Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah.

This chair is increasingly high. We're good? It doesn't work.

Oh, heck, we're on time even. Oh. All right, we'll call the meeting to order. First item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from April 23rd.

Commissioner Kelly approves the minutes.

Is there a second? Second. Commissioner Stockham seconds. All right. Is there any discussion?

None.

If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Because I wasn't here.

Okay. Next, public comment. Is there anybody that has public comment? I see nobody in the audience. Is there anyone online? Okay, so we have no other public comment. So action items. First on the agenda is a work session on amendments to the City of Sisters Urban Growth Boundary. Kyle, you're up.

Good evening, Commissioners. For the record, Kyle Collins, Senior Planner. Give me a second here. I'm going to pull up a...

Okay.

There we go. So as the chair pointed out, we are here for a work session in preparation for a public hearing that's going to happen in two weeks. This is for the proposed urban growth boundary expansion that's coming from the City of Sisters. So I'll walk through this. This is mostly just going to be a generic overview of what the process looks like. I'll go a lot more into the details of what the specifics of the proposal are. Once we actually get to the hearing itself, we'll talk about what actually went into preparing the materials and then kind of next steps and actions that the planning commission can take. So the full website and record for all the materials associated with this on the county side of things can be located at the website on the screen here. There's actually a secondary process that occurs through the City of Sisters itself. They have their own record and materials associated with that. But you can locate a link to the city website itself by following the county link. So they're kind of cross-talking to one another. So some general background and overview. Back in 2023, the Sister City Council directed city planning staff to start preparing an amendment to the city's urban growth boundary, specifically to accommodate growing needs for everything from residential uses, commercial uses, industrial uses. infrastructure projects, things of that nature. There have been conversations over many, many years that the City of Sisters was probably approaching its limit of available land within its existing urban growth boundary. And so they wanted to start that project several years ago. So moving forward in 2024, they actually formally started the process. They put together a number of opportunities for members of the public, both inside the City of Sisters and outside the City of Sisters, to look at several different proposals for what a UGB expansion might be. So there's been quite a bit of public outreach leading up to this point before they've actually made any type of formal application. The city also appointed what they described as a citizen steering committee to help guide what a preferred alternative for the UGB expansion area would look like. There were six at-large citizen positions as a part of that steering committee, in addition to elected officials and appointed city officials, members of city staff, some farm and forest interests in the region, and landowners that would ultimately be included in some of the UGB study areas. The committee itself reviewed a bunch of different draft materials that were prepared by city staff. And then finally, they made a formal recommendation to city council and the city planning commission on what they believed was the preferred alternative that the city should pursue when making this application to expand the UGB. So following that recommendation, they put together a preferred alternative, which I'll show you here in a second. There were a few different possible alternatives of areas surrounding the city of Cicers that could have been brought in, but ultimately based on essentially excluding Many of those alternatives, for various reasons, they landed on what they feel is both the safest path forward for expanding the UGB from a legal standpoint and actually meeting the standards that are required at a state level, as well as just general ease of actually moving these properties inside the city limits at a future date. So the proposal itself would add approximately 320, just shy of 320 acres, to the east of the current UGB. It's all north of Highway 126 and roughly southeast of the Sisters Eagle Airport. Here's a map. You can see where the proposed area is. Obviously, you can see everything in gray is the current Sisters UGB. You can see the airport, again, sort of in that northwest corner. And then you can see Highway 126 along sort of the southern boundary as it travels out of the city. So in terms of what the analysis looks like that was put together by the city, it was arrived at through looking a bunch of different criteria that are outlined in the Oregon administrative rules and the Oregon revised statutes. So there's quite a bit of handholding by the state and things that have to be included in a UGB analysis that's ultimately put forward by the city. And I'll try to summarize each of those as much as I can. So the first is, what is the city's housing, employment, and other community needs based on their existing land use patterns? So they're trying to figure out exactly how much land or is close to exactly how much land that they need for a number of different that they project would be needed inside the city limits over the next 10 to 20 years, something like that. That includes residential uses, again, commercial uses, infrastructure uses, things like parks and open space. It's really like the whole category of things that might be included in the city. That's compared against population growth estimates that are prepared on an annual basis by Portland State University. And then there are larger estimates and forecasts moving forward that those are based on as well. So they're comparing what they currently have in the city with the expected population growth in the area and trying to game out exactly how much land they might need to accommodate growth. They look at the city's current capacity within the UGB itself. So that they have vacant parcels that they can use to accommodate some of this projected need in the future. They're also required to go through a process before they actually propose a UGB to essentially put more efficiency inside the lands that are currently within the UGB. So are the rules that they could change at a local level, at a city level, that would actually maximize the uses, let's say changing certain properties from single family zoning or single use residential zoning up to multi-use residential zoning? Could you talk about turning certain lands into commercial properties that were maybe underutilized? things of that nature. So they're required to go through a process to try to put efficiency measures in place before proposing an expansion of the UGB. They did that over a course of many years. That's factored into the application materials, if you wanted to go into a little bit more detail what that looks like. And then finally, there's an inventory of all the surrounding lands that are included within a certain distance out from the boundaries of the current UGB to determine their suitability for inclusion within an expansion area. Some of the things they look at as a part of those suitability analysis is what's the current county zoning on the properties as well as the comprehensive plan designation for any parcels that might be included. Are there pre-existing developments on any of these properties that might make future redevelopment of those areas more difficult, future subdivision of properties more difficult? How close are they to existing urban infrastructure? Things like sewer lines, water lines, roads. Obviously, the closer you are to existing urban infrastructure, the easier those services out to newly included properties, and the further away you get from the city, the more costly and challenging it tends to be. And then one of the last things they look at are things like natural hazards or other natural features that might constrain future development. For the most part, within the City of Sisters, we're looking at things like there's slope areas, there's some significant areas of floodplain along White Juice Creek. And generally, those areas can be brought into the city, but they can't be anticipated to host future development. And so even though they might be included as a part of the UGB expansion area, they're assumed to not host any additional development in the future once they are brought into the city limits. And putting all of those factors together, they come up with the preferred alternative area, which is, again, what you see on the map before in previous slides.

Can I ask a quick question?

Of course.

So like if they're brought, those lands are brought into the city, can they, I get you're saying they're not available for development because they'd be like parks or things like that, like not developed at all or developed for like a different use?

It could be based on a number of different things. So if we talk to – let's speak to floodplains in particular. It's likely that the city has its own regulations controlling development within floodplains themselves. And so there's a constraining factor just from a land use and development standpoint. We're talking about steep slopes. They also have development regulations controlling you can't build things on particular – grades of slopes uh because there's risks of landslides there's erosion risks things of that makes so they could be used for something but just it'd be limitation not necessarily building homes or businesses yeah thanks that makes sense thanks um but generally what the it's it's effectively a preemptive exclusion of those areas of land knowing that once they are brought into the city there will be additional rules that would prohibit certain types of development yeah So the proposal underway that you are viewing as the planning commission is actually going to be reviewed by a few different bodies. The actual application itself currently under review is for a plan amendment and zone change. So this is really the first stop on a multistage process. But the properties that are slated for inclusion that are being proposed to be pulled into the city. have to change both their Deschutes County Comprehensive Plan designation as well as their zoning designation into essentially an urban holding zone until such time that the city itself annexes the properties and then adds city comprehensive plan designations and city zoning designations to those properties. So throughout all of this, the City of Sisters Planning Commission will also be reviewing a version of this exact same proposal that you are looking at. Obviously, you, as the County Planning Commission, will be reviewing this. And then subsequently, there'll be a joint hearing between both the Sister City Council as well as the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners. And they'll ultimately be looking at whatever recommendation you ultimately wind up making as well as what the recommendation from the Sisters Planning Commission. There's kind of a four-part review all going on simultaneously.

Okay. So do we know yet what their schedule, the Sisters Planning Commission schedule is?

They actually met last week.

Sorry, I must have missed that. Yeah. Okay, great.

Yeah. So is that like on video or? You should be able to find it again on the city's website. They have recordings of all their meetings in the same way that we do. So if you wanted to tune in to that, I'm sure you could find a copy of it relatively easily.

Were you the presenter for that?

I was not. No, that's all controlled by city staff.

Okay.

Yep.

Okay, interesting.

So the city has their own review process through their planning commission. We are... Largely not involved with that. We go through the county side of things. And then again, once there are two sets of recommendations from the planning commissions, we will jointly bring those together as both city and county staff to the board of county commissioners, as well as the city council. They could hold those meetings separately, but I think there's been an incentive to hold that as just a single hearing with all the elected officials in the room so that they can make kind of presumably a joint decision together.

Are they looking at the same map? Is it the same?

It's exactly the same proposal.

Okay.

Yeah. The only real difference is while we are largely evaluating this just based on the state standards and compliance with our own local county rules, they are looking at it based on compliance with city rules as well as the state standards. That's truly the only real difference. So our role is largely as a coordinating partner. We are obviously reviewing the proposal to make sure that it is in compliance with state rules, as well as our own local county rules. We're looking to provide additional opportunities for public comment, both from members of the public that might live inside the city limits or within the unincorporated portions of the county. And then we also provide notification to various public agencies that have an interest in these types of expansions of UDB. So those might be state agencies like the Department of State Lands, some of our fish and wildlife agencies, fire protection districts, school districts, all those various partners have been included in the noticing process. There's a lot of redundancy built into this. So the city itself is also alerting a lot of these agencies, but we're kind of a backstop to make sure that anybody that might have an interest has been contacted in some way. So the properties, as I pointed out earlier, I'll go through this a little bit again in some more detail, that would be included within the proposed expansion area, have to go through a multi-step process. This is the first stage of that process. Again, it's a change to the comprehensive plan designation and zoning designation for the properties. Um, concurrently, there would be a proposal to actually expand the line itself of the urban growth boundary. Those 2 things happen simultaneously. If this were to be approved by city council and the board of county commissioners. And then finally, there'd be an acknowledgement at the state level from the Department of land, conservation and development that yes, we've seen the proposal. We agree that it meets the state standards and we would sign off on an approval, assuming that there is a local approval. And then following that, following this UGB expansion process, there would be a subsequent process that would not involve the county. This is purely a city process wherein they would actually annex the properties themselves. So during this interim period, the UGB itself would be expanded, but the properties would not necessarily have individual city zoning designations or comprehensive plan designations for each individual lot. That happens at a subsequent step wherein the properties are annexed and they basically go through, look at what their comprehensive plan says for these individual properties and they decide these properties have these zones and they start actually carving it up much in the same way that we do when preparing our own comprehensive plan and deciding sort of these broad scale changes to zoning designations.

Yeah, go ahead. So what kinds of zones would there be? It wouldn't just all be the same zone?

For the interim period, it would all be the same zone because it would still technically be controlled by a county zoning process until such time that there is an annexation of these properties. At that point, it could be a variety of different uses depending on what the proposed needs were within the city. Some version of it would be higher density residential uses, lower density residential uses, industrial uses, open space, parks. Some portion of this is obviously carved out for things like road and infrastructure. So there's a calculation. They've already sort of excluded certain lands because they know that there are roads and sewers that are going to take up properties. And so it's really the whole suite of, again, urban uses that are needed within a city.

So do we have an opportunity to – is our purview limited to what's specifically been provided or a broader look at other options based on what comments may come in as far as urban growth boundary?

At this particular point, what we're looking at, the proposal itself comes from the city. So they're the ones that formally make the application. The planning commission is – They can make whatever comments they want regarding that particular proposal, but we cannot incentivize them to change their application in any specific way. It's really more of a, you can make recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners, and then they will ultimately decide if they feel that this meets the standards, both at a county level and a state level. And the same is also true with both the city plan.

Well, I was wondering, because I know there were, there was some discussion internally on the, well, actually not very publicly, the sisters on which areas that they wanted to, to include within the UGB. And I wasn't sure whether our purview included discussions of other areas, or it was strictly limited to what's presented to us.

I would say you're certainly welcome to look at that. The application materials themselves, you can see what some of those other alternatives that they ultimately looked at prior to arriving in the preferable alternative. And you can look at some of those. In terms of recommendations that you might make to the board, it's really open to the planning commission what they would want to look at. Anybody else?

I have a question.

Go ahead.

When it gets in front of the planning or the board, they either say yes or no.

There's a little bit of a yes or no or yes with modifications potentially. But ultimately, again, because this is an application coming from the City of Sisters, the city has to kind of co-sign on whatever. If there were proposed changes that needed to be met to meet, let's say the board wanted to see certain modifications to the proposal, the city would ultimately have to agree to what those modifications were.

Ultimately, the board could reject the proposal. They could. Yeah. Let's send it back to the city and tell them they're not going to approve X. But if they came back with Y, it could be approved. Correct.

So if someone was listening at home right now and thought, man, I'm dissatisfied with the process, they could come in to our hearing and voice it. Yeah. That would be a good opportunity to.

And it probably will happen.

I would expect – I mean given that this – it's not like this happens very often. These are sort of – they only happen maybe every 20 years in some cases. I would expect there will probably be a decent amount of participation at the public hearing.

Right.

We've had at least some kind of trickle in comments. And again, because they're sort of these dueling different public processes, the one on the city side and the one on the county side, there might be repetition in some of these things. And some people might have more interest in expressing their opinions at the city side, but we've obviously provided notice so that people have the opportunity to come here as well. Great. Anybody else? Great. Thanks. Just some general public and agency comments that we have received so far since the application was submitted. We've had two agency comments. They're both internal from Deschutes County. The first is from the County Environmental Soils Division. You can sort of go into the weeds here if you want to read what's up on the slide. But the gist of it is a lot of these properties that are slated for inclusion within the UGB currently have on-site wastewater systems. They have septic systems on-site. And because Deschutes County is effectively the agent of the state level Department of Environmental Quality, as long as those septic systems remain on site and in use, all of that is still controlled at a county level. So if there need to be changes made to on-site wastewater disposal systems, even though they would technically be included within the city, they have to go through Deschutes County. Obviously, a lot of that is negated because many of these properties would likely be required to hook up to centralized wastewater once they are brought into the city itself. But it's just something that they wanted to note and point out ahead of time.

Yeah, you'd have individual wells, sewers, or septics, lots of other potential redevelopment issues involved with – With that expansion.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that is more of a conversation, I would say, that gets once properties are formally annexed into the city itself is when there are these more agreements. You're talking about taxation districts, for example, to pay for some of these centralized services. There are, in general, requirements that once services are available, many properties, once they redevelop, do have to connect to these services. But that's largely controlled at a city level, not really a county level.

Sure.

Oh, go ahead.

Sorry. No, it's fine. This may be way beyond the scope of what we're doing at the moment, but do we know anywhere about how much that costs to hook into the public sewer, like the city sewer? That I don't know. I know we talked about this in context of Taravon and stuff, but I just know that that can be... It's sort of like you're required to do something that also does usually cost money.

In general, yes. I would say that is probably a question that is best left to city staff. They could give you a much better answer to what it looks like to actually extend these lines, where they have already expanded some of their existing like wastewater infrastructure, for example. Once we get to the hearing, city staff will obviously be here to give you their overview of what the proposal is. And so a lot of those questions, I think you might want to save until we get to the hearing.

Okay, you answered my question. I was going to ask if we're going to have an opportunity to ask questions of city staff and the folks that put this plan together.

Yeah, as the applicant, they'll definitely be here on the 20th. Great. Anybody else?

Are you done with your presentation?

Nope, not quite.

Okay, I'll wait to do that.

The next set of comments is from Tarek Rawlings, our senior transportation planner. Normally, when comprehensive plan amendments and zone changes occur, applicants are required to submit what's called a traffic impact analysis. Generally, it's just an analysis that says, once this new zoning designation is put in place, are you going to increase traffic impacts by making that specific transition over to a new zone? There is a specific section of the Oregon Administrative Rules that specifically excludes these types of UGB expansion projects from those types of traffic impact studies. But fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we actually have a local provision that requires these traffic impact studies anyway for any plan amendment zone change. It doesn't matter if they get this kind of car valid at a state level. And so in response to that comment, the city put together a supplemental memo and traffic report from Transite Consulting. They're traffic engineers that work pretty extensively in the region. They submitted that a couple weeks ago, and our senior transportation planner reviewed that and ultimately agreed with the conclusions and the analysis prepared therein. So they've met that particular standard of our code. In terms of public comments, we as county staff have only received three public comments to date. They've been split generally between those that are supportive of the proposal writ large and those that have concerns or generally are opposed, which is probably expected given, again, the scale and the rarity of these types of proposals. I would expect more of these to come in as we get closer to the hearing, but so far that's all we've generally received. And so next steps wise, we obviously have the hearing on the 28th in two weeks. Again, up on the screen here, you can find a link to the project website, which again holds the full record, all the application materials, including some of those supplementary materials that I referenced earlier. And with that, I can take any questions you might have.

Great. Did you have any questions? Yeah, please. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Questions.

for you, Mr. Collins. Thank you. So thanks for pointing out that there's the distinction between a UGB expansion and then annexation within the city. And the annexation could take place over any number of years and be in any number of configurations of parcels. So I think they have to be contiguous as they annex them more or less. But yeah, So in the interim, once say a UGB expansion is approved and it's something like this or approximating that, then you've got a strip of land that is not yet in the city of Sisters, but it's within the Sisters UGB. So you touched on this a little bit. I think it's the case or has been the case in the past that then you have to have a city-county agreement to jointly administer or there's a joint jurisdiction.

Joint management agreement.

What is it?

A joint management agreement.

Okay. And would that be a subsequent step after the UGB approval?

We actually already have a joint management agreement in place for all of our cities, including the City of Sisters. So this is kind of in the weeds a little bit, but technically what would happen here is we would be applying zoning to these properties. It's called the Urban Area Reserve Zone. There's some other zones. There's actually a floodplain zone specifically within these areas surrounding the City of Sisters as well. The goal largely is to maintain the existing land use intensity of those properties until such time that the actual formal annexation takes place. So it is a county zone that would be applied to these properties, but it's all managed by the City of Sisters itself. So they are actually the ones that if you wanted to build something on these properties after the UGB itself was expanded, it is a county zone. You could go on to our county website and find the actual rules that would apply, but the specifics of enforcement and review of those zones then is transferred to the city itself as a part of that joint management agreement.

Okay. Thank you. Good answer. You alluded to that when the process is finished from the city perspective and gains approval through the levels that you alluded to, it then goes to the state for acknowledgement. And I think I'm familiar with other UGB processes where DLCD is kind of iteratively involved along the way rather than waiting until the end of the process. And I can imagine scenarios where that would be advisable versus those where it might not be necessary. But what's the case here?

That is also true here. DLCD has been involved in – largely in the crafting of the preferred alternative. I mean DLCD is not necessarily – they do not have parameters that say you have to choose this specific area. They're looking at all of the lead up to this specific proposal itself. But to point to a specific example that might apply to this, there are a number of properties that were actually excluded from this preferred alternative, specifically because there are challenges in terms of their underlying zoning. Some of those properties have tried to go through plan amendment zone changes in the past. Those have been appealed at a state level, so the Land Use Board of appeals is sort of waiting to render final decisions on those properties. And DLCD, even before the application was submitted to us as the county and formally starting this process, they basically said, we can't review a specific proposal or we won't be able to sign off on a proposal that includes lands that are under appeal at a state level. And so in that way, they have already weighed in largely to this process. And the same is true of – in terms of preparing the actual analysis and what was required through those state statutes that needs to be included, those population estimates. How do you prepare housing needs analysis? How do you prepare what the future projected needs are? Those are all – very tightly controlled by the OARs, and there's some feedback and conversations with city staff primarily, although the county has had a small role there, just to make sure that the city understands what they actually have to address as a part of these proposals. They're not rendering a final verdict until there's a formal recommendation and signature, either a denial or approval, assuming approval in this case from both the county and the city. That's really the last step that they would review everything in full, make sure that all the T's are crossed, I's are dotted, so to speak, and then they would render a final approval or disapproval.

Thank you for that answer. You know, I always think that that kind of makes sense. Instead of having some big hairy remand slapped on the city or something like that, that they have some kind of early indication. So that makes sense. And then last question for the chair, actually. Chair Cyrus, you know, I know this is a legislative matter. I'm vaguely aware that you and your family are a significant landowner of acreage in proximity to Sisters. I'm just wondering if it's your intention to disclose a potential conflict during the hearing?

You know, I know a few of the individuals affected on both sides, but I don't have any interest in anything that's going on, anything personal.

So you don't even want to declare a potential conflict?

I can't think of any conflicts I would have. I certainly don't have any interest in any property near any of these.

Okay, thanks. Thank you for answering my question.

I mean, kind of like in the General Sisters area, I know individuals, some landowners that own properties on both sides of the issue. So I don't have any conflicts that I'm aware of.

Any other questions for me?

Anybody else?

One.

I didn't get the chance to review the City of Sisters site. I read our three public comments. Do you know how many comments there were on the city side? You said they had the hearing.

Was it – I would say if you look in their application materials, I can't tell you how many comments have been submitted once they've actually – this review process leading up to the selection of the preferred alternative as i stated that that really started in 2024 there's quite a few public comments yeah i was kind of more curious like the hearing happened last week like was there and that that i don't know okay that's fine yeah i'll look into it then with the city site but i again if you go to that website i think you can probably you can certainly find a recording yeah comments that were submitted there and in the general materials that have been provided thanks of course anybody else Great. Next. Next item. Share my screen again. New thing. This one's less exciting, I would say.

I had one of these in a while. Injective.

Yeah. Yeah. Oops. Hold on. Give me a second. I'm not sure why it's giving us the little difficulties.

There we go.

Yeah, clear and objective. So as far as I'm aware, I think all the commissioners have gone through some version of this before. But the second item I have for you tonight is a work session, again, in preparation for a public hearing on May the 28th. And this is the last or at least hopefully last package of amendments that we have to provide clear and objective text amendments to the Deschutes County zoning code. So on screen here again, you can find the project website for this specific proposal, you can find the full record of materials here, including the application this time coming from county staff for the health. I'll try to be relatively brief here since we've gone through three of these prior to this one, but just for a little bit of background and overview to refresh your memory. So starting in 2017, the state legislator passed a series of bills to encourage the expansion of housing production across the entire state. And that ultimately concluded in a number of ways, but one of the more meaningful changes that occurred in the one that we're here to talk to tonight was a change to Oregon Revised Statutes 197-3074. And specifically, that change in statute limits local governments to only apply clear and objective standards, conditions, and procedures regulating the development of housing, including what they describe as needed housing. And any adopted standards that we have at a local governmental level cannot have the effect of discouraging needed housing through unreasonable cost or delay. So that's a very wordy way of essentially saying that what we are required to put in place at a county level are clear and objective standards that use terms, definitions, and measurements that provide for consistent interpretation regardless of who looks at the code. So if you gave two different people the same code, they would arrive at the same conclusion when applying that to a particular development proposal. There's no discretion involved in the applicability of these standards. So we can't use language like compatible or adequate, really squishy kind of verbose language is ultimately likely not going to pass the clear and objective test. And so where possible, we've attempted to excise many of those pieces of language from the code. So there's a variety of approaches of what you can do that meets the clear and objective standards. You can have things like true or false statements, just is this allowed or not allowed? You can have things like counts and measurements. These are distance measurements, height measurements, things of that nature, something with a numeric value that we can very easily apply to a particular development and evaluate. And then finally, we can do things like have lists or menus. This might include a particular development needs to include three of five items or all of the required items in order to be approved. This one is probably the most important for this particular package of amendments, and I'll explain why in a second. But general, this proposal, as we've gone through this a few different times, we've obviously identified multiple areas of the county code, the current county code or previous versions, recent versions of the county code that are not clear and objective. And so we've tried to draft packages of amendments to sort of work through the entirety of the code over time. We've broken these down into distinct segments. You've obviously, you went through the first one, which I presented to you that dealt most broadly across all development. It was things like developments that dealt with things like our accessory structure components, probably the most foundational portion of all this clear and objective package updates. There's another one dealing with our goal five resources, things like our wildlife area combining zone and landscape management combining zone. And then there's another set of amendments dealing specifically with land use, excuse me, land division standards, as well as some of our road requirement standards. And then finally, that brings us to the package here tonight, which deals with our site plan and conditional use standards across Titles 18 and 19. Conditional uses are exactly what it sounds like. There are certain uses that are allowed on properties, but only under certain circumstances, hence the conditional. And site plan review standards are generally those types of developments that require either additional infrastructure improvements. Parking is largely controlled by site plan review itself. So we're talking most of the time about commercial developments when we're talking about site plan review. But there are occasionally residential developments that might trigger site plan review as well. We're also talking about our airport safety standards. These are requirements on properties within a certain distance of any of our airports here in Deschutes County. It's mostly intended to prevent airplanes from crashing into structures or reflective materials being put on the tops of structures that might blind pilots. It's intended to provide safe operations of those airport facilities. We're changing portions of our solar setback standards. Solar setback standards are a little tricky to talk about, but effectively what it is is property owners are not allowed to build structures that might hinder solar access on their neighboring properties to the extent possible they are able to do so. So if you are able to build a structure that will not shade another structure on – your neighbor's property, like a house, for example, there are specific requirements in place to limit those particular uses as much as possible. It's not outright limitations or prohibitions on those particular uses, but it's generally a set of standards that says, hey, try to push your house as far south as possible on your particular property. And then there are certain height requirements that might fall into place as well. We're also tackling the land division standards for our Title 19 zones that weren't originally captured in that first package of amendments dealing with land divisions. Our Title 19 zones are just a weird selection of zones that surround the Bend urban area and only apply within those areas, and they were just left out. mainly due to time constraints in the previous package of amendments. And then finally, we're making some modifications to what are described as our initiation of use standards for land use approvals. So if a property owner receives an approval from us for a particular use, They get a land use decision. There's generally a time limit associated with that that they have to act on it. Sometimes it's two years. Sometimes it's four years depending on what the approval it is. But if they are unable to fully complete that particular project in that timeframe, there are steps that they can take to quote-unquote initiate the use. It generally means expending resources or doing the work on the property itself that shows you've made a committed effort to actually get the ball rolling and you intend to complete the use even if you weren't able to do it in that period of time. If you cross a particular threshold of making those improvements to your property, then we would say you've initiated the use and you're able to act on that land use approval even if you aren't able to complete it within that original timeframe. We have preserved all the existing uses within the code. So specifically what we are not doing is removing uses that were previously allowed under the code. So everything that was previously in place is still in place. where we could make modifications or clarify existing language in the code to make it clear and objective. So if we could just make minor tweaks to the code that remove, again, some of this more like adequate language or compatible type language, we've done so. However, there are certain examples where that's simply not possible to maintain the intent of the code and keep that particular language in place. And so what we've done in those particular cases is craft what we have internally described as sort of a two-track review process. We basically kept the existing code in place, and we built an entirely new review section that is clear and objective, that we think largely preserves the intent of the original code, but it only applies clear and objective standards. So if you were coming in for one of these developments that might hit one of these two-track review processes, you would effectively be making a choice once you got to that standard and you said, I want to be clear and objective. I want to be reviewed under clear and objective standards. Or maybe there's some incentive or reason why you might want to keep moving under the previous code version. There's arguments for both. And so that was the intent of preserving both in this. I will say if multiple standards exist, we've specifically excluded the applicability of both sets of standards. So if you have chosen to go down a clear and objective path, which is something that applicants are required to do at the outset of any application, you have to use those particular sections of code. You can't mix and match sections of code under the previous language and the clear and objective language, again, if there are two particular review options available there. It's basically, if you choose to go down the original code language, you have to use all the original code language. If you choose to go down the clear and objective path, you have to go down the clear and objective path for all the applicable and relevant rules that are in place. We haven't made any policy decisions regarding which uses should be allowed in individual zones. That's not a part of this package. Again, the whole entire goal is to maintain those previous policy decisions in place, but just to make sure that the code language itself can be enforced and evaluated via clear and objective methods. Public and agency comments? None to date. And then next steps, as I pointed out earlier, we have one of two public hearings. This is one of them on May the 28th. Again, you can see the project website with the full record there on the screen. And with that, I can answer any questions you might have.

Questions?

Go ahead.

I have a question about the ground cover and landscaping. I guess landscaping in general. In regard to firewise practices, it was page, let's see, 95 of the PDF or the document. I just wonder, was any consideration given to firewise practices for landscaping and ground cover in terms of bushes next to buildings or here it says, you know, bark dust or bark chips? Ultimately, building or anything like that.

No. And again, I would say that probably falls more in the category of making a policy decision whether or not we want to consider changes specifically in landscaping. That's actually something that the board might be considering over the coming weeks is defensible space codes, which is a little bit more what you're talking about. Yes. But the whole purpose of this project really is to avoid policy decisions at all costs and just either keep the existing code with minor changes to make it clear and objective or to translate some version of the existing code into an alternative clear and objective standard that could be applied to the development. So these larger questions of should we change our landscaping standards more broadly? That's a great question, but not really within the scope of this project.

Thank you.

Commissioner, I don't have to go next. Okay. Thank you. A question for you, Mr. Collins. So the previous... packets of clear and objective language in the code that have passed through us have gone up to the commission. They've been approved and incorporated into the code and implemented. Correct. I'm just curious if you know, approximate numbers or magnitude, how many applications have been reviewed under either on that two-track alternative, the clear and objective track or the existing discretionary track?

That I don't know offhand. Will might have a better sense. My general... Zero under... It's probably very few.

Under clear and objective, you're saying.

Yeah, so I guess I'm just wondering if there's any kind of indication, Peter or anybody, if you care to speak to it, what's the general impression or reception from the public about that two-track process, either in this county or in other counties where I think we're kind of on the leading end of those that are reviewing their packets, but what impact is this actually having in the ground?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm kind of looking at the investment development record. I think there's two kind of responses. I think for tentative planning, we do see land divisions in rural Deschutes County. And so to the extent that there were discretionary criteria For some, that is reassuring to know that if someone has the zoning that allows, as a use that's permitted, land provider property in a partition or a subdivision, that that clearing objective path is available without the risk of an appeal. So I would think that's kind of maybe one way. appreciate the second response would be the current objective standards for housing were written for the intent was for us. That's where the density is. That's where you've got landscaping, off street parking heights, you compatibility criteria where you're getting density. You want to encourage density of different housing types to serve different tenors or tenures. And so I think that's really where the focus has been. We're one of the handful of counties that, of course, has a suite of areas that are eligible for rural, that have rural zoning, that have been in place for years. Many of those places are built out. I know I can tell you that when clear and objective standards happened as a refresh, it was the result of a LUBA decision in Lane County that interpreted their objective standards applied to exception areas, or at least that was what many interpreted. I think this was in 23, saw that, and then they basically codified that. They promulgated that in the state law, only defined, not that it mattered, it didn't. When Luba on remand revisited the decision in Lane County, they clarified that their intent was and confided in the statute. So it's a long winded way of saying, I think we're really seeing clear and objective standard obligations at a heightened level are places like Sisters Bend, Redmond, Lapine, you know, as a fast growing county. Of course, you also, I've heard that there's significant difficulties specifically pertaining to goal five in Washington County. Washington County has the largest HAB-Jacques Juilland, Urban unincorporated area, and so they have 10s of big others. HAB-Jacques Juilland, 10s of thousands of people that that may be a low ball in the urban incorporated there, and so they have dense urban level lighting patterns that are subject to county zoning that require this level of attention in ways that you know.

Good evening, your planning manager, Will Groves. So zooming out a little bit, if you think about why you would have clear and objective standards or not, one of the things that you're doing with a land use program is that you're trying to ensure compatibility between uses. So if you want to, for example, you're in a residential zone, and you buy a house, you're assuming there's going to be other houses around you. And that's important because that preserves the value of your most important investment, and perhaps more importantly, ensures the value of the banks that back that investment. And so it's vital that, you know, that there's some predictability in land use. And so at the same time that you want to have things that are absolutely allowed, you're in a residential neighborhood, you want to have houses, there's some things that are maybe things that should go into kind of residential neighborhoods like you know, a church or a daycare or things like that. So you end up with these discretionary standards. And in some areas, even those discretionary approaches, you know, this is a maybe thing here, intrude into, you know, into other areas like wetlands and floodplains. Yeah. Yeah, you can build a house here, but maybe let's go through a process. And what that maybe approach did, that discretionary process, gave an ability for a community development department, expert planners, and ultimately a quasi-judicial process to navigate their way through that. Like, is this actually a good idea here? And the discretion provides a tremendous amount of freedom in exploring that for both the landowners and the local jurisdiction as they try to figure out what's a reasonable compromise in these situations. The problem with those types of approaches, of course, for housing is that it can result in appeals, uncertainty. Somebody can show up with an application, a multi-thousand dollar application. They don't know if they're buying a no letter. And there's no way for them to know because that – things like suitable and compatible that – different judicial bodies may feel differently about. And so one of the big pushes has been to try to make these clear and objective standards, you know, to facilitate housing is to make these clear and objective standards operational. What happened to Director Gutowski's point is that this was dropped accidentally on counties and then there was a kind of a legislative push to maintain that. And the actual project of changing discretionary rules into clear and objective rules is in fact a robust policy decision. And what you really have to do is you have to be a lot cooler with a lot of different things. You have to be willing to say, look, if you cross certain – Basic thresholds, you can have your house in this case. And what happened is that when this occurred, we were given a very short window to create these clear and objective standards. And the penalty for not having a clear and objective standard was your rules were void. So if we didn't rapidly create clear and objective standards, we would – a huge portion of the county rules were going to be void and most of those relating to resource protection. So the explicit project from the beginning through today is to try to get through these without making policy choices. And the way that we've done that is frankly is – through the efforts of our consultant that we received a grant for, some of the best legal minds that we can get together, is to produce something that is not a policy choice, but is, frankly, for most landowners who don't anticipate an appeal, Additionally, constraining rather than freeing. The perfect example is in the landscape management combining zone. We, you know, our discretionary code says that you need to paint your house a color that blends with the landscape and is muted earth tones. And you may recall that instead we said you can pass through this through a clear and objective path. And be protected from certain types of appeal and have certainty if you paint your house one of these 64 colors. And in practice, nobody wants it because they're not afraid that their neighbors are going to take them into the state courts about the color they're painting their house. And the discretionary path is perfectly good for them. So the only reason why someone would take advantage of this is because – I think a reasonable person would take advantage of this is because you expect it to be in a contested case. And you were willing to put up with the sort of the straitjacket of the clear and objective rules. In order to really comply with the spirit of what happened with clear and objective, it would be a huge reevaluation of our goal five programs to say, okay, are we willing to make this much simpler for the opportunity to create housing? make these rules a lot simpler and those would involve real trade-offs in terms of protections of the resource and housing in a way that, you know, you could imagine it could become very restrictive of housing, very permissive of housing, you know, at the expense or benefit of the resource. And so as we came into this project, Again, expressly not trying to make those policy choices because all of them – the number of places where in order to really make a clear and objective, smooth-flowing code, we've made – there would be hundreds, maybe a thousand pivots in the code where we would have to make real choices that four of you would feel one way about and – Three of you, the other. So that's how we get here today. I think that it's going to be interesting to the extent that once we get through this sort of what I call the closing the barn door approach, which is to just ensure that we have some rules that we can enforce in any regard because, again, if you have clear and objective rules, then you can maintain your discretionary rules in the alternative. So once we get through that, I think there's an interesting question, which is where is it worthwhile to meaningfully revisit the resource protections or other restrictions that we put on the development of housing? These things certainly cost time to review. They cost time and money to review. They constrain the types of housing that can be made. In the rural county, I think that this is less prevalent, that in the end – I think we write one or two denials a year. People come in. They get approved for these things. They paint their house a color. They back up a certain distance from the river. The housing is produced. In the case of... cities where this was targeted initially, and perhaps appropriately, you know, the cities may be trying to achieve a variety of goals, like an aesthetic component or something like that, that, you know, may impose significant additional cost on construction. And so trying to, and we also see that everybody loves, you know, not everybody, most people love additional housing, but nobody lives, loves additional housing near them. And so, you know, trying to make it so that people can have reasonable expectations. If you move in this neighborhood and somebody comes in and they want to build this type of housing, they can do it. They check the boxes off, they go, this isn't a compatible, suitable question, not a discretionary question, one that you can come in with your permit and walk out with that permit. Yeah. It'll be interesting. Sorry, that was long-winded. This is all by way of saying it would be interesting at the end of this perhaps to think significantly about where county regulations are actually getting in the way of housing in terms of time, cost, efficiency of that production, and think about revisiting those rules, the landscape management combining zone. This one, I say it carefully, but do we care if a person in a thousand paints their house purple? You know, is it worth the review process that we go through that? Or, you know, or they might cut down their trees and you can see their house from the road. You know, it costs somebody, you know, a couple, you know, $1,500 in four months to go through that process, right? And in return, it's generally pretty nice to drive down our roads. You know, there's trees planted in front of houses. It makes it, you know, it gives a great rural feel. This was the goal of the landscape management combining zone that was put forth in 1992, you know, by... people just like yourselves, but it also, you know, to the extent that it delays and increases the cost of housing, it's a balance in the community. And you think about this, these things happen through goal five, through an EC analysis, that's economic, social, environmental, and energy consideration. So a multi-prong analysis about what, you know, the costs and benefits of trying to preserve community values, you know, in the face of economic challenges or housing challenges. And so those conversations are vital and can be had. And at the same time, it would be shocking to me if this unlocked hundreds of rural houses that were currently locked. To my impression, people are getting in the end to the housing that they want. It's taking a little longer, but I don't think it's dissuading any of this construction.

It's a balance, though. Thanks for that Will. Yeah, go ahead. Great answer. Provocative too in kind of implications. Thanks for that Will. I'm interested as we go through these different packets that the clear and objective in one sense, forgive my ignorance or skepticism here, it just sort of shifts where the discretion occurs because a lot of the clear and objective measures require something like a letter from a qualified engineer or a letter from a qualified wildlife biologist. Well, that's where the discretion is occurring then, but regardless, sorry for that little editorial comment. But a follow-up question and maybe one of you guys have addressed this earlier, but Okay, you can't do an a la carte. You've got to choose one track or the other. How about appeal? Can you switch tracks? Can you make reference to the other track on appeal and say, well, okay, discretionary, but here it says over here in a clear and objective, or does that remain to be seen and tested? And we'll see how that plays out.

So we call this the switching station in a train yard sense. And so in Title 22, the procedures ordinance, it's clear that you have to pick one. you can switch if you want to but that's a modification of your application so you basically you restart the process you'd say hey we're restarting the game we're going to play by different rules heads up everybody we're back at step one okay okay thanks yeah i think that's a would be true in terms of to answer maybe your first question a little bit more though um

A big portion, and Will did a good job of kind of explaining the triage portion of this, frankly, which is just we needed to get something on the books so that we had any rules at all. That's a huge portion. That's probably 90% of what we've done here. I would say there have been some targeted changes that we've made, not so much in this package, but certainly in previous packages that actually have made some meaningful difference in terms of like – customer interactions at the counter, across the street, sort of long-standing friction and challenges that we've had with applicants that because we were already kind of opening up the code and trying to apply these clear and objective standards, we had the opportunity to fix some of those portions and add clarifications. And I would say those have made meaningful differences. They're maybe minor. They're not necessarily increasing like huge housing production like the statute intends, but they have had some positive results.

Who else? Yeah, go ahead.

This is my last question. So I'm looking at the section on manufactured dwelling park. And under B2, it says the space provided for each manufactured dwelling shall be provided with piped potable water and electrical connections. And sewage, oh, it's spelled wrong anyway, was struck from that. Why would sewage not be required?

In general, it's because many of these sites are associated with onsite wastewater systems, and that's largely what we would require there. So again, this was one of those sections where there's actually a secondary process where If you were to propose a manufactured dwelling park, there's a clear and objective channel of getting a manufactured dwelling park, which is quite difficult, I would say. And the discretionary standard still stays in place. So there's additional sewage connection standards within that original discretionary standard. both of which are quite difficult. There are reasons outside of our local code which make it difficult to expand manufactured dwelling parks, largely to do with state law and goal 14 compliance. So there's probably a much larger conversation to be had around manufactured dwelling parks and where those should be located. Are they a rural use? Are they an urban use? We obviously allow them in certain areas of Deschutes County, but that is the general answer to your question.

Thank you.

Ms. Raquel, do you have something?

Yeah, my brain is still like processing wills, which was really great. But my question is kind of more of the user, like let's say I'm an applicant coming in to help desk. I really want to build a pretty traditional, you know, straightforward. Is it described, is one of the planners that come down, like describing it, hey, there's this two path system. This is the, like how much, I'm just kind of curious how that looks like at the help, like what do people already know about it?

So we have a webpage that describes this in much more detail and hopefully as much detail as you can give. There's kind of frequently asked questions, that sort of stuff. In terms of the application process itself, there's a formal application sheet that every applicant submits. It's generally like, what are you applying for? Where's your property? What's what? What type of approval are you looking for? Is it a landscape management approval? Is it you're trying to build something in a floodplain or you're trying to build something in a wildlife area combining zone, something of that nature? And then there's a specific section where you are acknowledging either, yes, I'm going down the clear and objective path or no, I'm not. In terms of how much detail that's being discussed at the counter, I don't know right now. It probably depends on the individual project. Again, as Will pointed out, most people are probably going to be pretty comfortable going down the discretionary path. It's largely worked in most cases for most projects that we approve and permits sent out the door. It works for most people. This was really – hoisted on us as an attempt to reduce friction as much as possible, but we didn't have that much friction to begin with. And so it's maybe helpful in some very particular case. Like maybe you have... an angry neighbor that is dead set to appeal your project regardless of how compatible we might think it is as practicing professionals and review bodies hearings officers might think. And so there is this sort of secondary path again for those particular circumstances where somebody can say, look, I'm willing to be hemmed in by these more restrictive rules, but I know that I have certainty if I do this, then even if it is appealed, I will almost certainly prevail.

This has brought a lot of clarity to this whole process to me. Just this last 15 minutes has really helped me out, understand this. So thank you.

Of course, yeah. It is complicated. And again, it's because these rules were probably intended to be directed towards cities because there is so much more opportunity for conflict because you're talking about more dense uses, you're talking about more people, talking about more types of uses being added in together. It's... It's not that there is no reason to include a clear and objective set of standards. I think I pointed out some examples where we could use some clarification and portions of our code. But largely, this was just we have to do something so that we have rules in place that we can apply moving forward.

Anybody else? Great. Is that everything you had? Everything I have. Great. Thank you. Thanks for me. All right. Two weeks. Next up is Terrebonne community plan update. Sounds like you had an interesting meeting there.

It was fun. Yes. Let me just. In the last several weeks since I've seen the Planning Commission, I think my eye prescription has gone out. For the record, Tanya Saltzman, Senior Planner. I'm just going to share my screen. All right. Yes, we did have an interesting time. So I'm here to talk about round one of our community engagement in the Terrebonne Community Plan. And I've spoken in front of the Planning Commission about this project before, as have my colleagues. So it's really happening now. It's been a journey and we're underway. The report that I provided in the packet provides a lot more detail than what I'm going to talk about today. If you want to really drill down into the nitty-gritty individual comments that were received, which I know some of you have reviewed and enjoyed, that's there for you there. I'm not going to obviously read through all of those tonight, but that's there for your resource. So a little bit of background about the Terrebonne Community Plan. As the Planning Commission is aware, it is functionally an appendix to the Comprehensive Plan. So it's updated on a separate timeline than the Comp Plan. As you know, the Comp Plan was recently updated and is kind of pending right now. And we'll probably talk about that a little bit later. But the most recent update to the Terrebonne Community Plan was back in 2010. There's a few of these community plans. There was the Tumalo community plan that happened a couple years ago. There's Newberry Country, Sisters Country. Given the upcoming plans for sewer in the Terrebonne area, the time was right. And the board did direct staff to initiate this project. It felt like a good time to kind of talk about what people want to see in Terrebonne, what they want the future to look like, what they maybe don't want it to look like. So off we went. You may recall that we applied for a DLCD technical assistance grant to help us get through this project. We often do that. They do provide some great funding opportunities. We did not get the full amount we asked for. Apparently, they had a record number of proposals for grants this year. I think it was... Oh, gosh, I don't remember. But it was like... 22 million dollars and they only had nine million dollars to give away or something something in that nature so in the end we received 15 000 which is great because we thought we were getting zero um this will be applied towards specifically the community engagement portion of this project so uh it's not for any consultant or anything like that it's mostly supplies printing kind of less glamorous stuff that just hard costs. Slightly unfortunate that procedural thing is that we got that grant approved the day after our open house. So the first round of expenses were not covered, but that is neither here nor there and does not affect the planning commission. And we'll be using it going forward. So we're really grateful for that money, so that always helps. With the engagement, we have three rounds proposed for a roughly year-long project. The first, which I'm talking about tonight, is the general kind of what is your vision for Terrebonne, just a real catch-all from the community. The second is coming back to the community and saying, hey, this is what we heard. Did we capture this correctly? Because we learned that sometimes we don't. Sometimes there's nuance that we want to understand that we didn't capture that first time. And we just really want to verify that people feel heard and that they feel like we heard them correctly. And then the third round will be kind of starting to turn that information into goals and policies, which, as the commission knows, are kind of the central backbone of how these plans, these community plans work. We had and will have both in-person and online opportunities to participate. So the way we structure it is the in-person is at the Terrebonne Community School and we have a series of stations. And I will explain more about this later. But rather than kind of one big presentation that starts at 6 o'clock and if you're late, you kind of miss it. it's interactive you can kind of go at your own pace you can pop in pop out get a sandwich which we have provided do it at your own pace you can stay at one station the whole time if you're really interested in that thing or not so we want to keep it you know this is not a lot of people's familiarity or comfort zone so we just want to really make it accessible to as many people as possible um online we tried to mimic that almost exactly um just considering the limitations of technology so we basically reproduced the materials that we had at the in-person open house in an online format so that gave people a chance to type their answers instead of writing them on a post-it note so that means they can either just Think about it longer. Think about it right at 3 in the morning when their best thoughts come to them. They can follow up on what they might have told us in the in-person open house. So just giving different venues for people to participate. Not everybody has the time or the resources or the desire to go to a school cafeteria all the time. And these have been well-received so far. So that's the way we're going to be going forward with the other two. So just to talk a little bit more about this round one, the goals of this was to establish just general priorities and hear people's feelings. Generally, this pertains to a community vision, general likes and dislikes about the community, thoughts about business development and thoughts about housing development. We also had space, obviously, if people just had thoughts that didn't necessarily fit into any of those categories. The in-person open house was on April 7th, 5 to 7 p.m. at the Terrebonne Community School. We think it was about 41 people, give or take. That's how many people we had on our sign-in sheets. Some people might not have signed in, but roughly around there. The online open house was available from that same day through the end of the month to April 30th. We had eight participants for that one. Would have liked to see a little more, but I think, you know, we did our best and we'll try to market a little more hard. We did hear from some people that they really prefer in-person things. But that also said, in the responses to the online surveys, some people said, oh, no, I want it only online. So it's hard to know. So we'll just try to kind of do our best and get to as many people as possible. The in-person and the online open houses yielded largely similar themes, which doesn't come as a tremendous surprise. There was a little more detail in the online just because of the format of it. And those differences are noted in the report. But there wasn't any real conflict between those two types of inputs. So the in-person open house featured five poster stations, and I think we attached those, I did attach those posters into the packet if you look at the exact content. Generally, they provided some information, background information or examples, and then asked related questions related to that theme. We also had a kids station. Nicole was staffing that one. We had one kid, but he was really great. And I didn't actually include the materials from that. I probably should have, but... the activity was kind of like a mock-up of your community and what you could put little kind of shapes and, you know, I want the school here. I want the, you know, this thing here. He was very engaged. I think his name was Cash. And Nicole, I remember she said, was very impressed. So we liked, you know, it was just one child, but it just gives, you know, that means that his parent or guardian was able to come to that event. So we're going to probably keep doing that. We'll determine that later. We also had three tables for special districts and agencies. We had one for the Terrebonne Sanitary District, the Terrebonne Domestic Water District, and ODOT. These are big players in the community. They all have active projects or just are really involved in the community. A lot of the questions that arose in the open house were very specific project-based. As you can imagine, a lot of them were sewer related so for the nitty-gritty of kind of what's happening happening with this project how is this going to work we send them to the to the horse's mouth essentially we don't want to speak on behalf of those agencies or special districts and i think they don't want us to do that either they were very popular at those tables as you might imagine that photo down at the bottom is um some of those tables but i think the agencies and the special districts welcomed the opportunity to be there you know they were just providing information trying to clarify any misinformation that was out there and just kind of trying to be a part of the community so i think we will definitely do that going forward So key themes. I'm going to keep these fairly general, but as I noted, there's more detail in the report. Growth and development. Keep it small and rural. That was largely what we heard throughout most, if not all, of the comments. A lot of people stated they don't want to be Bend or Redmond, whether that's in housing or commercial development. any reason at all. They just really liked the small-town feel. This was not a surprise. Along with that rural character, the value in the small-town feel was huge. People just, that's why they moved there, that's why they stay there, that's why they live there. We love the small-town feel. And this trickled down into the other responses for the other sections as well. People cited the views, the nature, the quiet, all of the things that you would expect in a rural community. The community vision. So this station, we showed them the 2010 vision statement, which is in that green box there, and said, you know, is this still accurate? What do you think about this? What would you change? The majority of the respondents felt it was still accurate. A few people said, oh, it's not going to be if you build houses everywhere or if you do have too much development. Rural and scenic character, again, you know, those are the things that they cited as the reasons they like the community. A couple people highlighted the phrase safe travel, safe traveling throughout the community. A few people said, you know, that wasn't really the case in 2010 and we're concerned about it now. So that's something that we're flagging. One person thought that the vision statement made the community sound like a pass-through, which I thought was interesting, rather than having a unique identity. Safe traveling throughout the community, I think they perceived that as like, it's a great stop on the way to somewhere else, which is interesting. I think that kind of comment is really helpful. So they suggested maybe recasting that sentence a little bit. They, you know, Terrebonne has this unique identity, and so why not capture that in the vision? Housing. This was, as you might imagine, a pretty popular topic. The majority of people who responded expressed the desire for single-family, low-density housing only. So on this poster, as you can see on the side here, we showed a few examples of types of housing that exist. So single-family homes, duplexes, and small apartment buildings. I think that says 4 to 12 units. So trying to give kind of examples but not limiting it to that. And we said, what type of housing would you like to see? There was a significant minority that did express value in things besides single-family homes. So there were duplexes, apartments. Some people wanted only duplexes, no apartments, only apartments, no duplexes. It was a little combo. Well-planned mixed housing was a phrase that came out. So it's not quite as unilaterally single-family low-density housing, although that was the dominant theme. Several people did express interest in ADUs. So in general, big development and sprawl were discouraged. They just didn't want big tracts of housing anywhere. This, again, didn't surprise us, but it was interesting to, and I would like to possibly drill into that nuance of the people who did express interest in well-planned mixed housing. What does that mean to them? So that'll probably be something we'll follow up on in the second event. commercial development. So we did a similar thing on that poster, showed a few examples of types of businesses. What types of businesses does Tarabon need was the question. The majority wanted no big businesses. We took that to mean things like Walmarts and big box stores, that type of thing. But they did really value small retail and services, the ones that are there, as well as potential new ones, but very small scale. Well, grocery stores are not that small, so that's kind of an interesting one. Bookstore was mentioned, an additional restaurant, perhaps some lodging for tourism, as we know there's not any of that really that we know of. Some responses did want zero additional businesses. A few people said, you know what, we don't need that stuff here. We can go to Bend, we can go to Redmond, don't need it. So we'll be interested again in kind of parsing that out. And I told this anecdote earlier that I just found entertaining is there was one very specific comment about the price of bananas. And we cannot affect that in our community plan. But it was interesting just when people talk about not wanting certain things, you know, the things that are meaningful to them. So this is why we have these events is to hear kind of these shades of like, what's important to you. So maybe that manifests itself as a second grocery store. Other items that are kind of a little bit beyond the original themes is traffic. No surprise, there were a lot of concerns about transportation and safety, especially given that there's been a lot of road construction in the community and continues to be now. So there's quite a few detours. The ODOT table was quite popular. Walkability, accessibility and lighting. This one I thought was very interesting. Some people said, you know, I really would love to be able to walk across the highway to get to this business or my kid's school or something like that. And to facilitate that, it would be great to have some sidewalks and some lighting. And then other people said, no way, no lighting, no sidewalks, no walking. So again, there's a real split. And I think we can again drill down, are there certain places you'd like to walk to or certain places you think it would be dangerous to have people walking, that type of thing. But it was pretty stark, that divide. There were a few people who wanted parks and public spaces, both indoor and outdoor, which also is interesting. Indoor public space that's not necessarily a business, like maybe a community center, that type of thing, because it is a tight-knit community. They do have the Grange, which is one space where there's meetings and things like that, but some people did express a desire for another similar space. An annex of the library. This came up more than once. Could be an interesting thing. It is really kind of beyond the scope of our, as the county planning department, our purview, but it's still an interesting thing to hear. And, you know, we can kind of rise that, pass that forward. Let's see. Oh, so that's a summary of our input thus far. I can pause there and ask if there's any questions or thoughts or feelings. Observations? Favorite comments?

I mean, I think you covered this, but yeah, I would just be so curious to learn more and understand about what are people's concerns about walking. Like you said, I think alluded to, maybe there's a safety concern about walking in certain, like we don't want to have people walking right across the highway in front of cars, but Just I would like to find out if that's like, you know, like if there are additional concerns that maybe I haven't thought of why that.

One thing that's kind of ringing a tiny bell in my brain was that some people just didn't want people around where they live.

Like a visual sort of people milling around and wandering about.

Yeah. I don't know where specifically they live. Obviously, if they're like way out, you know, somewhere there, it's different than if you live in a kind of a commercial corridor, but they just kind of didn't want to.

A quieter feel, maybe. Yeah, and like a quieter, sleepy sort of feel instead of like many tourists and lots of activity occurring.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm just curious. Yeah, no, it's a good question. I had.

Yeah.

Are there any transit recommendations they had then? Because I know there's a stoplight there and you're saying safety like walking. Did they have any thoughts on that?

Off the top of my head, I think one person mentioned public transit as a thing that would be nice to have, but they did not get any more specific than that.

I guess I was thinking like transportation, like are they thinking...

They didn't get into that level of detail. There were some people who were like, and I think that's captured in the report, just specific, you know, this intersection should be like this or that type of thing, which is kind of, you know, this plan is very, very general. It's more conceptual and theoretical and goals and policies. But yeah. Everything is kind of upside down there right now due to the projects that are going on that will be completed. Lots of suggestions about that. Nobody mentioned roundabouts now that I think about it. Either pro or con.

Commissioner. Thank you. I know that you've got still some next steps to outline, Tanya, but thank you for this. I'm always actually interested in these community plans as they come before us, these updates and so forth. For me, part of it is because, colleagues, it's kind of a reflection, I think, of Oregon's land use planning and kind of the planning geeks that are in all of us in Oregon. It's kind of in our bones somehow. And it gets to some of the fundamental elements that are incorporated in our statewide system, citizen input and planning and all that kind of stuff. But some of the stuff I took away from the comments that were provided to us, I don't know if it's a consensus or just a common sentiment anyway from those comments. Again and again, you hit on this, keep it small, comments that they're in a small community by choice, a lot of folks. I want to be careful. Maybe some folks are not there by choice, but a desire for slower or no growth. Even where there were comments like, you know, sewering is great to protect water. Traffic infrastructure improvements are, you know, great in the sense of promoting safety. Small businesses and services are great in the sense of convenience and so forth. But none of those really, if you pay attention to what people are saying, at least in my view, are not whether it's sewers or traffic infrastructure or business development and so forth to facilitate growth. It's to accommodate the people that are there and to make it a complete community. So these are not earth-shaking sentiments to me. I've heard these kind of things again and again and again in this kind of context, but it's a valuable exercise. I'm not saying that at all. But anyway, I find myself, Tanya, always scratching my head And I don't know if there's a version of that with you all that are professionals, but state requirements to accommodate growth in our cities and communities notwithstanding, there's a lot of folks that don't want to see it, particularly in small communities. So the idea that... um you know what do we do i understand it when people say what do you do when people want to come here and we need the housing to accommodate them we need the infrastructure and services and so forth and what you want to do slam the door behind you because you got in here that kind of thing but um i don't know i the acceptance and the mantra that growth is inevitable and we just gotta we just gotta plan for it and so forth I don't buy that. I don't buy it. And I think a lot of people don't buy it. And anyway, and that's what kind of reverberated through those comments for me, Tanya. And it reminds me of Ben 30 years ago when I came here. There were that kind of sentiment and a lot of people have just given up and they're just I'm going to be candid here. I love Bend. I live here by choice. But a lot of people, it's just kind of a sacrifice zone for growth. And they will live in Terrebonne or they'll live in Tumalo or they'll live in Lapine to get the hell away from the growth. So anyway, it's interesting to see those sentiments here.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've been discussing this amongst ourselves as well. I mean, what do you do? You know, we're not closing the door. We can't close the door legally or but we can, you know, I think thoughtful growth, careful growth, you know, or careful development, you know, with the addition of sewer that does unlock some possibilities. So with that variable, it doesn't mean we're building... skyscrapers tomorrow, you know, but it does open up some other options. And what are those options? What are those levers that we want to be able to turn on and drop? And it's going to be really hard to find a solution that satisfies everybody. And I think that's what the challenge of these types of plans are. But I think, and I was not a huge part of the Tumlo community plan. I know that they did limit some types of residential developments in the end. So maybe there's certain types of things like that, but maybe maybe commercial will be an area that grows a little bit more. You know, it's kind of teasing out those nuances of what's acceptable, what's not within the universe of kind of reality in the legal system and what can and cannot be done. It's fascinating. It's pretty interesting.

There's... allotting patterns, they don't have the area to even repair a septic system. And so you're talking about, that is a worst case scenario where you're just, it's compounded by inadequate soils and a lifespan of a septic system. And so the sanitary district on one hand was established to ensure livability. And yet, this is why we're at this point just prioritized over Newberry country is because sewer brings opportunity. It brings the ability to have density, to have rural ADUs, to the commercial district there where Oliver Lemons and others, their on-site wastewater system is hanging on. to plumb into the cluster system or the step system that hooks into the city of Redmond. So I think that a lot, that's not to discount the comments realities that come with that kind of development over the last 10 20 34 years so um it doesn't make it any easier it's still complex but um you can imagine rightful criticism like there was you didn't do anything you didn't plan for this we were losing you know homes upon homes and so it's like damned if you do damned if you don't but i think what's happening now is is better than better can i say that in air quotes is roughly

but that's that's our hope i think one of the things that i struggle with and i think i was talking about this with somebody today is that these plans i mean even if we change the zoning code to do allow certain things tomorrow it's not like that's going to change things overnight it's very incremental it happens very slowly when a property turns over or a property So I think sometimes there can be a, not a knee-jerk reaction, but something more subtle than that to the thought of growth, even though that growth might be so slow. It's the, you know, the slow trickle that... people get freaked out. I think sometimes they think, oh my gosh, that means in 20 years we're going to be all built out. That's not necessarily true. I struggle with how to kind of represent that as a planner because, you know, changing the code, changing these vision statements and the plan doesn't necessarily mean that this end goal is going to be met in 20 years. It's just kind of setting a trajectory that might go that way or might open up some opportunities. And I think that's a little hard to communicate sometimes, I think. with the scale of time that we're operating in.

Okay, go ahead. This is like the reason why I feel like I was so interested in being on the planning commission was this exact conversation we're having. And as a Tomolonian, I feel like very just sensitive about this issue because it does feel like an assault sometimes when change is happening. And I do understand that, like, even though it's not immediate, when you look at your hope that you have your generations are going to be in your community, it actually does feel kind of assaulting because it's like, well, my grandkids are not going to have the same community that I was raised in. And I just feel so fortunate that You know, so I think there's like some emotional part of it that I very much sympathize with. And but what I want to communicate is that I just find this just fascinating. And the more you learn about it and the more you learn about the process and the why's the more you become comfortable, maybe not comfortable, but just educated and you understand the sanitary problems. Oh, we do need a solution for this or we do need cheaper bananas or what, you know, I think so the more people can actually get engaged in this process. and come to the table and and and let us know you know verbally on written what however they can communicate their hopes and dreams for the community i think it helps us understand and and do our very best to like put together something that makes them proud in some way or the other so i just really hope that the community sounds like that people are already showing up i just really hope that we can just continue this process so that we can best serve them um because we don't have representation of tarabon i know we have redmond but we don't have representation of tarabon on the on the so i think that

I'm going to do my best. I know you will. I mean, technically, that's part of the area that I'm representing. Represent Terriban. But I don't live in Terriban. And so just to be respectful, living in between Redmond and Sisters is very different than living in Terriban. So you're absolutely right that there isn't a person on this body who lives in Terriban. And I just think it's a fundamentally different experience.

So I'm excited. I just want to share that. I mean, I'm excited to go through this process and I appreciate everything you've done. But it does. I do sympathize with the. Slow it down, you know, no. Yeah, no. You know, it's absolutely. That's a sentiment that completely makes sense.

You know, I get it. Yeah. Thank you for that. So.

Just a quick comment along the lines of communicating about this. This is a little psychological thingy. There's a downside to literally every option, including doing nothing. Doing nothing is always an option, but there's a side effect to everything that you do. And so sometimes it helps people to understand when you point out like, yeah, this option has this side effect or this downside. This option has a downside. We're going to be dealing with a downside no matter what we do or don't do. And so we have to choose among our benefits and downsides. It's so easy to idealize the option that sounds... Yeah, and especially when you love where you live. But Terrebonne in 2026 is not... Like, if you do nothing at all, it's not going to be the same as Terrebonne in 2046 because of what Peter said. You know, like, I mean, it...

Yeah.

Things will change no matter what. So I think that can sometimes be helpful to think about. That's super helpful. Yeah. that's an alternative you know what does it look like in 2046 if we do nothing versus what if we yeah go nutso with development what does it look like in 2046 and what does it look like if there's less nutso development in 2046 but maybe maybe that would be helpful to try to get people thinking about yeah thank you for that that's a that's a really good point anybody else

I mean, I was around in the 70s. Things have changed. I remember when Bend was 20,000 people. The bottom line is we're going to have growth. The best we can do is try to have thoughtful growth and try to plan for something that is the best of alternatives because, as has been stated, doing nothing isn't an alternative. Things change.

There was one gentleman who came to the open house, and I'm blanking on his name, but he was born in Terrebonne. Do you remember him? He was almost 90. He was born in Terrebonne, and he was telling me these stories, and he was like, you know, over there, there were six horses tied to a... I mean, it was fascinating. But even, you know, he had seen it all. he still lives there and he, you know, he said the exact same thing. He's like, I know, you know, things can't stay the same that they, otherwise they'd be the same as when I was born. And, you know, that's just not realistic. And he had a very refreshing attitude for someone who's been around in a community for so long. He was great. No, I appreciate your perspectives.

Well, maybe I'm dating myself a little bit.

That's good. I think I just have one more slide.

So anything else? Any other questions? No? Thank you. Look forward to the next step.

Next step is round two. So this is what we heard. Is that correct? So that's what kind of our general questions will be to the community. It'll be largely those similar themes. Now the wheels are turning on how to kind of explain what Commissioner Karras was just talking about, how we can kind of put that into some visualization. If anyone has any ideas over the next few months, I'm serious, feel free to email me. Just ways to communicate stuff like this is always helpful to have input. So we'll be doing this in late summer. I think it's probably going to be the last week of July. I think we're trying to pin that down and we'll let you all know.

Super quick. I just want to say I love the phrase the vulnerability of the status quo. Like I thought that was a really good. like on the other side, like that there's the status quo is very vulnerable in this situation. So like, I really liked how you worded that to like, we sort of almost like we, we got to think of ways to protect this because it's vulnerable in the face of the sewer project and everything.

Yeah.

You know, there's, policy direction can speak to the timing of zoning kind of thing. You want to wait until the sewers, you know, you read the policy re-engages the, I'm just giving you ideas, uh, to, to demonstrate to the community, like we're not just done, you know, in say 2027, like, okay, Hey, thanks.

You had your bite at the apple. We'll, we'll, we'll see you later.

And who knows what's going to happen, but you know, opportunities of when the sewer sanitary district completes its infrastructure, if that's the right word, its installation of the step system, a policy that redirects the county or the community development department to re-engage the plan because then right now it's it's still early i mean roads are are are open you know trenches are open it's still somewhat conceptual but you know so there's ways to demonstrate to the community that this plan is a living document there's an investment to come back when certain thresholds are met that's just one example you know, and then at some point, you know, you know, when there can be a policy that speaks to when, you know, if and when the zoning code should be updated. What are those, those thresholds? So the community has an expectation and a commitment that before, you know, development standards change, there's going to be re-engagement and that re-engagement like this very plan and the one before it informs and ensures that the And so I'm hopeful, I mean, our staff did a great job last month, but I think collectively, whatever those policies say or how they frame the issue, those are ways to, not to kick the can, but just say, look, we're listening to you. We know that there's going to be certain milestones, if that's the way to say it, that are going to be met, and we can identify them and then we can re-engage comprehensively to ensure that the community's voices is expressed and heard and identified and informed.

With that, We have a website. You can always contact me if you have any thoughts or questions or anything like that. And once we get a date for that next open house, I'll let the Planning Commission know you're all invited. And then we'll go from there. Sounds good. Thank you.

Oh, go ahead.

So big picture timeline. We have two more of these open houses. Yes.

And then like next year, we're starting to talk about like what's the early next years, I believe, is when we're going to be early-ish going through like the actual legislative process to adopt a plan document, give or take.

Staff comments. Yes.

Oh, I have none.

You have none?

I guess belatedly, I would also just like to thank Will and Nicole for carrying the brunt of that project. I was unexpectedly out for a while earlier this year, and they really kind of took it and ran with it. So thanks.

Thanks.

Well, thank you for the presentation. So who wants to go next? Okay.

I just have one other update that is probably of interest to the Planning Commission. So last month on the 15th, we had some members of the Oregon State Fire Marshal's Office come speak to the Board of County Commissioners. And the reason for that meeting is they just finalized at the end of last month a model defensible space code that's now available for local jurisdictions to adopt. Local jurisdictions include counties, obviously, cities, and interestingly, fire protection districts can be their own local jurisdiction that might adopt these rules. They really are just a set of minimum standards. Counties and cities, fire protection districts can go above and beyond those standards, provided they are in alignment with what's described as the international WUI code. This is the very early stages, I would say, of conversations with the Board of County Commissioners of what they might want to do this. So really at that meeting, if you want to tune in, it was a good discussion of hours or so of talking to them, then trying to boil into the details of what this model code looks like, what it might mean if it were adopted. It's an interesting conversation, but very much early days. We'll probably be going back to the board sometime in the coming months, really to start to give a framework to what this might look like moving forward. We are obviously not the only jurisdiction that has interest in this. The city of Bend is also having similar discussions. The city of Sisters has actually kind of knocked the gun and already adopted a version of defensible space code. And so they have something in place. And we know that other jurisdictions kind of throughout the region are starting to have these conversations. And given fire is an sort of ever-present concern here, a lot of community concerns energy right now, I would say, around this topic in particular. And so more to come there. But happy to answer any questions you might have about that.

Great. Thank you. Will?

Yeah, thank you. So I wanted to announce, we've been talking about the transition of natural resources into community development of the folks who do our community wildfire engagement. And we were hiring for the community wildfire protection supervisor. That's the Previously, the County Forester position, we had 24 candidates. And after a robust hiring process, included two panels, Lauren Street, who you've gotten the chance to meet, prevailed and has been promoted to that and will be a officially sitting at her new desk here shortly, which is an exciting opportunity. That's, you know, of course, it's a three-person department that, you know, was the former county forester and two natural resource protection specialists. And so we'll need to rehire behind her. But, you know, they do so much great work, as you've heard, through the work plan. And it's going to be exciting to have a full team there again eventually. And it's great to have somebody who really knows this work and has been doing it, you prevail against a really robust panel of interviewees. So that was a cool process. Also, coming up kind of for your next couple weeks coming up, of course, you've got Kyle back here with the public hearings for Clear and Objective and the Sisters UGB, followed by presumably a deliberations for the Sisters UGB. Sitting out there, we talked a little bit about private burials. So that'll be coming up in the summer. So a number of items coming up. And also, we're in the process, we have brought the work plan to you and we took it through the Historic Landmarks Commission and are on our way to the board next week with the work plan. And we will get some direction from them and see what's important. There's a lot of things that are really that just have to be done. Thinking about those, there is a cultural resources update. We've talked to you a little bit about a Goal 5 cultural resources update for historic landscapes. It provides an opportunity for notice and participation by our tribal partners there. on a variety of applications. And so new notice procedures have to be put in our code to give them an opportunity to participate in those. And it also gives an opportunity for local governments and tribal partners to make applications for new protections for resources. We just got some additional guidance from DLCD and frequently asked questions. I have a pretty good idea about what that work plan looks like, but there's some significant effort associated. with that. In addition, we talked about farm stores. There's this new legislative concept or legislatively approved opportunity for increased economic opportunity in association with certain farming opportunities. And what was interesting is that They left the sideboards on that for things like parking, road safety, some structural safety questions, some sanitation questions. They left those to local jurisdictions. So if we don't put any rules in place come January 1st, people can apply for those without kind of the sideboards that we put in for other agriculturally adjacent activities like pumpkin patches and things like that. So anticipating that the board will be looking for us to engage to ensure that that's a full opportunity for people to take advantage of those increased economic activities that can happen in association with farm uses of a certain scale. And that's right out of my list.

Okay, any questions?

All right, Peter. I just have three updates, commissioners. Yesterday was our budget presentation to the budget committee and the budget officer. This afternoon, the budget committee with the board's concurrence adopted the budget for fiscal year 27. So no real surprises as it pertains to the community development department. It was very straightforward in terms of our budget. Our budget recommendation, we've had relative stability over the last 3, 4 fiscal years. So very grateful for that stability and very modest fee increases to help, you know, help us provide cost effective and efficient services. So. excited to head into 2027 with that momentum. Just two other things. The work plan for fiscal year 27, the board's going to have a work session on Monday. And then the board will have its public hearing on the work plan on June 3rd. So just keeping that momentum going forward and putting in the position to get adopted, of course, prior to the start of the new fiscal year. So those were the three items I had. Thank you. Commissioner Karras.

I just want to ask a question and clarify understanding among you all. I know we have been over this a bunch of times with conflicts of interest, but I think in light of Commissioner Hofkamp's question, I think it's really important that everybody on our commission feels comfortable with those definitions and everybody in the public who may be listening to the meeting tonight or at any other time feels really comfortable with the idea of what is a conflict of interest and so I'm really sorry to do this because I know we're all probably trying to get out of here especially you guys have been here all day but I thought maybe I would summarize my understanding briefly and then make sure that I'm understanding it correctly and you guys as staff can say yay or nay or correct me But I think what I've personally been looking out for conflicts of interest are things where I may benefit or lose financially if a particular decision were made. And I have not been thinking of conflict of interest as like I have an opinion on a topic or I know more about an area than some of my fellow commissioners because I live near there, I live there. You know, like my favorite example is Dark Skies. I don't have anything to financially gain or lose based on the Dark Skies process, but I was very personally passionate and affected non-financially by that. That was not something I felt, and I don't think any of us brought up having a conflict of interest about that. i think commissioner or chair cyrus i think when you answered commissioner hovkamp's question you were clear like you're not going to gain or lose anything based on this process in terms of anything financial um and so i felt very satisfied with that answer but i i think just the fact that the question was asked sort of indicates we may have some lack of clarity about what if what a conflict of interest is and I really hesitated to bring this up because I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable at all. But I also just think like, hey, let's all get on the same page so we're all comfortable and everyone out there is comfortable. So that's, I'm just asking for clarity. Am I correct in understanding it that way? Am I missing something? And can you guys just give us a brief summary on, I know you've done this before, but maybe just review us again.

It's too bad our legal counsel isn't here tonight.

yeah but i mean to be fair we've we've done this several times so can we just do it one more time briefly sure and i i we certainly we were planning had there been a transition with the planning commission um with the redmond tarabon seat there was a plan and in first meeting in July to kind of revisit some of these, these important issues. So we can always do that. It might make sense just to have a regular recap, but to your, to your question at hand, this is the planning commission addresses legislative legislative matters. So you're right. A direct conflict of interest is if you have a pecuniary financial stake, you, a relative or whatnot, that would be a direct conflict of interest. Unlike quasi-judicial decisions where you're applying discretion, you're applying code, you're taking in substantial evidence in the record on a specific piece of property, more often one cannot have a bias. And so that's why it's imperative to be impartial. That's for quasi-judicial. Quasi-judicial proceedings. The Planning Commission engages in legislative proceedings. And so you can come with, like you used your dark sky, like I'm really interested in dark skies. I've been an advocate for several years. I've been elevating it on the work plan. It's okay to have those opinions. Those don't disqualify a commissioner. Now, if they were so – you were so – enmeshed in them, you know, because it was so core to your value system, you know, that you might want to reach out to legal counsel and say, hey, I'm really, really, you know, passionate about this. You know, legal counsel might guide you and like, you know, You still need to be objective. You need to listen to all the testimony and the issues. So it's important to acknowledge that one's bias could be so consuming that it would – the appearance of a conflict could be made. But that's where a potential conflict – you could say – you could disclose. Hey, I have a potential conflict of interest. However, I don't think it – precludes me from debating dark skies. I'm really passionate. I am very interested in the testimony and the materials offered by staff and the amendments being contemplated. That's how one can get ahead of those issues. So that's how I would articulate those questions. I look to our colleagues if you guys want to supplement that in any way.

Peter, if I might, I just Googled it. It says, Oregon public body conflict of interest laws mandated by ORS Chapter 244 require public officials to disclose conflicts when taking official actions that could financially impact themselves, relatives, or associated businesses. Officials must announce the nature of the conflict at the meeting or in writing with strict prohibitions on voting during actual conflicts. So it's very specific that it must be a financial interest.

My comments were offered not in the spirit of conflict of interest, nor in the spirit of bias. In fact, I was careful to use potential conflict of interest. And declarations, my understanding is, are used in public proceedings when you make a declaration like that to head off any perception amongst the public that there might be some kind of conflict. Thus, it's a potential conflict of interest. Not that there's a direct financial pecuniary interest, not that there's biased or particular interest in a substantive issue before us. But I was just suggesting, and it's not directed at Chair Cyrus or any individual person, it's the process when the public has raised concerns about me in the past. And I've made declarations up front about past employment history or something like that. It's to protect the process and to reassure the public. It's not talking about direct financial pecuniary interest, but it's addressing a potential conflict and say, look, I'm a large landowner, multi-generational family landowner, hundreds of acres, very close or in proximity to this community that's undergoing an expansion. I understand that there might be some concern amongst the public or amongst the media, you know, that there might be some concern about my participation on this body relative to that issue. And I want to address that up front. That's what I was saying. That's the nature of disclosure, as I understand it.

Okay, so everyone's clear on what exactly is a conflict of interest and bias. It seems like that's been thoroughly reviewed. Does anyone have any questions or anything?

Okay.

Then, I mean, I'm satisfied. I really did not want to make anyone uncomfortable. I respect that you should ask any question that you have, but I perceived the question to be like you had some level of discomfort or concern about that, and so I just want to make sure we're all good and everyone else out there is all good. I don't want to freak anyone out. People can probably tell I'm nervous and then that makes it all seem more sinister than it really is. But yeah, I just really want everyone to feel like we're good on conflicts or potential conflicts or anything like that. So

I mean, I'm pretty comfortable with the definitions, and I've had several conversations with legal counsel. And as long as it's legislative, I mean, just to their comments on dark skies, everybody had a strong opinion. None of us had a conflict because none of us were benefiting financially from having an opinion. So, anyhow. Commissioner, was that everything you had? Yeah, thanks.

And thank you guys for humoring me. Sorry to make everybody a little uncomfortable, but I really appreciate the conversation anyways.

No, appreciate you bringing it up if you've got a question.

Just thanks for the eventful evening and looking forward to the public hearings in a couple weeks. So, thanks.

Great. Commissioner Kelly?

First of all, I'm grateful that you brought it up. I think it's always great to review these things. So do not feel uncomfortable about it. And I appreciate you bringing it up. I appreciate you talking. I think that the more we actually talk about it, the healthier our body is.

That's very smart.

Talking is good. I speak for myself. I'm not uncomfortable. But thank you, everyone, who presented tonight. And I really appreciate just how detailed and thoughtful. And, Will, the way you did clear objectives. Really, like, I've been listening to hours and hours of this, and that really brought it together for me. So thank you for that.

The light bulb went on.

So, Mr. Hofkamp. Appreciate that really nice discussion in regards to, I don't know, a number of different issues tonight and thank my colleagues for that. You know, I often think about that growth, anti-growth sentiments and so forth. And I'm sensitive to in what's sometimes perceived as relentless boosterism. that there are a lot of people, longtime residents, much longer than I've been here, that are not inclined to be supportive of those things. And when I see it come through in something like public input, I just want to make sure that I'm acknowledging that. But I really appreciated everyone's comments. That, you know, change happens. I get that. I'm not sure that growth is actually inevitable. I think there's a distinction to be made between development and growth. And that's part of what I think we're all interested in being in this body. kind of that difference. I think there's beautiful towns and communities in Europe that have existed for hundreds of years and are not growing and they're thriving. But anyway, I get that. And just as a disclosure of my own, I mean, I'm not sure aging is inevitable. So maybe that kind of discounts my view on growth because it is. Anyway, thank you.

You're right. Aging is not inevitable. The alternative isn't much fun, though. And like I said, I'd just like to thank everybody. The presentations were great, and we appreciate everything you guys do for us. With that, meeting's adjourned.