Battle of the lands

County and Metro officials will decide which lands will develop and which will remain rural

By Jim Hart

The Sandy Post, Oct 20, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

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“The one growth-related issue that both in-city and rural residents seem to agree on is the separation between Sandy and the metro urban area,” he said. “People have experienced Gresham and Portland merging together, and preserving some kind of greenbelt between Gresham and Sandy along Highway 26 is key to keeping our sense of community and preserving the small-town feel.”

A few months ago, Lazenby said, the county PAC chose a position Sandy found acceptable.

“After many meetings, the county PAC recommended extending the Metro urban reserve east to 282nd,” Lazenby said, “and we felt we could live with that.”

But the county commission’s final recommendation went counter to its PAC.

“(The commission) recommended extending it all the way to the Highway 212 intersection,” Lazenby said, “which is almost halfway to our current urban growth boundary.”

But Clackamas County Commissioner Charlotte Lehan, who represents the county when talking with the other metro counties and Metro, said the issue is being considered for the metro area as a whole.

And each government entity has a vote in the decision process.

“We’re trying to come up with a regional decision that works for the whole region,” she said, “and provides enough land for employment and housing – and protects farmland.”

These representatives of the three counties and Metro, called the “Core Four,” must follow the factors identified in 2007 inside Senate Bill 1011, which outlines factors to be considered when evaluating various uses of land such as access to transportation and water, utility infrastructure and parcel size.

Some of the region’s land will be undesignated because it doesn’t fall easily into urban or rural categories. It will remain zoned as it is now, and not likely change significantly over time.

The reason the Boring area scores high on both urban and rural, Lehan said, is because many factors apply to that area.

“If the decision is not to designate it as an urban reserve,” she said, “it certainly would stay as a rural reserve.”

Lehan described a triangle that can be drawn on the map east of 282nd Avenue, with Highway 212 as one leg of the triangle and Highway 26 as the other.

“That’s the area that is most in question right now,” she said. “If I were predicting, I would say not all of that (triangle) would stay as urban. Part of it is likely to remain as rural reserve.

“Nothing is decided, but that’s kind of the discussions that we’re in the middle of, and I know we’re planning to meet (with Sandy officials) soon.”

Even though she said nothing is decided, she predicted all of the land near Highway 26 between Sandy and the Highway 212 interchange would remain as rural reserves, which would prevent it from being changed for the next 50 years.

Metro and the counties are taking public comments until mid-November, when a Nov. 18 Metro PAC meeting will set the stage for recommendations to the Metro Council and its Dec. 10 final decision.

For more information on the calendar, visit the Metro Web site calendar.oregonmetro.gov/events/?l=14.

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