Goal One Coalition – One Town Square

Goal One Institute

Goal One Institute is a nonprofit research and communication center – a think tank – based in Lebanon, Oregon. Our mission is to foster a transition to truly sustainable human communities within an intact and healthy global ecosystem. Our primary focus is on the unprecedented challenges of peak oil and global warming and on the role of land use in meeting those challenges.

Nonpartisan and independent, Goal One Institute is committed to the land ethic as voiced by Aldo Leopold:

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. . . . The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”

Policy & Research

Goal One Institute publishes original policy and research reports on specific projects in Oregon, including analysis and recommendations for action. We also provide commentary on land use, energy, and climate issues at our blog, One Town Square.

Current Projects

Issues on which Goal One Institute is currently working include:

Rethinking land use in Lane County in light of peak oil and global warming

The Lane County Board of Commissioners has convened a Land Use Task Force with the objective of revising the county’s comprehensive plan and development code to address the burning issues of the 21st century: how to best ensure cleaner, healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities in a world increasingly threatened by energy shortfalls and a warming climate.

The Task Force is meeting on Monday afternoons, 3:30 – 5:30, at Harris Hall. The Task Force has been charged with reviewing amendments proposed by Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County (available here) and reporting back to the Board with its recommendations.

Reforming the local decision-making process

Over the past several years Goal One Coalition has become increasingly aware of pressing problems with local appeals procedures and costs around the state. The hearings and appeals process can be complicated, convoluted, repetitive, and time consuming; and is becoming so costly that Oregon citizens – applicants and neighbors alike – are being priced out of the process.

Goal One Institute is recommending amendments to the Oregon Revised Statutes to simplify and streamline the local decision-making process and to reduce the cost to local governments of reaching a final decision on applications for permits and zone changes. Currently, state law requires local governments to provide opportunity for at least one public hearing, and caps the fee for that initial public hearing at $250. State law also allows for local governments to provide opportunities for one or more local appeals. No restrictions are imposed on fees for these additional appeals, except that the fee may not exceed the cost to the local government of providing the appeal. Many local governments have imposed fees amounting to multiple thousands of dollars. For example, the cost of an appeal in Lane County can exceed $3,500.

Such high fees effectively thwart statewide planning Goal 1 by pricing people out of the process.

Goal One Institute’s recommended solution to the proliferation of prohibitive appeals fees is:

Amend existing statutory language to emphasis that a single-hearing process is the default process. Local governments would retain their existing authority to review decisions at their own discretion.
If local governments chose to provide options for local appeals, fees for such appeals would be capped at the same cost as for the initial public hearing – $250.

Draft language for proposed amendments to ORS 215.422 (counties) is available here.

Draft language for proposed amendments to ORS 227.180 (cities) is available here.

Goal One is working in partnership with LandWatch Lane County to implement this concept in Lane County. At the urging of the Lane County Board of Commissioners, Goal One Coalition has been meeting with the Home Builders Association of Lane County and a consensus has been reached on a “fix” to the appeals process in Lane County. The draft of the consensus proposal is available here.

Culminating many years of effort, the Lane County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday April 29 ordered the Land Management Division to initiate post-amendment plan amendments (PAPAs) to adopt the reforms to the local decision making process proposed by Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County. The new Board of Commissioners, under the leadership of Pete Sorenson and Bill Fleenor, unanimously agreed that the time to act on the proposals had finally come.

The first public hearing on the proposed amendments to LC chapter 14 was held at a joint meeting of the Lane County Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners, beginning at 7:00 on Tuesday, July 21 at Harris Hall (a work session starts at 5:30). Goal One Coalition’s response to the Staff Report is available here.

At the joint Board of Commissioners/Planning Commission hearing, the Board directed Land Management Division to conduct stakeholder meetings to see if a consensus proposal could be agreed upon. Those stakeholder meetings resulting in a consensus proposal abandoning the “hearings officer final county decision” approach in favor of a straightforward cap of $250 for an appeal to the Board following a Hearings Official decision asking that the Board simply finalize the Hearings Official decision. The proposed process would retain the Board’s authority to review the Hearings Official decision at its discretion.

The consensus amendments to LC Chapter 14 are available here.

Public hearings on the consensus proposal will be held before the Planning Commission on Tuesday, October 6, beginning at 5:30; followed by hearings before the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday, October 21, at 3:30. The hearings will be in Harris Hall at the Lane County Courthouse.

The Board of Commissioners at its meeting on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 4 unanimously approved amendments to Lane Code Chapter 14 to streamline and expedite the way the county processes applications for permits and zone changes. Most importantly, the revised Chapter 14 dramatically lowers the cost of getting through the local process to a final decision. The new procedures provide two tracks for appealing a hearings official decision to the Board of Commissioners. For $3700 – the amount currently charged – a party can ask that the Board hold a public hearing and make the final county decision on an application. But for only $250, a party can ask that the Board not hold a public hearing, but rather simply ratify the hearing official’s decision as the final county decision. On either track, the decision to hear or not hear the appeal rests with the Board.

Property line adjustments in Lane County

Lane County currently does not purport to regulate the adjustment of property lines. Rather, county practice is to allow property owners to “adjust” their own property lines by simply recording deeds with the county clerk. The property owner can then, at some later date, apply for a “legal lot verification,” at which time the county may “ratify” that the resulting lot or parcel was legally created.

Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County have seen that the county’s “hands off” approach has led to abuses where developers find tiny “lots,” most often created when a road was built, slicing through properties and leaving new “lots” on each side. Developers buy up the land, reconfigure the property lines to in essence create rural subdivisions, get the county’s blessing after the fact, and then sell off the developable parcels at a hefty profit – all without public notice or review.

Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County believe the county’s practice does not conform with ORS 92.130(3). More importantly, Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County believe the county’s practices don’t comply with HB 2723 (retroactive unit of land validations) or HB 3629 (property line adjustments).

HB 2723 authorizes counties to retroactively “ratify” units of land that were illegally created, provided they could have been legally created at the time. However, units of land created after January 1, 2007 can not be subsequently “ratified.”

HB 3629 prohibits property line adjustments from further reducing in size substandard parcels in resource zones unless specified conditions are met – the most important of which is that the county approve the property line adjustment.

As Lane County does not review or approve property line adjustments, any property line adjustment in Lane County which reduces in size a resource-zoned property is illegal, as are the resulting units of land. In Lane County, any property line adjustment concerning a resource-zoned property had to at the time and has to in the future (at least until the county adopts property line adjustment procedures) comply with the Court of Appeals holding in Phillips v. Polk County. No unit of land resulting from an unreviewed and unapproved property line adjustment can subsequently be “verified” by the county.

Lane County’s lack of compliant property line adjustment procedures puts Lane County property owners in an untenable position. Lane County’ practices are creating a legal morass for Lane County citizens that must be rectified immediately.

Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County, in cooperation with the development community and county counsel, have drafted amendments to Lane Code Chapter 13 that would implement applicable state law and court decisions. The draft amendments are available here. An explanatory memo is available here.

Culminating many years of effort, the Lane County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday April 29 ordered the Land Management Division to initiate post-amendment plan amendments (PAPAs) to adopt the property line adjustment provisions proposed by Goal One Coalition and LandWatch Lane County. The new Board of Commissioners, under the leadership of Pete Sorenson and Bill Fleenor, unanimously agreed that the time to act on the proposals had finally come.

The first public hearing on the proposed amendments to LC chapter 13 was held at a joint meeting of the Lane County Planning Commission and Board of Commissioners, beginning at 7:00 on Tuesday, July 21 at Harris Hall (a work session starts at 5:30). Goal One Coalition’s response to the Staff Report is available here.

The consensus amendments to LC Chapter 13 are available here.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners approved the Chapter 13 revisions by a unanimous 5-0 vote at its afternoon meeting on Wednesday, December 9.

Lane County will at long last be reviewing and approving property line adjustments.

Nonresource lands

In 2008, in one of Ron Eber’s final accomplishments before retirement from DLCD and as a result of Goal One Coalition’s multi-work on forest issues, the Department of Land Conservation and Development (LCDC) amended its forestry rules, clarifying how the forest inventory was to be conducted (OAR 660-006-0010) and how forest productivity was to be determined (OAR 660-006-0005(2) and (3)).

As a result of the rule changes, it has become more difficult for a “hired gun” forestry consultant to conjure up the evidence needed to remove land from the protection of Goal 4 and reclassify it for development as “nonresource” land. Productivity must be determined and expressed in terms of cubic feet per acre per year. Acceptable data sources are specified. If published data is not available, methodology used by a forestry consultant must be reviewed and approved by ODF.

The Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) has now issued a letter further clarifying their understanding of how the new rules are to be implemented. The letter was developed in consultation with the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and ODF’s designated attorney at the Department of Justice.

The ODF letter explains that the rule establishes a hierarchy of data sources. In the first tier are the sources specified in the rule. The second tier includes other data sources determined by the State Forester to be of comparable quality. If no acceptable published data is available, “alternative methods” may be used to determine site productivity using direct tree measurements and calculations and appropriate site tables. Lastly, if site-specific productivity cannot be determined due to circumstances such as unavailability of suitable trees, sit-specific soil survey methodology may be employed.

The ODF letter reiterates that if data other than specified published data is used, ODF approval of the methodology employed must be obtained on a case-by-case basis. The letter also notes that productivity data assumes fully stocked stands and states that if a landowner claims that the property cannot be fully stocked for some reason, ODF approval is required before the stockable area” may be reduced.

Goal 4 protects “lands which are suitable for commercial forest uses.” However, neither Goal 4 nor its implementing administrative rule establish any productivity threshold. The ODF letter concludes by reaffirming that ODF considers lands capable of producing 20 cf/ac/yr to be commercial forest land. While not a legal standard, the ODF statement should serve as persuasive evidence that land capable of producing 20 cf/ac/yr of commercial timber is forest land protected by Goal 4.

While we at Goal One Institute are not happy with everything in the letter – particularly the bit that in essence requires that the potential capability for growing ponderosa pine in the Willamette Valley be ignored – on the whole, ODF’s letter clarifies several issues which have been the subject of much litigation.

What impact the amended rules and ODF’s letter will have on LUBA’s and the courts’ future disposition of those issues remains to be seen. Goal One Coalition continues its work to see that implementation of the new rules is consistent with the text and intention so as to preserve as much forest land as possible from development.

The ODF letter is available here.

Goal One Coalition is currently assisting local citizens with local hearings and appeals in Douglas County, Coos County, and Linn County in which application of the new forest land rules are at issue.

LUBA has now issued decisions in the Linn and Coos County cases: Just v. Linn County and Anderson v. Coos County. LUBA’s remand orders directed the counties to address compliance with OAR 660-006-0010, and suggested that lands capable of producing greater than 40 cubic feet per acre per year of commercial timber are to be protected as :forest lands” under statewide planning Goal 4:

“Land in a middle range from a low of approximately 40 cf/ac/yr to a high of approximately 80 cf/ac/yr is unlikely to be unsuitable for commercial forest use unless there are additional factors that render those moderately productive soils unsuitable for commercial forest use.”

LUBA’s suggestion that “factors” other than potential productivity might be considered is troublesome, and will undoubtedly be the subject of future litigation and rulemaking.

On February 23, 2010 the Coos County Board of Commissioners held a hearing on remand and re-approved the plan amendment and rezoning request. The applicant’s forestry expert disregarded NRCS productivity data and developed his own “weighted average” potential productivity for the property, claiming that coastal winds rendered the property unsuitable for commercial forest uses. Linda Anderson submitted this letter setting forth our thinking on how OAR 660-006-0010 and 660-006-0005(2) should be interpreted and applied. The county’s approach, if upheld by LUBA, would threaten all of Oregon’s coast with development:

The conditions found on the subject property are prevalent along the Oregon coast. Many coastal properties from the California border to the Columbia River contain sandy beaches, eroded cliffs and headlands, and coastal hills exposed to harsh conditions including wind and salt spray. To find that forested coastal lands are not “forest lands” protected by Goal 4 because individual lots or parcels contain areas of beach and eroded cliff and because the forested lands are exposed to winds would deny the obvious – that Oregon’s coasts are lined with forests from the California border to the Washington border – and would open Oregon’s precious and irreplaceable coastal forest, which maintain soil, air, water and fish and wildlife resources, to development and destruction.