
Portland Mayor Sam Adams (left, center) and Washington County Chair Tom Brian wrangled over the issue of urban reserves Monday night in the Hillsboro Civic Center.
For more than two years regional leaders have been trying to hash out what land should be set aside for urban development in the next 50 years and what should stay rural.
Over the past month, those talks have gotten stickier, with Tualatin and West Linn sending a strongly-worded letter opposing the urbanization of the Stafford area south of Lake Oswego and some county commissioners questioning the whole process.
But Wednesday, Metro President David Bragdon and Metro Councilor Carl Hosticka said the time to act is now. And they drew a map to show the way.
The next day, Metro Councilors Robert Liberty and Rod Park issued their own map, which made a similar centrist pitch on where the region should grow-largely eschewing controversial areas like Helvetia and the heart of the Tualatin plain north of Forest Grove-but would set aside much less land for urban development.
The Bragdon-Hosticka map, if adopted, would mean the region would set aside 28,000 acres of urban reserves to use as cities expand over the next 40 or 50 years. Liberty and Park's map identifies 18,700 acres.
But in a split vote on Thursday, Metro councilors voted to back the Bragdon-Hosticka map.
Liberty and Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder voted against the Bragdon-Hosticka map. Park abstained.
“Our intention is to accelerate discussion through having a specific proposal on the table to which people can react," said Hosticka at the Thursday meeting, according to a Metro press release.
The map, called the Bragdon/Hosticka Map is similar to a map of initial agreement drawn up by the “Core 4,” a group of representatives from Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties and Metro.
But it also makes some bold suggestions:
• Land north of Cornelius between Council and Dairy Creek, west of Cornelius Schefflin Rd. is recommended as an urban reserve, while urban reserves for land south of Cornelius is significantly pared back.
• Forest Grove gets a small portion of land north of its boundaries bounded by Purdin Rd. in the north and Highway 47 on the east.
• The Stafford triangle is largely set aside as urban reserve.
• Gresham gains an urban reserve to the east of Highway 26 around Orient Drive.
• Boring, west of Highway 26, is marked as an urban reserve.
Many controversial areas are set aside as undesignated areas. These include:
• An area west of Forest Park in Multnomah County on the west side of the Tualatin Hills.
• Land near North Plains and along West Union north of Highway 26, which a group called Save Helvetia has rallied to designate as rural reserve is left undesignated, with some rural reserves surrounding it.
• An area near Parrett Mountain, bounded roughly by Mcconnell, Baker, Grahams Ferry and Bell Roads is left undesignated.
• A pair of large areas to the south and east of Oregon City in Clackamas County are left undesignated.
“We have made our best effort to develop a proposal to which the Metro Council and the county commissions might potentially be able to agree,” they wrote.
Metro hopes to approve draft intergovernmental agreements this week.
The Core 4 is expected to continue meeting throughout the week.
Andy Duyck, a Washington County Commissioner who was making rumblings about the direction of the reserves talks a couple weeks ago, said he was heartened by what Hosticka told him.
Both Bragdon and Hosticka have been shopping ideas around the three counties.
“Keep in mind that it’s still fluid, but I think what he’s trying to do is get to the next step,” Duyck said. “We’re at the point with this discussion where it’s probably more politic.”