Oregon to streamline city expansion rules
Published: June 27. 2006 4:00AM PST
SALEM - To help accommodate population and job growth over the next two decades, the cities of Bend and Redmond are mulling expansions of their urban growth boundaries.
The process to do so, however, is not quick or easy.
Planners must base those plans on a series of assumptions - such as future population, future household size, the room needed for streets and parks, and future lot sizes - and then defend them to the state and against legal appeals.
As a result, it can take years and thousands of dollars to complete a single boundary expansion. The city of Bend is presently studying 27,000 acres to come up with 4,000 acres that will survive challenges.
But the process may be getting simpler.
The state, long criticized for the complexity and slow pace of land use decisions, is considering rule changes to make it faster and cheaper to redraw urban growth boundaries.
"This is a definite step in the right direction," said Damian Syrnyk, a city of Bend senior planner and a member of the task force that helped draw up the proposed rules.
"We can do the job right the first time if we have more clarity and people know what the rules are," he said.
The Land Conservation and Development Commission, which is meeting Thursday in Pendleton, will hold its first public hearing on a streamlined approval process that relies heavily on a concept known as "safe harbors."
A safe harbor is an accepted standard. If a city uses that standard - such as the acreage needed for roads and parks - then it would not need to do stacks of reports to justify its assumptions.
And state planners would not need to spend hours analyzing those same reports, said Bob Rindy, a planner with the state's land use agency.
"It saves money at all levels," he said.
The motivation for the rules is reducing the debates about minutia, such as what a projected household size will be, he said.
The rules, for instance, say a city can simply rely on the household size from the last census - rather than spending time and money on studies and paperwork to justify a projection, he said.
Greg Winterowd, a co-owner of Portland-based Winterbrooks Planning LLC, said the benefit to taxpayers is that cities can devote limited resources to things the public really cares about, such as how much density neighborhoods should have and where parks should go.
His business has been hired to oversee more than 20 boundary expansions by Willamette Valley cities.
"What we have today is fertile ground for arguments by people for or against expansions, which delay the process," he said.
"Even though I get paid for spending more time, that is a waste of the public's money."
Still, while the rules could offer a shortcut by requiring fewer reports - they will not erase the questions cities must answer before expansions are allowed, said Bend planner Syrnyk.
"It is potentially faster and will cost less," he said, "but it doesn't relieve us of our responsibilities."
James Sinks can be reached at 503-566-2839 or at jsinks@bendbulletin.com.
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