The Real Story – A Column

NOTE:  Tonight’s City Council Meeting Information is available – CLICK HERE  To see the 2026 Hillsboro Legislative Agenda along with the language around growing our Industrial land base by 1,700 acres, here is that PowerPoint!

If you read my first story about Hillsboro’s new “Ring/NAP” reality — where trans-Pacific fiber lands on the Oregon Coast and concentrates into a Hillsboro connectivity ecosystem — then this is the land-side follow-up.

Because once a city becomes a bandwidth hub, the next choke points/limiting factors  always look the same all over the world:

🗺️ Land. 🔌 Power. 💧 Water. 🏗️ Permits. 💰 Incentives.

And right now, Hillsboro has most of these things working except land, and City Hall is moving fast on a political package that reads like a blueprint to unlock and supercharge all five.

🗺️ The map is about to change — and most residents won’t know until it’s too late

For decades, Hillsboro leaders have sold land expansion one way: “high-paying jobs.” Big promises. Big maps. Big speeches.

But this time the pitch doesn’t match the reality.

Intel jobs have been cut. Industrial land is increasingly being absorbed by facilities that employ very few people once they are built, like the nearly 30 Data Centers in Hillsboro. And yet the urgency inside City Hall appears to be accelerating — not slowing.

So let’s stop guessing and look at what the City is actually asking Salem and D.C. for.

🧾 Here’s the basis for the 2026 legislative push — and it’s not the public  

In a memo dated January 6, 2026, City staff lays out exactly how Hillsboro’s legislative agenda is formed.

It says the agenda is informed by:

• 🏛️ Council direction

• 🧑‍💼 feedback from City department directors and program leads

• 🤝 “external conversations” with the City’s state and federal contract lobbyists, federal delegation, state legislators, local government and community partners, and stakeholders

Then the memo gets to the part Hillsboro residents have lived through again and again:

📣 Community Engagement: “Not specific to the legislative agenda.”

They do add that priorities are “indirectly informed” by community feedback that already reached Council or departments. But that’s not early engagement. That’s not residents seeing the map before the ink dries. That’s residents as background noise — not participants.

Also worth noting: the memo says the Equity Toolkit was not directly applied to the agenda (even though equity considerations are referenced).

Translation: the big players get the early conversations. The public gets the finished product.

And now that we’ve established that, here’s what they’re pushing.

💰 What Hillsboro is pushing for in 2026

Hillsboro’s staff report doesn’t frame this as a narrow technical request. It frames it as a coalition push — “in coalition with cities, counties, and local and state business advocates” — to “maintain and accelerate” advanced manufacturing and associated supply chain jobs and increase Oregon’s state and local tax base.

Then the City lists the tools it wants Salem to hand over:

• 🗺️ Bring North Hillsboro land into the UGB — land previously identified by the Semiconductor Task Force and SB4 (2023)

• 🧪 Expand the state R&D tax credit beyond semiconductors to include advanced manufacturing

• 💸 Allow a five-year property tax exemption on qualified new capital equipment investments tied to facility creation/expansion/modernization

• 🧾 Strengthen existing incentives, including the standard Enterprise Zone program

And in the City’s PowerPoint, it’s summarized as an “Economic Development Bill” with the same core items: North Hillsboro UGB expansion, capital equipment tax incentive, and strengthening the enterprise zone program (plus other items like regulatory reform).

That’s not “routine legislative housekeeping.” That’s a coordinated land-and-incentives push.

🧾 CALL OUT BOX 

🧾 What City Hall is asking Salem for (translated):

🤝 The City says it’s advocating “in coalition with cities, counties, and local and state business advocates” to “maintain and accelerate” advanced manufacturing and supply chain jobs and grow the tax base.

💰 Specific asks include:

🗺️ Bring SB4 / Semiconductor Task Force land into the North Hillsboro UGB – THIS IS 1700 ACRES OF NEW LAND TO FUEL DATA CENTERS – BESS BATTERIES – AI COMPUTING – POWER PLANTS – all of which employ almost no one- and if we are lucky some anufacturing jobs.
🧪 Expand the state R&D tax credit beyond semiconductors
💸 Allow a 5-year property tax exemption for qualified new capital equipment (This Could Mean Data Centers Never Pay Property Taxes)
🧾 Strengthen incentives, including the standard Enterprise Zone

📣 And the public process?
🏛️ The City’s own memo states: Community Engagement is “not specific to the legislative agenda.”

So on this 1,700 Acres- this is the same land that Mayor Pace and other City and County leaders fought to get included for Semiconductor expansions in 2023-24.  The Hillsboro Herald directly tied campaign contributions to these leaders from specific landowners who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars when the land is added to the growth boundary. As needed, the Herald can publish State records of all of those contributions. Is it just me, or is this story familiar?  And aren’t there definite conflicts?

They lost that land expansion battle, and Intel has lost 6,000 jobs since then.  And yet here we are again- and somehow we need it more than ever, but we lost 30% of our tech jobs? Make no mistake – this looks like a Trojan Horse strategy.  Say it is needed for jobs, but do not put any restrictions on the land being used for more Data Center/AI/Power Grid machines.  If they greatly restrict any land coming in from having Data Centers, BESS Batteries, and Massive substations built upon them, I will eat my words.

Here are some looks at the untouched farmland that the Mayor and some members of this council are going all in on- a move that will forever threaten Jackson School and our beautiful NW Hillsboro communities’ livability.  That is just a statement of fact.

Hillsboro currently has hundreds of acres of land for industrial use. The City itself has purchased over $200,000,000 in land in the past few years, and the residents are paying the interest on that.  As of now, it has not been resold or developed.   This area in Red is the land that the City Staff, the Lobbyists, and consultants it has hired want to propose for expansion.  The people of Hillsboro have not been consulted on this; there has been no engagement, and sentiment all over town is that no more growth is needed.  So who is pushing for this?

We covered this 1,700+ Acres and the money driving it in 2023, 2024, and late 2025.

Hillsboro’s 1,800-Acre Land Grab: Billions in Corporate Giveaways, Decades to Break Even

🏛️ Home Rule, translated

City Hall says it supports “Home Rule” — the idea that local government should control local resources and make decisions based on local needs.

But in the same packet, the City explains the legislative agenda is built through internal direction and external conversations with lobbyists, legislators, partners, and stakeholders, while admitting community engagement is not specific to the agenda.

So here’s the plain-English question residents should be asking:

If “Home Rule” means local control… why doesn’t it include the people who actually live here?

Because “local control” without local participation isn’t Home Rule.
It’s insider rule — and Hillsboro residents are tired of being briefed after the plan is already baked.

⚖️ The contradiction City Hall created in its own packet

The City’s agenda principles emphasize equity and inclusive decision-making—removing barriers, eliminating disparities, and coordinating public investments with the communities they serve.

But then, in the same packet, they state that community engagement is “not specific” to the agenda.

So which is it?

Because you can’t sell “inclusive decision-making” while designing the real agenda in rooms that residents don’t even know exist.

🔥 Why this matters right now

If Hillsboro is becoming a trans-Pacific connectivity hub, then land becomes a supply problem — and City Hall starts acting like the “solution” is to expand, incentivize, and build infrastructure capacity.

Fine. That’s a debate we can have.

But we can’t have it honestly if the only people in the loop early are lobbyists, stakeholders, and insiders — while the residents are told they’ll be “indirectly informed” after the direction is already set.

This is the part I keep coming back to, because it’s the recurring Hillsboro pattern:

WE, the people of Hillsboro, are never allowed to comment or be involved while the plan is being formed.
We’re brought in when it’s time to absorb the talking points.

📣 Questions City Hall should answer before the boundary lines move

If this push is truly for the public interest, then City Hall should be willing to publish and present — to the public — the basics:

• 🗺️ Land: What parcels and how many acres are targeted for North Hillsboro UGB expansion?

• 🏗️ Use: What’s the intended mix — advanced manufacturing, data centers, both?

• 🔌 Power: What MW assumptions, what substations/transmission upgrades, and who pays?

• 💧 Water: What volumes are assumed, what projects are planned, and what rate impacts follow?

• 💰 Incentives: What exactly is being waived, for how long, and what’s the public tradeoff?

• 👷 Jobs: What enforceable jobs-per-acre expectations and community benefits are required?

✅ Bottom line

If Hillsboro is going to rewrite its boundary and accelerate incentives, the people deserve more than slogans.

We deserve:

• 🗺️ the map,

• 🧾 the numbers,

• ⏱️ the timeline,

• and 📣 a real public process before the decision is effectively made.

Because the worst kind of local government is the kind that only believes in “community engagement” after the outcome is already baked.

And Hillsboro residents are tired of being treated like we don’t deserve to be the ones to draw up the blueprints!