METRO POLICY ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING RECORD

April 14, 2004 – 5:00 p.m.

Metro Regional Center, Council Chambers

Committee Members Present: Charles Becker, Herb Brown, Rob Drake, Andy Duyck, Dave Fuller, Gene Grant, Ed Gronke, Judie Hammerstad, John Hartsock, Tom Hughes, Kent Hutchinson, Richard Kidd, Deanna Mueller-Crispin, Lisa Naito, Doug Neeley, Dan Saltzman,

Alternates Present: Tim Crail, Meg Fernekees, Jack Hoffman, John Leeper, Karen McKinney, Dave Shields, Nick Wilson

Also Present: Hal Bergsma, City of Beaverton; Beverly Bookin, CCA/CREEC; Brian Campbell, Port of Portland; Cindy Catto, AGC; Bob Clay, City of Portland; Valerie Counts, City of Hillsboro; Danielle Cowan, City of Wilsonville; Bob Durgan, Anderson Construction; Kay Durtschi, MTAC; Kelly Hossaini, Miller Nash; Jim Jacks, City of Tualatin; Delna Jones, CFM; Gil Kelley, City of Portland; Stephen Lashbrook, City of Lake Oswego; Charlotte Lehan, City of Wilsonville; Leanne MacColl, League of Women Voters; Doug McClain, Clackamas County; Rebecca Ocken, City of Gresham; Laura Oppenheimer, The Oregonian; Pat Ribellia, City of Hillsboro; Michael Robinson, Perkins Coi; Chris Smith, Citizen; Marty Stiven, Stiven Planning & Development Services; Thane Tienson, Landye Bennett; Jonathan Williams, Intel; David Zagel, TriMet; Ted Wheeler, Citizen

Metro Elected Officials Present: Liaisons – Carl Hosticka, Council District 3, Susan McLain, Council District 4; David Bragdon, Council President

Metro Staff Present: Kim Bardes, Dick Benner, Dan Cooper, Andy Cotugno, Chris Deffebach, Lydia Neill, Randy Tucker, Mary Weber

INTRODUCTIONS

Mayor Charles Becker, MPAC Chair, called the meeting to order at 5:05 p.m. Those present introduced themselves.

1.  ANNOUNCEMENTS

Chair Becker announced that he would be switching agenda items 7 & 8.

3.  CITIZEN COMMUNICATIONS

There were none.

4.  CONSENT AGENDA

Meeting Summary for March 24, 2004.

5.  COUNCIL UPDATE

Council President Bragdon reviewed the dates and locations of upcoming public hearings for the Goal 5 Fish and Wildlife Habitat Program and the UGB expansion. Flyers were made available at the back of the room for the convenience of the members, alternates, and interested parties. Those flyers are attached and form part of the record. He informed members that Council would take amendments for the recommendation at the May 27^th Council meeting. Therefore, they would like to have MPAC’s recommendation by May 26^th. He said the Council had noticed final action on the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) by June 24^th due to the final deadline with the state of June 30^th. He also announced the scheduled upcoming Industrial Lands Tours. He informed the committee that Jim Johnson would be making a presentation to the Council on April 20^th at the work session. That presentation would be about the urban impacts on agriculture. He said that at some point that presentation would be made to MPAC as well. He said that the Hosticka amendment was on the Council agenda any time that the UGB main ordinance was before them.

6.  TITLE 4 REGIONALLY SIGNIFICANT INDUSTRIAL AREAS

Rob Drake noted that the version of the report dated 3/25/04 had an error.

Gil Kelly, Planning Director for the City of Portland, reviewed the City of Portland’s proposal, which was outlined in Mayor Katz’s letter and Gil Kelley’s memo. Those documents were included in the packet and form part of the record.

Rob Drake said that the RSIA subcommittee had recommended to the Metro Council that the medical facility issue be looked at by an MPAC subcommittee. He did not think that GMELS would answer all the questions, although it would illuminate some of the issues. He respectfully suggested that they not consider it at this point but have it be part of the host of things that were always open for periodic review.

Gil Kelley said that their preference would be towards caution and to set themselves up to be potentially more liberal in the future because industrial lands were a scarce resource.

Judie Hammerstad said that if they build it now, they could not go back and un-build it. In order to protect the freight mobility of these sites it would be better to adopt the amendment rather than ignore it resulting in over-development and not being able to preserve it for industrial use.

Gene Grant asked what the intent was on the amendment – it seemed to say that no city could allow office space within 1-mile of any of the freeways. The RSIA lands were very limited and it seemed to read as if it was absolute for all industrial lands.

Gil Kelley said the intent was for RSIAs only. They were not trying to govern all territory – just inside the RSIAs.

Tom Hughes said he had also thought it had applied to all industrial land when he initially read it. He said that when they studied something, they took no action until the study was done as opposed to taking action and then determining if that was the right action to take. He urged that they did not go in the direction that Gil Kelley had suggested.

Dave Fuller said that he also thought the restrictions applied to everything. He mentioned that the restriction of 1-mile would take up 50% of three metro cities, and the airport was less than that to the entrance of I-84. He said he didn’t think it would work.

Gil Kelley said they had intended to apply it to RSIAs and industrial areas but not non-industrial areas.

Andy Cotugno said that the motion would cover both the map and the language.

Rob Drake said it would also include that they were asking the Metro Council to form a subcommittee to study the medical facilities for large users for both industrial land and RSIA.

Judie Hammerstad said she would not vote for the motion. She said that she felt they had opened the resolution up to many things that were not the original intent. She said that they all worked hard to meet a compromise, but that she felt that it had been compromised more than it should have.

8.  METRO FISH & WILDLIFE HABITAT PROGRAM

Mike Jordan said that Phase II of the ESEE analysis was complete. He gave an overview of the program: how it started, where they had reached, and about what was to go before the Council on the following day.

Chris Deffebach gave a PowerPoint presentation, a copy of which is attached and forms part of the record.

Gene Grant asked about the impact areas.

Chris Deffebach said that the impact areas were those areas adjacent to the habitat areas and had no resource value for themselves but the type of actions that occur on those impact areas could affect the quality of the habitat. She continued with her presentation.

Doug Neeley asked her to describe the term “other urban development value.”

Chris Deffebach said “other” included parks within Metro’s jurisdictional area across the region and rural areas outside of the UGB.

Herb Brown asked if it included publicly owned land.

Chris Deffebach said that most of the land in the parks category was publicly owned but also included some private land such as golf courses.

Rob Drake said that the environmental community had commented to the Tualatin Basin Coordinating Committee that there was no prohibit on the Tualatin Basin map. There was concern about treating public and private land the same. He said that most private owners, if they were not going to compensate them for the loss of the property, would prefer strictly limit rather than prohibit. He asked Chris Deffebach to speak to compensation for the level of limitation.

Chris Deffebach said that there were a variety of parks and she did not know how various communities would feel about a prohibit designation on parklands. Part of the answer would be on how “strictly limited” was defined. She had heard suggestions that the public lands should be the role model for the region with the highest level of protection and restoration.

Doug Neeley said that there were lands that had been dedicated to cities because the developers felt they could not develop them due to habitat issues. He said that it seemed that they made some degree of sacrifice to make that dedication.

Chris Deffebach said that maybe there could be some cases that would be “prohibit” that Metro had not identified at the site at the level that could be targeted for an acquisition program.

John Hartsock asked how water surface management plans fit into the “strictly limit” or “prohibit” classifications. He wanted to know if that constituted a development.

Chris Deffebach said that they also had to consider whether some areas were so important to keep that they could not be regulated or it would be too much of a hardship. She continued with the presentation.

Andy Cotugno reviewed the resolution, staff report, and map for the committee members.

Doug Neeley asked about developed areas within the floodplains and Brownfield’s that were developed and use had disappeared. Given the Title 3 requirements, in terms of cut and fills, one of the aspects that could occur for the floodplain held great potential for mitigation. The areas that they were cutting from would provide good mitigation opportunities. They should make a distinction between the Brownfield areas versus areas that were developed and in use for a potential.

Ed Gronke wanted to know how those private property areas that were very close to a stream would be regulated. He was curious if planting of anything other than native plants would be prohibited on those slopes so close to streams.

Andy Cotugno said that any program that Metro adopted affected land use regulations including those on the local level. The treatment of native plants was not regulated through the land use process. If, however, someone wanted to redevelop, say turn their house into a duplex, then that was a land-use permit and the regulations would apply.

Ed Gronke asked if someone wanted to expand their home would they have to get a permit.

Andy Cotugno said that that type of thing was what needed to be fleshed out. The questions were, what was the threshold that new regulations should be applying on redevelopment? Those were the type of details that needed to be worked out next as they moved into the program stage of the process.

John Hartsock asked if the scenario was different from what had happened at Blue Lake Park.

Andy Cotugno said he did not know the situation at Blue Lake Park, but he suspected that they were trying to protect the well fields. That was a set of regulations that were necessary to protect the quality of the drinking water and the wells that were located in that area. He said it was not the same as Ed’s scenario.

Herb Brown said that the State Health Department and the local water districts set regulations to protect underground water.

Andy Cotugno continued to review the staff report.

Doug Neeley asked how they would deal with an important wildlife corridor that passed through several jurisdictions; how much flexibility would they permit if an action by one jurisdiction effectively eliminated the functionality of that corridor?

Andy Cotugno said he could not answer that question. He said that was the sort of thing that they would have to address later. He continued his review of the staff report.

Deanna Mueller-Crispin asked if the map was in the Phase II report.

Chris Deffebach said that there was a 2B option map and that due to its large size it would be posted on the Metro website.

Deanna Mueller-Crispin asked if there was an analysis about what the overall loss to class 1 and class A habitat.

Chris Deffebach said that there were many charts and maps that showed various breakouts.

Kent Hutchinson asked when the map would be available for the members.

Chris Deffebach said she thought it would be on the website in the next few days. There could be changes to the map as it was going through the process.

Kent Hutchinson said that they needed to start looking at the map with the understanding that there would/could be changes. He also expressed concern that there did not seem to be enough time to really learn/absorb information before they must make a decision. He suggested that it was bad policy to move too fast through the process.

Gene Grant asked if there had been any effort to engage the property rights groups. He suggested that Metro/MPAC should meet with them and possibly address some of their concerns.

Mike Jordan said that a member of Oregonians in Action was invited and did participate in the social portion of the analysis. He said that Metro had also heard from hundreds of property owners at the open houses.

Ed Gronke said he was glancing through the public outreach executive summary and he noticed that there were a lot of property owners who were in favor of regulation as long as it did not affect them. He wanted to know if there was a trend on public feeling that was emerging yet.

Mike Jordan said that his feeling from people was that they were not antagonized by the discussion although obviously concerned and interested.

Andy Cotugno said that they had done a property owner notice to many residential property owners. For the full public comment report they had used an electronic polling technique at the open houses, and he felt it was a valuable tool to help people determine what they thought about habitat protection.

Gina Whitehill-Baziuk said that the public comment report was based on just a small sampling of people who were overwhelmingly property owners.

Carl Hosticka said that he had attended a lot of those meetings and it was his observation that the people who cared enough to come out to the meetings appeared to be supportive of the program.

Andy Cotugno said that the schedule they were trying to follow: second discussion at next meeting and recommendation at the following meeting. He suggested that the members think about any amendments they would want to propose before the meeting.

7.  GREATER METROPOLITAN EMPLOYMENT LAND STUDY (GMELS)

Bev Bookin gave an introduction on GMELS. Erik Hovee gave a presentation on GMELS. Materials for this presentation were included in the packet and form a part of the record.

Chair Becker asked the members if the study met their expectations.

Carl Hosticka said it would be interesting to see what their ideas were and more importantly if the institutional structure would be able to accommodate them.

Erik Hovee said that they were starting at the general level and then they would look more directly at issues as the process advanced.

Bev Bookin said that the DLDC Goal 9 folks were delighted because they had been struggling at the state level and they saw the study as a new way to look at employment zoning that might be applicable at the state level. It might even result in a region-up challenge to the state to alter the state land-use laws to reflect the new paradigm.

Judie Hammerstad asked if Clark County was involved in the study.

Bev Bookin said yes. There were six (6) counties participating: Clark, Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Columbia, and Yamhill.

Judie Hammerstad asked about older properties being left behind when the market returned. She said that this concerned her pertaining to the UGB expansion and good use of land/space. She asked if they had any suggestions about how that land could be productively reused.

Erik Hovee said the UGB containment within this region might lesson the likelihood of that happening.

Bev Bookin finished the presentation. She suggested that MPAC serve as a mini-focus group for the study.

Judie Hammerstad said that Brian Newman had sent an email regarding pre-used industrial sites, Brownfield’s, which he was working on identifying with Clackamas County. She said that it was a piece of information that they should include in the UGB discussion and recommendation.

There being no further business, Chair Becker adjourned the meeting at 6:58 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Kim Bardes

MPAC Coordinator

ATTACHMENTS TO THE RECORD FOR APRIL 14, 2004

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