Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I will now call to order this June 16, 2026, Clackamas County Board of Commissioners Land Use Hearing. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Commissioner West?

Here. Commissioner Schroeder? Here. Commissioner Helm? Here. Commissioner Savas? Present. Mr. Chair?

Here.

The quorum is present, Mr. Chair.

All right, thank you. Clerk, would you now introduce our item under consideration today and explain the hearing order for us?

of course before the board order but then before the board today is ZD o-293 fiscal year 2026 minor and time-sensitive comprehensive plan and zoning development ordinance amendments today's hearing will proceed in three steps first will be a presentation from staff second will be a public comment period and testimony and then third a deliberation by the board and either a decision today or setting aside for a future decision During the public comment period will will offer an opportunity for a member of the Planning Commission followed by public officials followed by community planning organization representatives and other agencies Followed by any public members who wish to speak? If you're ready to begin, Mr. Chair, I believe Planner Fritzie has a presentation for us.

All right. We'll go ahead and have that presentation. And Martha, you want to come up then? Oh, there you are. Sorry, I was looking in the back thinking. Yes, ma'am.

So, good morning. I'm Martha Fritzie, Principal Planner, and how do I advance this?

I can either, I can do it for you.

Can you hear me now? Okay. Good morning. I'm Martha Fritze, Principal Planner, and I am going to do what I hope is a brief run-through of the staff report related to Planning File ZDO 293, which is a legislative amendment to both Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning and Development Ordinance. to do generally three things under what we call a minor and time-sensitive code amendment. This is a package that comes to you annually or biannually where we look at ensuring that our zoning codes comply with state mandates, with state law. We often make some optional changes changes to clarify existing language and correct errors that we find in our zoning codes and also it's an opportunity to adopt some other optional provisions that require a minimal amount of analysis often these provisions are to clarify and in this case we really were focused on creating more efficiencies in our zoning code streamlining processes and and trying to make the whole development review process easier, both for staff and for our customers. And also under these optional provisions, we sometimes respond to specific requests from members of the public. And that is the case today in this package as well. I'm going to go through, hopefully at a pretty high level, a lot of the changes. I know that you all received an extraordinarily large packet. There was a lot in there. This package touches 40 sections of our zoning code, adds two new sections to our ZDO, and makes some amendments to one of our comprehensive plan chapters. I'm happy to answer specific questions. I'm gonna try to keep my explanation a little bit higher level today so we can get through this. And before we get started, we did receive two additional pieces of testimony yesterday that I forwarded. I hope that it was also forwarded to you all, but I do have printed copies. If it was not, we received some comments from ODOT and we received some comments from one of our planning commissioners. Both were related to some changes that state law is making that we're implementing in this package. that really are having the effect of reducing opportunities for public input in land use actions. And staff definitely agrees, and I know and I'm fairly certain that the board agrees that this is not the direction that we like going. But I think that both the Planning Commission and I'm not sure if ODOT understood that that these are state mandates and we have to make some of these changes. So I'll talk a little bit more about that. But that was sort of the gist of those two additional pieces of testimony that we received. Next slide. Thanks. So like I said, there's a lot in this proposal. And so we tried to summarize it into sort of five buckets to talk about. And they're listed here. The first two are really largely those mandatory changes. We want to implement recent changes to state law. And those are things that are either in effect now that we are implementing directly out of state law, which is a really inefficient way to implement land use or they're things that will be in effect by this have an effective date of this summer and we want to get ahead of them. We also want to make sure that our agriculture and forest zones align with state law. You know state law is very prescriptive in what is and is not allowed in farm and forest zones and so our planning director took a pretty deep dive into our code and into the state regulations to make sure that we really are aligning properly with state law. And then the other three are largely optional. We're making some changes within the Willamette River Greenway. We're proposing to make some changes within the Willamette River Greenway. We're proposing some changes to clarify how structure setbacks are identified on some lots. And then there's sort of the laundry list under the other minor changes to reduce administrative barriers, correct incorrect citations, provide clarifications, and there's a couple additional items in that category. I'm going to go through each category real quick. Sorry, I'm not good without the little thing. So really there's sort of three subcategories under these implementing recent changes to state law. A lot of them are procedural. A lot of them relate to housing in the urban area. There's new housing application types that were mandated by state law and we now have to add those into our code. particularly middle housing land divisions and certain new procedures for some housing types that are seriously limiting or cutting out public notice or the ability for the public to appeal. And these are the types of new applications that are being referred to in some of the testimony that you've heard. They include different comment periods, sometimes in different rules, and the effect is essentially layering all, we're trying to simplify our code, and we're having to layer all these new processes on, and so we're trying to weave them in as best we can. Within here, there really is only one policy choice. We have to do these. There is one particular new housing application type in which public notice to neighbors appears, we think, to be optional. We have included that partly because we feel that public notice is important, partly because direction from past commissions has also indicated that the commission feels that public notice is important. The Planning Commission also agreed that the public notice should be included in there. I will put a little caveat with that is that public notice with this particular type of application is allowed and would be sent, but the appeal to LUBA for this was limited only to the applicant. On the one hand, it seems like maybe we shouldn't send public notice because they can't appeal it, but on the other hand, it is an opportunity to provide input up front so staff can understand if really this proposed development does meet the criteria to begin with. So we felt it was important. Other changes relate to allowing what I call special uses. There was several bills that allowed different types of uses, again, largely in the urban area but not totally. Things like childcare centers, residential treatment facilities and homes. mental and psychiatric hospitals and crisis stabilization centers. There were a couple of other uses listed in there. We have put them in the appropriate areas and allowed for them with the standards that were listed in state law. And then finally, the implementing of off-street parking rules in the urban area that are currently being administrated ADMINISTERED DIRECTLY OUT OF STATE LAW IN THE URBAN AREA, IN URBAN ZONES SINCE THE END OF JULY 1, 2024, WE HAVE NOT State law has not allowed the county to require off street parking with development. We have been administering that straight out of state law. The purpose of these code amendments is to put that into our code so it is easier to administer and understand. And I'll talk a little bit more about that also in just a minute. Thank you, Tony. Again, I said that we took a deep dive and why we I mean the planning director took a deep dive into our farm and forest zones and found a number of areas where our codes were inconsistent with state law and those changes are proposed. There was have also been some recent changes to state law related to rulemaking and other legislation and we have added those items into our zoning code and then along the way we have a mixed farm and forest zone that has always been a little confusing to folks because it really just points you toward either the farm or the forest zone and so and there is this big long table we have cut that down and just created very hopefully clear direct references to the other zones to make it again easier to understand and administer. Tony. So those were largely mandatory. Now we're getting into some more of the optional changes. And so we're proposing two different amendments within our Willamette River Greenway. And so if you recall, we did have a policy session, gosh, months ago, where we talked a little bit about this. And there are some maps in your packet. So the Willamette River Greenway is essentially this corridor along the Willamette River that has some additional protections, both in our comprehensive plan and our zoning code, It implements statewide planning goal 15, which is called the Willamette River Greenway. And within the Greenway, there are certain regulations in the county and we are proposing to amend two of them. One of them has to do with the, with docks. There are two areas in the rural area, essentially from Oregon City down to like Peach Cove and then between the Canby Ferry and Malala River State Park that are called limited use areas. Within those areas, new private non-commercial docks are currently prohibited. But we did an analysis of how many lots and how many homes are in that area and how many of those have docks and found that only three don't. And so this prohibition is essentially affecting three properties. And it seems unnecessary. It is expensive to try to change this on your property. It takes a lot of time, and so we felt it was unnecessary. It is not required under Goal 15. It is not required in the Greenway, and so the proposal would be to remove that prohibition within those limited use areas, and allow docks, understanding that there are limitations. There's still a process, and it would just have, docks would have to be subject to the same standards as docks elsewhere along the Willamette River. It should be noted that we're not proposing to change the boundary anywhere of the Greenway. It's really just some of the standards within that. And then the other standard that is proposed to be changed has to do with a residential height limitation for properties developed within the Greenway. And there was a specific request from a member of the public who owns some property in the high density residential zone. and wanted to build some housing and found out that there was this limit within the Greenway of 35 feet which limits the amount of housing that could be built in that zone. And outside of the Greenway in the high density residential zone, there is no height limit. There's other sort of natural limits. There's density and other development standards. And so the request came in to consider perhaps removing that. And again, we did a mapping exercise and found about maybe two handfuls of lots within the Greenway that are also in high density residential. Most of them are already developed. Most of them are well set back from the river as well. And so the proposal is to remove that 35 foot limit only in high density residential zones in the Greenway to allow for more housing development and sort of encourage some of our housing goals.

Uh-oh.

So then moving on, this one is a little bit sort of planner and wonky, and I will try to just get through it real quick. But basically when you come in for development, your buildings are required to be set back from your property lines a certain distance. The distance depends on what zone you're in and where you're located. It has come to our attention that a lot of staff time is being spent trying to figure out which property line is the front, rear, and side for setbacks because as we have moved away, particularly in the urban area, from these lovely little rectangular lots to lots of infill and very unusual shaped lots and flag lots, the way that the front, side, and rear property lines have been defined were very confusing and so the intent with these changes is simply to clarify that so we and customers spend less time trying to figure out where the front of their property is for setback purposes. The proposal would not change any of the distances for setbacks. It would just change, it would hopefully clarify where the development can go and make it easier to understand where on the property you can develop. And then sort of the other changes bucket, again, it's a lot of housekeeping and correcting citations. There are a few sort of minor amendments that I want to bring to your attention under this category. One has to do with SROs in urban commercial zones, that's single room occupancy developments. Those are what I sort of think of as a dormitory style. They're not actual dwellings, each with a bathroom and kitchen, but they're living rooms that have some shared facilities, either shared bathroom or shared kitchen facilities. We are proposing to allow them in urban commercial zones that allow multifamily dwellings. Arguably, state law may or may not require us to do that now, but certainly by January 1, we are required to do it. And so the proposal is to include it now because we've had some interest in commercial zones. And between now and January, if we didn't include it, It would require a property owner to go through a similar use determination which costs money and time and it's a land use application and it's gonna be allowed anyway in January so that's why we proposed it. Technically that's optional currently I think but It seemed like a good idea. We're proposing to add specialized structures or to make some changes related to specialized structures in specifically in light industrial zones. And I will talk about that in a little bit more detail in a minute. And then we are proposing to eliminate time extensions. And that sounds big, but effectively it's not going to do a whole lot. So currently, right now currently Outside of our farm and forest zones most of our land use applications have a four-year approval period With an option for a two-year time extension So whatever you're approved to do you have four years to to build it develop it implement if you do not do that within four years you could come in and submit a new land use application and pay a fee and and potentially get an extension for two years. This process tends to be a little cumbersome because if the rules haven't changed in that four years, we won't deny it. Time extensions are rarely denied unless something really substantively has changed in the rules in that four years, and yet it's essentially a new land use application that takes staff time, costs money to applicants. The proposal is to, rather than have the four-year plus the two-year option, is to just allow a six-year implementation period and remove the time extension. That would be for applications moving forward. Anything that is currently under the four years would still have the option to do the two-year time extension until we rolled through over time. And so that's the majority of the changes. In your packet, there is a fairly lengthy staff report to the Planning Commission in which there are findings. We assessed all of these proposals, I mean, the optional proposals against all of the applicable criteria, including statewide planning goals. any applicable ORSs and Oregon administrative rules because a lot of these affect the urban area, the Metro Urban Growth Management Functional Plan and their Regional Transportation Functional Plan. needed to be, we need to make sure we're in compliance with our own comprehensive plan, our own ZDO. The short version is there are detailed findings in the Planning Commission staff report. Staff has found that all of these proposed amendments do meet all of the applicable standards. Happy to answer any questions if you have specific questions about that. The Planning Commission did hold a hearing on ZDO 293 on May 11th. There were three parties that testified at that hearing. All the testimony was related to this time extensions. There is some concern you do have... Some testimony, I think it's exhibit five from the Hoodland CPO. There was some concern specifically about the approval periods and time extensions within river and stream corridor areas. And that's what that testimony is about. Ultimately, after a lot of discussion, the Planning Commission voted six to one to recommend approval of ZDO 293. The one planning commissioner who did not vote for approval really seemed to feel very strongly about the concerns up on the mountain related to the Hoodland CPO testimony and I think didn't want to move forward with that piece still in it. So I identified a few significant issues. I mean, I've talked a little bit about some of them, so I'll just touch on these real quickly and then wrap it up. The first one is time extensions in river and stream areas. And essentially, go ahead. Thank you. Essentially, The concern, as it was articulated at the Planning Commission hearing, and I believe in your packet in the testimony, is that we know and we agree that particularly up on the mountain, rivers and streams move, and particularly the rivers up there. And there is a concern that if development is approved and the river moves, that six years is too long to go back and... Six years is too long. They would prefer the four years, so someone would have to go back and take a look at it after four years. And I do understand that. And I think what we discussed with the planning commission, is there really are a couple of things to consider. One is this idea that I think is in the testimony of maybe we should not allow development so close to rivers. And that may be a conversation to have and a legitimate way to address this situation. That's well outside the scope of this particular project. There is another project that is underway in the planning department that's looking specifically at standards within stream corridors and other hazard areas, and the Hoodland CPO has been working very closely with them, and that is really the more appropriate project to sort of look at, are our standards correct? This particular proposal is just related to timelines. So a couple of things to keep in mind. When your development is approved, you're approved, potentially with conditions. If you are next to a river, you may have a hundred foot setback from the river. That means you have a hundred foot setback from the river. If it's two years before you come in to permit your development, because development, you do need to go through all appropriate development permits, and the river has moved, your site plan needs to show us where the river is and that you're meeting that hundred foot setback. And so when you're approved for a development, it's not necessarily you're approved only in that particular spot on the property. The condition would be that you have to have a 100-foot setback. If it were the case that the river moves so much that conditions on the ground, that conditions on your property were substantially different, a new application would be required anyway because it could no longer be found that it or we would need to reassess to see if it could be found that you could meet all of the standards. And so we don't feel that changing the timelines is really going to solve the problems identified by the Hoodland CPO. I think it's really more appropriate to look at what standards and through that other project. The purpose of, one of the main purposes of removing the time extensions here really is for efficient use of time and money and streamlining processes so we can so we can review developments and have more clear processes moving forward for our applicants. So the second The second issue has to do with these specialized structures, and I just wanted to spend a few minutes explaining it. There was not additional testimony at the Planning Commission, but there is some testimony in your packet. This all came about because there is a particular business owner who wanted to locate what we call a specialized structure. In this case, it was a tank. for some material outside of a building on their property in a light industrial zone. Well, that's currently prohibited. It's allowed in general industrial. In light industrial, it would have to be inside of a building. And so we talked about it and we decided that it would be, It would be reasonable to propose that some of these types of structures, and our code calls it silos, towers, and other specialized storage and processing structures, it might be appropriate to allow some of them outdoors in the light industrial zone, subject to height restrictions and screening and location behind a building. Currently, any sort of outdoor storage or processing in the light industrial zones has to already be behind the building. And so this seemed to fit in pretty well and seemed to be a pretty minimal change to allow for particularly for this business, but there has been other interest in these types of specialized structures. We did stop short of actually defining specialized structure at this point. There was a request for that. We're finding it's a very difficult thing to do because it's really not related to what's being stored in the structure. It's really related to the structure itself. So if it was just a regular storage structure that could meet regular building and design standards, we wouldn't be talking about it. And so we need to do a little bit more work if we're going to create an all-encompassing definition that's not sort of artificially too restricting. That was our concern. And so that's specialized structures. Got two more, I promise. Austria parking, everyone's favorite subject. So this proposal would reflect what's currently being implemented directly out of state law. I'm just going to reiterate that again. Since mid 2024, the county has not been allowed to to require off-street parking with new development in the urban area, in urban zones in the Portland Metro urban growth boundary. There are certain maximum off-street parking requirements that we have, and we also had to add some parking lot requirements. If a parking lot is required, or if a parking lot is provided, there are some State law is requiring some different tree canopy and some other standards with it So we've added all of those things in a couple of important things to keep in mind We cannot require off street parking. We can certainly allow it The up to the maximum if there's a maximum and And so we pulled some development. And we looked between 2024 and 2025 at different types of development and how much parking was being provided. And we found, interestingly, that middle housing, the duplex, triplex, quadplex, townhouse, cottage clusters, those were the market the developers were providing actually about 50% more parking than would have been required under our code. and other commercial and multi-family developments, we're still providing parking for the most part, just slightly less than what would have been required, about 98% of what would have been required. There's a lot of variation, okay? And including one cottage cluster development that is providing no no off-street parking and I'm not I don't know where they are in their development so it's no guarantee that obviously that developers would continue to provide parking but some things that we've heard from developers is that we want to be able to market our product and we are a suburban county still and so parking is still being provided and Obviously there's no guarantee moving forward as more and more infill happens. And so I just wanted to throw that out there that we did look at that and see what was actually going on currently just to understand what impact it had so far. Oh, and then the very last one, public engagement. Again, the Planning Commission was really adamant about you all knowing that they are very concerned about this continuing erosion of public input opportunities in land use processes. They understand that this is not something that even the board has a choice over that matter right now with the current legislation. And so they were interested in creating a subcommittee to work with staff from the state agencies. One of the planning commissioners has written the letter and provided it to you as testimony today. This is just... something that they understand can't really make a change in this particular package, but they felt very, very strongly about it, and so I am also, I am bringing it to you. So. This was my brief little summary of where do you have choices, right? Oh, he's laughing as I'm still talking. Most of the items sort of in one or two, the mandatory, most of those are mandatory under state law. I spoke a little bit about the one option about whether or not notice to neighbors could be provided in one of the housing applications. You do have a choice in that matter. The other items, the greenway, anything that we have proposed as clarifications for lot lines, the time extension, specialized structures, all of those are optional and things that you do have a policy decision about today. But a lot of these items in this package are required under state law. Staff and the Planning Commission are recommending approval as found in all of the redlined amendments in, it's not attachment A, that's my typo, I apologize. In the attachment in your packet, all 40 sections were listed in their redline. They each have a little summary at the beginning. Hopefully that was helpful to understand what changes were made. And so that's it, I'm gonna stop talking. I am happy to answer questions that you might have.

Right. Colleagues, any questions, comments? Go ahead, Commissioner Hill.

I want to thank you, Martha, for the synopsis again. I want to ask, the portion that just baffles me is the appeal can only be done by an applicant to LUBA. Seems so strange. And Is this a legislative change also that needs to get fixed? I will say one of the stupidest things I've ever heard is that an applicant is going to go, oh, I'm going to appeal this. I submitted this, but I'll appeal it myself, right?

Applicants do appeal if they're denied and sometimes appeal if there are conditions put on it that they don't think should be put on there. But it does eliminate the opportunity for...

Agencies or members of the public to appeal if something is approved Let's say that they don't like right and I do I will say too I share the concerns of the Planning Commission about the lack of public engagement allowed That's contradictory to state law and goal one is public involvement. So I think that needs to be addressed as well Any other questions

First of all, very good job. It was very informative. And I do appreciate kind of the stand you took on the dock matter. Sounds like there was three docks that were suffering some consequences. So I thought that was, and the extension was the other thing I thought was good. So many other things along the way, very impressive. So I think it's, Now our opportunity to open it up for public testimony, and I'll turn to our clerk to moderate the in-person and virtual testimony for us.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will begin with in-person testimony, and I will begin as their representative from the Planning Commission who would like to testify. Please come forward, Mr. Peterson, and introduce yourself.

Do I need to state my address?

Not necessary, Mr. Peterson.

Please introduce yourself. You'll have three minutes. Hi, I'm Tom Peterson, current chair of the Planning Commission. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but we felt it was an important enough issue that it was worth coming to this meeting and reiterating kind of our concerns about the appeal process being limited only to applicants. In fact, some of the members of the committee are trying to form a committee to see what can be done to try to elevate this and maybe have it revisited at the state level. So it's mostly just to reiterate kind of what Martha had just said and that we feel strong enough that we want to see what we can do to help change that. And then lastly, I wanted to say, I hope you enjoyed reading that packet as much as I did. Any questions?

No. Did you have something? All right, thanks.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public in person who would like to testify? Seeing none, I will turn to virtual testimony. If you would like to testify, please use the raise hand feature and I will call on you in the order received. One last call if you'd like to testify, please use the raise hand feature and I will call on you in the order received Mr..

Chair I do not see anyone who wishes to testify all right I'll close the public testimony portion will proceed to our deliberations again any other comments or input from my colleagues Commissioner Salas yeah, I just want to express I guess a level of frustration knowing that

the legislative changes that have been brought forth not only impact the public or in a way and not only to some degree even developers but also the counties and cities as jurisdictions, kind of losing their ability or authority to follow designs and land use planning that has existed for years and creating neighborhoods or areas in which they're thoughtfully planned and managed. And now it seems to be it's as a result of the housing emergency the governor declared pathway to just Develop in a way that it's not consistent with You know how Oregon has done a lot of things and even frankly, I think it conflicts with the Our planning goals. I know there's 19 of them, but I think there's some conflicts there. I am wondering if we are the state is abandoning the planning goals or the goals But it is something that does come up a lot Cities have charters some counties have charters and home rule is something that I know the cities are pretty upset about losing their ability for the foot for what I just mentioned their ability to control or build and the other aspect of this is that as the Lot of the infrastructure is built on a cycle or understanding of growth PSU growth standards kind of we build our water treatment plants in our wastewater plants on that Growth rate and when that growth rate is artificially changed and I think a lot of cities and or districts find themselves ill prepared financially to accommodate that so it's it's putting a lot of pressure on Districts counties and cities when it comes to providing infrastructure and the state is not helping in that regard. I mean, if they do help, it's minuscule. Frankly, it's not lost on a very small city or whatnot that even one increment of water capacity or wastewater facilities are going to cost north of $50 million, and that's a low cost, similar to $100-plus million to make an increment of capacity. and all the regulatory changes on the environmental side are not getting waived. I'm not saying they should be waived. I'm just saying that some of those barriers are still there when you're providing the infrastructure, so therefore the cost is there as well. The off-street parking is creating, especially in this area where we have transit that was once promised, you build a high density, we will come, we will provide transit. Well, transit is actually contracting, so now we're having areas where there's inadequate off-street parking and substantial... number of cars that are squeezing onto the sides of the roads and there's not enough off street parking capacity to accommodate that and we saw this in Portland many years ago I cited that many times as examples where it's not working and now welcome to Clackamas County out of our control we're having islands or I call a sea of cars in areas where housing has been developed and and again people are only get parking on the street because that's where the parking is The other thing I find striking is the changes as it relates to the Greenway. One thinks of the Greenway protections and you have this picture of what it might look like and then I think when you see the I live in an area where we have high density zoning in and around the Greenway and it just seems that's a conflict, right? You think a Greenway would be some preservation of maybe that particular area but yet whether it's a height restriction or just simply the density and the growth that's happening there, that just seems to be another visual conflict. I don't have any questions. All to say it's just more of just a concern that we're losing our ability to... control our destiny in a certain amount of ways. I do know that I will just let some of you people know that sometimes what comes with this is a quality of life issue, whether it's noise, it's other restrictions or what people view as restriction to their own property, their own property rights. So I'm hearing this more and more. And we'll have a I think we'll have some people testifying here not on this but on a noise issue here probably in the next couple three months. I expect to see more some folks bringing issues to us regarding noise and other impacts of development that otherwise without these changes they probably wouldn't be experiencing. I've said enough. Again, I'm frustrated. I'll be supporting the changes because it's relatively mandatory for most of this. And we have to do our housekeeping. But it won't be... Again, it's not lost on me that this is a... another difficult situation that will be dealing with the repercussions and consequences of for the Share I yield back Commissioner Schrader

Yeah, I just agree with both of my colleagues, Commissioner Savas and Commissioner Helm, with their assessment of this, because these are laws that have structured just for the public from the state, and we are mandated to implement them and change our codes. Could you explain to me a little bit more thoroughly? My understanding is with... The appeals process this will limit citizens appeals to Luba is that a correct just That I mean, I'm trying to really get a sense of What's going to happen with that?

So not just generally across the board, but there are The legislature has created some new processes that are available to certain types of housing developments and The one that I was referring to where there's an option for neighbor notice is one of the more confusing ones and I think Caleb may have to help me out a little bit. It came out of the 2026 legislature and it relates to a housing application that is using only clear and objective standards, which clear and objective standards are required under state law, it wouldn't apply if it's in certain protected areas, right? And so we have to create this new housing application process for these types of housing that we can choose to not send notice, although the proposal is to send notice, and then it specifically limits the ability of others to appeal and to appeal to LUBA, only the applicant can appeal to LUBA. It's that specific housing application. There are a few others, some of these special uses, are also have limited appeal. We have to allow them in certain areas. Doesn't mean that we can't send them through some sort of development review process. Some of them may need design review or other development processes. They still need to meet our development standards. It could be denied if it doesn't meet our standards, but the use itself can't be denied. But those also become this, what the legislature often calls not a land use decision even though it is a land use decision and when they say that it just means that the appeal process to LUBA is different. Presumably these could be appealed to the Court of Appeals. Circuit court, excuse me. Circuit court, I meant to say that.

So they'd be moving it from Luba directly to a circuit court in some instances.

In some instances, yes. But it's not just across the board. It's not eliminating the appeal for every type of land use application.

But this is largely, I suspect, to increase density in areas, to increase the... amount of housing available? I mean, I guess I'm trying to understand what's driving this.

Why would the legislature do this? That's what you're asking.

Yeah, pretty much. Caleb, tell me.

I think the LUBA process is simpler and easier for people representing themselves to navigate. And the legislature might be thinking, if we send these to circuit court, where it is less clear and more difficult and takes more time, fewer people will appeal, and therefore more housing will be built.

Hmm.

just guessing.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm seeing here. We're responding to a housing crisis in a way that eliminates, like I said, goal one has been the mainstay of land use in this state. So that is concerning. But I'm understanding because it's been passed that we have no, I mean, we could vote no, but it wouldn't, we'd still have to do, you know what I mean? We'd still have to do it at this point, have to amend our codes. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. May I? I think we're at a point maybe unless there's other comments. Seeing none, may I have a motion from someone?

I move we approve ZDO-293 as recommended by staff and the Planning Commission.

Are we locked in?

Aye.

Second that. Second that. All right.

So, Commissioner Helms, I move to approve ZDO 293 as recommended by staff and planning commission. It's been seconded by Commissioner Savas. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk, will you please call the table?

Commissioner West. Aye. Commissioner Schrader.

Yes.

Commissioner Zavas. Aye. Commissioner Helm. Aye. Chair Roberts.

Aye. Motion passes 5-0, Mr. Chair. All right. Thank you. As it looks now, we'll direct staff to draft an ordinance reflecting these decisions included on the agenda for the board's adoption at upcoming business meetings. I wanted to make sure I checked with council. Do you see anything else from the board at this time that you need?

No, Chair.

All right. Thank you. So with that being said, this will conclude our business meeting for the morning, and we're going to be back here at 1.30 for a policy session. So thank you very much, and we'll see you soon.