Participants wove into their conversations their appreciation for Oregon’s vast, diverse, and beautiful landscape, sharing times on road trips, graveyard shifts, and the every day where they took in the state’s mountains, farm fields, coast, and other incredible scenery. It contributes to what has kept the Regional Participants here and why some moved here. Passed in 1973, the Oregon Land Use Act has helped to preserve Oregon’s landscape. Many Participants sung praises of this law; some identified its shortcomings and need for amending it; and others wholly disparaged it.
This statewide land-use planning program directs communities to focus development within an urban core or city center with an eye towards preserving agricultural lands, forests, and other natural resources. The line separating the urban core and the lands to be protected is called the Urban Growth Boundary, or “UGB.”
For those that appreciate the land use regulations, they shared the value that Oregon has this different attitude and philosophy about development. Other states and places allow for paving over of wetlands and filling in creeks and have no limits on the extension of single-family subdivisions going miles and miles beyond the city center.
I've often wondered if I would be so attracted to the Oregon coast if we didn't properly regulate and plan for growth. (Lincoln City Dialogues)
I still believe that Oregonians really like that livability of the natural environment. I really believe that. But I don't know if people realize how it can erode quickly… I don’t think will be immune to coastal urban sprawl. (Lincoln City Dialogues)
Part of the reason I work in planning at state level is because our policies are really progressive compared to the nation and I would like to see us maintain that status. As we in central Oregon especially continue to grow, we're seeing lots of people come in. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
I appreciate that we don’t want to end up like the cities that are so sprawling, Jacksonville, Florida. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
Oregon is a land use state. To me that’s a good thing. It’s similar to what we have. We protect burial areas, berry areas, our fish, and habitats for deer and elk. (Tribal member, Warm Springs)
There's the perception that land use in Oregon is stunting economic growth here, particularly if you compare us to Boise and their explosion. But they're also aggressively eating up all their farms ways that we would find it disgusting in Oregon. (Baker City Dialogue)
In the same breath that people lauded Oregon’s land use regulations for preserving the landscaped and the valuable farmland that feeds us, they also expressed frustration over them. These folks felt like the laws hinder growth that some communities are desperate to create. They looked to amend the law or decentralize the decision making within it, not nullify the law.
You don't see sprawl here, but then you don't have enough housing and job economic development. It's the Yin and Yang thing to what we've got going. (Medford Dialogue)
It's very close to my heart when I see farmland being paved over. On the flip side, I know that there's farmland and there's farmland. There is an awful lot of the land all around our rural communities that you cannot really grow anything good… We need to recognize that there are going to be places in our rural communities that we can put high density affordable housing, areas where you can have buses, water, and other services. (Medford Dialogue)
Land use regulation is great for the Willamette Valley. However, in my county, ninety percent of the acreage is forest and 2% is agriculture. We are limited as to how can expand. At least on the coast, we shouldn't be so limited. We have such little flatland for building. Whatever is developed is not going to be affordable workforce housing. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
I have a county that lies between the ocean and timberland; it’s the most sensitive property in the state. Now we have a tsunami inundation zone and we can't move to the east, in the timberland, to protect the people from tsunamis. We should have another zone to allow cities to move to the east that are affected by tsunami zones. (Lincoln City)
In one of our commissioner meetings, I said tell me one time that we haven't been able to do something because of land use planning and none of us could come up with anything. Bad projects never made it, but there is frustration about the process. (Baker City Dialogue)
When you're updating your transportation system plan, you can't plan outside of your urban growth boundary. By the time you pick some of those road and re-routing projects, it is obsolete by the time the money comes around because you couldn't plan ahead even though you knew that where it was headed. I think sometimes we need to be able to plan beyond the urban growth boundary.(Warm Springs Dialogue)
A few Participants across all of the Dialogues said that the Oregon Land Use Act regulations did not work in their community at all. The effort to focus development in one part of town and preserve other lands with natural resource significance has been a classroom exercise that did not play out neatly in their world. Landowners within urban growth boundaries are destined for their property to be eventually developed. In some cases, their property may be one of a few key lots that remain undeveloped. Conversations between these landowners and community planners may go to nowhere, as the landowners feel pressure to develop or sell. Further, in some towns, lands that are naturally limiting to growth like slopes, marshland, public lands or land already protected (a park) make up a good percentage of land within the urban growth boundary. This has a number of implications. The limited land can increase cost of land and property within the UGB, driving up the cost of housing and economic development. Amending the UGB involves updating existing community plans and such plans can require the expertise of a consultant and/or significant time investment for the limited planning staff in small communities.
We find that in Deschutes County, the land designated as exclusive farm use is actually rocky and not much good for farming at all. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
When a big company wanted to come to our community. We had to update our plan, which is a long process. It cost us about $50,000. Now they want to expand again and we have to spend again probably $60,000 this time. It’s costly especially when the change does not actually affect any farmland or forest.
Land use rules made for the Willamette Valley don't fit with the land use opportunities in our community.
We missed the boat here in Ontario in the early two thousands when the boom hit. All of the housing growth went to Fruitlands, Idaho. We continue get further behind in creating housing.
Governor McCall was very visionary and very forceful personality for his time and drove the Oregon Land Use Act. But every, every idea has a shelf life and you need to revisit them, especially with Oregon’s changing population and economies.
Participants see these land use regulations so tied to economic development, farming, natural resources, and residential construction that the regulations feel personal. As they work to create change in their community, they bump up against these regulations where they feel like they have no power to make a change in regulation without spending limited funds, lots of time, and asking for approval. The counter to that is the permanency of development, that swift changes in community plans or easily approved development can have lasting impact on a community where the benefits are short-lived or create sprawling car-dependent development.
Rural Participants, not surprisingly, brought these challenges up and often linked them to the challenge of getting their perspective, their voice heard with state policy makers. Participants pointed out that the legislature is dominated by representation from the Portland metropolitan area down to Eugene, as both the house and senate are based on population and that’s where the majority of the state’s population resides.
In Oregon’s House of Representatives, twenty-nine state representatives cover the metropolitan area of Portland. In the Senate, eleven of Oregon’s 30 senators represent the Portland metropolitan area. Consider the communities and cultures of Portland, Lincoln City, Eugene, Medford, Bend, Klamath Falls, Lakeview, Burns, Joseph, and Hood River. Consider the prominent issues they all face and consider the challenge of prioritizing time and such limited state funds to address these issues in such different communities. In all of the Dialogues, rural Participants expressed their frustration over their attempts to communicate the challenges they face for rural communities to speak and yet not have their voices heard came up.
You’ve got legislative issues that are coming forward where urban seems to outweigh the rule. If you look at redistricting every time a census comes out, we're continuing to create larger and larger rural districts because the populations are shrinking. People are going to urban areas for economic development, for careers, etc.
I am on the state wolf committee and other committees like that. It seems like it's easier to convert eastern Oregon into a monument and put things out here that western Oregon wants and that suit their values. But they aren't willing to pay for it nor have it in their own backyard. These changes alter the whole life structure of those people that are affected. If you're going to affect people, then you need to take accountability and provide some type of adjustment for them and that's lost on many. So we see a polarization and our local communities rising up. They don't want the occupations that occurred in Harney County, but they also don't want just the wholesale somebody else, somewhere else, dictating them. (Baker City Dialogue)
We have Senator Hansell. We have Senator Bentz and a couple of representatives, but generally everybody else was representing metropolitan areas. Our values here aren't being respected and they're not even heard.(Baker City Dialogue)
Even if all of the coastal population voted for one person in a statewide race, we could not elect anyone. We are not going to be the driving force for any candidate. So there's disadvantages built into the system. (Lincoln City Dialogue)
It's a representative form of government where Oregonians in rural parts I think are often feel left out of the conversation. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
The laws and policies passed at the legislature often lay out directives for which state agencies or other decision-making bodies fill in the details. This is another area where rural perspective and experience is not consistently reflected.
We talked specifically about a better effort of state agencies and decision making bodies to both reach out and to allow rural communities to participate in the development of rules…to get to a shared understanding of the resources of and for rural and urban. (Medford Dialogue)
I wonder if the decision-making can be decentralized a bit, so that there's more flexibility in regions to be able to make the allocation and rules more appropriate. (Medford Dialogue)
I think people are making decisions need to realize and respect that there are differences more than they maybe do. When they pass laws and rules at the state level. They need to talk to rural. Self-service gas is a perfect example. With lots of people, you can have full-service gas. I can see how a person in Portland is like, “How is that a big deal?” but sometimes you just want to pump your own gas. (Warm Springs Dialogue)
The repercussions of the above are that laws and regulations are passed that impact them, sometimes even made for them, yet their voices, their perspectives are not heard. Some Participants referenced the many years and decades that they have put into speaking for rural communities, yet without any success. They describe it as leaders outside of their community determine their problems and then provide solutions without asking for their input. There is a recognition that these policies – described by one Participant as urban, liberal, and environmental – work for urban communities but there are consequences that don’t work for rural communities. One example is Oregon’s gas tax. As one Participant shared, “It's a regressive tax, because in eastern Oregon we have to travel in our vehicles. We have to drive. Biking is not an option – one direction of 50 miles is typical.” Another described the challenge of a hiring skilled contractor to teach a high school class to help prepare students for the construction jobs that are in demand. Because of state teaching regulations he could not do it. Others shared that, to provide these educational opportunities, they do a state permissible work-around every year for teachers.
Participants also gave the example of the cap and trade legislation. These Regional Dialogues took place before the discussion of this proposed law that led to the walkout of Republican legislators. Lincoln City Participants shared that they don’t oppose effort to mitigate climate change. After all, the coastal communities have many industries impacted by climate disruption: shell fish, salmon fishing, forestry, and tourism, which is greatly impacted fire season. “On the other hand,” one shared, “we've got other industries that are going to be directly impacted if cap and trade passes.” Another added, “It basically came from Portland. They never talked to a single fisherman from Oregon. They never talked to the timber companies.” A Portland Participant whose work has led them to meet to community members and leaders all around Oregon shared, “People just don't feel heard or understood. And sometimes people that I've just spoken with have just felt ignored.”
Participants targeted other issues: money and power exist in the wrong hands, cronyism is burned into the process, and that some leaders have a vested interest in things staying the same, where rural communities continuously get the short end of the stick. One Participant shared they spent 15 - 20 years resisting the idea that there was a major difference in how and what resources are provided to southern Oregon. They said that they resisted this notion until they had multiple examples of that unfairness. “And finally I said it's true,” they shared.
That the decision-making powers of Salem and Portland geographically lie on the far western side of Oregon contributes significantly to this conversation. This came up multiple times. To attend committee meetings or to provide public input can take hours in the car just to get to Salem: Bend (2 ½ hours), Klamath Fall (4 hours) and La Grande (4 ½ hours). Sometimes appearances only require ten minutes but that appearance relays rural perspectives.
I've been on the statewide sage grouse council for a while. Finally I just stood up one day at the meeting and said, “This is insulting to us. All the sage grouse are in eastern Oregon. We have to all pilgrimage to Salem to get here.” (Baker City)
Are we the only ones that feel like it's faster for us to get to Salem, than it is for Salem to come to us? (Warm Springs and Medford)
Part of the dilemma is that we, rural people, don't have a voice in Portland or Salem. It’s too expensive, too time consuming to get here for all of the meetings. I would propose that all state boards and commissions be required to have three-fourths of their meetings by video conference. That doesn't mean that the three of you go to Salem and me and the three of us being on video. That means every one of you being in video so that it's a fair exchange… so we all get the body language, we all get the before and after conversation. (Warm Springs)
One of the differences is access to political policy. Rural places are feeling ignored, that they don't have the power to make decisions and it's very frustrating. People feel angry or are pulling back from decision making or engagement because they feel like their voice doesn't matter. (Portland Dialogues)
People just want to be heard. There's a sense of frustration that Salem and Portland don't care what their needs are whether it's water rights or land use laws mean that border towns lose out on recruiting business. (Portland Dialogues)
Another piece of this puzzle is the assumption that all rural communities are one big community, all alike, but they are not. Economic development, affordable housing strategy or even park programming may not be translatable across Pendleton, Roseburg, Ashland and Burns. Communities that lie so close one another like Bend and La Pine are different but will get lumped together because they are in the same county. Policies, rules, and regulations are not a one size fits all, a number of Participants expressed. “When we think of policies and solutions, we really need flexibility. That's something that rural people, businesses, and communities seek.”
The responsive, do-it-yourself tendencies of rural residents contribute to this tension also. Rural communities described themselves as solving their own problems – fixing their car or kitchen sink instead of calling a mechanic or plumber. Participants expressed that, if a problem comes up, new policies are the answer. In urban areas, you may need that because there simply are so many people. Further, many policies affect rural more directly, as one Participants who served as a congressional aid shared:
There's a mutual relationship back and forth that's just not understood in urban communities because they're, they're not dependent on the federal government. What I've often found is people in rural communities are vastly more sophisticated on what's happening at the varying levels of government. I could walk into a small community and get song and verse about a sub- committee that had just a hearing. Then get asked “What's your boss going to do?” You would not have that kind of dialogue in Portland. (Portland Dialogue)
Participants lamented that policymakers from different parts of Oregon just simply do not get along. “Unification is our biggest issue. I feel like we aren't heard in Salem because we can't even get along with each other. When I try to understand why people don't get along really, sometimes it seems like there isn't really a reason,” one shared. Many times and in many ways, Participants shared that Oregonians have a lot in common, they just need to find those similarities and build from there. Another Participant shared, “There's just a divide that we don't at times align our similarities together to find ways to work well together.”
Interestingly, a number of metro Portland residents acknowledged the privileges they have around access to decision makers and power. They shared experiences where they heard and acknowledged the challenges of rural voices getting heard, that leaders holding decision-making power need to invite rural residents or leaders to table more – and rural as in many rural communities, not just a single person to represent the whole rural perspective. These Participants see the resentment from being told what to do instead of being asked what to do or asked and not feeling like their voices were heard. “There may have been times they were asked for their opinion but they don’t feel like it,” said one Participant. Another Participant added, “I’m not sure that I do understand rural. I have a low understanding of land use...If we did understand maybe we would make different decisions."