Okay.

You brought snacks, Blair.

Oh yeah.

I'm Brett, by the way.

You ready?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I'll okay.

Okay, everyone.

Um, my name is Brett Estes, and I am the North Coast regional representative for the Department of Land Conservation and Development.

And uh DLCD is the statewide land use uh agency.

And tonight uh been asked to go and over uh some land use 101 uh um background on the Oregon land use system, talk a little bit about uh the types of permits uh that are out there uh within the state of Oregon within the Oregon land use system, how to uh process those, and we'll get into some things like uh ex parte contacts um bias uh conflicts of interest, those types of things.

And I'm glad I'm glad that uh city attorney Blair Henningsgaard is here because if there are any kind of specific kind of legal types of questions, I'm gonna defer to him.

Um so uh you know, I'll go ahead and get started, but if there's a question along the way, um please feel free to you know ask at that point in time.

I think it's easier if there's something which is not understood to be able to dig into it at that point in time and and we'll also have time at the end for just general questions.

So um a little bit about me before uh we get started.

So um I'm an urban planner by uh by training and started my career in Texas uh as an urban planner and Brian uh Brian Texas, it's uh kind of like uh if you think of Eugene Springfield and you think of uh Eugene in Springfield, there's Brian and there's College Station, there's Texas AM University is located there.

I work for the equivalent of of Springfield, the the smaller, a little bit more blue-collar uh community, and that's where I started my career, and then I came out to Oregon in uh 2002, worked for the city of Hillsborough, and then I came to the city of Astoria and I was with City of Astoria until I went to the Department of Land Conservation and Development uh three and a half years ago.

And um as a regional representative, I have a four-county area, um uh the North Coast Regional Rep.

So I have Lincoln County, Tulamot County, Classup County, and then Columbia County.

And uh there are nine regional representatives like me across the state that help uh local jurisdictions uh to be able to administer the statewide planning uh process.

So in really kind of kicking off, um want to give a little bit of a history about the Oregon land use system.

So in 1919, the legislature uh gave cities the ability to start zoning properties uh within their city limits.

Uh really it was pretty simple.

It was looking at things like resident, where are the residential areas, where are the commercial areas, where are the industrial areas to be able to kind of separate incompatible uses.

And over time, that uh ability to zone was granted uh to uh counties in the 1940s to where they're able to zone uh property as well.

And across the United States, it's not always common that counties have the ability to zone.

Um sometimes some states allow counties to zone land, others do not, Oregon had since the 1940s.

And then in 1963, what was called the exclusive farm use zone was created.

Uh that's kind of key in the Oregon land use system that was implement implemented later on.

Uh the EFU zone was really to protect uh farmland.

Uh there was a concern uh from uh uh it ultimately would then Governor McCall about uh the uh the uh the redevelopment of farmland into uh into suburban home sites.

And so there's a desire to be able to control and protect some of those uh those farm areas.

So moving on, in 1973, Senate Bill 100 was adopted, which created the Oregon land use system.

And we've just celebrated our our 50-year uh anniversary of a couple of years ago of the Oregon land use system.

And so with that Senate bill, it created the Land Conservation and Development Commission, LCD.

And if you think of LCDC, the Land Conservation and Development Commission, it's almost like the planning commission for the state.

Uh they're a group of appointed individuals uh that uh develop rules uh which are implemented by counties and cities.

And we'll go into a little more about the rules here in a little bit.

So the uh Oregon land use system is based upon a whole set of goals.

And by uh 1975, the land conservation development commission had adopted the first 14 goals.

And then uh by 1976, um, the whole set of goals was created.

Coastal goals were the last set of goals uh which were adopted by land conservation and development commission.

So after that point, cities and counties were tasked to adopt zoning ordinances and comprehensive plans, which were consistent with the statewide planning goals.

So you have about a 10-year time frame where every city across the state and every county uh went through the process of adopting those those conference plans.

They were brought to the land conservation and development commission and adopted by LCDC, or we use the term acknowledged.

That's the term of our that we use.

The 10-year time frame, was that a plan thing, or was it just for council on behalf?

I believe there was a time frame, but I don't know there was extended.

That's the one that that's the question that I don't know.

Uh, I'll tell you that I was working with the planners in another city and in Clatzett County uh just today, and they're trying to figure out when was their conference of plan acknowledged.

They went and passed their first comprehensive plan in 1977, but it was not acknowledged by the Department of Land Conservation and Development until 1983.

And that's because there were many times appeals by um by special interest groups uh that were happening through that time, or else maybe the land conservation development commission didn't find that a certain aspect of the rules was adopted.

So it was not always you know a first-time slam dunk process.

Right, right.

So the the other thing which is kind of important for uh for coastal communities is the federal government created uh the uh the coastal management program, um, and there is a uh uh a process or uh a set of uh procedures that were established by NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, um, that uh that coastal jurisdictions, including Great Lakes coastal jurisdictions, um whenever there is a federal activity happening, meaning that there is uh a federal permit, or let's say the the Corps of Engineers or the Coast Guard is doing a project that they there is a review done at the state level to ensure consistency with with uh state and local rules.

And that program was started in 1977.

And so now today, if there is any work done along the Astoria waterfront using federal dollars, or if there is a permit that the Coast Guard is or the core is seeking, then there is a review, which our agency completes to implement uh the uh coastal zone management program at the federal level.

And that's still still in effect today.

Um my position and all the coastal staff at DLCD are actually funded by NOAA, uh the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Atmospheric Administration.