METRO POLICY ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING RECORD

September 10, 2003 – 5:00 p.m.

Metro Regional Center, Council Chambers

Committee Members Present: Charles Becker, Herb Brown, Richard Carson, Nathalie Darcy, Meg Fernekees, Bernie Guisto, Eugene Grant, Ed Gronke, John Hartsock, Tom Hughes, Richard Kidd, Doug Neeley, Alice Norris, Martha Schrader

Alternates Present: Larry Cooper, John Leeper, Karen McKinney

Also Present: Bob Clay, City of Portland; Gary Clifford, Multnomah County; Brent Curtis, Washington County; Kay Durtschi, MCCI; Paul Gilles, City of Hillsboro; Kathy Henton, MCCI; Jim Jacks, City of Tualatin; Doug McClain, Clackamas County; Karen McKinney, City of Hillsboro; Pat Ribellia, City of Hillsboro; Les Ruark, Gilliam County

Metro Elected Officials Present: Liaisons – David Bragdon, Council President; Brian Newman, Council District 2; Rod Park, Council District 1. Other: Susan McLain, Council District 4

Metro Staff Present: Kim Bardes, Andy Cotugno, Sherry Oeser, Mary Weber

1.  INTRODUCTIONS

Mayor Tom Hughes, MPAC Chair, called the meeting to order at 5:10 p.m. Those present introduced themselves.

2.  ANNOUNCEMENTS

Chair Hughes welcomed Herb Brown, Special Districts, Multnomah Co, to his first MPAC meeting.

Chair Hughes announced changes to the MPAC schedule canceling the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve meetings and setting an extra meeting date for November 19^th.

Andy Cotugno announced the final date for the Cascadia Metropolitan Forum as December 5^th, 2003.

3.  CITIZEN COMMUNICATIONS

There were none.

4.  CONSENT AGENDA

Meeting Summaries for July 9 and July 23, 2003.

5.  COUNCIL UPDATE

Councilor Rod Park said David Bragdon was late because he was with a group of people looking at the Arlington Landfill. He said there were 7 Goal 5 meetings to get public input on the program. He said that the Oregon Transportation Commission was meeting on September 17^th at the ODOT Region One building. JPACT was rescheduled for the following Thursday due to Railvolution, rather than the following day. There were 5 appeals on the UGB Decision from 2002. LCDC was looking into putting all 5 into one lawsuit.

Brian Newman said that they had had a strategic discussion about the Metro budget at Council the previous day.

Ed Gronke asked what the purpose for the Goal 5 forums.

Andy Cotugno said that they had a Goal 5 agenda item coming up and they would discuss that shortly.

6.  AGRICULTURAL SYMPOSIUM

Chair Hughes updated the members on the Agricultural Symposium. He discussed the tour and time constraints that may prevent them from providing tours. In lieu of this they would provide a good presentation with pictures and maps. It would be held on Halloween.

Martha Schrader asked if they were involving the Oregon Farm Bureau.

Chair Hughes said yes.

Martha Schrader said it was good to include them and she wondered if actual farmers were able to attend.

Chair Hughes said that the farmers who participated in the two previous focus groups were well represented.

Rod Park said that Terry Peterson, President of the Washington County Farm Bureau, had participated. Another focus group for Clackamas and Multnomah counties will be held on September 25, 2003. He said that the President of the Oregon Farm Bureau out of Multnomah County had very different views on farmland issues than the representatives from Washington County.

Martha Schrader asked if small timber farmers would be included.

Chair Hughes said yes. He said that 1000 Friends, the Department of Agriculture, and OSU had representatives at one or the other of the focus groups, so he felt that there was good representation.

Doug Neeley asked why they had only one focus group scheduled for Clackamas County when they had two for Washington County. He thought that if they had poor turnout for the first one that might explain it.

Chair Hughes said that there were folks who wanted a second focus group in Washington County. Susan McLain supported the second and found funding for it. Chair Hughes said they tried not to have it serve as a tool to make a point but rather to have an open discussion.

Susan McLain said that there was a real interest in the farm community to deal with both farm issues and urban issues. Especially for where some of the infrastructure issues were the same. They talked a lot about transportation needs. She said there was a lot of interest in the October 31^st meeting and in finding out what was going to happen on the east side.

Doug Neeley referred the committee to the report by the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce. He asked for clarification on a few questions he had.

Susan McLain said that the farming industry had to remake itself just like any other industry. The resources needed to remake themselves included land and water. Farming needed to be in irrigation districts. She said that people in the agricultural industry realize that they have land needs that cannot replace anything else.

Chair Hughes said that as urban areas become more congested it would increase time spent on market days because the residential roads would get more congested, and it would take the farmers more time to transport their goods. The competition for water also was a big problem. Areas that were good for growing crops needed good irrigation and that was sometimes problematic. He said that the decisions that they made collectively about the UGB and about infrastructure demands over time would be better served by what they learned through the focus groups and symposium.

7.  GOAL 5

Chris Deffebach said that she would first update them on the fish and wildlife items coming to Council for action. She said that she would also introduce them to the Tualatin Basin approach. Materials pertaining to these items were distributed and are attached and form part of the record. Chris Deffebach reviewed the items handed out. She reminded the committee members about the commitment Metro had to establishing a regionally consistent fish & wildlife habitat program. She said there were also regional connection issues to consider while creating this program. The benefit of using a regional approach should make it easier for some jurisdictions to develop a program for their area. She handed out another document pertaining to major milestones in the program. She said that staff would be back to MPAC for review and action/decision on how to proceed with program options. Ms. Deffebach also informed the members that the outreach effort for the program had begun.

Brian Newman said that people could go to the Metro website to get information on Goal 5. They could also put in their address to see where they were on the map.

Doug Neeley asked if the jurisdictions had received jurisdictional maps. He said it would be useful to have a Metro staff person come to his office and go over one.

Chris Deffebach said that the jurisdictions did have quarter-section maps, but that they had not been going out to sites to review them.

John Hartsock said he had concern that the Damascus area was disjointed with the overall concept planning process. He was worried that there was a lot of confusion for the public pertaining to this.

Doug McClain said that they had coordinated with Metro staff. He thought that there were a lot of public meetings taking place in Damascus that might be creating confusion.

John Hartsock said that the county had advised the CPOs to call Metro and schedule Metro to go out to Damascus, but he did not consider that coordination for the concept planning process. He asked that Metro staff work on that.

Chris Deffebach said they would like to come out and they would set something up.

Martha Schrader said that there were more stakeholders involved in the process beyond the CPOs and that it would be good to get all those people together for a meeting.

John Hartsock said that there was an MOU going between the county, Metro, and the CPOs and it needed to be coordinated.

Herb Brown asked if there was any action or interaction for the Clackamas River fish and wildlife and the water treatment proposals, such as with the Sandy River, for example.

Chris Deffebach said that the Metro water resource health advisory committee reviewed the Goal 5 work and that Metro did look for opportunities to meet with groups.

Andy Cotugno said that they were only dealing with Metro territory watersheds and not up in the mountains.

Susan McLain said that Chris Deffebach should make sure that Goal 5 got on to the agenda for the Regional Water Consortium.

Ed Gronke said he was concerned about the impact of mapping and the designations made by Metro. He said he was worried about the lack of public knowledge of the significance of the mapping. He suggested that they focus the outreach to homeowners in those areas.

Chris Deffebach said that increasing awareness of choices available was the focus of the public outreach.

Ed Gronke said that what had been done so far did not seem effective.

Chris Deffebach said that that was why they were looking for a variety of groups to visit in their outreach effort. She welcomed suggestions.

Ed Gronke said he was concerned about large groups asking 6-8 months down the road why they were not informed of the Goal 5 process.

Chris Deffebach said that they were anticipating a more intense interest in Goal 5 around March and April when they start talking about program options. She said that when they get to the ordinance stage it would be the first time other people hear about it. The Metro staff expected that people would learn about it at different stages of the process.

Andy Cotugno said that they had two property owner notices planned to go out in the spring and the fall.

Chair Hughes said that when they set the Goal 5 process in motion it was decided that the Tualatin Valley Basin could be treated separately. They wanted to be looked at by a basin-wide approach. He said that the Tualatin Basin approach would reach the same end result as Metro’s program, but it would be done in a way that addressed the particular needs of the basin. He introduced Brent Curtis to give details on the Tualatin Basin approach.

Brent Curtis, Planning Manager for Washington County, was representing the Tualatin Basin Natural Resource Coordinating Committee, which was a coalition of governments in the basin. He said that the coordinating committee had signed the basin agreement to undertake two of the three phases of Goal 5. That was the second step, the ESEE, and the third step, the program. In the agreement they vouched that they would coordinate with Metro and that they would return their ultimate judgment to Metro for them to evaluate. The overall goal of the work that the basin had done was to achieve the vision that was stated in as to serve, protect, and restore a continuous ecologically viable stream site corridor system through conservation, protection, and appropriate restoration. He said that they would coordinate their efforts with Metro to engage the public. Mr. Curtis said that they had also undertaken an effort to define existing environmental habitat and they were also doing their own ESEE methodology. They had worked closely with Metro staff on both those items.

John Hartsock asked if they were looking at tying together the service water management and the Goal 5 work.

Brent Curtis said that they were tying them together to the extent that outcomes would borrow from service water management types of approaches and vice versa. Because there was such a big effort to address the clean water act in the basin, they decided that the basin approach would be best.

Chair Hughes said that this discussion would be the first in a series of discussions on Goal 5.

8.  TITLE 4

Chair Hughes introduced Mary Weber to discuss Title 4.

Mary Weber said gave an overview of the Title 4 program. She said that the task between now and the end of the year was to decide where on the map the RSIA (regionally significant industrial areas) would go. There was still concern on the Council’s part, as they had not seen language on it yet. She said that they were on a schedule to have a recommendation to Council to adopt by the end of the year. That would mean that by the middle of October they would have a recommendation to Council that would begin to go through the MTAC/MPAC process. She said that along with the recommendation would be the map ware.

Doug Neeley said he wanted to be sure that MPAC saw the language in sufficient time before it went to Council.

Mary Weber said that they had laid out a schedule and she thought the staff had provided nearly a month between when it first went before and MPAC and when they would need the decision. She assured them that they would have enough time to review it thoroughly.

Chair Hughes said that staff should schedule the first discussion on Title 4 for the November 19^th meeting. He said that Rod Park had raised an issue about the timing on these decisions being a little uncomfortable. The Title 4 decision did not have flexibility and it had to take place before the decision on the expansion of the UGB. The difficulty was that they were set up to reach a decision on Title 4 by the end of the current year, and the UGB expansion decision by next June, and then a Goal 5 decision by the end of 2004. The concern was that having land in the regionally significant industrial area that the ESEE process would require removed from the Goal 5 regulations. The worst scenario was to have Title 4 regulations superimposed over Goal 5 regulations that could result in valuable parcels of land becoming un-developable or un-saleable. The problem was making the UGB decision followed by the Goal 5 decision and resulting in adding more land to the UGB later on in order to meet industrial needs.

Rod Park asked if they were comfortable making the UGB decision in June and then work on Goal 5 knowing that it might reduce the industrial land received in June. He wondered if they were willing to speed up the Goal 5 process, which he did not think was really possible, or would they rather meter back the timeline on the industrial lands process. He asked if a six months slip would have a profound effect on the regional economy.

David Bragdon said that the Council had already made a commitment to do the industrial land decision by June of next year and to the public, the stakeholders, and LCDC. He said he would not initiate anything to change those timelines.

Chair Hughes said that he thought it was less about timing but rather how they all worked together as a region. He said that if they trust that both processes would proceed in a straight forward, do what was best for the region, then there would not be a real problem. He said that the timing problem was more about how we choose to react to it.

David Bragdon said that he did not think it was a question of an aggregate number acres on one end of the scale and the same acres on the other end of the scale. He said that the ESEE analysis and the evaluation placed upon regionally significant industrial lands was relative to how the weighting was done. Another important factor would be the implementation period on Goal 5. Once Metro adopts something it would still need to through the state, and then it would have an implementation period built in at the local level. He said that local jurisdictions did not implement the Metro program until their next periodic review. So it could take years before either decision had a lasting effect on a jurisdiction.

Susan McLain said that they were parallel projects that were completely independent in the review process. She said that different areas of the region would implement Goal 5 at different times since Washington County had indicated that they would implement Goal 5 before the state had made a decision. She said she thought they should keep going on their own timelines.

Gene Grant said that there was a real need to get industrial land but that there was a perception among the business community that this was years and years passed due. The perception was that the system had not worked and there was some sense now that Metro had realized that and was trying to fix it. If Metro were to put the industrial land process behind Goal 5 he anticipated that the business community would not be pleased.

Chair Hughes said that they would proceed with the current schedule for all three programs.

There being no further business, Chair Hughes adjourned the meeting at 6:35 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Kim Bardes

MPAC Coordinator

ATTACHMENTS TO THE RECORD FOR SEPTEMBER 10, 2003

The following have been included as part of the official public record: