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February meeting

Tuesday, February 12, 7-9 pm, Leedy Grange Hall, 835 NW Saltzman

Everyone is welcome to attend. We’ll have a Cedar Mill Creek flooding update and revisit the Cedar Mill Town Center plan.

7:30 pm: Update on the Oregon Solutions Cedar Mill Creek Remediation Collaborative (now known as Tualatin Watershed Enhancement Collaborative, or TWEC) and the status of the three-year workplan. Melissa DeLyser, Public Affairs and Communications Manager for Washington County LUT, will present and answer questions. (See article here.)

7:50 pm: The Cedar Mill Town Center Plan —what does it call for and how can we update it?

The Plan was developed in the 80s, and hasn’t been substantially modified since then. Long-range traffic plans, zoning, and wishful thinking! How can we modify the plan to make it work for us? Erin Wardell, Principal Planner, Transportation Planning, LUT Planning and Development Services, will visit to explain the plan and discuss options.

CCI addresses the 2019 Washington County Work Plan

The Committee for Community Involvement (CCI) is the leadership group of all Community Participation Organizations (CPOs) in Washington County. The Code & Ordinance Subcommittee studies and gives input on the yearly Work Plan, a document prepared by county Land Use and Transportation (LUT) staff, which is approved by the Board of County Commissioners (BCC). The plan determines what LUT staff will be working on throughout “Ordinance Season,” from March-October, including proposed Ordinances (the laws of the county) and “Issue Papers,” which staff puts together to explore topics that may result in future action.

The chart presented at the CCI meeting. "Crickets" indicates no inclusion in the Plan, although staff included responses to all our requests in the Staff Report. Click to download full-size PDF

The subcommittee drafted a letter proposing topics to be included in the 2019 Work Plan that was then approved by the full CCI group and sent to BCC and staff last fall. At the January meeting, we heard from LUT Principal Planner Theresa Cherniak about the Draft Work Plan, and we compared what we had asked for against what showed up in the Plan.

The Staff Report, included with the plan, addressed all of our topics. Only two suggestions made it into Tier 1—the topics that will be acted on in the coming year. The draft Work Plan and Staff Report is available to download as a PDF from the county website here.

There will be an Issue Paper on Significant Natural Resources. Many feel that the county is in violation of Oregon’s land use laws protecting natural resources by letting developers build in certain areas. We had also requested that the county begin to work on a tree code that would protect some trees. The SNR Issue Paper “will inform” that possibility.

Placement, size, and other issues relating to Wireless Telecommunication Facilities will also get an Issue Paper. A local resident whose home was impacted by a proposed installation raised this issue.

Improving the county’s policies on infill (small housing developments in existing neighborhoods) made it into Tier 2, and we are determined to keep up the pressure to reduce impacts to our neighborhoods.

We also requested an Issue Paper on the long-term future of the governance of Urban Unincorporated Areas—Cedar Mill and Bethany, Aloha, Raleigh Hills and others—but that landed in Tier 3 because there is currently no funding available. We are continuing to work with staff to move that discussion forward. (For a full discussion of the UUAs, read the “Urban Needs, Rural Government series.)

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