Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, looks like we're back. So again, is there anybody online who would like to make a public comment that is not on the agenda tonight? OK, perfect. We'll move on to the action items. The first up is a public hearing on the amendments to the City of Sisters Urban Growth Boundary. Kyle.

Good evening commissioners for the record, Kyle Collins, senior planner. Give me a second to get upgraded to panelists here so I can share my screen. We'll walk through opening the hearing.

No.

Alright, so as the Chair pointed out, this is the time and place set for a hearing on file numbers 247-26-000105-PA and 247-26-000106-ZC concerning amendments to Comprehensive Plan designations and zoning designations for multiple properties in advance of a proposed expansion of the City of Sisters urban growth boundary. And staff will outline the hearing procedures that will be followed. Please note, you can find all the record materials for this particular proposal from the county side of the project itself on the URL on the screen above. The Commission's record on this application will be based upon the staff report and any testimony and evidence presented at the hearing. Please note that the hearing is also being recorded. The Commission may make a decision on this matter today, continue the public hearing to a date certain, or leave the written record open for a specified period of time. The hearing will be conducted in the following order. County staff will give a brief report on the issue and then city of sister staff as the applicant will provide an overview of the proposal from their end. We will then take any testimony from any agencies or interested persons in attendance. And then following testimony, the commission can request staff to answer any additional questions they may have. Please note that we have blue signup sheets at the entrance to the room here. If you haven't filled one out and you wish to provide testimony, please do so. given that this is a hybrid hearing with both in-person and remote participation. Again, if you have in-person testimony you'd like to provide, fill out one of those blue sheets. For any of our remote participants, to testify remotely, you have to be utilizing Zoom or have called in to Zoom using the dial-in option. And when the chair asks if anyone would like to testify, you will need to use the raise hand feature to notify the commission. To do this, you will need to press the raise hand button in your computer or smart device, or if you've called in, please dial star nine. Please note that given the expected amount of participation here tonight, staff would note that public testimony at staff's discretion would be limited to three minutes per party unless otherwise determined by the chair and the commission. That will not include any follow-up questions that the commission may wish to ask of any particular person. or any written testimony, please hand that directly to me as staff and I will ultimately provide that to the commission. Otherwise, if you have testimony you'd like to email to me, you can see my email address up on the screen. Please note that the chair and staff are responsible for conducting an orderly hearing. Any testimony or behavior which is inappropriate will be addressed and may result in that member of the public being removed from the hearing. Questions to and from the chair may be entertained at any time at the chair's discretion, but cross-examination of people testifying will not be allowed. However, if any person wishes to ask a question of another person during that person's testimony, please direct your question to the chair after being recognized. The chair is free to decide whether or not to ask such questions of the person testifying But prior to the commencement of the hearing, any party may challenge the qualifications of a commissioner for conflict of interest. This challenge must be documented with specific reasons supported by facts. And should any commissioner be challenged, that member may disqualify himself or herself, withdraw from the hearing, or make a statement on the record of their capacity to hear and decide this issue. At this time, do any members of the commission need to set forth any information that may be perceived as conflict of interest?

No.

Does any commissioner have anything to disclose? If so, please state the nature and whether you can proceed.

Does any party wish to challenge any commissioner or, in this case, the member of the hearings body based on conflicts of interest?

OK. As no challenges are presented, the hearing is now open. Staff will proceed with brief report.

Thank you, Chair. I'll try to go through this relatively quickly since all the members of the Commission have seen this material before and try to give as much opportunity as we can for public testimony. Some general background here. So starting in late 2023, the City of Sisters directed city staff to pursue an amendment to the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary, otherwise known as the UGB, to accommodate the community's land use needs for residential, employment, open space, and infrastructure purposes. That initial process kicked off formally in 2024, and there's been numerous opportunities for residents of the City of Sisters and the surrounding area to participate, stakeholders with an interest in either being included or not included, interest groups to the area, property owners, and the broader community just to generally engage. The city also appointed a citizen's advisory steering committee that included six at-large citizen positions, which were appointed in addition to elected and appointed city officials, city staff, farm and forest interests in the area, and landowners, which were ultimately included within the UGB study area. And that committee reviewed draft materials and made key recommendations to both the sister city council as well as the sister city planning commission. Following the recommendations from that steering committee and direction from the City Council, a formal application was submitted to Deschutes County on a preferred expansion area and alternative for lands to be included within a potential UGB expansion. So the formal proposal itself would add approximately 318 acres of gross land to the east side of the current UGB north of Highway 126 and approximately southeast of the Sisters Eagle Air Airport. Here's a map on the screen just to give some context of where that land is located. Again, in the northwest corner, sort of the upper left corner, you can see the airport itself. And at the bottom area of that blue block of land, you can see Highway 126. Everything in gray is the existing city of Sisters UGB. In terms of how they arrived at this preferred alternative, there's quite a few requirements that the city has to go through in performing UGB analysis. And it's arrived at going through rules outlined in both the Oregon administrative rules, the Oregon revised statutes, and ultimately a number of other items that I'll talk about in a bit here. But in terms of the OARs and the ORSs, the city has to look at their housing, employment, and other community needs based on some existing land use patterns in the area. They have to take into account population growth estimates, specifically the formal estimates from Portland State University that are provided on an annual basis. The city's current capacity within their current UGB to accommodate expected uses, whether those are residential uses, commercial uses, industrial uses, open space uses, et cetera. They have to look at previous attempts that the city has taken in underlying land use changes through regulatory zone changes, things of that nature, redevelopment opportunities and other efficiency measures for lands that are already inside the UGB. So the city has to have undertaken steps to try to maximize the use of properties that are already included in the city limits. And then finally, they have to undertake a very broad inventory of surrounding lands based on numerous factors to determine their suitability for inclusion within a future UGB. That suitability analysis looks at a variety of things, including the current county zoning and comprehensive plan designations of the properties, any pre-existing developments that might exist on site, proximity to existing urban infrastructure that would ultimately have to be extended to all these properties as the properties were annexed, and then things like natural hazards or other constraining natural features that might prohibit future development on these parcels. After taking all of that into account, they ultimately arrived at a proposal preferred alternative for selection of lands to be included in the expanded UGB, which you saw on the screen earlier that 318 acres. Note that this is a somewhat unique process that the Planning Commission doesn't often go through. It's actually subject to four separate review bodies. The first is the City of Sisters Planning Commission, who actually looked at this proposal last week and made their recommendation to the Sister City Council. Yourselves is the Deschutes County Planning Commission. And then finally, both the Sister City Council and the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners will ultimately review this and finally make a final recommendation to the Department of Land Conservation and Development at the state level. The county's role is largely as a coordinating party. We're helping ensure a few different things here. One, we want to make sure that the proposal meets all the relevant state and county standards that might be in place. We're obviously hoping to allow additional opportunities for public input, hence the public hearing here tonight. And then finally, we provide notification and coordination between various public agencies across the state that might have interest or oversight duties in regards to UGB expansions. The properties that are included within this proposed expansion area have to go undergo a multi step process before they're formally included with the city, which starts with what we're talking here tonight. That is a change to the Deschutes County Comprehensive Plan Amendment designations for the property slated for inclusion as well as a change to the zoning designations. That's really stop one on the train. Concurrently, the UGB boundary itself would be expanded if it were ultimately approved. That would need a co-approval from both the Board of County Commissioners as well as, again, the sister city council. And then finally, there's a final acknowledgement by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development before the UGB boundary itself was formally expanded. Following that expansion that's does not mean that those properties are technically within the city limits at that point. There's a subsequent step, which we refer to as annexation and following the expansion. The city of sisters would undergo separate process or separate processes. to annex those properties, wherein city comprehensive plan designations would be applied to the lands that were annexed, as well as city zoning designations would ultimately be applied to individual properties. That doesn't have to happen in one fell swoop. It might happen on a parcel-by-parcel basis. So not all of the properties currently included in the UGB expansion would have to undergo annexation at the same time. Next, I'll move on to public and agency comments that we've received on this application so far. We've only received two agency comments, both from county departments. The first is from the Deschutes County Environmental Soils Division. Notes that properties in the expansion area will likely be required to connect to sanitary sewer as annexation and future development on the properties occur. However, prior to that point, if properties continue to utilize onsite wastewater treatment systems or sewer availability impacts are not available, they have to be consistent with Oregon administrative rules. And Deschutes County Onsite Wastewater Division is ultimately the overseer of those rules. So Deschutes County still has authority over onsite wastewater treatment systems on individual properties until such time that they connect to urban wastewater infrastructure. The next set of comments I'll talk about came from our senior transportation planner. He points to a specific reference in the Oregon administrative rules that specifically exempts UGB expansions from transportation planning rule requirements, assuming that interim zoning designations in these UGB expansions are applied that do not allow additional development beyond what is currently allowed on site today. However, we have some local ordinances here in Deschutes County and a portion of our code that still requires a supplemental traffic impact study for any type of comprehensive plan amendment or zoning designation, which again, this project falls into. Based on that specific call out within our local code, the city submitted a supplemental traffic report from Transite Consulting about a month ago, and our senior transportation planner looked at that particular memo and agreed with ultimately the assumptions, methodology, and conclusions therein, finding that the proposed zoning designations and comprehensive plan designations and the interim, which would be applied to these properties, likely do not have additional traffic impacts that would be expected. In terms of public comments, we've received approximately 20 written public comments to date. Those comments are generally split between those that are largely supportive of the proposal, albeit sometimes with proposed amendments, and those with some general concerns either about a UGB expansion in general or a UGB expansion as proposed under the current alternative. I'm not going to go into the individual details of all those comments. Just note that they are in the record for review for the commission to take a look at. I will note, however, that just as a sort of broad distribution, there are more proponents for the proposal than opponents at this time. Next steps. So following the conclusion of the public hearing tonight, you have a few options to move forward, which I mentioned at the beginning, but just to reiterate them. You can continue this hearing to a date and time certain. You can close the hearing tonight, but leave the written record open to a specific date. You can close the hearing and set a date for deliberations. Or finally, you can close the hearing tonight and commence deliberations tonight. And with that, I'll take any questions that you might have. Otherwise, my contact information is on the screen for anyone who wants to reach out to me.

Any questions?

All right. We'll open it for comments. I think we're going to bring the applicant up first to provide their overview of the proposal.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.

Thank you just just a little logistics here before I get started, is the other members of the applicant team are they promoted to. presenters as well. Melissa or missy. yeah.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair and members of the Planning Commission. It's a pleasure to be here in front of you guys tonight. It's been a long time coming, a long process to get to this point. We're excited to present the results of our extensive work, the community's extensive work to get to where we are tonight. Just for the record, my name is Scott Woodford. I'm the Community Development Director for the City of Sisters. We also have on the line our consultant team that has been with us all the way through assisting us, and that is Matt Hasty and Andrew Parrish from MIG Land Use Consultants. They're experts in this. They do urban growth boundary amendments all across the state, and we're glad to have them help us along the way. As well as Missy Ryan, our attorney on the project, um as well as matt martin here in the office you may you may recognize him uh from from a while back uh he's here for this as the visual planner for the city of sisters So in terms of our presentation tonight, we will give a little bit of background on the process, kind of more detail on the process itself in terms of how we arrived at the proposal in front of you tonight. some more details about that proposal and then we'll touch on the approval criteria like to to thank the staff the county staff for a good staff report I think that we agree with all the findings they've been great to assist us not only through this process but even before this process they were some of the staff members were part of a steering ex officio members of a steering committee as we developed the UGB plan, we wanted to stay in connection with the county staff to make sure that they were aware of what's going on to see if there were any concerns. So that was helpful. And then even before that, with our comprehensive plan, there was involvement from county staff. So I'll go into kind of some of the history of how we got to tonight, because it's, as I said, a long time coming and it's been going on for about six, seven years. uh depending on how you count it and so it started really back when we updated our comprehensive plan back starting in 2020 and through that comprehensive plan process in updating and addressing the goals the different land use goals that are in the comprehensive plan including the goal 10 which is the housing goal part of that process is to update your housing needs analysis to identify what your needs are 20 years out into the future. And at that point, that was the first point that we identified a potential need for an urban growth boundary amendment. At that time, it was anticipated to be up to 100 acres. So moving on from that, once the comprehensive plan was approved, we moved on to updating our housing plan. And the housing plan is a document that was designed to address those goals and objectives of making sure that we have housing for a wide variety of people and sisters. And so that plan had lots of recommendations in terms of things that we could do to help out with that, including zoning amendments to reduce barriers to housing, financial incentives that we could employ to help bring about affordable housing, and a whole host of other measures that we use as a document and check in with regularly. and then a process that is required by the state one when there's a an idea or at least information that points to the need for an urban growth boundary amendment there's a requirement to go through a land use efficiency measures process and that's a requirement by the state before you can apply for an urban growth boundary amendment And that basically is an exercise to look at zoning amendments, barriers in your code, things that the city can do to help utilize its existing land more efficiently. And so we looked at a whole host of measures that we could put into place, that we can put into place to help be able to accommodate more of those housing units those future housing units that we identified within our existing boundaries thus reducing the size of the urban growth boundary amendment that we would need to request and so we did a lot of uh we took a lot of measures uh to uh increase that efficiency such as increasing our our allowed densities in our multi-family zones not only in the high not only on the high end but on the floor the low end so that we because we were seeing a situation where single-family development was being developed in our multifamily zones on small lots. We also added housing types to our zone districts, some metal housing types to provide more opportunities for workforce housing. We reduced the minimum size of our single-family lots. So a whole host of those measures were employed and put into place in our code that reduced the need somewhat of the need for our urban growth boundary amendment because we're being more efficient with the land that we have but it's still moving on to the next step after that go back for a second. I don't know who's moving along my slides here, but I'm not quite ready to jump to that yet. So after we did the efficiency measures, we also, through this process, got updated population projections from Portland State that the earlier ones that we relied on were quite a bit lower. So we had to kind of circle back, take a look, rerun some of our numbers, update our buildable lands inventory, and run some more numbers to see where we were at. And at that point, the demand was even higher for land. It was in the 205 to 250 acre range. And so based on that analysis, the council, let's see, how do I move this forward? He's moving it forward for me. So you can see the next step after that was the actual direction by our council to go forward with a UGB amendment based on that UGB sufficiency analysis. And that's the process that we've undertaken for the last couple years and has brought us to this point tonight. So that process was, as noted, was a two-year process. It was a very thorough process, a very methodical process that we went through. And our city council put a premium on community engagement because we have a community that does like to get involved, likes to know what's going on. And so we put extra dollars in our consultant budget to make sure that we went above and beyond

with community engagement, and I think that paid off. But we kicked off the project in 2024.

We took a look at our land needs again, and we'll review exactly what those land needs are later in the presentation. But not only did it include residential land, but it also included employment lands. That was an outcome of our economic opportunities analysis that along with residential growth, you're going to need to provide opportunities for jobs and for commercial growth at the same time. So there's 53 acres needed for commercial employment lands. As well as our parks master plan identified the need for 19 acres of park land. And then we also in discussions with our school district, a need was identified potentially at the end of that 20 year cycle for another elementary school. So after we finalized the land needs, we knew exactly how many acres we needed. That's when we established and analyzed, it created a study area. And I won't go into great detail on this because Andrew's gonna detail this here after me. But I went through that process where we studied every parcel within a half mile and sometimes up to a mile surrounding the community. So it was a thorough analysis. We looked at literally every piece of ground in that study area. And from that, in applying the rules that the state requires, morphed into a series of five or six different alternatives that we ran by the community to get feedback on. And out of that process and out of that community feedback came the preferred alternative, which you see before you tonight. And so now we're into the adoption phase where, as Kyle noted, we have to go through our city planning commission, which we had a public hearing on last week, and they recommended approval of the amendment. Obviously we're with the county planning commission tonight, and then we'll go to the board and the council, hopefully at a joint meeting at some point after this, not too long after this. And then, as Kyle noted also, there's more steps that are involved after we get the UGB amendment adopted. The next step would be area planning, and that provides extra detail in terms of the vision for the properties for the UGB out there. It'll start to apply comprehensive plan, city comprehensive plan. Designations out there in locations that will be a guide to future developers. It'll be kind of a master plan for future developers to follow to make sure that we're getting all the land needs met that we've identified provide some information and some guidance on transportation and how the project, how the properties will be served by utilities, locations for parks, things like that. And then after that's done, then we're also in the process of updating our annexation ordinance. And once that's all in place, then we can start entertaining participants for annexation. The city doesn't go out and annex property. It's completely driven by property owners out there. Go to the next slide, please, if anybody's controlling it. As I mentioned, our public engagement plan was very detailed and robust. We did establish a steering committee and represented very broad interests in the community, not only in the city, but involved landowners in the study area on different sides of the community to make sure that we got that input. from not only city residents but county residents and uh uh you know young and young younger residents older residents uh people that have been there for a long time people that have only been here for a year or two uh it was a very diverse group and and and uh they met i think seven or eight times before they came to their recommendation so they were a great engagement uh tool uh staff did quite a bit of outreach into the community we did a lot of community conversations where we We didn't wait for people to come to City Hall for an open house. We went to where people are to make sure that they were, we did small meetings with different community groups, HOAs, to make sure that they understood what this process was and answer their questions. Extensively with property owners that were in the study area, because we sent out letters to all the folks that were in the study area, any residents to let them know that their properties were under consideration for being in the and that was an effective process to communicate what the city was the city process and allow them an opportunity to engage. engaged with our planning commissioner council multiple times through all these steering committee meetings and workshops that we held. We took public comment in many of those meetings, received letters. They're all on our project website. Over 100, between that process and this process, there's over, I think, 110 submitted letters of testimony. That doesn't count all the public oral testimony that we've taken through this process. And then, as I mentioned, well, I guess I didn't totally mention, I did mention the coordination with the county staff, but we also coordinated with the U.S. Forest Service, the school district, ODOT, those groups, those agencies and stakeholders that might have an interest in what we're doing to keep them abreast of the proceedings. So next slide. So that kind of gives you an intro and a little bit of background in terms of how we got to where we are tonight. And then I'm going to turn it over to Andrew Perich from MIG to go into a little bit more detail in terms of the process and the plan. So Andrew.

All right. Thank you, Scott. Andrew Parrish with MIG, consultant for the City of Sisters. Happy to be here. So I'm going to provide kind of a technical summary of the urban growth boundary decision and what kind of led to that. So this is a 20-year UGB that is supposed to address the population and employment growth for the City of Sisters. We've looked at the amount of land available within the current UGB for both residential and employment land. As Scott mentioned, we've taken into account efficiency measures that the city has looked at, too. make better use of the land already available to it. And we have estimates for parks, schools, and other infrastructure as part of this. So on the residential side, we kind of broke things down into a low density and high density category. Employment land, there's both industrial and commercial land that we're looking at. Schools, we have the need for one school site. And then parks, there's just a general need for more parks in the community. based on the recently adopted Parks Master Plan. So we're targeting something like 200 net acres of land. And then when you account for future rights of way and infrastructure, that's something like 230 to 260 gross acres of land that we're looking for for the growth of the city. We established a study area consistent with state law. So that's a half mile from the urban growth boundary, except where there is exception land, which means land that is not farm or forest land in the county. So there's a significant amount of RR10, residential rural 10 land. land and then you look out one mile for that contiguous block there. So this is the map of the UGB study area. The state has pretty strict rules about the priority of land that you need to consider in your study areas and the intent there is so that cities look at exception land first. That's in the priority one classification. And then if there isn't enough land in priority one, then you can move down to other priorities of land to consider farmland, forest land, etc. to meet your need for urban uses. So the city undertook a pretty thorough alternatives analysis, basically setting up five alternatives that included all of that priority one land within the study area and did an evaluation based on the statewide planning goal 14 factors. Goal 14 is the urbanization goal. And so those factors are the efficient accommodation of land need. So is this land actually able to accommodate future urban uses? The provision of public services and facilities, can you actually serve it with utilities, etc. The third factor is economic, social, energy, and environmental consequences. So that's where you look at things like is it possible to build a walkable community in that area? Are there are there lands that are suitable for economic needs? It can kind of lump a lot of things into that category. And then number four is farm and forest compatibility. So would this new urban area be a good neighbor to farms and forests? So we used a good amount of available data from the county GIS and from other sources to evaluate a lot of criteria under these factors. So what you're seeing here is maps kind of rolled up for a number of indicators for each of these factors. And then those are weighted and rolled up into a overall map showing basically the most suitable lands and the kind of less suitable lands that are within the study area. So the city and the steering committee did the bulk of the work there to evaluate all of this data and put together a series of specific alternatives. So there were a number of refinements that the steering committee made at their last meeting or two, kind of refining this alternative into what made the most sense as a kind of cohesive area and met the community's needs. And we wound up with concept A.A. And then the county itself made some additional refinements related to specific rights of way that we've included in the proposal, just because it's county policy that certain roads should be the purview of the city when they become urbanized. So we changed the boundary slightly there. The steering committee and other bodies along the way did consider Concept B, which included the McKenzie Meadows Village property, you'll see on the west there. And we did evaluate that property in terms of those same Goal 14 factors. There were a number of pluses and a number of pros and a number of cons associated with that property. So some of the concerns that were raised were challenges related to transportation facilities, particularly if there was a need to get full connections to Highway 20 from that property, would have to cross county rural land, which would need a goal exception, which is a regulatory kind of lift, a burden to achieve there. Um, it has less connection to downtown and to services than some of the other areas that, um, we've looked at. Um, it has limited potential to meet a mix of land needs. So not a lot of sites that are along major highways or thoroughfares for, um, commercial or industrial land. Um, and, uh, we received guidance from DLCD from the state that, uh, the, uh, impact of appeals, uh, would, uh, appeals are impacting kind of the acknowledgement, the state acknowledgement of the potential rezone of that property. And that has implications for the timeline for this UGB approval. So the overall rationale for this preferred alternative, again, they're based on Goal 14 criteria. And it's all priority one land within this preferred alternative. But the rationale is that it includes higher scoring properties in relation to the evaluation criteria as documented in the staff report in our materials. It includes areas that are in close proximity to downtown Sisters currently. There's opportunities for commercial and industrial development adjacent to the Sisters Eagle Airport and along Highway 126. The arrangement of the properties allows for a future north-south connector to Highway 126. providing extra general transportation connections and also kind of an emergency route that was flagged by a number of people as part of this process. This UGB includes portions of the Indian Ford and Wychus Creek corridors with the explicit intent for future open space and trail networks. And it aims to avoid potential lengthy delays associated with MMV appeals per consultation with DLCD staff and legal counsel. Just a couple of other kind of items to note. So there, City Council did ask us to prepare, I think at a late 2025 meeting, a look at what the potential development readiness of some of the land in this alternative was. And so this is just a map showing properties that don't have any restrictive CC&Rs, that's covenants restrictions, criteria covenants and restrictions. And there's very little existing developments on these properties. And they all currently abut the urban growth boundary. So there's about 90 acres here shown in blue currently. There'd be more if you added a couple of properties that are basically vacant, but just not quite abutting the UGB currently. So I think it's safe to say that there is a fair amount of land that appears to be quite development ready within this UGB alternative. So this, again, is a map of the preferred concept. It's about 314 gross acres. It includes land along Highway 126. It includes land all the way north of Barclay near Sisters Eagle Airport, includes property along Indian Ford Creek and White Juice Creek, and it has large vacant parcels adjacent to city limits. So for the ultimate Sisters Comprehensive Plan designation for this area. This is a version of the Sisters Comprehensive Plan map, but this would become a UAR urban area reserve comprehensive plan designation, which, again, is a holding zone that Kyle was mentioning earlier for rural uses that are eventually going to be urbanized. But a lot of the same, I think most, if not all of the same uses that are allowed today on those properties would be allowed in the in the UAR. So I think for next steps and a couple of other slides, I'm going to pass it to Matt Hastie at MIG to take over here. All right.

Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it. I will try not to repeat too much of what other folks have said, but I'll probably end up doing just a little bit of that. Scott and Andrew both talked about subsequent area planning processes to dial in what the land uses would be, what the transportation and infrastructure components would be that would be needed to ultimately over time develop these areas. So That's something that's coming up after the UGB decision is approved. The city has been working on a set of updated annexation policies and has had a lot of discussion with council in particular about that. So that's underway now and that'll support future annexations. Then, as Scott said, annexations are done through landowner-initiated applications and would need to include master plans with specific transportation analyses. And then even after that, you know, land is annexed, you need to go through the development review process. So there's a lot of steps to make sure that this area can be developed efficiently and effectively over time and consistent with the goals of the city assisters. To repeat just a little bit of what Kyle said, we, in putting together the application for the amendment, we've looked at a variety of approval criteria and requirements and standards, obviously your county code and your comprehensive plan, because this is an application that goes through the county and the city, as well as the provisions of the Urban Growth Boundary and Sisters Joint Area Management Agreement, that the city and the county have, as well as the city's comprehensive plan, because we'll have to go through the city for approval as well. And then the statewide planning goals, Oregon revised statutes, and Oregon administrative rules. So a lot of things we have to address to make sure that this meets state and local requirements. One more. And this is just kind of a reiteration of the things Andrew talked about that, you know, sort of first and foremost in evaluating alternatives and recommending a preferred alternative, we need to look at these Goal 14 urbanization factors as we have evaluated these different options for expanding the boundary. So just a reminder on that. And I think that concludes the applicant's presentation, unless Scott has any final words he wants to make or say.

No, nothing further to add.

Questions? I had one. Indicated that you needed 15 acres for a school within that criteria. And it appears that the schools and sisters are consolidating everything on the west side. So I'm just curious what your thoughts were in addressing that with the proposal.

So as part of this process and as part of the UGB sufficiency analysis, we talked to all of our agency kind of partners in the area, including the school district, our public works department, to see what kind of needs they might have for stormwater detention or new public works projects. facilities, things that they might need to help accommodate the future growth. And as far as talking to the school district with the superintendent and his kind of attention to these, our 20 year, kind of at the tail end of our 20 year population projections, according to his analysis, he thought that there would likely be a need for another elementary school. And I think the thinking was that, well, this is a question you'd probably have to to ask him if their philosophy has changed or not. But I think they saw this as an opportunity to plan for the future and to hopefully provide some opportunity for future residents, future kids in these neighborhoods to be able to walk and ride to the school and not have to cross Highway 20 to get to the schools where they are now. But it's a question I think you'd have to ask the superintendent. But all I can relay is that through our interviews with those groups, that was the recommendation put forward. And so we took that forward, and that's where that came from.

Okay. Yeah, like I say, and I guess that brings to the next half of that question or what you just addressed is if you're putting the population on the east side of town and the schools are all on the west side, it would seem that all of the other school children are going to have to go all the way across town. And I know traffic's already crazy in the morning right now when everybody's being dropped off at school.

So this would be two elementary schools, if that's your question.

Right, but, well, if you divvy it up, I mean, my understanding is the school district actually has quite a bit of ground in that area for expansion. And you're talking about now adding a second elementary school on the east side. Now you've split all the resources, which, quite frankly, the school just closed an elementary school on the east side in order to consolidate everybody on the west side. It just seems contrary to the direction that the school district is headed.

Yeah, it's a good question. I can't really speak completely to their philosophy there, but that was the recommendation for, it's been that recommendation of theirs for at least several years now. And so if that philosophy had changed, they'd have plenty of opportunity to let us know that and to adjust our numbers. But I have not heard that change in request for that land.

Okay, and on your totals, I don't remember the acreage, 200 and some acres, but there's nothing in there for industrial or commercial?

Oh, there is, actually. I don't know if you saw that on our chart. If we can go back to that chart, part of this process, we did an economic opportunities analysis that was a process to see what types of industrial uses, things that might create jobs, what were the kind of things that the citizens of Sisters wanted to see in their future, and that equated to a certain amount of employment lands.

Oh, okay. Labeling, I'm used to seeing industrial and commercial as opposed to import.

Yeah, it's a different way of labeling. It's a term that basically covers industrial and commercial, like retail. So I think the larger component of that, Andrew, you can correct me if I'm wrong, is for commercial square footage than industrial.

I believe it's about 30 acres commercial, 20 acres industrial, but I can check that real quick.

Yeah. Okay. Anybody else have a question? Great. Thank you. Oh, looks like Nathan, have you got your hand up?

Yeah. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Just a quick question, kind of random, but it's been some years since I've heard anything about a potential realignment of Highway 20. It used to be, I guess it's been some time, but it used to be that there was some debate about, you know, potentially having it routed away from the center of the town. And I don't know what happened to that discussion. Just curious if there was any conversation with, I don't know, I guess it would be ODOT or whatever appropriate agency or if that's outside the scope of this process.

Thanks.

Thanks.

So I can try to answer that. All I can say is in my almost six years at the City of Sisters, that conversation has not come up in the public sphere since I've been there. I know it was a discussion prior to me getting there, but our current transportation system plan does not mention a bypass at this point. Not to say that that discussion won't come up again in the future, but it's not a current, it's not in any of our current master plan documents or capital improvement plans at this point. The focus has been more on the alternative route, as we're calling it, which once we completed the Barclay or the Locust Roundabout, that kind of completed that alternative route that goes around downtown up towards Barclay and over to back to Highway 20. It's been more of the focus of the city in ODOT.

Yeah, it looks like, I mean, if you were to go on the east side route, it'd create an opportunity to extend Barkley and loop back around into 126 in a different location and bypass most of downtown.

Yeah, that was the thinking for that.

Great. Any other questions? Great. Thank you. All right. We'll open it up to, you have anybody else where we open up members of the public?

Unless you have questions for me.

All right. We're going to do three minutes of, um, comment. If you could keep it to three minutes, that'd be great. So we can get out of here sometime tonight. And, uh, First, we'll call someone to the first person at the table, and we'll have somebody on deck, so the second person can come on up to the table and be ready. And the first we have is, and I'm going to butcher your last name, Dale Van Valkenburg. And on deck is, oh, man, I've gotten off to a bad start, Abby Caldera?

Abby Caldera.

Anyhow, go ahead. State your name and address and go for it.

Good evening, Chair Cyrus and planning commissioners. My name is Dale VanValkenburg. You got it exactly right. I'm employed by Brooks Resources Corporation. Our address is 409 Northwest Franklin Avenue here in Bend. We represent a group of property owners in the northeast area of the expansion area. We think the city has done an outstanding job of evaluating the criteria, going through the lands analysis. We support the proposal. We have been working with those owners on a development alternative plan, and we look forward to the area planning process. And that's all I really have for you tonight.

Great. Thank you. All right. And on deck is going to be Garrett Mosier.

good evening commissioners my name is abhi chaudhary i live at 69033 berkeley court i was the vice chair of the ugb steering committee for the city of sisters and i'm here to voice my support for the proposed boundary i want to share three things today number one it's clear that sisters needs more housing immediately across the country we've seen that housing affordability can only be solved by building rapidly to stay ahead of demand if the um I think that number two, I want to reiterate my support for the proposal. The proposed area not only meets all the requirements for the city's expansion, but also supports the downtown businesses because it is within a five-minute walk for both employees and patrons of downtown businesses. The UGB steering committee voted 11 to 1. in support of the current proposal. It also voted 11 to 1 to specifically exclude the MMV. I think Morgan, who's here, will probably speak, is the only person that voted against both motions. Number three, Mackenzie Meadows Village and Coba have repeatedly circulated a misleading survey claiming Barkley Meadows owners aren't interested in development. The letter notes that they surveyed 10 households and all 10 said no. In reality, there's actually only eight households represented. One household, their vote appears three times in the survey. Additionally, only four of the households are actually in the UGB area. So six of them are not really relevant to the conversation. And then they did not send the survey to the owners who are working with Brooks. So I think it's like pretty intentionally misleading. But that's all I have to add for today. Thank you so much for your time.

Great. Thank you. On deck is

Chris Colbeck?

If these are difficult to see, I also submitted them. Good evening, Chair Cyrus, members of the Planning Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight. My name is Garrett Mosier, here today on behalf of the Central Oregon Builders Association. COBA represents over 800 members in the development community and related professions. I have the pleasure of serving as their Director of Government Affairs. I'm here today to respectfully request that this commission does not recommend the adoption of the Sisters UGB amendment as currently written. The proposed UGB amendment does not currently include enough land that can be realistically and cost-effectively to be developed over the next 20 years to deliver the residential and commercial needs that the city itself has identified. This is concerning because under Oregon State land use system, Goal 14 says that all cities UGB expansions must, quote, accommodate urban population and urban employment to ensure efficient use of land and provide for livable communities. Serving in this role, you all know well that not all land can be developed for the same cost at the same rate. Some can't be developed at all. Differences in geography, watershed, cultural significance, proximity, and elevation relative to infrastructure, willing property owners, and many other factors can all determine the feasibility cost and how long it takes these projects to come to fruition. These potential barriers drive up costs for both housing and commercial uses, making projects difficult to pencil, and this ultimately determines who is able to afford to live, work, and open a business in Sisters. With my written testimony, I've shared these maps that overlay the multiple barriers of development facing the city's proposed UGB amendment. I hope you've had a chance to look those over. For the last five years, the number of residential building permits issued by the city has gone down every year. Last year, only 56 new residential permits were issued in the city of Sisters. This year, unless something dramatically changes, the city is on pace to issue even fewer in 2026. This is a concerning trend given that, through the UGB process, the City has targeted the goal of building 1,970 units of new housing between 2021 and 2043. That equates to 90 new homes per year. In other words, we're struggling to achieve the much-needed housing production we need to see. This trend is largely due to the very limited supply of land in Sisters, able to be developed affordably. The difficulty and cost to build here is how we've come to the average home price of roughly $800,000 in the City of Sisters. As a representative of the building industry, I'm here to say the proposed UGB amendment before you is not going to solve the supply and affordability crisis we're facing. More than 200 of the 312 gross acres in the proposed amendment will be too costly and or burdensome to develop and meet previously mentioned production goals and create viable commercial opportunities. The proposed UGB expansion does have some viable land that can deliver. For example, what we heard from Brooks Resources earlier this evening. There are also other lands the city could include in its proposed amendment. For example, the nearly 58 acres owned by McKenzie Meadows Village that just last year Deschutes County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to expedite the rezone for after the City of Sisters requested the expeditious review of the rezone application. In that letter, which I submitted in my testimony, the City of Sisters wrote the board asking that MMV parcels score well in the latest objective analysis against required review factors for UGB expansion.

Are you about done?

Yes. Before I close tonight, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here, and I urge you to not recommend adoption of the Sisters UGB Amendment as currently written. Instead, please ask for the redraw to include lands that can be realistically and cost-effectively developed into housing and commercial uses.

Thank you. And on deck is Morgan Greenwood.

Good evening, Chair Cyrus, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Chris Kobach. I'm a land use lawyer with Buchanan Schmidt Kobach here in Bend at 937 Northwest Newport. I'm representing McKenzie Meadow Village tonight, and I'm going to make some comments why we also are going to urge you to recommend not going forward with this. But before that, I want to let you know, I represented McKenzie Meadow Village before your board on the rezone that the prior speaker just spoke about. I was there when the board unanimously approved that rezone on an emergency basis. And they did so because they saw this property as a very unique opportunity to immediately meet a housing crisis. And that's an important thing to remember. I submitted a fairly detailed letter a couple days ago. it's in the record for your consideration. I'm not going to have time in three minutes to go through everything. I'll hit the highlights. But one thing I do want to say before I do that and run out of time is if you feel you have enough information tonight to make a recommendation, by all means, you should do it. If you have concerns that you need time to study it, if you're concerned at all about this proposal, you don't have to rush tonight. You can come back and you can take time. So on the substance, City of Sisters has a housing need. You heard it, like 1,900 some units in a planning period. They need real houses. They don't need hypothetical houses. They don't need paper houses. The problem we have, there's a lot of good property. The Brooks Resource property, my client 100% agrees. That's excellent property. It should come in. It should be developed. We're 100% supportive of it. The sub areas, Barkley Meadows and 126, Highway 126, those properties give us concern. They were included based upon nothing more than assumptions about redevelopment. There is no qualitative assessment that you'll find in that material. There's no market studies. There's no data. There's no any kind of study saying that property will redevelop within this planning period with needed housing. And here's why. It's just not there. And the reason it's not there is it's not going to. These are people who own properties that are large acre estates. They bought them for a reason. They're holding for a reason. They're a commodity. A number of them have already said, we're not interested in doing this. And they're not going to do it. And their heirs aren't going to do it. That's not why they hold the property. I do a lot of rezoning applications in this county. You probably know this better than a lot of us in the room. It's becoming harder and harder and harder to get property rezoned to create these rural estate properties. They're going to become more and more coveted. It's a commodity. To expect those people to just abandon that lifestyle and redevelop is unrealistic. Lastly, what I want to say is if the city's banking on House Bill 2138 and this provision that purports to eliminate CC&Rs, it's a dangerous proposition. That is a very limited zone. It only invalidates CC&Rs to allow middle housing. It doesn't invalidate all the other restrictions. And the other thing about it is it's one of the most pervasive intrusions on property rights and contractual rights that I've seen in a long time practicing. I am 100% sure it's going to be legally challenged. So when the city says we were concerned about an appeal on MMV, but we're willing to risk the whole future of the city on these properties based on a law that is likely to be challenged, and I think it's likely to be reversed, it is taking away longstanding historic property and contractual rights from people. They're not going to stand for it. So I think we're headed towards a mess. If they bring in that property as property to meet this real need and that law is overturned, where is the city? Where are its people that need real housing? So I would encourage you as well as Mr. Mosier, please take your time, make the right decision. A lot of people are counting on it, not just my client, a lot of people. Thank you.

Thank you. And on deck, we have Bill Willits.

Thank you, Chair Cyrus. Can you hear me okay?

Barely.

Okay, how about that?

Better.

Thank you. Chair Cyrus, Vice Chair Kelly, thank you. My name is Morgan Greenwood. I live at 1646 West Lambert Avenue in Sisters, Oregon. I'm a member of the UGB Steering Committee with City of Sisters. I'm also the current government affairs director with Cascades East Association of Realtors and the former vice president of government affairs with Central Oregon Builders Association. However, I want to make abundantly clear that I am here speaking only on behalf of myself and nothing that I'm saying this evening reflects either the opinions of my current or former employers. I think we've heard a lot tonight about the likelihood or efficiencies of developing the land within the proposed UGB expansion. Mr. Chowdhury is exactly right that the way to get ahead of this housing crisis, the way to achieve the 1,900 housing units that City of Sisters is obligated to construct in the next 10 years is to build efficiently. What we're seeing in the proposed UGB expansion are a lot of highly parcelized rural subdivisions in which regardless of the property owner's willingness to sell and develop are highly expensive to both assemble, remediate septic systems, extend utilities all the way past the current boundary of both water and sewer within city limits. These are very large risks the developers are unlikely to want to take in order to build efficiently, and if you cannot build efficiently, you cannot build cost-effectively. The homes that would be constructed on these properties would not do anything to bring down that $800,000 median home cost in the City of Sisters. However, we do have willing property owners who own the McKenzie Meadows Village properties. These are property owners who have committed to 30% of the homes being deed restricted for workforce to be affordable to a sister's workforce. I cannot overstate what a gift this is and here I will rely on my professional experience. These are home ownership opportunities as opposed to rentals. This does not happen ever. I've never seen this happen in any jurisdiction in Central Oregon. And so I think that this is a gift that the city of sisters should take the time to see through. We have an opportunity as you have heard from Mr. to take the time to receive more information on this process and provide the city of sisters with developable land. They can serve the residents and the workforce there. So I would ask you this evening to deny this application and take the time to gather some more information about what kind of property could be brought into the UGB that would best serve the current and future residents of Sisters.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. And on deck is Kurt Colberg.

Good evening. Bill Willits, managing partner of McKenzie Meadow Village. First of all, I want to say we are 100% in support of the Brooks Resources Project. They are going to be delivering 31% affordable housing. They're a quality company. And anything we can do to expedite that, we are in support of. I'm going to put this in as plain of English as I can, and that is this long process has a huge hole in it. And that hole is that about 40% of the land is in Barclay Meadows First Edition, not to be confused with Barclay Meadows. Barclay Meadows is Brooks Resources. Barclay Meadows First Edition sits below. And there are 19 property owners in there. And if you study CC&Rs, you'll recognize that no, eight of them don't vote. All 19 of them vote, even though only eight of them are included in the urban growth boundary. Four of those eight have said no, they're not interested. 10 of the 12 votes recorded have said no, and therefore that property will never come in. The city may argue generationally, you know, 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, but the dynamic is not going to change. We've got riding arenas, we've got huge barns, we've got all kinds of things there. It just isn't going to redevelop. Central Oregon Land Watch may argue HB 2138, but in truth, that net is six houses per building site. And to get to six, you get a bonus on your four for affordable housing. Barkley Meadows First Edition needs to deliver between 700 and 800 homes. It's the biggest segment of land in the UGB expansion. It will deliver 24. It's got a huge hole in it. And you have in front of you the votes that property owners have come back and said, no, thank you. Historically, the City of Sisters, as soon as Trapper Point came back and said, no, the majority is against it, they took it off the table. This one, a little too far down the road. Somehow we're going to defend this. So I encourage you to carefully study that because we're talking reality here. It's not going to come in ever. And that's why I think you should take a little time to make your own decision on that. I do have one other quick thing. In Central Oregon 30 years ago, 60% of people could be a first-time homebuyer. Today, we're at between 8% and 9%. We are in crisis. And we, McKenzie Meadow Village, are putting together something in cooperation with Bridge Meadows, which is, if you're familiar with it, an incredible concept where there will be about 50 senior homes, as well as working with kids, foster kids. We're working with SOUL, which is a group of local moms that want to build homes for their developmentally disabled kids. We're going to provide them free land. We're going to provide bridge meadows, free land. We're going to provide 32 lots to Habitat at a price they can afford to continue their work. And we're working with a school district because we're the only neighborhood within walking distance to the school. Kirk Scholes and I are working on a plan to deliver whatever is needed in terms of teacher housing. To Morgan's point, This is a unique opportunity, one that I don't think has been presented before. And I think based on twofold, one is what we're offering, and then the other is we've got a huge hole in the AA. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. And on deck is, and I'm going to screw this one up again, Robin Hayakawa. Robin Hayakawa. You're on deck. Go ahead, Kurt.

Yeah. My name's Kurt Kahlberg. I'm 73 years old, born in Oregon, lived in Sisters 45 years. Scott makes me laugh. He says, you know, oh, you can walk to town from this new development. Talk about walk to town. I don't know if you're very familiar with McKenzie Meadow. Some of you know, you can walk within five minutes to get your groceries, your prescriptions, your churches, your schools. You don't have to cross any highways. If you got a bicycle and you're an eight year old, you can go to the ball fields. You think you can do it on the east side of town? That whole development dumps onto Locust. Locust is an alternate route, or I'll call it a truck route, for Highway 20, and you're gonna send kids three miles to the elementary school and cross a roundabout that's, I drive race cars, It's a freaking trick. And I'm pretty doggone good. You expect a kid on a bicycle to cross that roundabout to go to his baseball practice? You guys are nuts. You know, the city is out there. Whoever... This land did not know. I lived on Righteous Creek. That is a giant floodplain. They don't talk about it. They say, oh, there's 19 acres maybe. Bullshit. That whole entire meadow floods. And it's interesting how the city council, it was a split vote. The city planning commission was a split vote. And you know who voted against this plan? It was people that knew this town. It was a past mayor. It was people that are born and raised in this town. It's not people like Scott that have been here six years. I've been here 45 years. I know what happens. That's why all you young people sitting in those seats, when I was here last time, it was a different bunch. They are planning for 50 years, and you might give them a little credit for putting all the schools in one area, putting all the shopping in one area. and health care in one area so they can ride their bike and not have to go across a truck route and a major highway to get to where they want to go. Churches are there. You know, so after school projects, Young Life, different programs like that, they can walk from school to their churches. You can't do that on the east side. It's a joke. So sorry to get excited, but I'm just mad. I cannot believe that Scott says, oh, well, we got all these letters and everybody's for it. I'd use a word, but That's not right. The town is not for it at all. So thank you for your time. And thank you very much for your service. Because please don't disgrace them. You know, they had a plan. And don't let them down. Thank you.

Thank you. Robin.

Yeah, good evening, Chair Cyrus, Vice Chair Kyrgios, Deschutes County Planning Commissioners. My name is Robin Hayakawa. I'm an Associate Staff Attorney here today on behalf of Central Oregon Land Watch. Our address is 2843 Northwest Lolo Drive, Bend, Oregon 97703. My colleague, Kristen Reidelberger, couldn't be here tonight, but Kristen has really been deeply involved in this process for the last year and a half, two years, including serving as an ex-officio member of the UGB Citizen Steering Committee. She regrets not being able to be here, but I'm going to do my best in her stead. I didn't actually mean to get the last word here because I think that... A lot of really invested interests have had insightful and meaningful things to say about this already. But I will say that on behalf of Landwatch, we do appreciate the extensive and thoughtful analysis that went into the final proposal that's in front of you today. We believe that it's technically sound and it's well grounded in community values as evidenced by the recommendation of the steering committee. and the planning commission itself. We fully support the adoption of the sister's proposed and preferred UGB expansion. Yes, and we agree with staff, the Sisters Planning Commission, and my reading of the Deschutes County staff report as well, that this application meets the criteria required for proposal. I do want to address a couple of issues, provide some context for our support. I'll try to keep it brief. First, the properties included in the proposed UGB, they score highly on the Goal 14 urbanization factors. They include a mix of attributes that we believe will support the diverse needs of the community over the 20-year planning horizon. We believe that it's going to lead to the development of a more complete community in the city of Sisters. Its proximity to downtown should allow for a mix of housing, jobs, and services with walkable and bikeable connections. We also believe that the area presents an opportunity to protect portions of Indian Ford and White Shoes Creek for conservation, education, and recreation. You heard a little bit about this, but we also believe that the concerns around CCNRs are vastly overstated. Beginning on January 1st, state law, that's ORS 93277, is going to prevent all existing and future CCNRs from prohibiting the development of and subdividing for lands for middle housing. And so that means that properties will be able to develop to urban densities without needing to amend CC&Rs. And then finally, we do oppose the inclusion of Mackenzie Meadow Village properties. We think that inclusion of these lands is going to result in conflicts with wildlife, conflicts with wildfire, I think are particularly significant, and transportation conflicts. I submitted some comments this afternoon. Apologies for not getting them over to you earlier. we disagree that uh the the mackenzie meadow properties can be considered priority one in their current status they have not been acknowledged as exception lands they're subject to appeal um and so there's been comments about risking the future of this ugb expansion we think that to uh jeopardize this process over lands that have not been acknowledged um is not a good use of this process's time and resources. So with that, we do encourage you to approve the UGB expansion, and I really thank you for your time and your consideration, and of course the work you do for Deschutes County. Thank you.

Is there anybody else in the audience that wants to speak? Great. Anybody online? As those online are elevated, if you could give your name and address and look forward to hearing from you.

Good evening, Chair. Can you hear me okay?

Barely.

Hello, Chair and members of the Planning Commission. My name, for the record, is Jen Kovetz, and I am the Community Engagement and Government Affairs Manager for Hayden Homes. I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate this evening in the hearing. In her email to you earlier this month, longtime Sisters resident Kathy Degendorfer encouraged your commission to visit the neighborhoods and Sisters that sit west of Highway 20 and north of the downtown core. Mrs. Degendorfer invited each of you to, quote, experience for yourself what it is like to live in that intentionally village-like part of town, end quote, before making a recommendation tonight. Her letter is a good reminder of why the City of Sisters intentionally located all of its schools, major grocery stores, medical centers, and other amenities northwest of Highway 20. Mrs. Degendorfer's letter reminds us that this westward city planning was, quote, not by accident, end quote, but because, quote, previous city leaders and volunteers just like you saw the benefits of locating essential services where folks can access them without crossing a state highway. End quote. Hayden Homes is proud to have built 539 homes in two communities in this village-like part of Northwest Sisters. And we know firsthand what this location means for the families who've purchased our homes. As you've heard, children walk and bike to school. Folks can run errands while completely avoiding that tourism traffic. And housing affordability was guaranteed for the long term. In Hayden Home's McKenzie Meadows Village community, thanks to a visionary annexation agreement between the Sister City Council and the landowners, 10% of the units are deed-restricted affordable for 50 years to homebuyers and renters earning 80% area median income and below. The UGB amendment before you does not take advantage of the existing fruits of previous sister city planning efforts. By expanding only to the city's east without spreading some of that development into viable lands in Sisters Northwest, this amendment would push all new development far away from existing services. It's important to note that Sister School District Superintendent Kurt Scholl is on the record throughout this entire process with the city, supporting bringing in lands on the west side, specifically the McKenzie Meadows parcels. When Hayden Homes built the McKenzie Meadows community, we intentionally left water, sewer, and road utilities stubbed to the neighborhood's northern edge. These utilities are ready to serve the next phase of Sisters' growth. And with onsite utilities ready to go, infrastructure costs will be much lower than on many of those eastern parcels where development could be delayed if infrastructure projects don't pencil. And you can just look to Ben's Southeast Area Plan brought into the UGB a decade ago for an example of development completely stalled by lack of infrastructure. A decade is too long to wait in a housing crisis. So tonight, please don't forget the history of how and where and why Sisters has grown to date. Please do not recommend approval of the UGB amendment before you, and instead remand it to the city for a balanced growth between Sisters' current western and eastern boundaries. Thank you for your time.

Great, thank you. Anybody else? Great. Yeah, go ahead.

So we have access to the presentation by the applicant, yes, in the public record or no?

We don't at this time, but we will.

OK, yeah, that would be great to just have your slides so we can go back and review some of the things that you said.

Any other questions? Okay.

Go ahead. I'd like to hear. You know, you heard some very compelling things tonight about, you know, properties to the West. And I would just like to hear, is it possible to ask for kind of a rebuttal from Scott just so that I can understand why that property wasn't? I mean, I kind of understand, you know, some, but can you just give me some more information about this? Because I'm...

Yeah, if we could focus on that alternative. That was also where my question was coming to, too, because you went over the different alternative properties and some of the reasons why you guys didn't select them. So it would be helpful to have an overview of why did you not select this particular property that citizens have given really compelling testimony about, just from your perspective.

so sure yeah we as uh andrew mentioned in the presentation we uh included concepts for all priority one lands uh in the uh in their study area so we actually brought those out to the community to make sure that we considered every property and got public comment on every property we also kept the McKenzie Meadows Village proposal on the line for the vast majority of the process, even though it wasn't a priority one land at the time. They went through the rezoning process. The city council did ask to expedite that, not necessarily to bring it in, but to have it for consideration. And ultimately, they chose not to include that property with the preferred alternative. Some of the issues were the pending litigation, pending appeal and the process that that could take going through all the iterations of the appeal process could be yours potentially. And I think that was a consideration that the council took into consideration. not wanting to wait around because we did have a long discussion about whether we want to pause our process to see how that process works out. After it got appealed, the council decided ultimately that they didn't want to wait around that long. There could have been other considerations as well in terms of why they chose not to include that parcel. It did have some pros to it, like Andrew mentioned. It did score well in some of our analyses. but ultimately the fact that it wasn't available for us to incorporate was a big factor in the decision and also the fact that we had plenty of other priority one land. If we didn't have enough priority one land to meet our needs, that would have maybe changed the equation. We would have had to wait it around for longer to get that, to see if that land eventually became priority one. We had over 1,900 acres of Priority One land. We only needed 250, so we had plenty of Priority One land to consider. Some of those lands we stopped considering after a while. They have had issues. They didn't score as well as the preferred alternative. We did discount some properties that didn't want to be in the UGB, but they also had other issues going along with their properties that weren't conducive to urbanization, such as small parcels, some of them on the order of two to five acres, which is extremely hard to urbanize. Somebody would have to assemble multiple properties to be able to do any kind of development. uh so i want to reiterate that and because this was a consideration during our process were the presence of prop was the presence of property owner rejection a valid criteria not to include properties in a ugb and according to dlcd it is not a criteria for consideration um if that were the if that were the case then we probably would see half the number of ugb amendments that we do in the state if property owners objected to that it would IT WOULD SEVERELY CURTAIL THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT GOALS OF THE STATE. CC&Rs, THE PRESENCE OF CC&Rs ARE NOT A REASON NOT TO BRING PROPERTIES INTO A UGB. WE'VE GOT SOME GUIDANCE FROM THEM ON THAT AS WELL BECAUSE CC&Rs CHANGE OVER TIME. PROPERTY OWNER VIEWS ON WHETHER OR NOT THEY WANT TO BE IN THE UGB CHANGE OVER TIME. It's a 20 year plan. It's not intended to be developed in two years or five years, but in total, over 20 years or potentially even a little bit longer. And viewpoints change, property owners change. So that's, I think, why we didn't use that as criteria not to, or to exclude properties solely. If they were excluded, it was because of other factors on top of those issues. I wanted to respectfully disagree with some of the mapping that was presented tonight in terms of showing cross hatching and trying to demonstrate constraints on the preferred property. They're showing landscape management constraints that upon annexation will not apply. There is a wildlife corridor that I don't think would comply or apply once annexation takes, occurs. There's steep slopes or there's a allegation of steep slopes. There were some steep slopes that we discounted when you're talking about the butte that's in the study area. That's definitely does have steep slopes and because of the cost of development and not not leading to opportunities for affordable workforce housing. We discounted truly steep slopes. uh there there are not steep slopes on this property so i think there's a lot of demonstration that there's constraints on this property and there are some constraints uh you know there's going to be need for infrastructure improvements yes there would be a need for a bridge i think every every property that's in a ugb has has going to need some investment to to make that development happen and so it's not an unusual thing to see the need for uh road improvements or that there would be a need for a lift station There's issues with the MMV parcel. They do not, as currently laid out, meet the fire code for fire access. There's requirements for separation for, they have two access points, but they don't meet the minimum requirement for separation of those units or separation of those access points. So they have to go through the Forest Service to see if they can get a permit to create an emergency access road. Is that achievable? Potentially. There's also potential traffic issues. Not to say that those are insurmountable, but I think the point is that every parcel has some potential issues that need to be addressed. There aren't any perfect UGB lands to bring in that don't have any constraints. I also wanted to provide the opportunity for Matt, Andrew, or Missy to provide any rebuttal to any points.

There's a hand up from somebody.

I believe that's Missy if you want to speak.

I saw that earlier.

Oh, there was a hand up. There she is. Hi. Go ahead.

Yes, hi. Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer questions. I also want to, if you don't mind on the time, I believe that the consultants would also like to respond to a few things. A couple things that I wanted to hit on were I appreciate the perspective that the new legislation in House Bill 2138 is jarring, I believe I heard unconstitutional. I think we have to proceed with the notion that the statute that the legislature passed is probably constitutional the legislature does have access to legislative council they certainly would have run legislation like this past legislative council and gotten opinions about its constitutionality so i think it's a little bit difficult to just throw that baby out with the bath water you know so to speak um i just also wanted to uh point out that the city is under a time constraint here to have this whole package wrapped up and sent to dlcd before the first of the year so that it can rely on its very very expensive studies that it has been working on over the last four years as was demonstrated in that slide and i'm also happy to answer any commissioner questions

So I had one, and I don't know who's the most appropriate, kind of following up. The McKenzie Meadow property, was it passed on its merits or strictly because of the appeal?

I don't know the answer, the complete answer. I'm not sure if they got to that point or not. I would defer to Matt and Andrew if you want to weigh in on that.

Yeah, I'll weigh in on that. And I'll just, while I'm at it, mention a couple of other responses to some of the testimony. So I would say it was not waived strictly on the issues associated with the appeal. Andrew and Scott both talked about a number of potential issues with that property. We did not believe we could consider that as a priority one land based on what we were the guidance we got from the state, which will ultimately need to acknowledge this amendment. So I think we're going to have to agree to disagree with the conclusions of McKinsey Meadows Village representatives and what we heard from the state. So that's one thing I would say. It certainly was one of the issues that we considered and the steering committee considered. But the steering committee was very careful to say in their testimony in previous hearings, that that was not the only thing that they considered when they recommended the proposed boundary, that they thought about all the other things that Andrew mentioned and Scott mentioned earlier in terms of some of the other potential barriers or roadblocks for that property. And as Scott said, there are no perfect properties within this UGB. There's some that are better, there's some that are worst. We evaluated all these properties on their merits. And again, we kind of kept the McKenzie Meadows Village property on the table for quite a while, but ultimately for a combination of reasons, The steering committee, the planning commission, the council, majorities of all those groups recommended not to move it forward. So that's what I would say about that. I would also just respond to a couple of other things in the testimony. I think to say that the areas within the proposed boundary area are highly parcelized subdivisions is not accurate. the average size of those parcels is between 10 and 25 acres those are not small pieces of property we did in fact as scott said exclude properties that worse that were on the order of one to four acres and not reasonably expected to urbanize even over this long period and then finally i would say there are a lot of assertions made about what people will or will not do with their property over the next 20 years And I can't make those assertions because I don't own that property and I don't know what those people will do with their property in the next 20 years. But we are bound by state rules to consider those properties as potentially developable over that long-term planning horizon. It's a long time. I think to say that these people will never do anything with their properties, particularly if they come into the UGB and the value of them for development increases significantly, I think that does change people's calculus about what they do with their property. So I would just kind of take some issue with some of the very definitive things that were said about what other folks will do with their properties or won't do. So those are the things I would add. Okay.

Commissioner Williams? Yes.

So I was not able to attend the last meeting and I am not up to snuff on McKenzie Meadow. I find it interesting that the county commissioners unanimously voted to rezone it last year. So my question is, if this land of MMV is not put into the UGB, and they meet all their criteria for roads, egress, ingress, sewer water, could they break ground tomorrow? And that's just something I don't have enough information about McKenzie Meadow. I was not aware. And I really appreciate all of the community's input. I've read all the written testimony over the last few weeks. And there's just a lot of people and there's a lot of opinion. So that's just my real question is if McKenzie Meadow can do all of this on their own, can they go be a community without being in the UGB? I'm just I'm not up to snuff on that. I think I can respond to that.

Maybe just as helpful. Yeah, go ahead, Kyle. So the MMV property has gone through a local comprehensive plan and zoning through Deschutes County.

Ultimately, the Board of County Commissioners approved that.

If they were to surmount all the appeals and had success in that area, they would still be governed under the current rules by Deschutes County code. So the two are unrelated. So they would receive a new comprehensive plan designation and a new zoning designation through Deschutes County, but they would still be subject to effectively rural development standards. They might have more allowances under those standards. They could potentially get smaller lot sizes, more development opportunities, central development opportunities in particular, but it would be much less intense development were they included in the UGB itself.

Okay, thank you.

So what I'm hearing is that the primary objection to including the parcel on the west side is the fact that it's under appeal by Landwatch. And I also understand that, you know, the legislation... would hope to at least wipe out CC&Rs. And I strongly disagree with the notion that legal counsel at the LC looks at everything from a standpoint of whether or not it's constitutional before they allow the legislature to pass stuff because they pass stuff that gets thrown out in court all the time. And I've been involved in lots of legislation over the years, so I know that's absolutely not true. I guess I'm weighing, I mean, which is the faster through the court process? Because I fully expect the CC&R stuff would also be appealed. And, you know, it could take years to be remedied. So, I mean, six of one, half a dozen of the other, of which is likely to make it to the finish line first. But a question I would have is, since you guys have spent several years doing this, How many acres in the east side proposal are currently available by willing sellers to have their property redeveloped?

I don't have that acreage in handy right now.

I didn't know that. For me, that would be important.

I would say it's quite a bit more. If you put it by acreage, I think it's quite a bit. It's probably more than half. More than just the property owners that have been talking to Brooks have registered that they are interested in being part of the UGB. It's not just those properties. So I think if you did it by acreage, because some of the bigger parcels are actually supportive of being in the UGB, that the vast majority, I would say, would probably be in support of being in the UGB.

Because I guess that's kind of what I was looking at is, okay, how many, okay, we're talking 200 and some acres being proposed to bring in. I mean, how many acres would be readily available to be developed? And so that's, to me, that's an important factor because granted this is a 20-year plan, you know, I mean, if you're looking for housing in the near term, that doesn't help much.

I think that's why the slide that Andrew put up that was a question that council asked is what is the readiness how much of the acreage is ready to be developed sooner rather than later and that was that slide that he put up that showed quite a you know that whole area in yellow are areas that are adjacent to city streets now or to to develop streets adjacent to utility lines so they could easily be brought in given that that accessibility of utilities and transportation and willing property owners.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Go ahead. Question.

Can you talk to me more about this January 1st date and how this is impacting this process if we wait? So that's my first question. Why is that date coming up and how does that affect our process? And then do we have any kind of idea on the timeframe of the date? litigation the appeal happening if there's any estimate on that on how long that would take

Yeah, I think you can address that.

Yeah, I can address at least the first piece.

So my understanding, at least in terms of the lube appeal, is we would expect a decision, at least an initial decision sometime over the next month is most likely. But that does not definitively state that that would be the end of the process. There's always the potential for remands of decisions and additional information. It's very difficult when you're talking about litigation decisions. Luba, potentially it even goes beyond Luba. It's difficult to say it will be done at this date. I think we can expect it would likely, I mean, the quickest it could happen is maybe in the next month and the longest it could happen is potentially over the course of years.

And talk to me about the January date

Yeah, I can answer that part. So the Oregon housing, the state has new methodology for determining like housing needs. Their Oregon housing needs analysis, which is the state is doing the analysis instead of individual communities doing their own housing needs analysis. So we're still under our own housing needs analysis. And they've basically carved out or grandfathered our process because we were already in the process when those rules came into effect. So they have grandfathered us for a certain amount of time, January 1st, 2027, that we need to have local adoption or we would be basically starting over with many of our studies and analysis with new methodology. So we're trying to avoid that.

Any other questions? All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Oh, what's your pleasure? Well, it seems like we've run out of, we've run out of comments.

I think.

I have a comment. What's that?

Hi. Go ahead. I tried to give a comment on the phone, but there was no way to be heard. There might be some other people on the phone you might want to ask if they want to make a comment. So I got on the web on my phone because we lost power here at the house. We had a lightning storm come through. So may I speak?

Yes, go ahead. Say your name and your address.

Thank you so much. My name is Monica Tomasey, and I am in Sisters. I'm a resident and I have a natural resource science and management background, including in climate change. And I'm concerned with landscape scale, firewise land use, as well as fair and democratic processes. And I support and ask you to support the decision by the sister city council to choose concept A point A for the UGB, as well as the planning commission decision to the town planning commission decision to submit this application. I followed the process that the officials, staff, and citizens went through over the last couple of years, and I found it to be thorough and explicit and deliberative and inclusive. The Eastern Cascades forest ecosystem has experienced increased drought since the early 1990s, and the likelihood of wildfire is likely going to increase. So for Western wildland urban interfaces to creep further into drying forest is to invite more fire and property loss and perhaps loss of life. So hardening of homes is not enough to prevent the damage and and death that can come with wildfire, we need to protect, enhance, and restore all the wet areas that are available. And we do have them in concept A.A. And that's one reason I really like it is that it does include a lot of wet areas or formally wet areas that can be enhanced or restored. So that's my... general background, but I found out that even though my associates considered this UGB to be a done deal, the McKenzie Meadows owners and attorneys and associates have been enjoying a public relations campaign of propaganda editorials and VIP tours in an effort to thwart the described democratic processes above. So... I think I can answer one of your questions about why was the Mackenzie Meadows Trout Creek parcel rejected. When the official votes took place at the steering committee level and the planning commission level and the council level, there were many residents that shared many diverse reasons for why they opposed adding this parcel over the last two years. Many arguments were shared in writing and in person, and any of you can find those written in oral public comments in the records. The no votes were about both the process and the substance. Perhaps the most pivotal reason for denial of inclusion of this property was the enhanced risk of loss of property and lives to fire if this Trout Creek parcel was to be altered and developed. The town has an obligation to protect public safety as their top priority, and the majority of sister city councilors made the responsible choice to not allow this Mackenzie Meadows trackery property to be included because given in the event of a wildfire, the amount of people living in this area would exceed the amount of people that would be able to escape a fire. We have experienced the affordable housing shell game here in Sisters multiple times, And promises are not the same thing as legal contracts. So while they made promises of increasing the number of escape routes, the additional routes are not now there. And there is no guarantee those evacuation routes ever will be there. Because we're talking about Forest Service and ODOT approvals that who knows how long that would take. So to illustrate the absurdity of the McKenzie Meadows case, village desperation to get their 56 acres included in this expansion they're attempting to sweeten their pot by promising housing for people with mental or physical disabilities and for seniors so picture this a wildfire going through this area where seniors and people with disabilities have 20 or maybe three minutes to realize there's a danger escape their homes and struggle to evacuate along with hundreds of others in that development, and, oh, by the way, the tollgate development, and, oh, by the way, the existing Mackenzie Meadows Village development. It's absurd.

Are you about done?

I'm about done. While I'm sure they would love to think that this public relations campaign and pressure would change the status of the city decisions, I want to put my faith in you and you having integrity to go along with what the City of Sisters thoroughly processed. The loss of people and pets in homes is a high price to pay for the promise of affordable housing. We do have other options for near-term affordable housing. Let's move on, get this concept approved, and facilitate the affordable and insurable and safe housing for the people who need it. Places that will have evacuation routes included. Thank you.

Thank you. So is there anyone else that would like to comment before we wrap it up?

Also note, just given Monica's testimony, again, if you've dialed in and want to provide testimony, please hit star nine on your phone. That's the way to raise your hand and ultimately provide that testimony. And then we can upgrade you to a panelist.

Okay. I'm ready to make a motion if you are entertaining a motion. I move to leave the written record open, close the oral testimony, and leave the written record open for one week until Thursday, June 4th, and commence deliberations on Thursday, June 11th. And I am prepared to discuss why I think this is a good idea.

Okay. Is there a second? I second that.

Can I chime in a little bit here? I just want to say, given that you're talking about leaving the written record open for a week, that doesn't provide a ton of time for us to include all those materials as well as provide sort of a staff summary, some staff direction potential and scaffolding to help guide your deliberation. So I might want to... amend the motion, if I could, to push deliberations out to your meeting after that point, which I believe is on June the 25th.

Is a week enough for written comment, or do you prefer two weeks unwritten and the following...

I think what he's saying is if... He needs more than a week to... Well, the packet comes out on the 4th, and so if that's not enough time, if it's

You are too.

So then I'm missing the 11.

You too?

No, no, no.

Commissioners.

Yeah, I was hoping.

I was going to prefer.

Are we back?

The next one just.

Okay. Do we have any comments from our other commissioners?

I don't know if the chair maybe wants to repeat the motion just in case the commissioners online didn't hear.

Can they hear us now?

I can hear you now. You guys froze for a bit.

Yeah, we got a crack of thunder. So we've got a motion and a second to close the hearing, extend comment period, and then have deliberations in a month. Do you have any comments?

I think that sounds great.

Okay. Well, all those in favor, say aye.

Is Commissioner Hofkamp going to say something?

Nope. Oh, you got your hand up?

No, I'm sorry. Just going to vote on the motion.

There you go. All right. So all those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries. All right. We'll move on to the next agenda item.

Just for as kind of a last word here, if anyone wants to submit additional testimony comments, please send that to me. My email address is kyle.collins at deschutes.org. Please note, if you want it to be included in the record, that'll need to be sent to me by June the 4th. That's next Thursday at 4.30 p.m. Thanks.

All right. Now we'll see how many people are here for our next agenda item.

Thanks, everyone. Drive safe home.

We should require everybody that's here to testify on the next one.

All right.

All right, go ahead.

Right. We'll try to be expeditious with this one. So this is the time and place set for hearing on file number 247-26-000249-TA concerning amendments establishing clear and objective housing development standards as mandated by House Bill 3197. Staff will outline the hearing procedures that will be followed. planning commission will hear oral testimony receive written testimony and consider the testimony submitted at this hearing the hearing is also being recorded the commission may make a decision on this matter today continue the public hearing to a date certain or leave the written record open for a specified period of time the hearing will be conducted in following order staff representing deschutes county as the applicant will give a brief report on this issue we will then take any testimony from agencies and any interested persons and following testimony the commission can request staff to answer any additional questions Please note this is a hybrid public hearing with both in-person and remote participation. For any in-person participants, if you wish to testify, please fill out one of the blue sign-up sheets at the corner of the room and submit it to staff. After your name is called, please come up to one of the tables at the front of the room before beginning your testimony. Before starting your testimony, please provide your first and last name as well as your mailing address. For all remote participants, if you wish to testify, you must be logged into Zoom or have called in using the Zoom dial-in option. When the chair asks if anyone would like to testify, you will need to use the raise hand feature to notify the commission. And to do this, you will need to press the raise hand button on your computer, or if you've called in, please dial star nine. In addition to oral testimony, if anyone has written testimony to submit, please hand it to me after your testimony. And if you're participating remotely, you can submit your written testimony to me via email. Again, my email is kyle.collins at deschutes.org. Please note that the chair and staff are responsible for conducting an orderly hearing. Any testimony or behavior which is inappropriate will be addressed and may result in that member of the public being removed from the hearing. Questions to and from the chair may be entertained at any time at the chair's discretion. Cross-examination of people testifying will not be allowed. However, if any person wishes to ask a question of another person during that person's testimony, please direct your question to the chair after being recognized. The chair is free to decide whether or not to ask such questions of the person testifying. Prior to commencement of the hearing, any party may challenge the qualifications of any commissioner for conflict of interest. This challenge must be documented with specific reasons supported by facts. Should any commissioner be challenged, that member may disqualify himself or herself, withdraw from the hearing, or make a statement on the record of their capacity to hear and decide the issue. At this time, do any members of the commission need to set forth any information that may be perceived as a conflict of interest.

Does any commissioner have anything to disclose? And if so, please state the nature and whether you can proceed.

Does any party wish to challenge any commissioner, the member of the hearings body, based on conflicts of interest?

As no challenges are presented, the hearing is now open. Staff will proceed with a brief report.

So we might do this a little bit differently than we did the last public hearing. So it looks like we don't have any members of the public that are in person that like to participate. Do we have any members online that would like to participate? So seeing none, I might dispense with the more formal variation of the staff report, since the commission has already seen a variation.

That would be much appreciated.

A few different times, just as the very cursory kind of elevator pitch here, due to that house bill I mentioned earlier, 3197, counties and cities are required to implement clear and objective standards for new development of housing across the state, or previous standards can't be applied to those developments. We've gone through several of these proposals in the past. This is the fourth and hopefully final one that we have to do. Broadly, it deals with things like manufactured dwelling parks. It deals with initiation of use standards for pre-approved developments, things that have already received approvals. It deals with site plan reviews, so things that require additional parking usually. You might think of multi-unit dwellings, for example, and a host of other kind of miscellaneous items, things like our airport safety zone, Some other items like our solar setbacks that were not captured in previous amendments. So this is a fairly large package of amendments. But again, the broad goal is to either create new standards that we believe are clear and objective that would apply to new housing. Or if we couldn't justify making brand new standards, we've effectively created a dual path for development where our previous code is in place. Applicants can choose to go down that previous version of the code or we've created a brand new clear and objective path for those same types of developments. But ultimately applicants would have to choose one or the other at the onset of their application what they would like to do. I can answer any questions that you might have, but again, that is the elevator pitch here. Again, your next steps are as follows with these public hearings. You can leave the written record and you can continue the hearing to a date certain. You can leave the written record open but close the hearing tonight. You can close the hearing and commence deliberations, or you can set a date for deliberations in the future.

Great. Any questions? Anybody else online? Got any questions? All right. What's your pleasure?

I propose to close the written and oral arguments or records tonight and begin deliberations.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Okay. Motion to close the record and begin deliberations. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Anybody have any comments?

Sure, I'll comment. I will move that we recommend to the Board of County Commissioners to approve the amendment as offered by county staff.

Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion?

Just in the interest of efficiency, I don't have a lot of discussion. So that's why I'm moving to just move this on forward.

Anybody else? Oh, go ahead.

Just one quick question. Curious, maybe you mentioned it, but how many more packets of the clear and objective language are we expecting?

This is hopefully the last one.

Ah, OK.

Thanks. So we're getting close to being done. One more vote.

And then I would comment that the staff... All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

It looked like maybe Commissioner Williams had a question or comment. Oh, did you have something, Tony?

I did. It was merely the staff does a phenomenal job trying to get in line with the state. And that's our objective is to be in line with state code. And I appreciate what they do. And that was why I was in favor.

Thank you. So comments, staff comments. Nothing. Who wants to go first? Since you've been sitting up here all night. All right, Will.

Yeah, good evening, Chair, Commissioners, Will Groves, your Planning Manager. Just wanted to give you a little bit of an update of what's coming up here. So your next meeting on June 11th, because of how you decided this evening is a skip, so no meeting for June 11th. Your return on June 25th to engage in the deliberations associated with the Sisters UGB, as well as tentatively we've got bringing before you a review of the comprehensive plan remand. So one of the things that LUBA remanded the 2040 comprehensive plan on was a requirement in our local code that the planning commission be revisited for a review for a review of changes to that comprehensive plan. So I'm talking to the board on Monday to see if they want to initiate that remand. And in the event that they do, part of the procedural effort will be involved coming back and giving you an opportunity to review that. So that won't be a full public hearing, but it'll be one of those expedited reviews that we brought to you. So we'll teach you what's going on there. And then any recommendations or thoughts you have in association with that would be carried forward for the board. Remember, of course, that that's contingent on the board initiating that remand on Monday.

Is that de novo or very specific?

It's going to be very specific. Briefly, the LUBA remand was on two issues. One had to do with procedural notice, both the DLCD and planning commission engagement due to changes that were made before the board. And those changes had to do with how – and this is going to get a little technical. I'm going to have to keep it as high level as I can here – had to do with how cluster and planned unit development, so two types of conditional uses, are afforded to rural residential lands. And it turns out that LUBA found that there are effectively three different types of rural residential land. So you might think that your property is zoned RR10, and it is. But in fact, for the purposes of planned and cluster developments, You were either in that zone before October 4th, 2000. You were in that zone after that date, but arrived there by a goal exception to goal three or goal four or both, or you were a non-resource land. So most of the plan amendment zone change you see in recent years in front of Deschutes County, rather than taking an exception to goal three or goal four, that's our agricultural and our forest goal, has instead said, look, this isn't a farm. It never was a farm. It'll never be a farm. Please release us from the protections of goal three without actually taking an exception to those. In our previous effort on the comprehensive plan, we had read the statute to treat those post-October 4, 2004 lands the same. And Luba made it clear that they, in fact, fall into different categories. And so the staff proposal, should the board advance this, would be to separate those out clearly to address what Luba had said. Basically, a remand from Luba says, close but no cigar. and gave us very specific instructions on what was required to fix that. So you'll see that coming back in front of you. Also, tentatively private burials. We were working on the language for that and hope to bring that back in front of you or get that in front of you on June 25th. Again, that's relatively important. You know, when somebody wants to bury, this is a family member on their property trying to ensure that they can do that in an orderly and expedited way. You know, nobody wants to Leave somebody unburied for a significant amount of time. And one of the things that we're running into as we have investigated this legally, we'd hope that we could set it up so that you could delegate your authority to Peter or myself to say, look, you know, yes, state statute says that the Planning Commission has to make these decisions about whether to allow or not allow these burials. And in coordination with legal counsel, it turned out that that delegation of authority is not possible. So that's going to be required by state law. It was something we were trying to solve because you can imagine if someone comes to the front counter and says, hey, I have a dead relative. I'd like to put them in the ground. And our answer is the next planning commission meeting is in a month. We were trying to find some clever way around it. We to date have not. So we'll be back in front of you on the 25th to talk about that.

We can't just give a pre-approval for any application?

We're still trying to think of smart ways to do this. We were looking at it and haven't found anything plausible yet, but just a heads up that that's coming your way. Certainly the Terrebonne community plan advancing. So you've got the report on the initial community engagement, and we are planning a second engagement date to be determined to basically go out to the community and say, here's what we heard, tell us more. That would be followed by a third engagement, which really gets into the policy, kind of the weeds of the policies. And one of the things we're finding with the Terrebonne Community Plan is, you know, as planners looking at those policies, those goals and policies embodied therein, is that they really get into the details in a way that maybe is a not appropriate for a community plan potentially, and a lot of transportation concerns that have subsequently been moved to the TSP and some goals that were set up in the past that have been achieved. So hoping to get the kind of voluminous number of goals and policies potentially down to a more manageable level. But as you heard, you know, community really that doesn't want to see, you know, big changes to their rural feel. And that was consistent with what they wanted over a decade ago when we talked to them last about this. So an interesting ongoing community engagement. Let's see, what else have we gone on? Oh, since we talked to you last, Lauren Street of our natural resources specialist has accepted the position as the community wildfire protection supervisor. That's the former County Forester position. So very excited to have her both her in-house experience in that role. And that's of course our natural resource team that works on all the wonderful things that we do for fire prevention, including the spring sweat equity and fall bin programs, as well as a huge number of grants and other opportunities we do to try to help neighborhoods through Project Wildfire and other organizations manage their wildfire risks. So excited to have a supervisor in that position and looking to backfill her position so we finally have a full team of three for the first time in a number of months.

Great.

Anything else? No, thank you. Stephanie, did you have anything?

Good evening. For the record, Stephanie Marshall, Senior Assistant Legal Counsel. I wasn't going to shout from back there that I didn't have anything to add. I thought I'd be a little bit, you know, respectful of the procedures here. So we'll capture it all. We have a fair amount of things going on, and it's always a pleasure to be able to dig in, no pun intended, to new things.

thanks great thank you yeah peter thanks mr chairman members of the commission i just have two things one just a reminder that the board's public hearing on the community development department's work plan is next wednesday And so we'll certainly provide an update to the board at your next meeting on the 25th. And then speaking about June 25th, many of us, including Stephanie Marshall, will be monitoring the Land Conservation and Development Commission's meeting. There's an enforcement petition. As it pertains to how the shoots county is processing plan amendment zone changes out of a few as well as non form dwellings. And at that meeting, the department, the Department of land conservation development is responsible for determining if there's good cause. for those petition requests. So if there's not, then I believe that process concludes, or maybe there's an appeal process. Yeah, you're not quite done, Stephanie. Yeah. He just thought she would.

Yeah, I realized that.

Little teaser. Yeah, sorry.

I apologize. I'm a little under the weather, so I'm trying to fire on all cylinders here. Mr. Gutowski was correct that the good cause hearing will be either the 23rd or 24th of June in Salem. I was talking to Mr. Nick Lelak, and he suggested that it's a good idea to be there in person. And so I will do that. If good cause is determined to exist, and again, I'm sorry for my voice here, we will go to a hearing. And a hearing is already scheduled for a date in August. That does not mean that it's been pre-decided. It's just because there's a lot of moving parts and there's a timeframe within which the agency has to act. So that's already set up for August. But hopefully we can get through the good cause hearing and maybe get the petition dismissed. But I will definitely keep you all posted. And it probably will be coinciding at one of your June meetings. I'll probably be in Salem.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

All right. How much more you got?

That's it?

Wow. All right.

Commissioner Hofkamp.

Nothing for me. Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Williams.

I really appreciated the community engagement on the Sisters UGB. I did watch the video from the last meeting. And I appreciate that I have a month to get a little more information on it. And if we're talking about digging, I don't know if everyone knows, but the state of Maryland became very recently the first state to allow for deceased human composting.

Okay.

And that's it.

So, Commissioner Stockton.

Oh, yeah. It was a good, engaging evening. I listened to the City of Sisters Planning Commission hearing a week ago and some similarities, people writing comments. But there was also new comments tonight, so I thought it was great and really worthwhile. I look forward to deliberating on that in a month from now. The only comment I have in addition to that is... We talked about it for the work plan. Sounds like the public hearings on June 3rd. Just getting a wildfire panel just kind of on the calendar for the foreseeable future. I know it takes time to get those experts scheduled, but I just think it'd be a really great evening for educational stuff for folks, especially being in fire season. So besides that, thanks for a nice evening.

Yeah, with my luck, we'd get it scheduled and I'd be off on a fire. Yeah, he'd be gone.

Oh, just a quick reminder. I was about to recommend, you know, to the extent you were interested that, you know, those sisters materials are available on the web. I took a look at that video as well. It'll be important to note that to the extent you're making a decision based on things that weren't directly presented to you, this is a legislative process. So you would just have to take, you would want to take note that you, you know, that you'd say, hey, part of what my decision process was, I watched the sisters hearing or that I've observed other materials, just so that people can be aware of the kind of the universe from which you're making.

So we can complete the record. Yes. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. So, Commissioner Karras.

I don't have anything. Great meeting. Commissioner?

You know, I have a question for staff. Since we've last had our meeting, we had a pretty big election. Can you walk me through the timeline on how our new board is coming on board? And I know in the fall we have another.

January.

Okay, can you explain to me the process? Sure.

Commissioner Kelly, and just to build on Will's comment about if you're relying on evidence in the record from another record, you want to make sure you provide that information to Kyle within the open record period. So if you found something that was captivating from the sister's planning commission record,

let kyle know and then he can he can uh receive it and then even maybe note it in a memorandum um just just for clarity so that was a really good observation yeah i would i would state um the open record period includes your include yourselves ultimately is a good way to think about it so if you have like hey i think all the commissioners should take note of this send it to me directly then it gets included in the record and everybody has that singular access from from one point

And that is a good point. I mean, to your point, if you saw something you liked in that, you need to just ideally just add that entire... meeting to the record. So then it's all up for grabs. I've done that multiple times over the last few years. If I've came across something that I wanted to use in deliberations, I added it to the record so it was there. Because otherwise, I mean, we can't talk about it unless it's public record.

Helpful advice.

Thank you.

Mr. Kelly, to your question. So there was a lot of conversation, of course, last Wednesday, understanding the results. So there's two outcomes. One is commissioner-elect Collins, Jamie Collins, because he was running against Commissioner DeBone for a four-year term. and he prevailed with over 50% of the vote, that was a determinative outcome for the election. There's no runoff. So Mr. Collins will be seated in January of 2027. And the same is true for Rick Russell. He was running for a two-year term. One of the newer positions, he won more than 50% of the vote. So he will be seated at the first meeting in January of 2027. The other two positions, one is Adair's open seat, so the Samadini, and Lauren Connolly, where the top – Laura Connolly was the top voter getter. Amy Sabadini was second, but both of them did not receive 50% plus one. So the top two vote-getters, those two, will run off in November. And so their campaigns continue. And the same is true for Morgan Schmidt and Mr. Emhoff. I can't remember Ms. Emhoff's first name. Rob Emhoff. And so those were the top two vote getters. They didn't receive 50% plus one. So, uh, the county voters will vote in November when we vote for governor and whatnot, House of Representatives, congressional districts and whatnot. We will vote for those two positions.

And they will go into effect in January.

They will go in effect in January. That is correct. And the other thing that will be voted on in November is whether or not the voters want to approve a district map for county commissioners. um and so that's that's that's all that we know no point in kind of running through conjecture or you know scenario possibilities but um uh certainly a a significant shift in the board um with just what occurred last tuesday so We'll be we have the department heads have a retreat tomorrow with county administration. And one of the items is during the lunch hours to discuss kind of transition to twenty, twenty seven. Because it's significant. We're going from a three-member board to a five-member board, and we're going from a board that had certain political leanings, and it looks like those leanings are shifting. We know they're going to be shifting. So departments are preparing as we speak, I think, just to begin educating at some point this year. uh we will likely uh all departments uh and including our our partners you know with stephan i can imagine stephanie and i and others at some point sitting down and engaging commissioner alex when they're ready to talk about the community development department land use as well as other responsibilities the department has so um lots to come as we as we gear up for 27.

So if in the fall the districting map is approved, then in two years we will vote per district?

You will vote for Commissioner DeBone's seat. And commissioner dare seat remain will stay in place for 4 years. So, Colin seat and and and the adairs open seat will be a 4 year term. They have to run their course. So, in 20, I can't do the math in 2032, they'll be subject to districting. Right? Commissioner Chang's term comes up in two years. So if district mapping happens, that position will represent a district. So what does that mean? In 2028, three positions will have district boundaries, as I understand it. But Mr. Chairman, did I do OK? I think that's- You know, we never really got into the implementation part. That's how I understand it. OK.

So I shouldn't feel bad that I am confused.

Yeah, I mean, what everybody needs to know is in November, voters are going to determine whether or not they want district representation. District representation won't go into place until 2028. So for at least two years, there will be five at-large members.

Thank you for the clarification.

Yeah.

And my only other comment was, I mean, great discussion. I came in here with some kind of ideas and my mind was opened and I was like, I'm excited to deliberate and hear what you all have to say.

Thank you. And I just want to thank everybody. We had a good meeting tonight and got a lot accomplished and I appreciate it. That meeting's adjourned.

See you in a month.