Land Use and Property Rights

Six Questions: Big Look Committee Outlines Oregon’s Land-Use Future

By Sam Lowry, Guest Writer, 7-28-06

by Sam Lowry

In Java, the mark of power is to hold opposing viewpoints in dynamic tension, reconciling them both in the moment and over the long haul.

The Oregon State Land Use Task Force — known as the Big Look task force — now five months into its three-year charge to recast the state’s planning program, shows no signs of believing it will do any less.

At its retreat held Sunday and Monday in Lincoln City – the first of several meetings planned away from Salem’s familiar halls – the 10 Big Look members boosted confidence that they can find workable solutions to an issue now seeming to preoccupy every breathing soul west of the Colorado front range: how to balance landscape protection with property rights.

It appears to be a true treaty house of land-use politics.

The weekend meeting followed others held since spring to gather thoughts and comments on the state’s land-use planning system – a strict and vaunted system implemented in the 1970s, but shocked two years ago by passage of the property-rights Measure 37.

That measure has spawned similar measures in nearly every Western state this year, and land-use nerds nationwide say they are watching Oregon, to see how it will emerge from such a massive comeuppance.

In many respects, it is the Big Look task force they are watching.

• • •

In Lincoln City, with two days to sift through a mass of ideas and passions assembled over months, the task force got down to making something tractable out of it all.

Mike Thorne, Pendleton rancher and task force chair, suggested three goals: crafting a short-list of consolidated issues (the group’s target for months now), delegating responsibility for examining them, and designing this examination to fit the task force’s political and group ethos.

Two days later, the body accomplished all three things.

Working groups consisting of three or four members (they volunteered or agreed to serve on two groups each, based on interest and “ideological balance”) will spend the hot months delving into six massive topics.

Can the entire land use debate be reduced to six questions? You be the judge:

Question 1: What are the appropriate roles of state and local governments in land use in Oregon?

Question 2: What is the appropriate role of citizen involvement in land use?

Question 3: What role should land use planning play in enhancing Oregon’s economy now and in the future?

Question 4: What are the most effective tools to manage population growth to achieve community goals?

Question 5: How should Oregon’s system of infrastructure, finance, and governance influence land use?

Question 6: How can the land-use process appropriately address the benefits and burdens that fall on individual land owners and the general public?

Think of an issue; it’s certainly there on the list of questions. (If you doubt, listen to the meeting’s audio recording, when it gets posted.) Within the pointed, sometimes contentious, occasionally humorous debate that led to the issues’ framing, lies your topic, whoever you may be. This goes right down to the really tough ones – because everyone knows they’ll have to be dealt with.

Take rural residential development, for example; it’ll mostly be part of Question 6:

“A lot of people feel they have a right to their one acre of paradise, and maybe that’s engendered some of the hostility to the program,” which prevents that, said member Wes Hare, Albany’s city manager, on Sunday.

“The cumulative effect of everyone living on an acre in the Willamette Valley would over 30 years have meant we look like California,” said member David Bragdon, Metro chairman, a short time later.

“Now I know where you stand on that one!” laughed member and property rights attorney Jill Gelineau. “I want you on my subcommittee!”

On Monday, Gelineau argued that individual property owners have borne too much burden for public wishes.

“Maybe making this a central topic gives us the chance to address it head on and provide some leadership on an issue that the state has failed to deal with,” she said.

The working groups will not attempt to craft solutions, but will lay out pros and cons, opposed positions and trade-offs within the myriad fine-grained topics the six questions encompass.

For now, their careful introspection preserves hope for success, sounding a grace note in the Oregon – and Western – clamor. Its members are clear in their desire not to defeat one another, but resolve tangled issues together.

Thorne carefully reminded his colleagues not to freewheel in formulating issues. “It has to be done in a way that reserves the right of all 10 members in the final framing.”

INVOLVE CITIZENS, GOV ADMONISHES

The goal is to assemble work groups’ output into an agreed-upon whole by Christmas. Then early next year, the task force will go to the people.

Finally, many will say.

Already thousands of Oregonians have sent comments, by letter and e-mail, in organized forums (particularly the Envision Oregon effort), and through the task force’s own online survey, conducted in June and July.

Are they being heard?

Maybe not in the way they hoped. Many (including this writer) have noted the disconnect between early expectations that the task force would hold hearings around the state, and the emergent reality that it would wait to do any such thing.

On Sunday the group received a letter from Governor Ted Kulongoski.

“I encourage the Task Force to commit itself to assuring opportunities for education, involvement and validation of your work for all Oregonians,” the Governor wrote.

“I think the answer is, yes, we agree,” said Thorne. “There’s going to be a right time for that.”

The task force has been adamant about moving forward systematically.

“We all want [public outreach],” said Hare; “but we have to structure it. It is like drinking from a fire hose.”

The online survey, commissioned by task force members Steve Clark, editor of the Portland Tribune, and Judie Hammerstad, mayor of Lake Oswego, received a lukewarm reception from the group.

“The survey did not provide too much [focus],” said member Gretchen Palmer of Palmer Homes in Bend.

There is great risk in dissing even a single comment offered by a citizen. But the members know they will have to find a way to engage people across the state.

One model that impressed Hammerstad, Palmer, Bragdon, and task-force vice-chair Nikki Whitty, a Coos County commissioner, was the one they witnessed at last month’s forum organized by the Urban Lands Institute (ULI) in Redmond.

“There was a whole lot of interaction among people and officials from all around the state,” said ULI’s Holly Hendricks, present at the task force retreat.

She said that ULI would like to hold another, similar forum, at a time and place when all ten task force members can attend.

When all is said and done, among the many Oregonians passionate about land, the pent-up desire for engagement and involvement can only be a good thing – once it is released.

The task force’s message to all Oregonians was finally clear: “We will want to hear from you.”


Sam Lowry, a former Gorge-area resident, is a freelance writer who reports on Oregon’s landmark land-use debate.

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