Planning the Portland Urban Growth Boundary by Sy Adler

Author:Sy Adler [Adler, Sy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780870712128
Publisher: Oregon State University Press

Chapter 9

Toward Acknowledgment (1978–1979)

The drawing of an urban growth boundary is not to be done simply based on how much land do we get into the growth boundary to accommodate everybody’s perspective of need. . . . What we . . . have going on right now is people manipulating the system to get as much in the urban growth boundary as they can.

—Martin Cramton, 1978

LCDC Begins Processing CRAG’s Proposed UGB and Clarifying the New MSD’s Power to Adopt an Urban Growth Boundary

The City Club research committee’s comment that the new MSD might not have the authority to draft, adopt, or revise a regional urban growth boundary took on renewed significance in October 1978. DLCD director Kvarsten had received a letter from an assistant state attorney general, which he shared with Bob Stacey, who vehemently disagreed with one of the conclusions the AG’s office had reached: “MSD lacks the power to adopt an urban growth boundary and, therefore, ‘the actual creation of such boundaries has now been left to the cities and counties.’” MSD clearly had the authority to adopt, administer, and revise an urban growth boundary, Stacey wrote Kvarsten: “The specific power granted to MSD to enable it to ‘provide for’ this particular aspect of land use planning is the ‘functional plan’ power” it had been given by statute. He argued that LCDC had already told CRAG to focus on matters of regional significance and that the Tri-County Commission clearly saw the mandate to eliminate the regional comprehensive plan as a way to reduce duplication. Stacey also thought that, if necessary, LCDC could require MSD to add a growth-boundary-related functional plan to its work program. Stacey acknowledged, though, that “these questions are as much political as legal. The most effective way to assure that MSD performs the planning work . . . is to obtain MSD’s agreement that it should do that work” (Stacey 1978).

Stacey’s letter to Kvarsten was written shortly after the CRAG staff had released its preliminary Urban Growth Boundary Findings. Before going out of business at the end of December, the CRAG board wanted to adopt findings and associated boundary changes and submit them to LCDC. Once they were sent to the state, though, what would happen if LCDC required changes? If Stacey was right, then MSD could take affirmative action to declare drawing a boundary a matter of significant metropolitan concern and produce a functional plan for it. Or perhaps LCDC could take affirmative action to require MSD to draw a boundary. Or the legislature could step in during the 1979 session to clarify the situation. In any case, politics would be involved.

LCDC met to consider the implications of the assistant attorney general’s letter and to determine whether the preliminary boundary that CRAG would soon submit should be fully acknowledged before MSD took over. One implication of the letter was that MSD would not have the authority to change an urban growth boundary if LCDC thought it was necessary. Stacey told LCDC, though, as did CRAG, that it would be possible for the new MSD to revise what CRAG had submitted.

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