Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

So I guess we'll call this meeting to order. So Darcy, could you do the roll call for us, please?

You're muted, Darcy.

I'm not hearing you. You're on mute, Darcy. I always forget that.

Commissioner Stevens? Present. Commissioner Murphy?

Present.

Commissioner Lee?

Present.

Commissioner King.

President.

Commissioner found there. Commissioner Satter president. Commissioner canton wine president. And I have commissioner Wilson who just popped up I will move him over. So everyone is present and accounted for.

All right. I'm going to defer kind of introductions with our newest member until after we do the public hearing, because we may have members in the audience. So in the interest of their time, we'll jump into the public meeting first and then Following that, we'll get a chance for all of us to introduce ourselves to our newest commissioner, if that's okay with everyone. Before we get into the public hearing, there is an opportunity for public comment. If there's anything someone from the public would like to share with the commission, other than what is on the agenda tonight, now would be the time for that. So do we have anyone in the audience that would like to speak? Doesn't look like it. I don't see anyone. Okay. So then I'm going to jump into the public hearing. So I have prepared a script. Most of you probably have it. So you bear with me as I read through this. So the public hearing is now open for the consideration of files ZO437-25 and ZO438-25, an application by M&S Investments LLC and Andrew Stamp of VP Law for a comprehensive plan map amendment to change the land use plan designation for the subject property from agricultural to rural industrial. with the corresponding zone change from exclusive farm use to rural industrial. No development is proposed with this application. Assisting us in the hearing today are several members of county staff, Administrative Specialist, Darcy Renhardt, Principal Planner, Marcia Fritsche, and Planning Director, Jennifer Hughes. This public hearing is now being conducted virtually using the Zoom platform. Panelists for today's hearing, which include members of the Planning Commission and county staff, have both audio and video capability. The applicant will be added as a panelist as a panelist during their presentation. If a panelist is participating with audio but not video, members of the audience will not see the panelist's name on their screens, but will be able to hear them when they speak. Audience members who have joined the meeting will have their mics muted unless they wish to testify, in which case they will be called upon to do so by the county staff moderator. Audience members' videos will not be turned on at any time. Today's hearing is being recorded as required by law. The county will post the recording on the county website as soon as possible. So I have a few general statements. The Planning Commission is charged with making a recommendation on the application to the Board of County Commissioners. The record from this hearing will be forwarded to the Board, which will make the final decision. The Board will conduct another hearing on this application on Tuesday, August 4th, 2026 at 11 a.m. That hearing will be de novo. meaning that the hearing will be started anew and additional testimony may be offered. Tonight's hearing will not go beyond 10 p.m. unless the majority of the Planning Commission in attendance vote to continue past that time. If not concluded, it will be continued to a date and time certain. The hearing may be continued for other reasons as well. If an announcement of an additional hearing date and time is made tonight, it will be the only notice given of that additional hearing. So here's how we're going to conduct the hearing. So first we're going to get the planning and zoning staff report. Then there'll be entry into the record of any additional correspondence that we received that may not be in our packet. Technical information from other government agencies, testimony, and then a planning commission discussion and action. I have a few more statements to make. The legal statements. This is a quasi-judicial land use hearing, which means two important things for those participating in this hearing. First, all of the criteria that staff believes the Planning Commission can use in reaching a recommendation are listed in the notice given for this public hearing and will be identified during the staff presentation. All testimony, arguments, and evidence must be directed toward these criteria or other criteria in the comprehensive plan, zoning development ordinance, or other land use regulations that the person identifying believes to apply to the decision. Accordingly, anyone testifying is asked to please direct your testimony to a relevant approval criterion. Second, failure to raise an issue accompanied by statements or evidence sufficient to afford the decision maker and the parties an opportunity to respond to that issue may preclude appeal to the Land Use Board of Appeals on that issue. Failure of the applicant to raise constitutional or other issues relating to proposed conditions of approval with sufficient specificity to allow the county to respond to the issue precludes an action for damages in circuit court. Once final, the county's decision may be appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals. At this time, I wish to ask members of the Planning Commission to disclose any ex parte contacts, bias, or conflicts of interest. Please indicate the nature and extent of the ex parte contract, bias, conflict of interest, and indicate whether you intend to participate in or abstain from the hearing. So are there any commissioners that doesn't appear to be any? No. Okay. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to the planning staff to present the report. Martha, I presume you're up.

Yes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm going to share my presentation.

Let's see.

Come on. All right, does everybody see that as a slideshow and not with all my, okay. Excellent. So hi, I am Martha Fritzie, principal planner for the county. And you might notice a different face on the screen here. That's Christian Snuffin. He's the county engineer. I asked him to attend today in case there were some specific traffic related questions for this one. So thank you, Christian. He is available for questions. And I'm going to get started. This is, as was mentioned, a proposed comprehensive plan map amendment and zone change. Specifically, the proposal would change the comprehensive plan amendment from agriculture to rural industrial with a corresponding zone change from EFU, exclusive farm use, to the rural industrial zone. This is being done under a specific statute identified for what is called abandoned or diminished mill sites. So a lot of you have been around long enough to know that typically when you try to change the zoning from an agricultural zone, it's extremely difficult and it often requires what is called an exception to one of the statewide planning goals. Well, there are a few very specific exceptions to that requirement, and this abandoned and diminished mill site is one of them. So in this case, if all of the standards under ORS 1997.719 are met, no goal exception is needed in this case, which makes it a much easier process. Importantly, though, only the mill site portion of the property can be redesignated. You can't designate additional properties or even an entire property if it wasn't historically used as the mill site. Per usual, no development is proposed with this zone change, and this doesn't specifically authorize any new development on the site at all. That would have to occur After the zone change, you would need to meet all of the conditions on this zone change and any other requirements in the rural industrial zone, including design review. So the site itself is on Cropth Road. It's a single tax lot. It's identified here. The whole tax lot is just under 21 acres. The portion that is proposed for rezoning is the portion in the southwest side that you can see is developed. That area is relatively flat and has been developed for quite some time as the mill site. The eastern and northeastern portions of the site do contain some steep slopes, protected areas, a pond, a stream. Those areas will not be a part of the rural industrial zone. If this is approved, those would remain in the EFU zoning district. The site itself is zoned EFU, like I mentioned, and it's in this large block of other properties, also zoned EFU. It's in an agricultural area, roughly four miles southeast of Malala, surrounded by farmland. It looks like, just from aerial photos, a lot of cultivated fields, some treed areas, although those are largely along the water features, the creeks and streams. There are some dwellings in the area, typically associated with farms. There's not any rural residential zoning in the area, but there are some residences. So this is from the application. This is a zoomed in aerial of the area that is proposed for redesignation to rural industrial. It's that pinkish purplish line that is pretty narrowly drawn around the buildings. You can also see from the green contour lines that it is pretty much the flat developed area of the property. This area is currently developed with 13 buildings, some asphalt and other surface parking and storage. And so that's the area that's proposed. It is roughly seven and a half acres based on our calculation. And again, the remainder of that 21 acres would remain in the EFU zone. This is a photo dated somewhere in the 1950s from the application. You can see the mill as it probably originally was based on evidence in the record, including land use applications. that the county has. It appears that this mill was established originally in 1941. At that time, there was no zoning that would prohibit it. The first zoning was established on this property in 1976, and that was EFU zoning, although EFU in 1976 is a little different than EFU is now. Some things have changed, certainly. One thing that hasn't changed is that this mill would not have been allowed an EFU, and so it became a non-conforming use. And a non-conforming use essentially is something that was established legally at the time, but the zoning has changed and therefore it's no longer allowed under zoning, but because it was established legally, it's allowed to continue. And as long as it continues, it is allowed to continue and or be altered. And in this case, there's A pretty detailed explanation, both in the application and maybe not as detailed, but an explanation in the Planning Commission staff report of some of the verifications and changes that have happened over the years, essentially between 1993 and 2013. The property owner at the time came in and asked for certain alterations to the non-conforming use. In some cases, it was adding some buildings. In other cases, it was allowing for some different types of uses on the property. Interestingly, you can see in this photo, this, let me go back. This property to the south here is developed and it looks like and it is developed sort of in association with this. But this was not part of the original mill. You can see that that's this vacant land up here. That development was allowed in about 2005, 2006 under an alteration of the nonconforming use. In other words, they were sort of expanding uses associated with this nonconforming use. So that's how that development got over on that other tax lot, but that is not part of the proposal today. That property and those buildings will remain in EFU. They will remain non-conforming uses. And so it confused me at first when I looked at all of this. I was trying to understand how those buildings got there and why they weren't part of this application, and that is why. Although there's been a lot of different sort of iterations of uses and expansions and alterations, currently there is not much going on on this property. And based on the description of each building and what is in each building that was in the application, It's largely vacant. The buildings are largely vacant. There is Wilco has some warehousing going on here for their farm store supplies. A very small building is being used for pocket door fabrication, essentially assembling parts into, I guess, pocket door pieces. I'm not entirely sure. And then there is a business called Precision Drying, I think is the name of it. They are, according to the description, using some of the kilns that were on site originally with the mill. excuse me, one of which has been replaced, and they're doing some redrying. The way it's described is that they are redrying lumber that actually has been processed somewhere else. I don't really know what the reason for that is, but I presume that there is some reason. But it is a slightly different use than was originally on the property. This is what's going on right now. This becomes important as we start thinking about an abandoned and diminitional site. So procedurally, this is a quasi-judicial application. We are required to send notice. Notice was sent out to property owners within a half mile of this site and also any applicable agencies. On June 8th of this year, I have received zero public comments on this application. The local community planning organization is inactive. The only comments I really have received are from Christian Snuffin, who's here today, the engineering staff. I always ask him to look at the traffic studies, and he noted that he concurred with the findings in the applicant's traffic study and recommended a couple of conditions of approval. related to that, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So per usual, there's a lot, a lot of criteria that need to be met, including statewide planning goals. In this case, the particular ORS listed here, comprehensive plan goals and policies, zoning and development criteria. I'm going to not talk about every single one of these and touch on what I think are the most important. There are detailed findings in the Planning Commission staff report that you received a week ago. And I'm happy to answer questions if I don't actually talk about something that you had questions about in that report. We're first going to start with ORS197719. So it says, paraphrasing, that a site that meets the statutory definition of an abandoned or diminished mill site may be rezoned to an industrial site. without an exception to statewide planning goal three. However, if a county does that, they can only allow industrial uses on the site, not retail or commercial or even other uses that may be allowed in the industrial zone in the underlying zoning district. Those are not gonna be allowed here, just industrial. And also county may not rezone to allow those non-industrial uses without following the usual rules, which may involve a goal exception. And also, I mentioned this, only the area of the mill site may be redesignated. So what is an abandoned or diminished mill site? It's complicated in some ways. So this is the definition right out of the statute. Our ZDO also mirrors this definition. It's a mill or plant or other facility engaged in the processing or manufacturing of wood products, including sawmills and facilities for the production of plywood, veneer, hardwood, panel products, pulp, and paper. that have to be outside of an urban growth boundary, were either closed after January 1, 1980, or operating at less than 25% capacity since January 1, 2003, and contains or contain permanent buildings using the production. I put this whole definition up here because it becomes very important to understand if this property qualifies as an abandoned or diminished mill site because we know There's stuff going on on this property, right? And it has been going on. But what we need to figure out is, is that stuff going on actually, does it meet this definition of a mill site? So I'll start with sort of the low hanging fruit, the A and C. They're pretty obvious. Yes, this is located outside of urban growth boundaries. It's like I said, about four and a half miles southwest of the city of Malala. It's not in an urban growth boundary or a city. And C, does it contain or contain permanent buildings using the production of manufacturing of wood products? That also is very clear from evidence in the record. It was a mill established in 1941. A lot of the buildings are still there and there's a whole slew of aerial photos that were in the application that show various years. It's clear that there are buildings that were used for that purpose. So then we get to this issue of, well, was it closed after January 1, 1980, or has it been operating at less than 20% capacity since January 1, 2003? And importantly, we need to look at this specific list of things that are identified that under the definition that make it a mill site. It has to be whatever was there that was closed or is operating at 25% or less than 25% capacity has to be something engaged in processing and manufacturing wood products, including sawmills. And that long list, I'm not going to read again. The important part about this definition is that The state law narrows the definition by using this including. It is intended to narrow it not only to these items, but to items that are like this or similar in character. And so... The use of the word including in statute, case law has found does have the meaning not of making an exclusive list, but of making, these are not my lawyerly words because I'm not a lawyer, making a narrow down list of things that need to be similar in character. So as we think about, as we look through the record and the evidence that was provided in the application, and we look at the old land use applications, we start to look at sort of these key dates. So January 1, 1980, we know that the mill, that it was a mill. At one point in time, it was a lumber mill. It was very clear. Based on the evidence in the record that was still operating in 1980. In fact, in 1993 is the first alteration of the nonconforming use that we have, and it discusses that even the sawmill was still operating at that time. But then when we get later to about 2000, there's some testimony that the applicant put in the record of people who worked in the mill and said that in 1999, when the original owner passed, they shut down the mill. There is an email also in the record that somebody notes in 2000, they're looking to buy the mill and that it was still in operation, although the sawmill was not in operation anymore. And so I think somewhere between before 1980 and post-1980, the sawmill stopped operating, but it appears based on information also in further land use applications, even in 2006, there's a long list of things that were occurring on the property, and it was noted that the 13 buildings were still being used, that days and hours and use and number of employees fluctuate with the seasons, but it was still in operation. And then in 2013, there again is a comment about the 13 buildings currently being used for wood processing and lumber milling. although I'm not sure the sawmill was running, and that existing operations employed 30 people. And so there was definitely something going on that would likely fall under this sort of yellow highlighted manufacturing of wood products for some time. I don't know. how much of it was going on post-2003. That evidence was not put in the record to identify whether or not it was diminished to 25% capacity. However, when we look at what is happening today, and bear in mind that it says was closed after January 1, 1980. It doesn't say when. It doesn't say within a year or two years. It can be closed presumably at any time. So we look at what's on the property right now. clearly the parts that are vacant or warehousing other types of materials do not meet this definition of a mill site. So then we had to think about the other uses, you know, that are taking up the other buildings, the pocket door fabrication, Again, I think it really is just assembling pieces. They talk about having hardware that they're bringing lumber in and attaching hardware to the lumber. That doesn't really seem to be of the same character as processing, producing plywood, veneer, hardwood panel products, pulp and paper, which clearly... begin with sort of its primary processing. They begin with raw materials and turn them into something else. And so then it's just this other drying business, which are using the kilns that originally were part of the mill. And I think at some point it would have been easy. You would have to argue that, yes, that's part of the facility that's making all of these things. But at this point, that business appears to also just be taking in sort of third-party processed materials and doing something else with them and so i think that it's pretty easy to find that the what is happening on the property right now does not meet the definition of mill site including sawmills and facilities for the production of that list of items and therefore it is considered abandoned for the purpose of this statue. Again, there's a distinction between things happening on the property, these non-conforming uses that have sort of changed in character over time, and the whole property being abandoned. The requirement isn't that the whole property be vacant and abandoned. The requirement is that this mill use is abandoned. And so in this case, both the applicant and staff have found that that is the case. And so that means we can move on. I promise this is the most I'm going to talk all night because this is one of the most nuanced pieces. So, once you determine that it does meet that definition, you do need to look at the other criteria and make sure that it does or you can meet that. In this case, only the developed area of the mill site would be redesignated. which is that pink line that was pretty narrowly drawn around the existing development and buildings on this lot. Based on the old aerial photography and the land use approvals, this appears to be reasonable. This appears to definitely be the area of the mill site, the area that was originally, that did meet that definition of a sawmill and processing, doing primary processing of the lumber materials, the wood materials, sorry. And then the other criteria require conditions to ensure that they're met, which are listed in the staff report. There were a couple of conditions put on it. One of the conditions under state law is that only industrial uses can be allowed. And then the other one is that may not be rezoned except as provided sort of elsewhere in state law. Both of those would be conditions of approval. So, oh, before I go on to that. The state law allows for this type of a zone change without consideration of certain administrative rules and other criteria under state law, but it doesn't exempt it from also having to meet local criteria. And so that's why we look at our both our comprehensive plan and our zoning and development ordinance also. So I'm just going to touch on a few things in the local criteria and some of you may have heard me phrase it this way before, I'm not going to go into all of the comprehensive plan policies. So I like to think about zone changes in terms of sort of the four big zone change criteria in the zoning and development ordinance and found in section 1202. The first being that The proposed zone change is consistent with the applicable goals and policies of the comprehensive plan. It kind of rolls up into the comp plan and to the statewide planning goals. And in this case, there wasn't anything really substantive in the comprehensive plan. There were policies in five different chapters. that it needed to meet. Chapters 2 and 11 are largely procedural coordination. That's on us for sending notice and doing the coordination activities that we do. Chapter 3 has a policy that's specific to rural wetlands and ponds. which essentially requires they be avoided. And in this case, that's pretty easy to make that finding because the rural industrial area is the area that is already developed. It is already outside of the wetland and ponds, and development would not be allowed to expand past that. Chapter four is also pretty easy. Sometimes it's hard to meet our criteria for applying a particular zone. But in this case, there is a specific allowance for rural industrial to be applied in this particular case for an abandoned diminished mill site. And then chapter five requires a zone change comply with the transportation planning rule found in statewide planning goal 12. Again, there are some conditions required, but the applicant's traffic study found and our county engineer concurs that with those conditions, the zone change can be found to comply with these things. The second criteria requires demonstration that any needed public services are available and sufficient for development that could occur under the new zoning designation. Again, in this case, this is pretty straightforward. There's no public water or sewer in this area and none required for this development. And county engineering is the surface water management agency in this area, and we do have a preliminary statement of feasibility signed by them that indicates that surface water can be addressed adequately on site. So that is met. And then the last two have to do with the transportation system, both that the transportation system is adequate and will remain adequate, which again ties to Chapter 5 and to the transportation planning rule, but also that the safety of the transportation is adequate to serve. the level of development anticipated by the zone change. Again, a traffic study was submitted by the applicant. The traffic study found that the proposal would not have a significant effect on the adequacy or safety of the transportation system. And again, some conditions are required, specifically limiting the uses on the property. And because the traffic was modeled based on certain building square footage, there's a condition that would prohibit an increase in the building square footage. So it doesn't mean that the site couldn't be redeveloped. It just means that they are limited to the amount of square footage that is on the site. And we're going to talk about that really quick. So there are conditions number four and five in the Planning Commission Staff report. The applicant called me up after the staff report was issued and had some questions about these two conditions. So so the applicant's attorney, excuse me. And so he and I and Christian had a quick meeting phone call to discuss these and. Hopefully I can explain this adequately. Like I said, Christian is here if I don't. The original condition under number four, or the condition that you've seen, limits the uses to manufacturing or other industrial uses that generate less traffic, or less traffic generative. I don't have it in front of me, obviously. And This came directly from the traffic study because it was the manufacturing use that was modeled. But after having some conversation and discussing it, we came to the conclusion that it's not necessary to be this specific in this condition. And rather, because state law limits it only to industrial uses, that we determine that manufacturing really is the most traffic generative use in the list of industrial uses. It's not necessary to limit it to essentially require anyone coming in to put a different use besides manufacturing have to show something about the traffic generation knowing that it's going to generate less traffic than the manufacturing use. And so we think we've all agreed that it is sufficient simply to limit it to the industrial uses allowed in the rural industrial zone, that it's not necessary to sort of create this extra step for other industrial uses that would be allowed that are not manufacturing. Hopefully that makes sense. So we are recommending actually amending that condition. And I have some language in the next slide to simply limit the uses to the rural industrial like state law requires us. The next one, condition number five is about limiting the building square footage. And so I noticed as I was writing this condition that the traffic study modeled 87,100 square feet. um, based on the application materials and the, um, the diagram that I showed you earlier with all the buildings and the square footage. I put them in a spreadsheet. I added them up and it added up to 92,750 square feet. And so we talked to the applicant about that, um, and, excuse me, the applicant's attorney, and He had indicated that he's going to verify the total square footage on site. The intent of the modeling and the intent of this condition was to not make them remove square footage, but to limit the building square footage to what exists currently. And so we need to reconcile those numbers, and we are working with the applicant's attorney to do that. It hasn't happened by today, and it probably won't. We're going to have to do that before the board hearing. I think based on that conversation, the county traffic engineer wasn't particularly concerned if it ends up being 92,750 square feet doesn't think that there's going to be a concern for traffic. Although we are going to require an addendum to their traffic study just so we know what those numbers are and they can demonstrate that it's possible that this. particular condition will change. But I want to assure you that the intent will remain the same, that we're just trying to figure out to reconcile how much square footage actually is on site and make sure that's modeled, that meets the criteria, and that's what it would be conditioned on. So in conclusion, staff did find that the application meets all the applicable criteria for the comprehensive plan map amendment and zone change and recommends approval of the files with conditions as noted in the staff report, except as with the revision to condition four, which simplifies the limitation and would limit it just to industrial uses that are authorized in the rural industrial district. And I threw accessory uses in there too, just to be clear that we would allow that. Jennifer Hughes may not think that's necessary, and she can tell me if I need to strike that. But the intent is to make this a little more straightforward and not have to cause everybody coming in to look in the ITE manual and tell us that their industrial use generates less traffic than manufacturing when we've already determined that manufacturing was the most traffic-generative industrial use. That's it. Any questions? HAB-Masyn Moyer- Oh, can I stop my still sharing HAB-Danny Teodoru- Questions.

Can you raise your hand, please. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Stop sharing. HAB-Masyn Moyer- There we go. HAB-Danny Teodoru- Wilson, you're on mute.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- My understanding. HAB-Masyn Moyer- What's the difference between rural, industrial and manufacturing.

So rural industrial is the plan designation and the zoning designation that would be applied to this property. The rural industrial zone allows a number of different types of uses. Manufacturing of certain materials is one of those uses that is allowed.

So give me an example of something that would be a rural industrial and would not apply to manufacturing.

A use in rural industrial that is not a manufacturing use?

Yes.

Well, give me two seconds to open up my zoning ordinance. Because I could guess, but I want to make sure that I'm right.

I mean, somebody must have defined what rural industrial was and limited it to that. Okay. manufacturing a car or putting together a tractor or something like that.

So rural industrial allows a number of uses that are commercial in nature. It also allows things like fraternal lodges as a conditional use. Dwellings as an accessory use. Farmer's markets. It allows plant nurseries. It allows certain recreational sports facilities. But none of those are industrial uses. Those would not be allowed on this particular property. But it would allow manufacturing fairly generally manufacturing uses.

So let's say somebody wanted to build a piece of product that would harvest corn or something like that. Would that be an industrial use?

I'm sorry. I'm having a really hard time hearing, Michael. Is everybody else or is it just me?

But I'm just, I'm a little, you know, trying to figure out what manufacturing difference is between industrial rural industrial production well so manufacturing is a type of rural industrial use or it's a type of industrial use

the the distinction is that rural industrial is the zoning district as opposed to an urban industrial that allows a whole lot more things rural industrial is intended to allow industrial uses that are compatible with the rural area kind of vague okay i got it uh-huh

Commissioner Stevens, I think you're next.

Thank you, Chair Peterson. Real quick, you mentioned, Martha, that, wow, is everybody getting feedback? Yep. Okay, so it's not just me. Okay, I'll talk slowly. You mentioned that the CPO was inactive, which I think is Malala, and reactivated a bit ago, but you did not receive any CPO input.

It's in the South Canby CPO area.

Oh, okay. And they are still inactive. South Canby is inactive. Okay, that was number one. And I guess out of curiosity and along the same vein as Michael Wilson, has a use been shared, like a future plan or use of the site? Yes.

No, not that I'm aware of. The applicant may be able to address that. I think there's at least someone representing the applicant here.

You're on mute, Murph.

Thank you, Tom. Hi, Martha. Great package. I love having things to do. A lot of digging there. Number one, this is going to change zoning. It's tax-based also, isn't it? Does somebody have a mic on that...

I don't know. I'm really getting a lot of feedback and having a hard time hearing.

I think it's coming off Commissioner Wilson's mic.

Oh, he just muted. Okay. Is this any better? That's much better. Can you ask the question again, please?

So since we're going from EFU farmland, which has basically a low tax designation, low rate, this is going to increase its taxes, isn't it? And will there be a backlog that it has to pay for this changeover?

I don't know. I am not the tax assessor and that's not one of the criteria for the zone change. I can say that just because it's zoned agricultural doesn't necessarily mean it has a low tax base because I would be surprised if this property was in farm tax deferral. It's been a mill for quite some time. But again, maybe the applicant could verify that or answer that for you.

Right. I just thought I'd ask. One of the things that came through. Another is, since it has an on-site wastewater treatment, have the drain fields been located? I see asphalt buildings only on the area that's changing. So is it going to go to a different lot for its wastewater treatment?

Not to my knowledge. That is also something maybe the applicant can verify.

And this would probably have to be discovered when the building permits or prior to building permits, I would imagine.

Well, no, I mean, quite frankly, we need to make sure that the zoning line is drawn in the right place, that it's within this, within the rural industrial zone. So we will certainly verify that.

That leads to the next question. The stream is considered a type F stream. Fish are in this stream. So is there going to be an increase in setback from this water line, by water line?

An increase in setback? Yes. Well, no, we're not going to make people move buildings. And so typically if you have a non-conforming setback from a stream, you are allowed to maintain that setback if you were to remodel or replace your buildings.

even with the zone change?

Yes. The zone change doesn't change that. We would be potentially fixing some of the non-conforming use issues. But if there are existing buildings that were established legally, we may not be fixing all of the non-conforming building location or issues like that. There still might be non-performing uses on this property in terms of setbacks.

An observation that I came across in the comprehensive plan, page three, chapter three, probably second paragraph, describes the loss of ag land in Clackamas County in the last 30 years as being over 100,000 acres. I'd like my commissioners to know that. That's straight out of the comprehensive plan. Not that it should affect this, but we do have a loss of ag land, ag forest land, that's a pretty high number, so. Thank you, Martha.

Okay, Commissioner Lee.

Yes, thank you, Chair. I have some environmental questions for you, Martha. I understand from the packet that there's a groundwater sensitive designation on the site and that there's also, similar to Murphy's question, that there's sensitive creek right next door to the site and that the applicant provided a hydrologic study of the wells and they analyzed how that hydrologically, it's all interacted with one another and the other wells in the area, but yet There was no water quality analysis done on or testing of the water coming out of the wall.

So that's fair. It is in a groundwater limited area. You're correct. The zone change criteria for properties in a groundwater limited area are minimal, um, at best, the, the thing is, um, section 1000, oh, help me out, Jennifer, 1002, is it, um, that require, or is it 1000, no, it's 1002, um, Certain development, including industrial development, or if you were to do a subdivision, which couldn't... Well, I guess an industrial subdivision could happen in this case. It does require the hydrogeologic report. And so I did look at it. There was no basis to require any sort of quality testing of the water for the zone change because it's not a particular criteria, but... Any development that happens in any industrial development that happens in the rural industrial zone, if it is approved, would be required to meet all of the standards in 1002 for the hydrogeologic report, the analysis.

Okay. So we have no water quality testing done, and we have a sensitive creek next door that And we know it was a mill site, and we know there was a massive fire. And we know all the activities have been going on on the site. Has anybody done an environmental phase 1 report on the site?

Not that I'm aware of. I didn't find any in the nonconforming use verifications and alterations. And again, it's not a requirement for the zone change. This development already exists, but these things would need to be considered moving forward with any sort of redevelopment on the site.

Exactly. And I'm not sure how we can meet goal five of the statewide planning goals in chapter three of the comp plan that protects natural resources without some sort of environmental assessment of the site. That's just my two cents. Thank you.

Thanks. Commissioner King, your turn.

Thank you. I'm the new guy here. I had a process question in terms of, you know, since there's been no public testimony or response, the notice went out to neighbors within half a mile. This is a pretty rural spot. I'm wondering, is there like three neighbors or four? I wonder how many notices went out for for this change.

I need a minute to look that up and I'm happy to do that, but we can, if somebody, if you can give me a minute, we can move on to the next question.

Yeah. I'm just curious because no response. That's one thing that's kind of jumped off the page to me was there's no public response. This is a pretty big change. And so I was just curious, like who's, maybe it's not on everyone's radar. The other thing was, um, Have we gone through this, used this statute in Clackamas County before for another, I mean, it's been around for 20 something years. Have we gone through this with another mill site that has used this statute to change?

So not that I'm aware of. There was one that was talking about using it and was able to do a zone change through a different process. I don't think it is used a whole lot across the state. I talked with the DLCD representative, Department of Land Conservation and Development, and she had mentioned that there was a lot of new people in the department and a number of people had come up to her and said, I didn't even know this existed. So... It's not commonly used, but I'm sure it has across the state at some point in time.

Okay. Well, that's why we pay lawyers to find this stuff. Condition... So the change to... Your proposed change to condition four is now allowing... all the rural industrial use. So is that really even a condition anymore at that point? It seems like it's not a condition if we're saying that all the uses in this RI zoning is allowed, where before we were saying they needed to demonstrate some certain traffic thing. Is it even a condition anymore?

So yes, and I apologize if I wasn't really clear. The condition is that only the industrial uses that are allowed in that zone would be allowed. There are other uses allowed in that zone like recreation facilities that are not considered industrial uses that would not be allowed on this site but could be allowed on other rural industrial sites.

Okay, thanks for that clarification. And I think this was finally is... Just for my information, in this zoning, is any future development going to have to go through design review? Or is there things that could happen as of right that wouldn't go through? Like anything, any future change in terms of the physical structures on the site are going to have to go through design review. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. All right. I think that's it for me.

So it looks like we sent out, I mean, it is a rural area. There's not a lot of neighbors within a half mile, but it looks like there were 27 minus two, about 25 neighbors within a half mile. In addition to agencies like the fire district and other, and the state agencies that were notified.

Okay, great. Thanks.

Mm-hmm. Commissioner Wilson, you have another question.

Yeah. I want to give Mark a break here and address my question down to Christian. How are you doing, Christian?

Doing well. How are you?

Fine. I haven't seen you in a while. I see from the square footage on the traffic study, I have a question about that. I understand there's about 30 employees there now presently on site for those various things that they're doing there. Do you have any information on the current traffic volume for that site?

Yes. The traffic study did assess what the current trip generation was, and let me get to that. For the PM peak hour, it was five trips total.

Okay. Now, why does the square footage have an impact on a traffic study? I mean, the place could be used for storage stuff, and it only has two or three people there, and very little volume. So why does the square footage have an impact on traffic? the limiting of the traffic study. You're saying we're going to limit the square footage based upon the traffic study.

Right. In ITE trip generation, the number of trips is often, well, it's associated with one variable or another, and in this case, for these uses, the variable was was square footage of the buildings. So there's a general correlation between the size of the building and the number of trips generated. There are other variables such as, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No consideration of what is being used there, what the facility is being used for. It's only the square footage.

The square footage of a manufacturing land use.

But this is a rural industrial, not a manufacturing.

Well, manufacturing was determined to be the most intensive trip-generating use of the uses that would be allowed. Okay.

Thanks, Christian. Look forward to seeing you.

Yeah.

Martha, just a quick question. How does Clackamas County zone for pellet manufacturing? Is that under wood manufacturing or wood processing? What they used to produce at this mill site, I was digging through the state and it's more or less under a fuel regulation that I could see. Now, are we treating this as a fuel regulation? or a wood processing if we were to deal with this as a pellet production, pellet manufacturer?

Well, that is an interesting question. And we... Based on the alterations of the non-conforming use, we're looking at it as wood processing. As I was digging into sort of the definitions of things that are like plywood and veneer and that list and looking at the different like NASICS categories of the manufacturing, it became clear to me that wood pellet manufacturing really is sort of biofuel manufacturing. And I don't think we historically have looked at it that way. It is no longer on the site. So I also feel like this is a really big cop out, but we don't actually have to define that right now. But I think that maybe how we have looked at it has changed over time.

Yeah, digging around. It's not an easy find with the state either, as I was digging around through their regulations. Definitely needs work. Thank you for answering that.

So are there any other questions of staff before we move on to the testimony?

One more quick question.

Yeah.

So... If this rezoning did not go through, is every new use on the site right now, this new non-conforming use, have to go through a process? Does the rezoning, in terms of just continuing on as it is today, just create less friction for the owner of the property going forward? Yeah. if so like why aren't they including the if they're going they're putting together 625 pages of information to rezone this why why is it not including the additional buildings in the site to the south i guess i don't quite i have some cognitive dissonance and why that's not included if they're going through this process and where the friction is for them and what happens if this doesn't go through for the future of the site

That's fair. I see Jennifer smiling. I will try to answer this quickly, Jennifer. Because that's a very important and big question. So... Why they're not doing the other site is a little bit easier for me to answer. The reason they're not doing the other site is I don't think that they thought they could demonstrate that that portion of the development was part of this mill site. And if you recall, ORS 197 requires that the rezoning only be of the mill site. And so because that was done after, my guess is they didn't think that they could argue that. And again, they could verify that. But the other part of the question about non-conforming uses is unfortunately a little complicated. So yes, any alteration of a building or a different use that is put on this property requires an alteration of the non-conforming use. A land use application and approval And essentially to demonstrate that it won't cause any greater adverse impact than the nonconforming use does right now. As a part of that, you also need to demonstrate that the nonconforming use or uses on the property have not been discontinued. for more than two years. And I think they may be at risk of that at this point. We did not make any official determination about which of these uses are still legally nonconforming uses on the property. If this were not rezoned every time something changed on the property, the property owners need to go through an alteration of that nonconforming use. And I think that that is what they're trying to remedy here. That was my short answer.

Okay. Well, it sounds like some of the questions may be questions for the applicant as well. They appear to me they overlapped a little bit. So if there are any other questions of staff, I think we'll move on to the next part of the process. So have we received any correspondence on this matter other than those items included in our meeting packets? No, we've not. Okay. Okay. And are there any other government agencies here to provide technical information related to the application? I don't believe there are. I can't see the list, so I don't know.

I'm going to say no to that also.

Huh?

I'm going to say no.

Okay. All right. So now we're going to move into the testimony section of the hearing. And so this is how this is going to work. First, we're going to hear testimony by the applicant or their representative. And we'll give them 15 minutes. But if they need a little more, I'll be flexible. Then there'd be testimonies. from representatives of recognized community planning organizations or hamlets, maximum five minutes per CPO or hamlet. Then any other testimony, and I believe someone in the audience had raised their hand, that would be their opportunity for them to raise their hand or ask questions. And that would be three minutes per speaker. There'll be an opportunity for the applicant's rebuttal, which is limited to arguments addressing evidence already in the record. And that's 10 minutes. And then there'll be an opportunity for planning and zoning staffs to rebuttal, which is limited to addressing any evidence already on the record. So if you want to provide testimony, you will use the raise hand feature in Zoom. Please do not raise your hand to reach the point of testimony order where you are eligible to testify. Attendees on a PC or iPad, you have a raise hand button on the Zoom bar. It's top or bottom, depending on your device. Attendees by phone use the star nine to activate the raise hand feature. When the moderator switches you over to provide testimony, your access will look different for a moment. Primarily you will see all participants' cameras, not just the one who is speaking. Staff will call upon you when it is time for you to provide testimony. Once you have provided your testimony, your mic will be muted and your screen will be returned to normal. So with that, the applicant now has an opportunity to present their proposal.

So I have Allison Duna.

Hi, can you guys hear me? Yes. Is my audio working? Hi, my name is Andrew Stamp. I'm using a different person's computer, so I might show up as Allison, but hopefully you can tell that I'm not Allison. But anyway, my name is Andrew Stamp. I'm a lawyer at VF Law. I co-wrote the application along with my associate, Spencer Patowski. He probably did 90% of it. Just to reminisce, the first time I appeared in front of the Clackamas County Planning Commission, I think, was 1998. So I don't know if any of you were on the Planning Commission in 1998. I kind of doubt it, but that was the first time for me. I'm glad to be appearing before the Planning Commission tonight. I do want to say I'm not going to give a long presentation because Martha did such an excellent job. And she really did a great job fielding a lot of the questions too. So I don't think I would have said anything different than Martha said so. So excellent work on her part. One observation I'd make about Oregon land use is rural industrial zone is a little bit of a... I want to say, well, I'm not going to use the word I'm thinking of, but it's a use that is under... appreciated and because the only uses that were zoned rural industrial when senate bill 100 was passed and you know counties were going ahead and adopting comp plans the only rural industrial areas were uses that where they already had a use there on the site you know the only sites that were zoned rural industrial were areas that already had a rural industrial use They didn't take 100 acres of vacant land and say, this will be our rural industrial area. And so there were certain, that's one of those uses that is very hard to, the only sites that are currently rural industrial are sites that usually have stuff going on and they don't turn over very often. The people that have them use them and it's very hard to get that kind of land. The Oregon Statewide Planning Goals and the program in general really tries to push industrial users into urban industrial zones. regardless of whether they need the urban services that are associated with those urban industrial zones. So there's lots of rural industrial users that they're caught between a rock and a hard place because they can't afford the $250,000 an acre that it costs to go into the Estacada urban industrial area or the city of Sandy's urban industrial area. They can't really afford that. But it's hard to find these rural industrial areas. So, you know, we've been talking to the legislature about this for many years. And in 2003, one of the ideas was, well, we've got all these abandoned mill sites, you know, because Oregon doesn't really do logging anymore at the same intensity that it did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And these are underutilized sites. And these are sites that are really no good. They're oftentimes zoned EFU or zoned for forestry, but they're really not good for resource use. Why don't we pass a bill that allows these sites to be redeveloped? And so House Bill 2691-2003 was the result of that effort. And I remember being involved in that when it was going on. Ironically, it hasn't been used very much. This goes to some of your commissioner's questions. How often does this get used? I'm only aware of a handful of cases where it has been used throughout the state. And one of the things that attorneys like to do when we have a potential land use application that we have to write is we go, well, let's find out, let's get five different applications that other people have written and kind of cut and paste out of those. you know that's the classic you know why reinvent the wheel if someone already did it successfully not to mention you can read those applications and kind of see what problems they ran into and and how they dealt with them and stuff so it's always good to read those old applications but what i found was there wasn't a whole lot out there so we kind of ended up having to go from scratch And that's one of the reasons this application took so long to generate. The other problem we ran into is that various uses on the site, at some point it sounded like they were going to stay, and then some of the uses decided to close down. Like, for example, the Traeger pellet mill, one of the reasons we didn't include them is because for a while they were telling us that they were going to stay. And we figured, you know, the application was complicated enough as it is, and involving the Traeger site, which has its own unique set of circumstances, as Martha indicated, made the application more complicated. So we decided to just dumb it down as best we could and give you the cleanest, easiest application to approve. We probably will come in at a later date with another application for the Traeger site, It more than likely will be a goal exception of some kind, but that's a little bit too determined. And I was talking with Martha a few days ago and said, I've got a couple of different ideas about how to do this. And I'd like to talk to you about which one, which application you'd rather see, you know, what would staff be more likely to approve? So I'm hoping to have that conversation at some point. But for here tonight, we don't need to worry about the Traeger site. The question was asked, well, if you're not doing manufacturing rural industrial sites, what other uses could you do? One of the classic examples, and this has been a huge problem in Clackamas County, is contractor establishments. And what happens is you'll get a guy, he'll start out as a small business and he'll do it as a home occupation. I'm sure you've had many of those cases. And as long as they've got three or four employees and a few vehicles, that works out great. But eventually, the ones that actually know what they're doing grow. And next thing you know, they've got 25 vehicles and 30 employees or something like that, and their neighbors start complaining about this home occupation that just sort of outgrew itself. And so code violations get filed. They come to me and say, What should we do? And we say, you got to move your business to a rural industrial area or an urban industrial area. And they say, we can't afford urban industrial. I said, well, then it's rural industrial. Well, there's no land available for this. Okay, well, then you're just move to Idaho then because they got plenty of land and they don't care what you do. And so, you know, those are the tough conversations that we have with our clients. And oftentimes the answer is move to Idaho. And I've always thought, even though that's good legal advice, it's kind of crappy for Oregon. And as an Oregonian, I hate giving that advice. I hate giving the advice, move to Idaho. But we do it very often. And so this to me is a step in the right direction for kind of fixing that move to or Idaho problem and Because it you know, those are some of the uses that could be allowed vehicle repair businesses is another example The guys that are too big to do home ox You know, so anyway, those are some examples of some of the clients that we might be able to attract and Some of our buildings are pretty big and those might be good for warehousing and things. They're all solid buildings. They're all well built. The property is not in farm tax deferral, by the way, because they're not farming anything. So kind of one of the requirements of being in farm deferral is you have to be in farm deferral. I mean, you have to have some actual farming going on and we don't. So anyway, I think those are some of the things that I just, some background that I wanted to give you. Martha was correct. Somehow, when we originally did the application, we had our traffic engineer, we told him 87,100 square feet of building size. And I think later we figured out it was closer to 93,000. So we're going to have to fix that little error. It's a little discrepancy, but we may as well fix it. We'll do that as we move forward with the project. Someone asked about environmental phase ones. That was done at the time of purchase in 2015. Obviously, nobody in their right mind buys old properties that have been used in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s without doing some kind of phase one and oftentimes a phase two because you don't want to buy a property that ends up being a contaminated surplus site. So that was done, and this property is remarkably clean. So that's good. Someone asked about goal five. In a PAPA context, you know, post-acknowledgement plan amendment context, goal five really only applies if there's a goal resource, a goal five resource on the property that's being rezoned. In this case, there's not. And that's why goal five, it's pretty easy to meet the goal five criteria here. And as Martha pointed out, right now we've got a whole lot of non-conforming uses on the property. One of the big reasons we want to rezone a rural industrial is so that we're kind of shovel ready for the next guy that wants to come in, you know, we don't want to have to say, well, you know, maybe you could get it, maybe you won't, but you got to go down and talk to planning and run, they'll run you through a type two or a type three, and it'll take six months. And maybe if you're lucky, you get it, maybe you don't, you know, and people are like, wow, you know, I can't be unemployed for six months. That's a problem. And so, you know, being able to be shovel ready and just move right in as an allowed use in the zone is a very, very attractive thing for a property owner. So anyway, unless there's more questions, I think that those kind of summarize the things that I heard and wanted to address. but I know you probably have some more questions, so I'm open to taking those.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation. It looks like Commissioner Wilson has their hand raised. Do you have a question?

Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Allison, you're representing an investment corporation, so... corporation you're representing is really not going to be using this property they're probably going to be looking to sell it from what i'm hearing from you and so they're looking at this change in the zoning uh to aid in their marketing of this property is that correct

Commissioner Wilson, M&S Investments is really two people. It's Mitch Magenheimer and his wife, was it Sarah? Yeah. And so they're not some big, nameless, faceless corporation out of New York City or Delaware or something. They're really just... local people that live right down the street from this area. These are folks that grew up, lived their whole life in the area. What they want to do is lease the space out and get rents out of it. So, you know, that's what they're doing now. They've got tenants in there and they're hoping to get more tenants once it's zoned rural industrial. But, you know, it's a long-term hold for them. uh you know they they did buy it they're making payments on it and that kind of thing so they you know the way it's working right now is i think the rents pay for the you know whoever it is they bought it from you know that kind of thing But eventually when they own it free and clear, it'll be a, you know, it'll be a good investment, you know, but it's really important that we have people like that that'll do these things because most people can't afford to buy a big property like that. And, and, uh, and you know so to have someone that's a local person in fact that steps up to the plate buys it and then offers that up for rents uh at you know to other people in the community that to me is a real good community service i mean they make money off it obviously but you know these are people that might otherwise have to go to sandy or or aurora or woodburn and pay even more money for industrial land, urban industrial land, which most of them can't afford.

Okay.

Does that answer your question, sir?

I'm not really concerned about the corporation piece, and I'm glad to understand that it's some local folks. Now, is that square footing limitation going to impact their purchase of this property? I I personally don't think that that square footage is a reasonable thing to do, you know, reducing it down like that. But I'm just questioning you, is that going to be a big burden on them?

Well, the reason you have the square footage limitation is to deal with the transportation planning rule. One of the things the transportation planning rule says is that if you change the level of service of an intersection two miles away, then you've got to pay to fix that intersection. And So we don't want to fix intersections. Obviously, we don't have that kind of money. And so what we did, we told our traffic engineer, hey, we want to have as many trips as we can have without blowing out any intersection or causing the level of service to fail or to go below standards. And that's what our traffic engineer came up with. So I think we want as many trips as we can have, but by the same token, we don't want to fix intersections. So that's the compromise. And that's a reasonable compromise. Now, if in the future, let's say Elon Musk decides that he wants to put some rural industrial use there, and he doesn't care what it's going to cost, but he's got a lot of trip generation, then we'll say all right elon then then how about you fix that intersection we'll we'll put in the the new land use application to clackamas county and they'll tell us to fix the intersection and and we'll send you a bill because you've got more money than you know what to do with and everyone will be happy you know that that could happen it's doubtful but you know Stranger things have happened, I guess. That's the line we're trying to draw. We want as many trips as we can get, but we don't want to get Christian snuffing mad at us that we're messing up his intersections. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. Now, I understand there's like 30 people that are currently employed there. You don't know who might want these properties. But I have some concerns about, you know, those folks losing their jobs and all that, and that's not a big problem for you, but it's something to consider. I'm assuming that they're going to own the property for a little bit, at least, until they can find somebody to lease it to, or if you buy it, you're going to have it leased to whoever's there now, I think, right?

Yes, we're going to continue to lease to any tenant who wants to stay. But, you know, speaking for my applicant, I'm sure he would love to have more tenants. And I think we'll get more tenants once it's rezoned rural industrial because there's probably a lot of people that are a little bit scared off by the nonconforming use aspects of it right now. It's hard to talk to a potential tenant tenant and say well we don't really know if we're going to get approval for your use as an alteration of a non-conforming use i mean maybe we get it maybe we don't we'll let you know in six months or eight months because it usually takes us a couple months to draft an application and then it takes five or six months to run it through So, you know, those are the kinds of problems that we want to avoid by rezoning it. You know, it'll be shovel-ready, so to speak. And I say shovel-ready. We're not actually planning on building anything new, but tenants could move in, start their business, you know, a day later or a week later, you know, really fast turnaround.

So whoever you lease it to, will have to be rural industrial type production, right?

Yes. Manufacturing or, like I said, contract establishment, vehicle repair are kind of the obvious industrial users of that. You know, it won't be commercial. There won't be any clients. It won't be a commercial nursery where people are coming to look at pots and plants.

know it'll be it'll be mostly manufacturing i think you know i mean that's the obvious thing there okay thank you for your response you're welcome here mr camp line you have a question yeah thank you mr chair i just wanted uh mr stamp made a comment that i just wanted to uh emphasize as important that these are local owners who are doing something constructive with the property and from how it appears in this application are simply looking to make the property more marketable and more commercially aligned with a productive use. And I think to the extent as a planning commission, we can support that within the bounds of the law and the relevant rules. To me, that should be a kind of parcel of what we do. So I just want to go on record and share that sentiment.

Thank you. You don't have a question for the applicant. You're just making a general statement. Correct. Okay. Yeah. And that's fine. But usually we wait till deliberations for those. Okay. So no other questions for the applicant from you? Okay, I guess I'll move on to Commissioner Lee.

Yes, thank you. Mr. Stamp, I'm glad to hear that a phase one environmental was done on the property. Would your client be willing to enter that phase one report into the public record in an effort of transparency?

We lose him.

My guess is they're talking amongst each other.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I muted myself and I forgot to put myself back on. I think they will. They're not here tonight. It just so happened that the... the the hearing date tonight came at an unfortunate time for them they had a pre-play planned vacation i mean this thing had been on the books for a year for them so they're out of the town and and not in a place where they have coverage Uh, so I wish he was here tonight to answer your question definitively, but I don't see why they wouldn't, uh, you know, but you know, it's rather obvious you don't buy million dollar properties without doing a phase one, uh, you know, you'd have to be, I mean, I don't, I don't know anyone that would do that. Um, that would be pretty, yeah. So I'm sure it's no problem. I hate to put words in his mouth, but I can't imagine it would be a problem.

Yeah, all you can do is ask. I appreciate that.

Yes, sir. Are there any other questions for the applicant? I don't see any other hands raised. okay uh so i guess we'll move to the uh the next um round and there'll be another opportunity perhaps for the applicant to uh respond to some other things that come up so we're not cutting you off just yet um so are there any representatives of community planning organization or hamlets here to speak i'm assuming no okay Now we'll have an opportunity for public testimony. So again, as I mentioned, please raise your hand using the Zoom if you want to testify. And for the record, please begin by stating your name. where you are from or who you are representing. And if you would like a copy of the final Board of County Commissioners decision on this matter, please provide your mailing address so we can send that to you. So if there's anyone who wants to testify, you each have three minutes to testify. Darcy, do we have anyone in the audience that wants to testify? No? Okay. So we don't have any in favor or we don't have any opposition. We don't have any neutrals. We just, okay. So we're done. Okay. So one more chance for the applicant, if there's anything that they would like to say before we move on, now would be an opportunity. Anything that's come up that you would like to rebut or any closing statements, now would be the time.

Thank you, Chair. Obviously, I didn't expect anyone to show up. Mitch and his wife have lived in the area a long time. They know everyone in the neighborhood. They have very good relations with everyone. They're the type of people that if you need a tractor, they're there at your house with a tractor to help you do what you need to do. you know so we did not expect there to be any opponents uh to this application so you know if we thought maybe if uh you know a thousand friends or some of the advocacy groups didn't like it for whatever reason they might show up but we even talked to them about it and they seem to be fine with it they said as long as you're not converting usable farmland to to rural industrial we're okay And we said, nope, the only thing we're really proposing is areas where there's concrete. And so that was kind of the beginning and end of their concerns. So it is comforting to hear that there aren't any opponents here today. I think that's a testament to Mitch's character.

Okay, great. Thank you very much for your comments, and we will take all those into consideration when we get into deliberations. So I'm now going to close the public testimony portion of the hearing. And now it is open for discussions or comments from the commissioners. And it appears that Commissioner Kentwine already went on record where they're at, their position is. Who else would like to comment at this point? Commissioner Murphy, I see your hand up.

Thank you, Tom. This is a question for Brian. Brian, would you know if they could access or could we access the DEQ or the environmental phase one report should be filed with DEQ?

Possibly if it was actually filed with the DEQ. But if it was performed as part of a land use action, probably not.

Probably not. OK. Thanks.

Commissioner King, you're next.

Thank you, Chair. So after going through all 625 pages of this, it seems to meet the criteria. And the current zoning from my chair appears to, it's not taking any agricultural or farmland out of out of the county because it hasn't been since 1941. So it's just sort of bringing it in line with what's been going on there for however many years. The current zoning, all it seems to be doing is creating friction for the owner. And so I think I'm kind of on the same page as Commissioner Cantonwine that This seems to make a lot of sense to me. And the fact that Thousand Friends has not come out against this, I mean, if anyone was going to, it would be, and have a concern on that side of things, they would have voiced them, I'm sure. And no, there was outreach and no one's opposing this. It seems like the neighborhood's on board. And so that's kind of my position at this point.

Great. Thank you. Mr. Catlin, you have some more comments, obviously.

Go ahead. A simple question. Well, maybe not a simple question. Commissioner Lee, when would the phase one become subject of public record? Is there an open DEQ matter related to the site? If there was, yeah. Right, if there was. To my knowledge, there isn't. I'm just asking you because you seem to have more knowledge than me. amongst the group, there's no active DEQ matter on the site.

I honestly did not search for that. So I do not know to definitively answer your question. But I would imagine that it would have come up during an environmental phase one, that there was some sort of DEQ action pending on the site. And that would have led probably to a phase two

and since the applicant didn't mention anything about a phase two that's a good sign thank you commissioner stevens i really uh support commissioner king's deliberation and i don't have a whole lot to add this seems to make sense i support the fact that this is already developed we're not taking farmland out of production. Obviously they're excellent neighbors and no one's here to complain about this change. So I'm in support of it. And thank you for asking.

Great. Thank you. Commissioner Satter.

The only thing I had to add, I mean, it's pretty much in line with what everybody else was saying though. Sorry about the dog. Is that, I mean, this is the zoning change. And if they're not looking at any kind of change of use or any development at this time. So given it's just a zoning change right now, with everything staying the same, it's just getting it in line with the actual use. And so there wouldn't be an environmental change impact, I wouldn't expect.

um if that makes sense sorry the dog is being that um okay anything else okay anyone else want to say anything uh

I'd like to make a motion, if that's all right, Chair.

I'd like to make a comment first. I've been patiently listening to everyone else, so I figure I ought to say something regarding the matter. And I'm pretty much aligned with what I'm hearing from the rest of the Commission. It's one of many examples of... property that was used for what in an area that was intended for a different purpose and somehow was grandfathered in all these years. What I've never understood is why it wasn't just given the more formal exception in the first place. And we have to go through these things later in, you know, 30, 40, 50 years later. So it seems to me like this is a an easy easy thing to proceed with and I will make a comment though regarding the the loss of agricultural land and you know having been on the commission for a few years and getting a flavor of the nuances in the county I think part of the problem with the county is we have so many properties that are really too small to be productive farm land. And we see this, we saw this earlier or last year in that application. And so the problem in my mind is the fact that We've got a lot of small parcels that have been carved up in the county over the years in the rural areas that just don't lend themselves to agricultural use anymore. And I don't know how you solve that problem. But to me, that's the bigger issue in the county. This is kind of a no-brainer. So that's my two cents. So would anyone like to make a motion? I would. Okay. Okay.

I move to recommend approval of files zero 437 dash 25. And zero 438 dash 25 to the Board of County Commissioners as recommended by staff.

Do I have a second? Commissioner Wilson, you're seconding it, OK? So. With that we all Commissioner Murphy, you have your hand raised. You're muted.

Excuse me, I'm sorry. I would like to add what Martha's amendment, he was asking for to limit the industrial, to industrial use to minimize the traffic.

Is that, is that, can you clarify your motion for me, please?

She said as recommended by staff and the staff recommendation is to make that change to condition four. So I think it's covered and Jennifer can maybe give a head nod or shake her head. Okay.

Thank you.

Yes. Okay. So that amendment is not necessary then? You're withdrawing it?

Yes, Tom, I'm withdrawing that.

Thank you. Okay. All right. So with that, I'm going to do a roll call or take a vote. So I think the easiest way for me is to see if everyone uses your raise hand feature for the ayes and the nays.

We have to have a verbal vote for the record.

Okay. All right. So do you want to do that for me then?

Sure. I can do it for you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Stevens.

I'm in favor.

Commissioner Murphy.

Yes.

Commissioner Lee.

Yes.

Commissioner King.

Yes.

Commissioner founds.

Yes.

Commissioner Satter.

Yes.

Commissioner Canton wine.

Yes.

Commissioner Wilson.

Yeah.

Commissioner Peterson.

Yes. That is unanimous. Okay. Motion carries. So we can move on. Hold on a second. Let me get my agenda back up. Okay. So the hearing is now closed. We have a few other items. They shouldn't take too long, but if anyone wants to take a quick break before we drive into those, we can do that. Or if everyone wants to just keep charging along, we can do that.

I'm good with a two-minute break or three-minute break.

Okay. We'll see you back in two minutes. Thank you.

Martha, this was an excellent report.

She's really good, isn't she?

Thank you. I can still hear you. Thank you.

I was hoping you could.

It must have taken a long time to do that.

Yes.

Yeah, I admire your attention to the detail and all the nuances. Thank you. Yes.

I'm going to go grab some more water really quick.

Yeah, go right ahead.

Tom, what are you reading? What good book? No. Bookwise. You're on mute.

Now, while we're being recorded, so it's probably not wise to have a conversation about books and reading, but I'll hook up after the fact. I'll fill you in.

Thank you, Tom. My dogs appreciated that.

Yeah. Well, we've been going for almost two hours, so I figured people might need a quick break.

Yeah, the dogs did anyhow. Yeah.

Whatever. I don't think we have everyone back yet, do we? Well, I'm going to assume most everyone is back. Normally, I would have liked to have started the meeting, being as we have a new member to our commission, with some brief introductions for an opportunity for for Tyler to tell us a little bit about his background at the same time for him to learn a little bit about the rest of us. So if everyone's okay with that, I'd like to take some time right now before we get into the other items on the agenda to just do a quick introduction. So Tyler, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, sure. Briefly, I work at Windermere Realty Trust. I'm the authorized principal broker at the Moreland office here in Selwood. I started my real estate career about 20 years ago, about I don't know, four blocks from Bryant Park. So right where apparently Darcy's hanging out on. I was over on 38th Street. I started in commercial appraisal and then I'm from born and raised in the Portland metro area. Went to Clackamas High School, came back to Portland and I live in unincorporated Clackamas County, but I can see Milwaukee from my front porch, and I consider myself a Milwaukee enthusiast. I really love all of the exciting things that are happening in that downtown area over the last several years. I'm excited to be here. I don't know what else to say.

Great. We're happy to have you. I'll just give you a little background. I'm on my fourth term on the commission, so I've been around for a while. And prior to that, I was an engineer at the Port of Portland, but I've been retired for the last nine years. I'm just, I live out in the unincorporated area as well in the Happy Valley area, but Happy Valley is kind of across the road from me, but I'm not in the city. So, anyone, Murph, would you like to go next?

Sure. Hi, how do you do, Tyler? Nice to meet you. Welcome to the commission. My name is Gerald Murphy or Murph, and I've lived up in the Mount Hood corridor for 52 years. I have 13 years in government camp and the rest down in just east of Brightwood, HOA, Timberline Rim, which borders both sides of the upper Sandy River. I'm a member of the Hoodland CPO, the Mount Hood Corridor Wildfire Partnership. I come from a blue collar background, a lot of logging, home building. John Gerstle, excavation roofing. John Gerstle, On and on, whatever it takes. John Gerstle, Welcome.

John Gerstle, Thank you. John Gerstle, And I will say that mercy great guy to go on a hike with up there and learn all about what's going on. John Gerstle, i've had several trips with a great resource. John Gerstle, We would like to go next. John Gerstle, Commissioner Stevens.

Hi, Tyler. Man, you hit the ground running. Great questions tonight. It's obvious you've read 625 pages. Anyway, I too have been around for quite a while. I had a few years and then took a break and a few back in it. And really, I'm thankful I did. It's really valuable to keep your finger on the pulse here. I've been on the Beaver Creek CPO board for 28 years and the Hamlet of Beaver Creek. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary here in Beaver Creek. I'm in very unincorporated Clackamas County, lots of amongst a lot of timber land. So I get to ride my horses on it and it's great. We have an amazing staff. You're going to learn a lot, have a lot of support and welcome.

Thank you, Commissioner Stevens.

Commissioner Wilson, I think you wanted to started to say something. Yeah.

Yeah. My name is Mike Wilson. I'm a retired Marine. I was in the Marine Corps for 20 years, served as an airport. I was a pilot in the flu airport. Moved up here to Oak Grove about 30 years ago. I also worked as a Director of Information Systems for Gunterson Marine across the river here. I've been through my fourth term with Tom on the commission. I serve on two other Captains County Commissions, Transportation Safety Commission and the Extended Law Enforcement District Commission. I've enjoyed working on this commission. I find it very interesting. and glad to have you on board.

Very nice to meet you, Commissioner Wilson.

Commissioner Lee, would you like to go next?

Sure. Welcome aboard, Tyler. My only son's name is Tyler, so you got a great name. I won't forget it. Currently, I am a civil engineer registered in Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, and I work as the principal engineer of the land development group for Pace Engineers in Lake Oswego. Been on the board now, what, two years? Something like that. Been fun. Been very interesting. So glad you're here.

Nice to meet you, Commissioner Lee.

Hey, Tyler. I'll go next. Okay.

Hey Tyler, I'm Ryan. I'm a local contractor. This is my first term on here. I think I joined when Brian did. I think I'm in this a couple of years and learning a lot more than I probably even knew I was going to learn doing this. Don't have a whole lot of other experience in any of the committees or anything, kind of getting into it and jumped right in on this committee for sure. So I live out in Damascus, just a contractor by trade. So nothing special there.

Well, it's nice to meet you, Commissioner Founds. Yeah, good to meet you.

Commissioner Cantwin, you want to go next?

Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you, Tyler. Been on the commission for a year and a half now, since early 25. I'm working real estate investments. I'm president of CWC Investment Company. We have a variety of multifamily, commercial, industrial, and then some net leased assets throughout Oregon and Washington. Pleasure to meet you.

Nice to meet you as well. And Commissioner Satter.

Hello, I'm Jennifer. I live in Malala. And I think I've been on the commission about the same time as Commissioner Lee. I think we started about the same time. I was on the planning commission in Moala before, and I was on city council and school board. My background is in corporate accounting, and I've lived most of my life in Clackamas County around. My dad worked in the mill, so we did move a lot when I was a child. And I have four kids. They're all adults and six grandchildren.

Really nice to meet you.

Well, we look forward to your participation. As Tammy mentioned, you're off to a great start. I remember my first couple of years, I hardly said a word. I was so intimidated by it all. So you jumped right in. That's great. You're going to be a great addition. Thanks. So with that, we have some minutes to approve. I presume everyone's had a chance to read the minutes. I'd like to make a motion to approve them as written. Okay. Do I have a second? Commissioner Murphy, I see your hand raised. Are you a second? You're on mute. Okay. All right.

Uh, point of information should I abstain from this vote?

Because I was, yes, you can stay. It would be. Yeah, that would be acceptable. We would understand completely. Uh, okay. Uh, I think we can do the minutes with a, I, and they, um. Not having roll call everyone correct me if I'm wrong Darcy. yes i can yes okay yes for the minutes you can all right all right so all those in favor of the minute says red say aye aye aye aye aye aye do we have anyone to pose let's put it that way all right all right they're passed okay okay so uh with Oops. You're on mute, Commissioner. It looks like you were talking and you're on mute. Okay, guess not. All right. So we've had to put off the election new officers for a few months because of reappointments of commissioners and whatnot. So I'm way overdue, way past my time. So we need to elect new officers. I did a little bit of... inquiring of what interests there might be to see if we could maybe get one of the newer members to step up. But most were a little reluctant at this point. But there were two that said that they would serve again if the commissioners chose to nominate them. So those were commissioners Stevens and Commissioner Murphy. So do I have any recommendations to nominate a new chair and vice chair?

Looks like Commissioner- Tom, I would like to nominate Tammy as the chair.

Okay. Anyone else have a-

I'll second that.

OK, so we have two. Commissioner Stevens, do you want to say anything before we vote, or are you OK?

On my screen, she's locked up.

Oh, is she?

This is a good time to put her in this position then.

It'll be such a nice surprise for her when she gets on.

Oh, you didn't know. I'll call you later. So we lost her? It looks like her screen's just frozen. Oh, no. I would bet she wants this. Yep. She didn't say no to me, so I'm assuming she'll be okay if we vote her in. Do we want to give her a minute? That's too bad. Well, how long should we wait here?

She's still with us. I hope that didn't shock her.

I don't know.

It looks like Darcy's trying to call her.

Okay.

Okay, I have her on.

Oh, yes, that'll be a problem.

Okay, so they nominated nominated you as chair. She accepts.

Okay. All right. We haven't voted yet. Yeah, we haven't voted. They haven't voted yet. You're not a shoo-in yet. I just wanted to let her know what's happening. That's all. Okay.

Yeah, it looks like your screen is just frozen here. Oh, that's weird. Do you want me to bump you out and then you can just rejoin? Okay. I'm gonna hang up.

Okay, here we go. All right, we'll give her a minute to come back on. So she can vote. I take a minute, right?

Okay, she's gonna try and rejoin.

Okay.

but she accepts the nomination. Yeah, yeah.

You back? no you might ask for any of the nominations tom well i just want her to be present for the vote if we can't it can be that's all um still waiting uh yeah

Okay, I just sent her a new link. Okay, so maybe that'll work.

I think we ought to have Nick elections person. looks like we have her back ah welcome back okay so uh we have uh it's been moved and seconded to uh elect tammy commissioner stevens i should say as our chair the next term so uh that uh we'll take a vote can darcy can you uh do a roll call for me please

Commissioner Murphy? Aye. Commissioner Lee?

Yes.

Commissioner King?

Yes.

Commissioner Founds?

Yes.

Commissioner Satter? Yes. Commissioner Cantonwine?

Yes.

Commissioner Wilson? Aye. Commissioner Peterson?

Absolutely, yes. That is unanimous. Okay, I probably should have packaged it with the vice president, but I didn't. So we need to elect a vice president, a vice chair, I should say, as well. So does anyone have someone they would like to nominate?

I'll nominate. I nominate Brian Lee.

So we have two. We have Commissioner Wilson wants to nominate Commissioner Lee. Commissioner Satter is nominating Commissioner Murphy.

I second Murphy.

Obviously, he's not ready. Okay. So how do I want to do this? I guess we have two potential nominees. So we'll let the Commission choose which one they want to choose. How's that?

So we'll do a second commissioner Lee.

Huh?

Doesn't somebody have to 2nd commissioner Lee's nomination?

Oh, true true.

No, I want to I will 2nd commissioner Lee nomination.

Okay. Thank you. Yes, I really would like to have to possible just just to. So having said that, we have two candidates. We have Commissioner Lee or Commissioner Murphy. So when we do the roll call, you can all say which one you prefer. So Darcy, please.

Commissioner Stephens.

You might make a choice.

Our first big decision.

Did she go blank again?

I think so.

Oh no. I don't care if says she's. OK, why don't birth?

Um, Commissioner King.

This is my first meeting. I'm going to abstain. I don't know. I have not served. I've only been serving for hours. And so I think it's appropriate for me to abstain since I was not part of the process leading up to this.

Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll let you off the hook. Commissioner Founds.

I'll vote for Murph.

Commissioner Satter. Um, or commissioner Canton wine.

I'm going to abstain from this one.

Commissioner Wilson. Commissioner Peterson.

So I'm trying to, am I going to be a tiebreaker or am I going to make a tie? Neither. Neither? All right. Then I was, no offense Murph, but I would vote for Commissioner Lee.

That's okay.

Mine gets the new blood, that's all.

We have three for Commissioner Murphy, two for Commissioner Lee. Okay.

All right. So it looks like Commissioner Murphy and Commissioner Stevens will resume officer positions again. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jennifer. And we have schedule review and some other business we want to chat about too. Okay.

I mean...

Not Commissioner Hughes, Jennifer Hughes.

That's okay. And I haven't met Tyler yet either, but we're going to schedule a little Zoom orientation. If Darcy hasn't reached out to you, she will. So it's nice to meet you. I'm Jennifer Hughes. I'm the planning director. I'm at 98% of all of these meetings, but I never do the important stuff. I bring people like Martha to do the important stuff, but I'm almost always here. So welcome. And we're very glad to have you.

Thank you.

As far as the schedule review, first, the good news, we'll be canceling the second meeting in July because you finished this item tonight. There's no need to hold it for a continuance. So July 27th is canceled. In August, Martha will be back again on August 10th, which with what I guess I will characterize as an Interesting application. I mean, it is interesting. I think it's going to be somewhat complicated and I know she's already thinking about how to try to explain this in a way that is less complicated, but it is a technically a comprehensive plan amendment for what's for a goal exception, which is not something that you see very often. And this one is a little bit different than even the goal exceptions we've had in the past. So it should be interesting. I do expect there'll probably be public interest in this one. I will be relatively shocked if you don't have people to testify, which we haven't had a lot of with a lot of your recent quasi-judicial applications. There's been not a lot of controversy, I think, with this one there may be. So just be prepared that we'll We'll probably be having some testimony. Commissioner Satter, do you have a question about that?

I have a question. If there were to be something on the agenda, say this fall, and a commissioner excluded themselves from the meeting because maybe they have a conflict of interest, and probably Yeah. Oh gosh. I can't remember what it is right now. But anyway, it'd be a complete conflict of interest. Would they be able to testify at the planning commission meeting as a citizen?

I believe the answer to that is yes. I mean, I can certainly double check that before the time comes, but I don't think you give up your right to participate as an individual. If you essentially recuse yourself from an item.

Okay. Yeah. That person may just,

withhold their specific testimony for the county commissioners when it gets that far but yeah sure sure yeah yeah i mean you definitely that and we can have the sort of ins and outs of what really qualifies as a conflict of interest um oh i'll be definitely a conflict of interest okay well and if you feel that you would be biased i already feel i'm already gonna have um ex parte contact like

There's going to be a town hall and everything. And I'm already, yeah, there's going to be so much expertise on taxes.

Okay. Okay. So yeah, you would just, you would just not participate in the hearing.

Yeah. So when that UGB expansion does come this fall, I will not participate. So something for the other commissioners, because when you are looking at a quorum, I will not be able to participate.

Okay, that's good to know while we're planning.

Yeah, I thought scheduling was a good time to mention.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So then on August 24th, we're having another study session. We've advanced this project on clear and objective standards related to the various natural resource and natural hazards provisions of our code. A number of you will remember we've had some consultants here before. We've done a couple of, I believe a couple of study sessions now The project has advanced quite a ways, and we are going to have actual draft code amendments for your, not a hearing yet, but for discussion. And we will also be doing at least one digital town hall for the public coming up this fall. So Joy Fields and the consultants will be here to talk about that with you in September. And then... Sorry, in August. I misspoke. August 24th. Then we have two potential dates in September. We will be narrowing that down. We'll be doing a study session either on the 14th or the 28th of September on ZDO 294, which is another package of minor and time-sensitive amendments. We just finished. You'll recall we just had one of these packages, but we're already starting up. Our first team meeting is actually Wednesday. to start talking about this next package because there are a number of things that the state has adopted that will take effect January 1st and we need to do some work. And in at least one case, there's actual policy choices for us to make. It's not just a mandate that we have no, we have to do it, but we have some flexibility on how we do it. And we need to get that in place before January 1st. So it's a pretty tight timeline. So we will be doing a study session to talk about what all is going to be in that package. But we need to get a little further along before we decide which one of these dates is preferable. So either the 14th or the 28th of September. And then the public hearing on that will be October 12th. At this point, Then we've got a hold on November 9th for public hearings, two public hearings, one for the city of Canby wanting to expand their urban growth boundary and a second one for the city of Malala wanting to expand their urban growth boundary. And then there'll be another study session in December. also on the clear and objective standards project with the consultants. So there are actually kind of some weighty things coming up for the rest of the year and quite a bit to keep you busy. I do think that both the UGB proposals could attract interest, but the Malala one in particular is already gathering interest, which is what Commissioner Satter referred to. So I think you'll have some public participation really on at least a couple of these items, which will It'll be good. We haven't had a lot of that for a while.

That is a lot of documentation to read too.

Yeah, quite possibly so.

Is it would we be able to tackle both of them in the same meeting? I'm just thinking there's going to be a lot of public testimony. Yeah. It might be a bit much to try to do both of those in the same meeting.

I think the Yeah, I think the question becomes whether we have the time to do something different. And Martha, do you want to respond to that?

Yeah. We're hoping so. And we know that it might be a long meeting. Both the City of Malala and the City of Canby have what seems to be a very firm deadline of the end of the year to get through their city and the county process. And November 9th was the latest date that we could schedule and still maybe hopefully meet that by the Board of County Commissioners. But also it was the earliest date we could schedule and have both cities go through their processes and get us the information. And so it is a little compressed and we will do our best to move this along in one meeting for both.

Well, it's going to end up being two meetings if we go along anyway.

Possibly. And so also, we will be, I'm going to be tacking on a little UGB 101 and the study session on the Minor and Times Sensitive Amendments also just to sort of talk, give you a little bit of background on the process and what happens before it comes to the county decision makers and sort of what your role, what the county's role is in the process. to hopefully make those hearings go a little bit more efficiently.

The board has scheduled their hearings for December 1st for that. And so there is a little time. Your other regular meeting in November is Thanksgiving week, which isn't always ideal either for the commission, but also for the public wanting to testify, a lot of people traveling and that kind of thing. We could certainly look at, especially, you know, you can always choose to schedule a meeting a different, you know, potentially on a different Monday or something if we need to find a way to separate them out. But we're going to need to have you finish your work so that it can be at the board on the 1st of December.

Okay. Commissioner Wilson, do you have a hand?

Yes. Jennifer, I know we've talked about this before. Um, I would like to see something put on the agenda as to what the Board of County Commissioners decided on our recommendations, whether they rejected, approved, or amended what we proposed for them from our meeting. That would give us a little idea of how effective we're being. And I think that would be important for us. I know it would be important for me. I don't know about the rest of the commissioners, but I want to know, you know, how well we're doing, if they don't like what we're doing or if they think we're being very proactive with the community or what.

Sure. Put it on the agenda.

Yeah.

I think that's a great lead in to the other item we wanted to talk about actually. So if I may, When I made a point to go to the BCC meeting, even though we had unanimously agreed with the amendments that Martha had presented, but primarily to echo our concerns, some of our concerns about one of the provisions that the state had made that didn't allow adjacent owners to appeal some of the decisions. And so I felt it was important that they hear that as well, not just read it in a minute. So I made a point to go to the meeting. However, they were already of the same mindset. Those comments actually came out from some of the commissioners in their discussion. And so in that particular item, I think we were pretty well aligned with the commission and their feelings and our feelings. on the last item, if that's what you're looking for. But I think your point's a good one where in the future we'll try to make sure that we get a report back, just a brief report back on commission actions that we had acted on, if that's what you're getting at, sounds like. It makes sense?

Right. So we can just, we should just really add that as a regular agenda item. I think it'll jog all of our staff's memory that we need to, you know, be prepared because sometimes, I mean, it depends. Sometimes there's kind of, you know, we might cancel a couple of meetings and we get busy and forget like, wait, they did have an item that we never got back to them on. But yes, I think point well taken Commissioner Wilson. And so for i think everybody remembers what tom's talking about that was zdo 293 which was the last package of minor and time sensitive amendments in the board did pass those uh according to your recommendation unanimously and there will be a business meeting adoption of the formal ordinance document on august 6th um and so then they will take effect 30 days after that so we're looking at early september that that will all be in place yeah

However, Commissioner Canton-Wyatt had started to circulate a really well written letter about our concerns. and how we can move this forward. And I wanna apologize to the rest of the commissioners. I had intended to be talking to all of you these last few months in anticipation of this meeting. Unfortunately, I was dealing with my mother who just passed away last week. So I was a little preoccupied and so I didn't follow through prior to this discussion like I had planned. But I had had an opportunity to talk to Jennifer about it. And we thought it was probably worth an opportunity for the commissioners to bring this up again. Jennifer can kind of explain what we... how we could approach this in a way that's within the bylaws or county statutes, whatever. So I thought it was worth mentioning because it seems like there's an opportunity for us to see if we can really make some change here. And so I thought it's worth discussing it again, and maybe we could come up with a strategy is how we might want to push this issue forward. So with that, Jennifer, do you have any comments you would like to add? Sure.

So, right, I was on vacation when you had the meeting where you considered the text amendments, and I understood when I came back that this issue that staff is also concerned about, which is the kind of rollback through state legislation of community involvement in various types of land use applications, primarily in the name of housing production. That's the stated reason for the changes anyway. I think the concern is just the idea that the Planning Commission would send a letter sort of on behalf of the Clackamas County Planning Commission to state legislators or state agencies is really beyond the scope of what the county sees the role of advisory boards and commissions as being. So essentially you advise the board, but the board really sets the county's message in terms of legislating. or advocacy. And so there's a couple of options. As individuals, absolutely. You can testify to the state legislature. You can testify to Land Conservation Development Commission, written, oral, whatever, as long as it's clear. And you can draw on your own experience and say, you know, I have served on the Planning Commission and through that role. But what you shouldn't be doing is speaking on behalf of the county or on behalf of the County Planning Commission. So that's one option, and that's what Commissioner Cantonwine did, was change the letter to be his own personal and submitted it as testimony for that code amendment package. But if what you're interested in doing is having the county do something to advocate for this position, then I think another option is to speak as a body to the board. So in other words, you draft, instead of drafting the letter, as you started to do to, um, DLCD, you would address it to the board. And then, I mean, certainly you can send it directly, but what normally happens is they would end up having like staff potentially come and like present the letter to them at one of their issue sessions and talk through it. Um, and, and it would be sort of, what are you asking them to do? You know, then that's really the question. Are you asking the board to advocate at the state level for changes? I mean, I think that's where you were headed. Um, And so that's open to you as an option. Of course, there's also public comment at all of their business meetings. You know, you can sign up to get, anybody can sign up to get public comment and there's a three minute per speaker. So that would be another option potentially if, you know, one of you wanted to go and kind of share those thoughts, you'd be welcome to do that during a business meeting. But if you want to go down the letter route, I would say address it to the board, send it through me and we'll get that in front of them in some, you know, We'll have to reach out to the administration office and find out. But oftentimes, they would talk about that at their weekly issue session. And they are going to be setting their legislative agenda, I don't know exactly, a little bit later this year for 2027. My understanding is they already have interest in something related to land use, which they really haven't had as a high priority on their legislative agenda in recent years. But they're at least talking about it's this erosion of it. It's not just the public involvement. It's also the erosion of local control. They're concerned about for sure.

So it's clearly where it's headed.

Yeah. I would like to give a little two cents on this subject, too, because it happened in my neighborhood. We had a land use action in which a person bought a piece of property. They split it into four pieces. which went through a public land use subdivision action, which was fine. The main house was on one property. The three remaining pieces, they proceeded to split into two pieces each for a total of six. No public notice, no land use action involved. It just happened down the road from me. Not good.

It's happening. It's happening all over. And I mean, obviously there are different, you know, I don't, I want to be clear. There's people who are advocates for this and it's not just, you know, there are different perspectives, but. I think regardless of your perspective, there is no question that there is more control from the state in urban residential development than there's ever been. And it sort of continues to be layered. So that's a change. And then the sort of reduction of notification and appeal rights and all of that is also clearly happening.

Very frustrating in the rural community because Here we give up a lot of amenities and services that are available in larger communities, specifically to have a quality of life, to raise families and such. There's a trade-off for that. And so a lot of people here feel like that's being taken away from us.

One other thing I wanted to mention is that if you are going to send a letter, again, to the board on behalf of the Planning Commission, it should be something where there's a draft and you talk about it at a meeting and vote so that it's clearly that a majority of you want to send a letter.

I would agree.

I think we should do that.

Anyone else wanted to comment or?

Tom? Yeah.

Yeah.

Commission. Recently, the Mount Hood Corridor Partnership, a member of that who's also on the Hoodland Fire Board, crafted a letter for legislation, actually wrote the whole legislation himself for 72 hours of backup power for cell towers in wildfire risk neighborhoods. His angle is what he came up with is if he could tomorrow night can get the Hoodland Fire Department to back this. And if they, which I'm sure they will, because we're pushing on 911 numbers not being able to be called during public safety power shutoffs. He wants to solicit the special districts of Oregon, which are over 900 of them. for backing and then present that to the legislation, which I thought was a very smart way to go. So creative thinking of who else could back this would be this type of movement, I think would be time to put on think hats and take a look.

If that made sense. There's some chats going on as well. I see Tammy wants to try to organize. And I had a similar thought, but realized that whenever we do any kind of a Zoom meeting involves all of the commissioners and it has to be publicly noticed. And so I was cautioning, I was a little concerned about us being not real, recognizing the fact that we also are considered public body and as a result, we're subject to all those kinds of things. We need to be thoughtful how we approach it. So I would, and I was struggling with this last month or so as to, well, how do I want to approach this? I fully support it. I think most of the commissioners are in agreement, but I wasn't quite sure how we'd go about what we can do and still be within the county, which is why I talked to Jennifer.

Yeah, I mean, we can talk, I can clarify, but I think it's okay if, you know, if a couple of you want to draft a letter. Right. And then, you know, and then we put it in a packet and talk about it at a public meeting. What we can't have is like, you know, serial discussions or all of, you know, five or six of you having a meeting kind of offline. It doesn't really work that way.

Yeah, and I'm well aware of that. So, yeah, so it sounds like what we might, want to do is work on a proposal, a subcommittee, work on a proposal that we would bring to the next meeting that would then could be voted on as a recommendation to the commission. That's something we could do collectively. Beyond that, it's gotta be more individual if I understand it correctly. So for example, we can't as a board lobby our legislators individually. We'd have to do that individually. Is that a fair statement? That's right. Yes, correct. Okay. And that's kind of what I was wrestling with. Well, how do we do this in a way where we have some influence as opposed to just send a letter and go to the commission. That's the last... you know, we see of anything. So, you know, how do we, what I was wondering is how do we start kind of a grassroots effort to kind of get this issue elevated, not just from Clackamas County, but statewide. And that's the strategy I was thinking we might want to try to figure out how can we go about creating a grassroots approach. Again, we just have to be a few of us, maybe coming up with an idea of how we approach this. I don't think we can do that collectively.

Chair, I've got a question. So I'm playing a little catch up, obviously. I haven't seen any of the letters we're talking about. Is there has this been discussed publicly in this forum previously this year that I could go back and watch something to kind of get up to speed of where everybody's headspace is at on this noticing issue? But how do I get caught up on this? It sounds like there's some momentum behind it and I just want to jump on board.

You talked about it at your April hearing. Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

So there's a availability to view that, right?

I think it was in May.

May 11th.

Oh, sorry, May 11th.

Yeah.

May 11th. So the May 11th, yeah, the recording should be, I'm assuming, online unless there was some sort of issue. It should be posted on the Planning Commission webpage, and if not, Darcy probably has it.

Mm-hmm.

Should. So that would be the way to get caught up on what the prior discussion was. And then, yeah, that's kind of where then there was this effort to draft a letter, which is when I intervened and rained on everybody's parade and said, wait, slow down. We have to do this this way. So that's where we're at now.

Yeah. Commissioner King, I just sent you the link to the recording.

Thank you very much for that. I'll take a look. Yeah.

Okay, well, sounds like Tammy's from what I'm seeing is kind of looking to run with this for next meeting wise. And I suspect there will be some offline phone conversations individually with some of us who are willing to try to figure out what we can do to get this elevated at state level.

Yeah, and Tammy, if you want to convene, you know, whatever, three of you or something like that, to just have a discussion over Zoom, certainly Darcy or I can set that up. And if you want me to be there, that's fine.

Jennifer has her hand up.

Oh, my comment was going to be that if people want to work on MORE GRASS ROOTS, CONTACTING PEOPLE IN YOUR CITY COUNCIL AND YOUR LOCAL PLANNING COMMISSIONS AND YOUR COMMUNITIES WOULD BE GOOD BECAUSE THEY ARE LIKELY HAVING THE SAME FRUSTRATIONS THAT WE ARE HAVING. PROBABLY EVEN MORE BECAUSE IT AFFECTS THEIR LAND USE DECISIONS MORE AS THEY ARE PROVIDING MORE SITE USE DEVELOPMENT, THINGS LIKE THAT. A LOT MORE THAN WE DO IN THE COUNTY LEVEL.

Yeah, there's a lot of concern among cities and counties in terms of, for a number of reasons.

I was going to say, there is an election coming up, so there is an opportunity to make it an issue with all the folks running at the state level. So anyway, enough said. Alright, any any other thoughts on this little issue? Sounds like we've got this piece of off more offline conversations and we might come back to the full committee Commission in our next meeting. I don't know. See kind of in Tammy shoes. Obviously I want to be involved in any way I can help as well so. All right, is there anything else anyone wants to share for the good of the order or are we done for the night?

How about a motion to adjourn?

Do we need a motion to adjourn? I don't know.

Not necessarily. Everybody wants to agree with the sentiment.

Yeah. I think we've gone long enough for one night. So it sounds like we've got some long ones coming ahead of us. So we'll call it a night. So I'm going to adjourn the meeting. Thanks, everyone, for all your input. And look forward to seeing you all in a few weeks.

Thank you. Thank you. Good night.