Who's drivng this bus?

You know the old saying, 'What if they had a war and nobody came?'

How about  - 'What if the Hamlet Board decided to draw a pretty Comp Plan and 7 out of 10 Hamlet Neighborhoods said we don't think that's necessary.'

Would the Hamlet Board listen and say 'OK, what do you want?'

Or would they try to convince us this is important with some fresh new reasons to have one like:

• If we don't have a comp plan there will be more things like the compost facility, only worse!!!!!
• If we don't have a comp plan, then the cities will come in and just do whatever they want here!!!!
• If we don't have a comp plan, aliens will come down, land on your house, suck out your brains and abduct your pets!!!!

In January  Mike Miller, chair, announced within minutes of being elected chair that his goal is to have a comp plan by the end of the year. He didn't say he was here to find out what needed to be done, what the people of the Hamlet want, to strengthen our relationships with the cities that border us, or anything else; he's a one-agenda no other input required sorta guy.  So I'm thinking it's going to be more of the same old worn scare tactics.

Previous Hamlet outreach efforts were tightly planned and universal. This outreach is much looser and neighborhood specific. The possible nightmare is the input will be apples and oranges. The upside is that people are getting to say and discuss whatever they want. And what I'm hearing is that the majority of the neighborhoods are not convinced that they want to do this planning.

Say this majority gets together and says, ya know, we're not going to play. And if you go ahead and create a comp plan anyhow, we know it has to be voted on. And we'll be there on election day to tell you what we think of your creating a comp plan that nobody wants.

Real Photo of alien space ship sighted near Johnson Road

But say Mike, there's something you can do for us. One thing comes up over and over in these meetings. People would like to have the freedom  to someday divide their lot or be able to build a second house on their land for a family member. Can we look at the feasibility of making that possible?

At the moment, doing this is about as or less likely than the alien landing scenario. Once we came into the Urban Reserve, things on a zoning level flash froze for us, except for the Measure 37/49 exceptions.

Being an Urban Reserve is still kinda new. Maybe rather than having our land locked up for the next 25 or 40 years it would be possible to create another exception that allows some lot divisions.  Have we looked into seeing if that can happen? 

There's no reason to keep us in large tracts for farming now. We're Urban wanna-bes. The only reason to keep us tied up like this is to have shovel-ready large acreage for future developers. How fair is that?

This is not a crazy idea.  Thinking that we can come into the UGB, get annexed into a city, dictate our own density and have 1 acre lots and equestrian trails with fields full of horses though, that is crazy.

This time let's do something that would actually benefit the people that live here now instead of those who are anxious to be our future.

 

Clouded Vision

This is a Word Cloud I did on the Vision statement a few years ago.
A different way of looking at what we came up with.

“Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.”

At the last Hamlet Community meeting I went with a question.
OK, a burning question.

How can a citizen get something put on the Hamlet Ballot?

What question? they wanted to know.

How about asking citizens when they want to come into the Urban Growth Boundary??

Some people think working on a Vision Map will be used as proof by the Clackamas County Business Alliance and the Stafford Land Owners to say we want to come into the UGB very soon and be developed 'sooner rather than later' to quote Commissioner Ludlow.

This type of thinking leads to mistrust and fear and makes it hard to move forward together in good faith. To avoid that distrust, I want a question that would clarify that approving or rejecting a plan does not have anything to do with a UGB inclusion timeline.  Maybe something like :

Approving this Vision Map
a)does 
b)does not
mean I want to be included in the UGB prior to 2021. 

That would take care of knowing if people want to get all excited about the upcoming 2016 inclusion.  But I'm willing to work on the wording to make it a better question.

I was told that's not the kind of question we want to ask. Over and over by different board members.

No no, I protested. I don't care about your opinion on my question. I want to know the mechanics of how a citizen gets an issue on the ballot. You know, the PROCESS.  Do I get a petition with 200 names? Do I stand on my head? Offer a bribe? What's the process?

Well, there is no process. I can email them the question and they'll think about it.

Hubba hubba - that sounds very democratic and very unbiased and very grass roots, don't you think? I can sort of imagine how much consideration my email would get!

Putting a question on the ballot isn't covered in our bylaws.

Good bylaws are a work in progress. People worked hard to craft the best document they could for us when they were written and adopted in 2006. But they must not have considered that there would come a time when The People would want to ask questions that the board didn't think up first. Or agree with.

So now what?

I could ask that the bylaws be reviewed and a process for this be considered and an amendment be proposed. Since we don't have a bylaws committee anymore, that request would also go through the board.

I'm screwed!

current bylaws:

Pollywoggin it

Kerplunk kerplop. Three frogs simultaneously startle, leap into my pond and swim to a safe depth.

They're  Northern Red-Legged frogs and are on the Oregon Sensitive Species - Vulnerable list. They and their habitat are disappearing.  But there's something about this bend in the Tualatin river that they like.  Hamlet residents report seeing them in their streams and ponds and right now a half dozen are hiding in the bottom of mine. 


One of Ann Culter's Stafford Character monthly articles on local critters was about red-legged frogs and she told me how after she'd built her pond they moved in and laid eggs on the plants. That reminded me of a very local urban legend here about how red-legged frogs lived in the stream by my house in the 80's, but hadn't been seen since.

A year later we built a small water retention pond in a low spot of the yard and had the county put in some mosquito fish. It was like opening a Froggy Diner! That fall we had two red-leggeds come hang out for a week or so. The next fall there were a few more. This year is the first spring siting and there's practically a crowd!

These guys are travelers and don't breed here, but this is an increasingly popular rest stop on their spring and fall migrations. For a few weeks out of the year our yard is honored to be habitat for a recognized sensitive species.

And this year they're visiting over Earth Day.

Earth Day.

How the Hamlet folks decide to move into the future determines if this little frog and all the other critters that find some sanctuary here in our semi-wild little pocket of the world will continue to thrive. Currently my neighborhood is roughly 1 house per 5 acres. Flip that to 10/acre and kiss this frog - goodbye.

Rabbits and Hats

Why, you might wonder, do we have a group called Friends of Stafford.

It's simple: the Hamlet as an entity of the County can't protest what the County does in any legal way.

By the time the Hamlet figured out what it meant to us for S&H to do surface mining and expanded composting here, the approvals were granted by the County. Any opposition had to be taken up by a different group.

S&H has a long history of violations of the terms of their current conditional use permit. The hearings officer even said he didn't think they could abide by the conditions of the permit as he gave it to them. How could the County Commissioners then approve the permit knowing people live out here?

There are 3 schools full of healthy young children adjacent to the planned facility. The smells and dust created will negatively affect their playgrounds. It is not a good mix. 

Friends of Stafford formed as a voice of protest against this poor planning decision.

They've worked hard getting the word out and build a coalition of opposition. They've found areas of Real Concern too for the impact of this on our aquifer - concerns that can't be raised now due to procedure rules because they didn't come up in the first hearings. They're raising funds to pay lawyers. They're speaking with S&H to try to find compromise solutions and so at this time their voice is the only hope, aside from a change of heart by S&H, for keeping the area free of the dust and stink of a compost facility. And if you think it won't stink, let them be the first to say 'I told you so' when it does.

Cautionary message?

Right now those who control 'the message' are saying Stafford is THE PLACE to develop. Even though nearly 80% of the lands brought into the UGB in the past 20 years have not been utilized the people here who want to develop their land are pushing the message that we need to be plowed under and built up.

It's hard to affect County decisions. It takes work and showing up and speaking up. Like Redlands did when S&H tried to move the stink into their neighborhood. (Visit this site to what they did.)

But it's  really really really hard to reverse something that's happened.

We need to remind our Hamlet leaders, the cities around us, the County and Metro LOUDLY and FREQUENTLY that we don't want to be brought inside the UGB before it happens.

The message isn't 'how' we want to be developed. It's that we don't.

Keep that rabbit in the hat.

Leggo my Lego!

Legos have been inspiring kids since 1916. 

Arguably 100% of male engineers and 23% of female engineers built their first bridge out of legos. (Now that there are pink legos the female statistics are predicted to increase.)  

Young Basil, before deciding if he'll become an engineer or a developer, contemplates building a high-rise out of environmentally friendly legos 

For future architects however Lincoln Logs are the building toy of choice (first structures by toy are 62% Lincoln Logs, 22% Tinker Toy with just 10%  Legos and the balance being soup cans). For budding Landscape Architects there was just sticks from the backyard.

Legos are now the latest, greatest planning tool in the Hamlet. The Tualatin Loop Neighborhood Association used legos and maps to show graphically how many houses are in the neighborhood now, 

A typical lot in Tualatin Loop now

and how many will be there if Metro requires densification infill to to occur at the current suggested levels of 4,12 or 25 per acre.

This same lot in Tualatin Loop after development to certain Metro guidelines.

This presentation has been so insightful and useful that it's now being replicated at other Neighborhood meetings - Ashdown, Vineland and Childs are among the first to sign up. If you'd like to see how this works, attend one of these meetings!

Future Maps

I have a language-buddy in Japan and while skyping we checked out my neighborhood at the 10,000 foot level on Google maps. Did you know that the Rosemont Trail is there? How amazing is that. It isn't even finished yet and it's on the map just like the Great Wall of China!

It got me thinking about what it took to get it there. Obviously the hard work of many dedicated people who envisioned it. But also the many landowners who gave permission for it to cross over their property in the easement.

Sometimes it feels like we're in this deadlock between those who want to develop and those who don't. But there's at least a third group. The growing group of Hamlet residents that have contributed to the common good by dedicating their land to open or park space.  There's the Stevens family that transferred some of their property into Metro open space and another piece into LO park property and the Wankers whose former home is now the birthplace of zillions of Metro native plants.  Sorry, I don't know the name of the family whose property  buffering Wilson Creek is now Metro land. Or the gentleman who gave his magical property near the Tualatin River to the Audubon Society (who forthwith sold it to someone who clearcut it - tragic!) And I don't know a thing about the Cornell Nature Park on Rosemont - but it's on the map!

The Century Farms of Cook and Fiala are dedicated to keeping our open space vibrant with farming and historical trees and some community confidence that this land is here to stay as part of our heritage if at all possible.

All around us people are quietly tending to and loving their land, convinced the roses bloom this huge - only here. Or that the sunrise looks this incredible - only from here. Or maybe that this bend in the river creates water music unique in the universe - just here. They're percolating ideas in their minds about how future generations can enjoy this beauty as much as they're enjoying it now.

In ten or twenty years when you Google our neighborhood those people's names will be there too, followed by 'Meadow' or 'Nature Park' or 'Wetland' or something that will remind you of the cool gentle breeze of a Hamlet spring.

Timeline Unchained!

While some are worrying about chained and unchained CPI's, the Defender of the Process has been concerned about our current vision process which is tethered by a very tight time chain.

We're working to get a Hamlet Vision thingy together which has an ambiguous name, ambiguous purpose and ambiguous 'driving factors' that dictated a really short, nay impossible time line of 'done by July'.

At a meeting last week of most of the neighborhood Captains these issues were discussed and the process was cleaned up a little to be more accessible to the Grass Roots of our community for a longer time period.  Unchained from the Timeline. Yea!

The Defender is truly mollified on this point.

Now the next question is : what should one wear to their neighborhood meeting? While I usually feel well equipped with a notebook, glasses, cellphone and pen, people have been seen this week at Hamlet meetings sporting their lawyer at their side. Now I feel totally under-dressed.

Enter The UGB - Just Say No!

We didn't get into the the Urban Reserve just because we're the little triangle that's left out.

We got in due to the completed game plan of some people that believe they stand to gain a lot from having their properties developed.  Here are three of the main groups inside the Hamlet working tirelessly to pave us over.

The Borland Neighborhood Association INC  - This group isn't really a Neighborhood Association at all. It's a select group of landowners that have land on Borland Road and want to develop it big time. Tall towers, high density, a Town Center.  They haven't discussed it with the neighbors that surround their property on Halcyon. They have however hired some big consultants and paid them to be their lobbyists to get them into the UGB at whatever cost.

The Stafford Landowners.  You might think you qualify since you own land here, but no. Again these are select landowners that have paid to get into this group which is intent on developing their lands as soon as possible.

Clackamas County Business Alliance. Although it sounds county based it is in no way a county entity.It was formed in part by residents of the Stafford Hamlet and have been demanding development here for years. Those residents are the ones that clear-cut the Christmas Tree farm and adjacent properties a couple of winters ago causing mud flows and flooding onto their neighbor's lands in Shadowood.  Their lobbyist, Burton Weist, played a major part in getting us into the urban reserve. Money well spent for them.
Beyond the lobbying there's a long list of campaign donations to County candidates that they've been making for years.

Is this illegal or wrong?  Nope.

It is however something to keep in mind in case you think the message that we're 'ready, willing and shovel ready' aren't being planted into the public mindset quite deliberately by a few individuals who think what they'll gain is more important than what you'll lose through development.

If you want to change the message,  perhaps that we don't want to be brought into the UGB until all the current land inside the border has been used properly, speak up at the Hamlet events going on this spring.