Cornelius at center of reserve debates

As regional leaders hash out the final negotiations over where the region should grow, all eyes look westward

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, Feb 4, 2010

ADVERTISEMENTS

Next Monday a meeting will be held in Portland that could determine what Cornelius will look like in the future.

But the meeting won’t be a session with the Cornelius City Council. Instead, it’ll be a meeting of the minds between four very different politicians representing the whole region.

That’s when the “Core 4,” a group of elected officials who’ve been set with the task of guiding the region’s planning of urban and rural reserves, sits down for its latest meeting. But the foursome – Washington County Chair Tom Brian, Clackamas County Commissioner Charlotte Lehan, Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogan and Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington – won’t just be there to talk. The hope is, they’ll be ready to cast some votes.

What the foursome decides will set in motion the epilogue to a two year-long slog through the political muck that is Oregon’s land use planning process.

“We might be able to land this plane after all,” Lehan said Tuesday. “We’ve been circling the airport for a while.”

Over the last week, a flurry of behind-the-scenes talks have been held to hash out the final negotiations over urban and rural reserves.

“I would just like to find a solution that respects the [agricultural] industry and hopefully gets us to a point where we’re not embroiled in litigation for years,” Lehan said.

But some people privy to those negotiations say that Clackamas County officials have put too much pressure on Washington County to reduce the amount of farmland that would be designated for possible urban development in the future.

“Clackamas county delegation has tried to intervene in things that are in Washington County,” said Metro President David Bragdon.

Lehan said she’s gotten the message to butt out, though not in as many words, but thinks reserves will have regional impact, and should have regional input.

Bragdon issued a press release urging everyone to come together after a frustrating meeting of Metro’s Policy Advisory Committee, a collection of elected officials from across the region, last Wednesday.

“The MPAC meeting showed how difficult this is,” Bragdon said. “They were going over things that they’ve gone over for two-and-a-half years.”

Then it took the group a half-hour to figure out whether or not they should adjourn the meeting.

The wrench in the works seems to have come from a coalition of environmentalist groups, who along with 1000 Friends of Oregon, a land use advocacy nonprofit, and the Washington County Farm Bureau, have been putting pressure on elected officials over the last two weeks to pare back the amount of land set aside for urban reserves from around 24,000 acres to more around 15,000.

The biggest cut to urban reserve land in that group’s proposal comes in Washington County. And the most politically contentious urban reserve proposal is in Cornelius.

“We keep on getting asked to peel back and peel back,” said Cornelius City Manager Dave Waffle.

Cornelius planners say the city will need to expand north of its current borders and onto the farmland north of Council Creek in order to accommodate industrial job centers.

1 | 2 Next Page >>