Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Let me check again. Am I testing?

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Do we have quorum?

We do. So it's now 5.31 and it is August 13th and I'm calling to order this regular meeting of the Deschutes County Planning Commission. Our first item on the agenda is approval minutes from July 9th and July 23rd.

Is there a motion for the minutes? I was in attendance both meetings either virtually or in person and would move to approve each of them individually so those who may not have been in attendance can abstain vote.

Okay, so let's do July 9th first. Is there a second?

Yep, I second.

Okay, so all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, that passes. July 23rd. Is there a second?

I second.

Okay. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay, great. So the minutes from both July 9th and July 23rd, 2026 have been approved. We can move on to our next item on the agenda, public comment for items not on the agenda. Is there anyone on, I see there's no one here in person except for our two staff. And is there anyone online who would like to make a comment about something not on the agenda? Okay, thank you. Okay, so hello. And if you would like to make a comment about something not on the agenda, please raise your zoom hands. And if we don't see a zoom hand, We will go ahead and move on to our action items. First one and only one for today, work session, legislative text amendments to the Deschutes County Comprehensive Plan, titles 17 and 18 of the Deschutes County Development Code.

Good evening, commissioners. For the record, Will Groves, your planning manager, I'll vote it as panelist here, be able to give you a presentation. And I am presenting for Kyle Collins, who is in Hawaii at this point. So I appreciate your patience as I'm going to read his slides to you mostly. So this is a work session for upcoming hearing at your next regular session on the 27th for Sisters Legislative Text and Comprehensive Plan Amendments. Those are files number 24726, 439PA, and 441, the applicant being the City of Sisters. Record materials project website are available at HTTPS. Forward slash W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W. And a comprehensive plan, as you're well aware, designations control zoning districts which can apply to properties. And the proposed amendments would update a list of applicable zones allowed under the Sisters Urban Growth Area Plan designation. So we're going to talk a lot tonight about plan designations and the zoning designations that come from them. So again, comprehensive plan designations are your starting point from which you get zoning districts. And then within those, there are development standards particular to properties and uses. For example, a rural residential exception area is a comprehensive plan standard that is implemented by the rural residential zone. And that rural residential zone may in turn be modified by combining zones, such as the landscape management combining zone, wildlife area, surface mining impact area. And this in turn lets a property owner understand the allowed uses, minimum lot size, setbacks, et cetera. And these are all zones in Title 18. So in the sister urban growth area comprehensive there's currently the urban area reserve zone, UIR-10, the floodplain zone, FP, and the airport overlay zones. And these are all zones governed by DCC Title 21 that's specific to the sister's urban growth area. Statewide Planning Goal 5 covers natural resources, scenic and historic areas, and open spaces. It requires jurisdictions to inventory significant Goal 5 resources and establish protection standards for those resources, balanced against other relevant priorities. Local protection standards are implemented primarily by the zoning code. So in Title 18, this contains effectively all of the zoning districts and standards which protect these Goal 5 inventories. In Title 21, the Sisters Urban Area Zoning Ordinance, it has effectively none of these zoning districts or standards which protect the Goal 5 resources. This came up in our discussion of another application, and we'll talk about that. Under the current framework, it appears that the application of the Sisters Urban Growth Area Plan designation would serve as a de facto repeal of the Goal 5 resource protections for affected properties. So properties coming into the Sisters UGB, should that be approved through separate amendment, which you've already heard some about, if they come into there, they would at that point lose their Goal 5 protections. So River setbacks, river habitat protections, wetland protections, things like that, unintentionally would evaporate. And that's not allowed under the state system, as best we can tell. So this is a chart showing that same thing. Again, at the top, the comprehensive plan designations, the zoning codes, and the protections or lack thereof. So the City of Sisters is mandated to perform its own Goal 5 inventory and program establishment, but the timeline's unclear. Even after completion of the city's Goal 5 program would only apply to those properties that are annexed to the city and given city zoning designations. And there's not a mandated timeline for properties to annex once they're included in the jurisdiction's UGB. So I'll say that another way. So when you're in the process of coming into the city, the first thing that you do is you expand your urban growth boundary. That changes your comprehensive plan designation and makes you available for annexation. So the urban growth boundary expansion doesn't bring you into the city. It makes you eligible to come into the city. You've engaged in all the planning, the statewide land use process, and you have been authorized to bring these lands in through annexation. Annexation happens in a second step. So the difficulty that was discovered is that these properties that say are adjacent to the Whitechess currently have a variety of protections. Under the initial proposal, they would be rezoned to UAR 10 and have none of these protections. And then at such time they annexed to the city, they would have the city's protections, which are robust and adequate. But the thing is that no one is mandated to annex to the city. So someone potentially could remain in this limbo status, a property could remain in this limbo status forever with no resource protections. So the proposal seeks to allow certain DCC Title 18 zones to remain as viable zones for properties within the Sisters Urban Growth Area Plan designation. So the concept here is instead of there just being UIR-10, you can just stay in the zone you were in. And that will be the zone that holds you until you have annexation with all of the protections and apples to apples requirements, obligations, and resource protections. There's also a proposed Title 17 amendment, and that has to do with land divisions for properties that have come in with the City of Sisters UGB. And it changes whose code regulates those land divisions. So it would switch it over to the City of Sisters as the land division code for these properties that are waiting to come into the city. And this was something we picked up from the city of Bend. They had done this previously with one of their urban growth boundary expansions. And they said, look, we want to make sure that as people are dividing properties in this area that we intend to be part of the city, that they're not creating infrastructure problems. So we want to be able to operate our code to ensure that we get proper road continuity and other things like that. And this is intended to prevent land divisions. Oh, I just explained. This is modeled on the city of Bend. So let's talk about some other things that are happening at the same time. Two other legislative matters have some relationship. Of course, the city's urban growth boundary amendment. That one is, as best we can tell, is contingent on what's happening first. So first, the notion is, is first the rules would be amended to allow the existing zones to be used as the urbanizable zones. And then they would be brought into the sister's UGB if approved. At the same time, there are amendments required to DCC Title I. Again, this is the Sisters Urban Area Zoning Ordinance. And so there's some patches going on there, and that goes through a different legislative process and passes through the city. So that's not in front of you here today. And so it's important for general context. It's important to remember that these legislative proposals must be reviewed under their own merits. or compliance with the standards of the code, the comp plan, and any other standards. So it may be possible that you and ultimately the board recommend and approve these applications and the City of Sisters Urban Growth Boundary might not be ultimately approved. So this has to be considered under the context that it needs to stand alone and not be seen exclusively as a package deal with the City of Sisters. That said, in staff's opinion, and we can talk more about this, this is something that requires some sort of fix. And at least at the outset, this seems like a plausible one. But there's some uncertainties. There's numerous matters of first impression that are raised by the proposal that don't have precedent in county findings, case law, or state statute language. Disuse county is unusual in the Goal 5 protections that we put in place. Many counties don't have the same level of additive wetland protections, wildlife protections, scenic corridor protections that go beyond the state minimums. So we're a little bit unusual and finicky in this regard. Um, public and agency comments. So we got a comment, comment from our transportation planner who, uh, reviewed it and said that this appears to comply. No problems there. Uh, no other public comments to date next steps. So public hearing coming up at your next regularly scheduled meeting, uh, record materials are available and Kyle Collins will be back from Hawaii. Hopefully then. And I'm available for any questions.

Are there any questions?

I have questions. So when reading this and reading about how there's really no, my understanding is this is sort of a gray area. There's really no legal precedent for what the request is. Why is this coming to the Planning Commission and not straight to the Board of County Commissioners or a hearings officer?

So this is because, so matters that are land use, this is one, this is changing the rules. So changing rules go down one of a couple paths. If it is property specific, so it affects either an individual property or a small class of properties, and there's some case law about how you select that. We'll talk about that probably later in the year. It's the difference between quasi-judicial and legislative amendments. The quasi-judicial ones, small set of properties, those can go to a hearings officer. Any other rule changes have to come through the Planning Commission, either by hearing or by the review that we used recently for another matter. And then they proceed onto the board. So because the Planning Commission is the citizen involvement body of Deschutes County, this is an extra opportunity for both you as our citizen experts and volunteers. Thank you very much. To sniff this over and let us know if it's a good idea and also allow, you know, this initial round of hearings so that by the time that it gets to the board, it's well formed and vetted in some ways. So a valuable part of the process. But at most, if the board declared this in need of severe expediting, they can bring it through you as a review without a formal hearing. And as we did in that previous example, have a recommendation rather than a vote.

Thank you. Commissioner Williams.

So, Will, thank you for that. And I have read the packet a few different times, and each time I get a little bit different takeaway from it. So what I would like to do is just this is what I'm thinking. Okay, so right now all the county land has a Goal 5 endeavor. If it gets into the UGB, it has a different zoning And that goal five endeavor is taken away unless we change UGB zoning. Because like what I've read is if proposed amendment seeks to expressly recognize certain designations to carry forward on newly included lands until such time that the more extensive city goal five work commences. So if I understand that, it sounds like a positive to keep like the wildlife overlay repairing areas, things like that in place until the city of sisters has to do their due diligence before it actually gets annexed into the city.

Old star. This is normally if I try to explain it to someone, it's a, you know, it's half an hour and a whiteboard before we get it anywhere close to where you are and you read it and got it. So nice work.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

Commissioner Stockamp?

Yeah, I was curious if county legal is able to elaborate more on that section under uncertainties. So it was those four first impression bullet points where there's not much precedent in Deschutes County findings, case law, or state statutory language. I mean, I have a specific one that intrigues me most, but I was just curious if tonight's the night for county legal to share, if that would more so be on the 27th. So...

Great question, and that would definitely be at the hearing. Okay.

Gotcha. Yeah. I guess just to share in advance what I'm most curious about, it's that number four, it's can the city's sisters enforce its own subdivision code against properties which are governed by the Chutes County Development Codes? So I guess my question right now, which maybe you can answer, Will, is so say if – if this were to be approved and land is annexed in, but it's not in city limits yet, does that mean that the City of Sisters subdivision codes apply, even though it's still county development codes on it? Am I understanding correctly?

Got it exactly right. And with the City of Bend, you know, that we did that years ago and it's been unproblematic. I don't know how hard it's been tested, but it's been unproblematic for the City of Bend. It's just, you know, the Title 18 and Title 17, we spend a lot of effort trying to make sure that they plug into each other nice and neatly, the definitions match, and that you can make sense from one to the other. And that heavy lift of seeing how all the provisions in all circumstances and all permutations of these two codes might interact is something that we just haven't done that review. And it would be extensive. So what we're hoping in the hearing process is to the extent that there's anything that needs I mean, ideally, it's not a fatal flaw, but if there's something that needs some additional wiring and definition, some additional language to explain, oh, this definition translates to that definition will be treated the same. It may run without that or it may have some unexpected errors. So that's just something that we, given the complexity of it, we as staff have embedded in the entirety. But it's been, to my understanding, unproblematic with the the grafting of the city of Ben's subdivision code in those limited circumstances to the Deschutes County code.

Okay, thanks.

Other questions? Yeah.

Do you know if, and if so, what the differences are between a goal five in city of sisters versus the county?

Yeah, so if you think, I couldn't speak exactly to those protections, but I can give you kind of a general overview. So if you remember, Goal 5 comes from an EC process, and that's a process by which there are things that might have competing values associated with it. That could be riparian habitat, it could be endangered species, but things that have federal protections, we certainly have to follow those. We have no local choice in them. But something like mule deer, for example, you remember that process, that's a Goal 5 inventory resource. And the EC process asks a local jurisdiction to think about it and use as they think about that. They think about that in terms of economics and social impacts and environment and energy impacts. And what's surprising to people about that is you can choose whatever you want in that process. You can be like the deer get nothing. You know, that's a totally viable answer. But you explain why you said, look, you know, we're desperate, poor farmers and even putting it, you know, taking our fences down, our children will starve. And you'd be like, the deer get nothing. That is a valid, easy choice. So each jurisdiction, once they've identified that there is a resource, you have to go through a kind of a multi-step process. First, you have to inventory the resource. Where is it? You make a map, and then you decide what you're going to do for it. And you can either, for uses that would otherwise be allowed on properties, you can either allow them outright. Go ahead. You can limit them. Yes, and. Yes, but. Or you can be like, no, you just can't do those there. That's not compatible. And each jurisdiction gets to make its own choice, and you can change your mind over time. And the document you do this through is this EC analysis. So we see these with some regularity, they come up, you know, in the land use process where property is being rezoned in the landscape management combining zone, for example. And you were previously a farm and now you're trying to be residential land and there's other uses you can have. And so the question is, hey, this property that we decided was properly protected while it was a farm property through the landscape management zone visual protections. Now it can build. a church or you know some a veterinary clinic you know or some other things like that is the program to protect the thing that the landscape management zone that was put in place is it sufficient to achieve the goals that the community wants you can renegotiate the deal so the city of sisters at some point has gone through a process with their community to decide what the appropriate levels of protection are for that community but in terms of how those line up you know like for example in our floodplain zone And, you know, I can look to the city to correct me at the hearing if I've got this wrong. In our floodplain zone, we allow development basically to the maximum extent that FEMA allows it. So FEMA says, yeah, you can develop in a floodplain, but get an engineer, do an elevation survey, use special materials, be careful where you put dirt, don't flood your neighbor, do the math. And in the city of Sisters, my understanding is that they just say, just don't. Don't build there. Right. You actually get some pretty high water and it'd just be best if you not. So those are kind of differences, although that's not an EC resource. It gives you a feel of something where they made different choices. They could be more protective, less protective, or different protective. And you can imagine that if you think about the Whitechess as it is now in the rural county, and then you think about maybe some of the rivers that flow through Eugene and Salem, You know that there's just kind of rivers and cities are developed adjacent to in different ways and with different precautions and that you know. rural rivers, where you know the the land use density might be one unit for 10 acres you might have. You know apartments built up to some you know reasonable distance from the river, you know, in consideration of the habitat and the flood issues and other things like that.

Thank you.

Are there other questions. Commissioner Williams.

So aside from these four bullet points on page five or page seven of the totality, Title 18 zones be utilized, what Commissioner Stockkamp had mentioned about item four. This is a standalone issue that the Planning Commission is addressing without prior precedent, may I ask, or is the staff willing to say that in general the staff would recommend moving forward with all, some, or none of these amendments?

I think, like you, that this seems plausible to us. Well, let's talk about this broadly. And I can't speak for the commissioners or for you in this regard. Generally speaking, assuming that something is legal and broadly sane, counties have generally been pretty permissive about cities expanding their urban growth boundaries and said, hey, that's your city. Your citizens vote on it and kind of decide how that's going to work has been generally the approach. You know, in this case, we're trying to move a lot of pieces at once. And so it'll be interesting to hear at the hearing. I think you're going to see a robust turnout for the hearing on the 27th. And I think it will be interesting to hear, you know, attorneys on both sides of the matter. dig into the issues. I think that there'll be some things that we expected to hear about and some things we didn't expect to hear about, and we're going to learn a lot. So I come into it with an open mind. This is something, a problem that should be solved. Cities do need to be able to expand in the face of Goal 5 resources. I don't think it's anybody's intention that as soon as you put up county protection on lands that it never can be part of a city. So that much seems pretty obvious to me. But is this the particular package as implemented to get there? That's really going to be the kind of the topic of the hearing. And we've worked extensively with the city of sisters, you know, at this point, we don't have staff has no giant red flags to wave, you know, some questions, but we'll be interested to see how the hearing plays out and the process going forward.

That's a really helpful summary to kind of help us get our heads around. What are the decision points here that we should be orienting ourselves to? Thinking, is this the package? Not so much should we have something like this, but exactly what goes in it makes sense to think about.

Yeah, and I think it's a relatively difficult question because the secret question that you want to know the answer to is when you, you know, there's this thing called, in old engineering language, called a smoke test. When people would build circuit boards and things like that, you turn it on to see if it smokes. And if it does, you're like, whoops, I didn't do that right. And in this case, you know, there's not really a good way to smoke test this. You know, we've done all the kind of the theoretical analysis that we can, but, you know. A lot of these things work pretty different in live fire exercises when there's clever lawyers on both sides and a lot of money to be made or lost for, you know, the people participating in development processes so Um, yeah, it's been checked over to, uh, the possible level of diligence. And at the same time, it may produce strange results when it's, uh, when it's turned on the first time. So in some ways the hearing is a smoke test to see people, you get people from different angles to take a look at it and yeah, this is going to work or no, this can't possibly, or yes. And it needs a fix right here.

Yeah, well, hopefully anyone listening or listening to the recording later, maybe that's helpful for people to think about, too, as they bring their testimony. You know, like, what are we potentially missing or what hasn't been thought of? And everyone is really open to these ideas right now because of what you just said. Like, you guys... done everything you can in terms of hypothetical analyses, but that doesn't mean you've thought of everything. So that's a really helpful approach. Commissioner Williams?

One last comment, question. So with the public hearing, we're going to be hearing from different players. So there's a possibility that the amendments to 17 and 18 could maybe be re amended before being approved. Yeah, by tweaking, like tweaking the verbiage.

Definitely. I anticipate that that's almost inevitable. And one of the things that may be in front of the Planning Commission is a question if you want to basically set some sort of clause in, you know, you've got three things moving simultaneously. You've got the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary Amendment, you've got these amendments, and you've got the Title 21 provisions that are moving through the City of Sisters process, but will come back before the board. And so one thing that would be tricky to implement but might be beneficial is setting some sort of clause that if one falls, they all fall, you know, that you, you would say, look, we've managed to think about how these particular amendments interact and that, you know, we haven't thought about how all possible amendments might interact with this. And we're not, you know, we're, you might be ready to say yes to this cluster, but not, you know, some other thing in the abstract, you know, and that, that may or may not be something that can be set up legally, and it may or may not be something that's desirable. So let's say, you know, one scenario, and I think you've heard about this, I don't think I'm extrapolating here, is that, you know, there are parties to the City of Sisters urban growth boundary expansion who missed the bus. You know, properties that wanted in and weren't ready and didn't get in. You know, in the event that, let's say, all of these amendments fail, you know, and they come back and they say, yeah, let's do this again, either with the same properties or with different properties. You know, we'll make another go at it. The question then is, you know, this same question will come up again. There is, you know, almost all surrounding lands have some goal five inventories associated with it. So, you know, it may be a benefit to even if this particular expansion doesn't succeed, that it may be a benefit to expansions in the future. So it'll be interesting to see if people who are parties that are potentially hostile to this particular expansion are also hostile to these amendments, which they're potentially going to need something like in the future.

Anyone else have a question? I mean, I'll just comment. I think this actually, this work session has been really helpful because I was like, yeah, I feel clear now. So that's good.

That was an excellent presentation.

Thank you, Kyle. No, those were good responses to the questions. Okay. Well, if there's no other questions, then we can move on to planning commission and staff comments.

Yeah, thank you. So we have Board of County Commissioners has a A comprehensive plan word voted two to one to implement the, the fix that we brought before you as a, as a work session. And so first reading coming up next week. More in then after that more plan amendments and zone changes. And then we're going to move on to the next item. reading of the comp plan, assuming it proceeds. And then finally, Tanya, remember, came through here with private burial grounds, looking for a date to bring that before the board. Coming up for the Planning Commission, really the next big thing is August 27th, and you've got a double header that night with both the return of the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary Amendment as well as this amendment that we did a work session on this evening. We haven't scheduled out further from that, but you can imagine that there's the potential for continued hearings, open records, post-hearing periods, deliberations.

I can't believe we're doing both.

And then coming in behind those, you know, kind of for the remainder of the year, the big things that are on my mind, DLCD did a rulemaking to create a new type of Goal 5 cultural resource called a cultural landscape. And it's a way to improve interactions with the federally recognized tribes in terms of notice and interactions and give feedback. some opportunity for jurisdictions who want to maybe protect important landscapes or historic sites for neighboring tribes through a statewide process. So that is something that we're working on and hopefully going to bring at least some portion of that forward before the end of the year. The other one that's really got our attention right now is farm stores. We talked about the legislature added beyond farm stands the possibility for farm stores that have for certain farms significant additional economic opportunity and one that isn't as directly tied to the agricultural production of the property but more more more openness this has been a persistent problem with farm stands people want to they want to sell a turnip but then they want to sell a turnip t-shirt and then they want to have a turnip festival and they want to have a band play at the turn festival real loud until midnight so all these things uh have to be figured out and farm stores comes with all of these and i think there's going to be a real pressure uh for you and the community to decide are these really a store and thus should be subject to the extent of the law to all the things that, you know, a commercial enterprise, you know, you're going to open a McDonald's, you know, the parking, all this health and safety stuff. There are some sideboards in state law that prevent kind of a full site plan review that we would normally do for a normal commercial operation. Or is this closer to farm stands where it's like, this is a lemonade stand. Why are you making it tough for people who are trying to, you know, who are having a hard time anyways? So you're going to see That come through and even at this moment staffs trying to figure out what a what a balance to bring to you in terms of at least initiating that discussion looks like so very interesting and keeping us busy terrible on. Commissioner Kelly was up with us in Terrebonne, and we had a great turnout. I thought we were going to have a relatively weak turnout. The Terrebonne Community School was closed for HVAC repairs, and so rather than canceling the meeting for months, we had it in North Redmond, and we got about 30 people to come out. Lots of dots on poster boards and lots of community engagement, lots of good conversations. We got a grant from DLCD and brought sandwiches. Sandwiches were eaten. And generally, generally good vibes and good impact information from the community. Really, Tanya will come back to you with a community engagement report associated with that. But, you know, spoilers is continued messaging that they like their small town. And they're not looking to, they don't want a Fred Meyer, nothing against Fred Meyer personally, but they're looking for a larger store. You know, they're not looking for intense development. And, you know, it ranges from people being tolerant of some additional development to people being really like, it's perfect the way it is. So, uh, yeah, some really good community engagement there. And, uh, that's, uh, Oh, interesting. Maybe other interesting news. You met Lauren street, our community wildfire protection specialist, as she advanced, we're in the process of trying to hire for her, uh, replacement at her, at her previous desk. We got 92 candidates for that application and, uh, got down to five through a series of, uh, interviews to, uh, that we're talking to on Friday and Monday. And we've got some, got some good people. I'm excited. Let's see what else is going on. Remember, Peter was talking about the DLCD enforcement petition. This is where Landwatch and Thousand Friends of Oregon had approached the LCDC, our state land use big sibling. And It said we were doing it wrong. And so that went through a process where LCDC said, let's let a hearings officer hear a case about this. And there's significant legal maneuvering going on right now in association with that. Ultimately, a variety of parties, not just the county and Thousand Friends and Land Watch, but a variety of parties who have jumped on that case, will argue about plan amendment zone changes, as well as there's a secondary issue about non-farm dwellings, and there'll be some discussion of, hey, is Deschutes County doing it wrong? And in 1992, we went through a similar process, and the state concluded, yes, we were doing it wrong, and boy, we were. This time, I think it's a much closer question. There's a lot of state law, there's a lot of moving targets, and it'll be interesting to see what conclusions, if any, come out of that. I mean, certainly we're always trying to do our best and stay in line with state law. And as you probably have watched, there's a lot of disagreement and a lot of money to be made luring, disagreeing about what state law means. So that's a vigorous topic. Any questions for me this evening?

I guess not. So we can move on to planning commission comments. Commissioner Stockamp, do you have any comments?

No, none tonight. Thanks for the helpful work session.

Commissioner Williams?

No, just, well, thanks for the clarification. Like I said, I read the packet a couple of different times, a few sections a couple of different times, and thought I was on the right track. It's... just something we haven't really dealt with in a while, so it was nice to get some clarification on it. And good job, Commissioner Kuras.

Thank you. Commissioner Altman?

My comments are just the same. When I read the packet, I was very confused. So I'm glad that we were able to get a lot of questions answered today. Thanks.

Good use of time. Okay. Well, thanks, everyone. And thanks, you guys, for being here and us having a quorum. And thanks to everyone listening. And I guess we'll see you in a couple weeks. And with that time being 6.07, meeting is adjourned.

Might be our fastest meeting ever.