Okay.

I'm going to call to rear this work session of the Forest Grove City Council.

And the topic is on urban reserve.

I put my agenda away.

A lot of noise just for one second.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Urban reserve planning area.

And I have staff, Daniel Reardon, senior planner and community development director Brian Pole.

Just a reminder to everyone that during work sessions, no public comment will be taken, and the council will take no formal action.

Okay, I'm gonna pass it over.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mayor.

Members of City Council, Dan Merkin Senior Planner with the Planning Division.

We started the discussion at your last council meeting, but we'll just kind of recap what was presented at the last meeting and then transition into the new information.

We have a pretty big agenda.

So hopefully we can get to through this pretty quickly.

Next slide, please.

So tonight's work session is really to provide an opportunity for city council to learn about and discuss the David Hill Urban Reserve Planning Area.

And staff would really like to hear council's thoughts about next steps and how to proceed with the David Hill Urban Reserve Area in terms of long range planning.

This particular topic touches on a couple of what's one city council goal objective and several vision statement action items.

Specifically, this work session deals with 2025 City Council Goal Objective 1.1 to initiate policy discussions on an urban reserve growth strategy.

Excellent.

In terms of the Vision 2040 plan, uh this topic addresses the 2040 community growth goal statement regarding a well connected, safe environmentally sustainable community with diverse affordable housing, resilient green infrastructure, efficient mobility options, and strong public safety, creating a vibrant, accessible, and climate conscious community for all.

And this work session also deals with the 2040 outcome around affordable housing options.

Next slide, please.

And then key action items that are addressed by this topic include updating the city's comprehensive plan, keeping all long-term infrastructure plans up to date, increasing industrial business development, and increasing the volume and diversity of commercial business development.

Next slide.

So at the last uh city council meeting, we talked a little bit about what is an urban growth boundary and the Oregon Revised Statutes provided definition for an urban growth boundary.

But in plain language, an urban growth boundary is simply a line identified on a map that separates urban land from rural areas that could be urbanized.

Next slide, please.

So this map shows the uh the city boundary in relation to the urban growth boundary.

The orange larger area is the urban growth boundary around the city's planning area, and the red line is the current city limit boundary.

Next slide, please.

So what is an urban reserve, which is the topic of uh this work session this evening?

Um an urban reserve is established by state law and adopted for Metro for areas adjacent to the Portland Urban Growth Boundary.

And an urban reserve is essentially land outside an urban growth boundary intended for future expansion over a long-term period.

Uh urban growth boundaries are generally designed to accommodate land needs for a 20-year planning horizon.

Um so the idea is the 20-year land needs will be met within the urban growth boundary.

Um the urban reserve takes it the next step.

Um it's to identify urban development needs for a 20 to 50 year period, unless there's insufficient capacity in the urban growth boundary, and the urban growth boundary needs to be expanded.

If the urban growth boundary does need to be expanded, it would be expanded into one of the urban reserve areas around the Portland UGB.

Next slide, please.

So the the city's urban reserve area, the David Hill urban reserve area is shown by the yellow boundary.

Um it's adjacent to the four scale heights neighborhood in northwest Forest Grove.

Um, this slide shows the urban reserve boundary, the urban growth boundary, and the city limit line.

So the urban reserve area is the yellow boundary, urban growth boundary is the orange line, and the city limit line as it currently is the red line on the map.

Next slide, please.

So there's been a lot of work over the last 20 years or so related to long range planning in terms of how the city might grow over the 20 to 50 year time horizon.

It started back in 2006 with what was called the Great Communities Planning Process, and then there were several other initiatives.

The Washington County Urbanization Forum in 2009, which stipulated that future urban areas must be within the city.

It can't be unincorporated areas.

So no more Loas, no more Bethany.

That was really the result of the Washington County Urbanization Forum.

And then this slide shows some other initiatives that were completed, including the Westside Refinement Plan in 2017, which looked at how the area within the urban growth boundary that is yet to develop, how that should grow and develop, as well as look at the urban reserve.

And that was back in 2018.

Next slide, please.

So this slide shows that the great communities land use concept.

And the reason why I wanted to show this is that it showed kind of an efficient land use pattern where the the city would both Forest Grove and Cornelius would grow northward across Council Creek.

It would allow for a variety of land uses, commercial shown on red on the map, higher density development in the orange and lower density development in the red, and employment and dust and industrial areas in the in the gray area on the map.

And this is an efficient land use pattern because it's more concentric and so it's easier to serve.

The issue with this concept is that it shows growth going into high value farmland.

And that was really a consideration that the legislature addressed when looking at the urban reserve areas, and that's the principal reason why we ended up with the David Hill urban reserve area instead of going further north of David Hill Road, all the way up to Purden Road because of that impact to high value farm.

Next slide, please.

After the urban reserve areas were designated back in 2014, there was a group of Portland State University graduate students in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning Program that took a look at the area and came up with some concepts for how the area could grow.

This was the preferred land use concept, PASA Plan D, and it shows that development would largely be concentrated adjacent to David Hill Road, which is the east-west road on the map, with some fairly high density development as high as 30 units per acre, which could be somewhat challenging to achieve in an area that is steeply sloped and also bisected.

They're not contiguous areas because of the topography, and I'll show you that later in the presentation.

But really, the takeaway from this slide is the amount of land that would be either open space or natural areas that would largely be off-limits for development, which is a large portion of the David Hill Urban Reserve area.

Overall, the David Hill Urban Reserve area is about 330 acres, but the net developable area is about 170 acres, so about 40% of the overall area.

The upside of including the natural areas in the in the urban reserve area and ultimately bringing into the city limits, is that there are greater protections within cities for natural areas than we would see just out in the county in the unincorporated areas.

We have a tighter controls in our development code with respect to how natural areas are protected.

So that's one reason for adding that area into the urban reserve.

Next slide, please.

So why the David Hill Urban Reserve Planning Area, and this is basically where we left off at your last city council meeting.

So this is the start of the new information.

I want to point out that the David Hill Urban Reserve Planning Area was part of an initial proposal that included the David Hill area, the Purden Road area, which is north of David Hill Road, all the way up to Purden Road.

The area that's in the urban growth boundary now is Council Creek, which is kind of halfway between David Hill Road and Purden Road.

So not all of that area was brought into the urban growth boundary.

But that area, large area was looked at, as well as the area south on the south end of town, the Elm Street urban Elm Street area, which was also brought into the urban growth boundary by the legislature through the Grand Barry Basket about 2014.

This land use concept also is more concentric, and so it represents a more efficient development pattern.

And it also supported a variety of proposed proposed land uses, including residential in the David Hill area, a mixed use commercial residential area in the Purden Road area, and industrial in the Elm Street area.

Some of those opportunities have gone by the wayside with the smaller Purden Road area.

When the Purden Road area was actually looked at as for urban reserve, the area in the far north end on the yellow line.

I'll try to point to it here.

I don't know if you can see that.

It's the far north yellow line.

That the land adjacent to Purden Road was identified for employment uses, principally industrial.

In the area south of Council Creek is for residential.

When the legislature drew the boundary of Castle Creek instead of Purden Road, it basically did away with that opportunity for industrial use, which was unfortunate.

And again, this combined area provided an opportunity for efficient public service delivery.

And as I mentioned on uh before, including the David Hill area allows for protection of natural resources after land is annexed into the city.

So that's why the David Hill urban reserve planning areas was identified.

Next slide, please.

This is again is the map just to show the location of the David Hill urban reserve area.

We can go on.

So getting into the urban reserve planning area characteristics.

This map shows that it is fairly parcelized.

There are 23 individual tax lots in this area.

About half of the tax lots are larger than 10 acres, which is a fairly good size for subdivision development, but being so parcelalized, it makes it difficult to do a comprehensive sort of master plan development for the area.

In addition, 18 of the 23 parcels have some fairly significant improvements on that on them.

The medium uh value for improvements within the urban reserve area exceeds 345,000 dollars.

So it's not like all of this area is just completely vacant and without any improvements.

There are some homes and other improvements in the area that complicates potentially complicate development for next slide, please.

Topography is a real uh consideration.

Um, you can see on this slide that there are significant areas that are greater than 25% slope.

Um, largely that's off limits to development because of the steepness.

There are also significant areas that are greater than 10% slope.

Those areas have some development potential but uh are challenging, um, especially with respect to putting in streets and other infrastructure, sanitary sewer lines in particular.

But the one thing I want to point out on this slide is that there are pockets of areas that could be developed, but they're they're they're not adjacent, they're isolated and separated, which complicates development potential, and that's shown in the lighter areas in the blue shaded area.

Next slide, please.

So the urban wildland interface is a is another consideration given the state topography and the forested area.

Um, the current city's comprehensive plan has some policies for promoting development standards addressing uh the urban wildland interface and mitigating for wildfire, uh, but our development code currently has nothing but really with respect to uh firewise development, having separation areas between the vegetated area and homes, or anything guiding uh specific construction materials to mitigate uh potential wildfire.

So that's another consideration with this area.

Next slide, please.

Transportation is largely there's really no real transportation network in this area other than David Hill Road, which bisects the urban reserve area and Gales Creek Road on the south.

Uh, there's really no internal uh transportation network.

There is Northwest Creekwood Place, which is a private road similar to Plum Hill Lane off of Thatcher Road that serves as some of the homes there.

Um but um when Metro evaluated the uh David Hill Urban Reserve area as part of the 2024 Urban Growth Report, leading to bringing some of the Sherwood Urban Reserve Area into the urban growth boundary.

They rated the transportation uh network in this area as low, requiring significant uh investments.

Um another consideration with respect to transportation is this is areas not within the TriMet service boundary, and TriMet really has no interest in serving this area, and it's uncertain whether or not Grove Link would have sufficient resources to provide transit service to this area.

So there's some transportation considerations with respect to this area.

Utilities also largely devoid.

There's a water line that connects to the city water reservoir, which is in the urban reserve area.

But other there, there's really no utilities except for power in the in this area, and it's uncertain whether or not the utility could reasonably be extended into the urban reserve area without significant public investment because of the topography and natural resources.

Next slide, please.

So switching gears into the urban reserve planning, doing a concept plan for the urban reserve area.

There's some requirements under the metro code with respect to how local jurisdictions must develop concept plans.

But the city is responsible for developing a concept plan in consultation with the county and in coordination with metro and the appropriate service districts.

So the one thing I want to point out here is it's not just the city decision or city action with respect to adopting a concept plan.

It requires consultation with the county and coordination with Metro and all of the appropriate service districts.

The process is governed by Title 11 of the Metro Urban Growth Management Functional Plan and the Urban Planning Area Agreement between the county and the city.

Next slide, please.

So the Title 11 of the Metro Urban Growth Management Functional Plan requires that the specific factors that are considered that for concept planning.

One that the land use concept promotes efficient urbanization, that the area become or contribute to mixed-use walkable transit-friendly communities, and that the area supports the construction of all types of needed housing, including housing across the entire price sector.

And now that the state has housing production targets for cities across the entire range of housing types, including those for households with zero to 30% income, all the way up to high in market rate.

That needs to be considered as part of developing the concept plan, how the city would achieve those state housing terms.

Next slide, please.

So candidate areas proposed for urban reserve areas proposed for addition to the urban growth boundary considered by Metro generally on a six-year cycle.

Master Metro completed the last cycle in 2024.

And through the last cycle, Metro added about 1200 acres of urban reserve adjacent to the city of Shoywood, which is currently being appealed and being considered by the state land conservation and development commission.

State law does allow for mid-cycle amendments for land exchanges and modest expansions to the urban growth boundary.

Next slide, please.

So the Metro Urban Growth Management Management Functional Plan requires that the county city work together with Metro to prepare the concept plan, and that the area subject to the concept plan and date for completion will be jointly determined by Metro, the county, and the city.

So again, it's just not a city action involves the other entities as well.

Next slide, please.

So concept plan must again achieve cost-effective and efficient provision of public facilities, a development pattern supportive of non-auto vehicle travel, pedestrian and bicycle travel specifically, a range of housing types, a well-connected system of streets, bikeways, parks, recreation trails, protection of natural features and avoidance, or minimum minimization of adverse effects on farm and forest practices on nearby rural lands.

What this means is that the land use concept plan should try to minimize potential impact on agricultural activities, principally farming, but forestry as well.

Next slide, please.

So a concept plan must show specific locations for different land uses, residential, commercial, industrial, general locations for needed utilities, proposed methods for funding the public utilities, preliminary strategies to support the plan outcomes, indicate locations for water quality and habitat conservation resource areas and be coordinated with the school district.

So really the point of all of this is that there's a lot that needs to be done in terms of preparing concept.

Next slide, please.

So the city is in the urban planning area agreement between the city and the county also governs how the urban reserve area is planned.

It includes an agreement between the city and county regarding expectations for road funding and jurisdictional transfer.

Gales Creek Road is under county jurisdiction and David Hill Road through the urban reserve areas under county jurisdiction.

So there'll be discussions about transfer of those facilities to the city at some point as the area urban urbanizes.

So this slide is intended just to show some of the other urban reserve areas adjacent to the Portland UGB.

It also identifies where the rural reserves are.

Next slide, please.

There's been quite a bit of recent legislation related to the urban reserves, and in the interest of time, I won't go into this in any detail.

You have in your package, you can refer to it.

Next slide, please.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So potential next steps.

And this is really where staff would like to hear from the council about your perceptions moving forward, next steps for the urban reserve area.

We have five different potential next steps.

One is to proceed with an initial feasibility analysis to determine the practicality of providing cost effective public services and a range of housing types in this area.

It wouldn't be a full-blown CASA plan.

It would be kind of the next step beyond what was done in the West Side Refinement Plan to look at can we really meet those outcomes in the Metro Code for how an urban reserve area should develop?

Is it even feasible?

Number two is to apply for funding for metro to prepare a formal CASA plan for the entire urban reserve planning area.

Number three is applying for to do a concept plan for just a portion of the urban reserve planning area.

It could be that area adjacent immediately adjacent to David Hill Road, consistent with what the Portland State University students came up with for a concept where it's just the area that really has some development potential, it's not the entire area.

Number four is deferring moving forward with doing an urban reserve PASA plan until after the city's required housing capacity analysis and housing production strategy are completed.

And this is important because the housing capacity analysis will look at the city's buildable land inventory, how much land is available for development, how much has to develop how much land has development is truly developable, has development potential, and um also looks at allocating the state housing production targets and looking at her capacity and whether we can achieve those targets.

If those targets cannot be achieved, there are a couple of things that could happen.

One is that the city has to adopt uh land use efficiency measures to increase the capacity within the urban growth fund.

If that's not possible, then the urban reserve areas could be looked at for potential addition.

Um, and then the housing production strategies intended to provide incentives for producing the housing to meet our targets.

And so, really, the the results of both the HCA and the housing production strategy help to inform how things should progress in the urban reserve area.

And then number five is working with neighbor neighboring cities, the county and metro on possible reserve area legislation to address urban reserve limitations, uh, principally with our urban reserve area where there are some real channels.

So those are the potential next steps.

With that, I'll conclude my presentation.

I don't know if Brian, you have anything you'd like to add.

Now we'll turn it over to Council.

Nothing to add.

I mean, I think in in sort of in generally speaking, you know, uh 2014 was a different time, you know, uh, when all this happened, you know, we weren't talking about affordable housing the way we are now.

We weren't talking about sort of these housing capacity issues and everything.

Uh prices of housing about a third of what they are now.

Uh this is a different conversation.

Um, even just at the uh housing land advocates uh forum we had, you know, uh talking about the how big the fire insurance uh conversation is right now and how many people are not getting dropped or getting dropped and how hard it is to get fire insurance, and and this area falls right in that sort of vein.

Um, and that is not by any means to kind of sway you all with your decision making, but just to sort of set the table for you know why we thought this was important to get in front of you to talk about proactively uh and kind of determine next steps before we really kind of dive into uh uh a whole planning process.

Counselor Faulkner, I ask a question about, you know, I can it's it's pretty obvious why the um the you know capacity analysis and production strategy would inform the other.

But I also wonder if there's you know, for for like that number one, the initial feasibility, I wonder if that might actually even inform some of that process because I think you know, for because you know, it it sort of has just always sort of been there, that land is sort of has always kind of been designated as like eventually that's probably where we'll grow.

But like you said, 2014 was a very different time.

We weren't talking about wildfires nearly as much.

We weren't, you know, we weren't talking price of housing is significantly higher.

There's just a lot of reasons why I think like maybe just not really thinking about that as developable could actually inform the the the anal, you know, those analyses too.

And so I'm kind of thinking about those things a little bit more parallel than the way they're laid out here.

Um I think if you if you sort of do that initial feasibility study and you and you recognize that like we really don't get a whole lot out of that, you know, we don't get affordability, it's really gonna be difficult to I mean it's gonna be difficult to meet those goals, then maybe we think about you know, our ex you know, our plan for using existing land that that a little bit more efficiently.

So can you I think as we've talked on staff, I think that this number one, I mean, really kind of makes a lot of sense, right?

I mean, no matter what, if you're having this conversation about housing capacity analysis and everything and sort of next steps, number one's only going to feed into data and have more information and make that a richer conversation as we move forward through the for these processes.

Um we've had that conversation on staff, and that I think that makes a lot of sense um to kind of do this number one.

Uh but Dan, I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but I think that's kind of where we are on the whole thing.

Yeah, exactly.

We know there are some challenges.

Number one would allow us to put some numbers and have some tangible information to support our perceptions.

Um is really intended to show that I mean everything that you need to be done for an urban reserve passive plan, a full-blown passive plan, is a very heavy lift.

And and and there is a relationship between the housing capacity analysis and the housing production strategy, but that does not mean that we can't proceed with doing some initial analysis to get the information.

Any other questions?

Yes, Council President.

Yes, um so I agree that uh having that feasibility analysis is you know uh would be um kind of like the first thing to do.

However, I do have a question about the um so the DHCA uh will not be ready until 2027, right?

By the end of 2027.

That's our deadline.

That's our deadline.

2028, maybe.

All right, how about the feasibility analysis?

How long analysis, how that would that how long would that take for the for that section?

It it really depends on on the scope of work that we're asking for.

And if it's very well defined, I mean it can be done relatively fast.

But the contracting piece of things is probably one aspect that would take the longest.

But once we have somebody on board, it could be a few months, four to six months, maybe longest to get that.

But if it's very well defined and we're just looking at specific things, looking at what would the infrastructure costs, and just basically because Metro did do some preliminary analysis as part of the 2024 urban growth report.

We need to validate those assumptions and that's what they did and see if it was is really reasonable.

And so I think it's principally looking at the infrastructure costs and being able to meet the metro code requirements for you know, is it even feasible to produce a range of housing types in this area?

That could be looked at pretty that could be looked at pretty easily.

I think that'd be the infrastructure infrastructure costs, but also how those costs get paid.

Now, as Dan mentioned, you know, uh as this was initially kind of thought of that, you know, a lot of these areas, you know, sort of north of David Hill Road, you know, towards Council Creek, a lot of those might kind of help offset the cost of the infrastructure that goes up the hill.

Um, and and that's not gonna happen, you know.

And so you know, the the potential extra extra system development charges or however you decide to pay for it, um, could have pretty large impact either on the prices of those houses specifically up there, or how that cost gets spread around, um, maybe not in that geographic area, but uh, you know, to other ratepayers, and that's another huge issue for you all to consider.

Um, and so again, this feasibility analysis might look at some of those things.

But not cover that all of that, but have a sort of sort of general idea of how that might look.

Thank you.

Counselor Schimmel.

I would also lean heavy on them number one.

I assume it's number one because that's your favorite.

Not intentional, no.

Uh well, I mean, it with what you just shared, it seems obvious that that land doesn't conform with the outcomes.

I mean, and that's apparent to me.

I I don't know if it's apparent to someone looking at a the same map in their at their desk, or what additional information they need that can inform the rest of the process or limit the amount of hours and money spent on something that we absolutely know is impractical, and so we need we need those the other 2014 plans to be back at the table to evaluate as well in parallel.

Uh is it or that is would that be part of number one is is to you know look relook at those other two areas that were taken from me before.

I don't think that'll be part of a scope of work is to look at the other two areas.

Um that wouldn't be probably well, I've said it would be probably the scope of work.

Um I I think that I don't want to correct you with what you said.

I I think that sort of the way I see a little bit a little bit more is we don't know if it's feasible or not.

Um on its face, it appears difficult.

Um, but we're not developers, you know, and we don't we don't know for sure.

Um so we need to get an idea of what the costs and opportunities of development up there are vis-a-vis what the product we would get out of it would be.

You think I'm not fairly, Dan?

That's fair.

That's fair.

But uh I was just building on the the 60 percent was not developable.

Right, yeah, that and the rest were scattered.

So does that disqualify those scattered sites if it's difficult to it's impractical to get all of the utility to the all these scattered properties out in the woods, plus the the fire piece.

Yeah, those are definitely considerations and the topography.

I mean, it's one thing to take a look at things that are very high level, and uh but when you get into the details about the slope and the topography, I mean, even down to streak rate and things like that.

But we need to take it the next step and drill down a little bit further.

Um, when Metro looked at at this area, they ranked um they ranked kind of uh urban reserve areas is either having low potential, medium potential, or high potential across different factors um related to utilities, water services, sanitary sewer, storm drainage, and transportation.

Metro rated storm drainage um and transportation as being low, um and that's because of the amount of investment that we required to put in those improvements.

Sanitary sewer and water service were rated as medium.

Um but with respect to water service in particular, there's the need for an additional water reservoir, which really wasn't considered as part of the metro analysis, which increased the cost significantly.

It's looking at some of those other issues, infrastructure needs and making sure that they're actually being considered when these areas are being evaluated.

So I've heard a few people say option one, and then option one I hear it say a thumbs up on that.

Okay, yes.

I think that's the next step we would like the feasibility analysis.

We're gonna continue to move forward with four anyway, right?

So one and four.

Correct?

Okay.

Do you have what you need from us?

Sure do.

Thank you.

Okay, perfect.

Thanks.

I'm gonna adjourn this work session.

We're only five minutes late.

Good job, gentlemen.

Good job, council.