The Real Story- A Column
Editors Note: North Plains City Manager and his crew are at it again. Growth at all costs!! Despite the entire City voting in a 70 % plus Majority against growth and massive Industrial Expansion, these people do not seem to care. A plan to put hundreds of acres of big box tech and industry on the SE edge of town is at play again. Possible Data Centers and heavy industry, right next to Sunset Ridge and Atfalati Elementary School, have made their way back into the discussion and are being pushed for. What sort of a horrible leadership group would threaten little kids and a quiet, highly valued neighborhood with steaming concrete monsters, chemicals, energy vibrations, and God knows what else? I mean, this level of horrible planning isn’t even seen in Florida and/or New Jersey! Is this what we have become? Or are we just being led to the edge of the cliff like so many lemmings and pushed off the ledge? The people of North Plains have grit, creativity, and are caring, engaged citizens. This is something that no one in their right mind, regardless of political party, should reject. Anyone doing this and leading this sort of lunacy needs to be removed from power. I stand with the good people of North Plains in rejecting any and all of this as a reasonable plan.
Read the email below and GET INVOLVED! City Hall belongs to the people- stop getting run over! Data Centers, Heat Islands, vibrations, smokestacks, and chemicals do NOT BELONG next to schools and homes! Only YOU can keep your town safe and sound!
All that said, here is a post from the Friends of Smart Growth- the real ones!
Dear Friends of North Plains,
We’re writing to give you a quick update and invite you to 2 upcoming opportunities to share your thoughts: a UGB Concept Plan meeting on Tuesday, 6/2 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at Jessie Mays Community Center, and a taping of OPB’s Think Out Loud on Thursday, 6/11 from 6:00 – 7:00 pm at the Atfalati Ridge Elementary Cafeteria (also take this survey).First, thank you to the 279 (and counting) people who signed our petition to remove Bill Reid as North Plains City Manager. City Council will hold an Executive Session at their June 1 meeting under ORS 192.660(2)(i) “to review and evaluate the employment-related performance of the chief executive officer who does not request an open hearing.” We have faith that the City Council has heard your comments and petition signatures loud and clear. We’ll keep you updated on future developments.Right now, the most important ways you can support the city are by raising your voice on the proposed UGB Concept Plan on June 2 and by sharing your concerns about staff’s push for a UGB expansion instead of addressing the city’s real needs with Oregon Public Broadcasting for a taping of Think Out Loud on June 11. More below.1) UGB Concept PlanOn Tuesday, June 2, from 6:00 – 8:00pm at Jessie Mays Community Center, North Plains will hold an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) Concept Plan Public Meeting. That concept plan can be found here and you can see the map of the proposed expansion area on p. 6 of the pdf. The plan claims: “The City has an estimated need of approximately 127 acres for housing and associated infrastructure, 40 acres for parks, and up to 690 acres for commercial and industrial lands.”This plan is very similar to the plan that City voters rejected 71-to-29 in a ballot initiative just 2 years ago, except that it does not include as much land to the west. It is based on the incomplete review of a “ReLook Committee” convened by the former city council. This committee first decided on the amount of land they wanted to bring into North Plains’ UGB, and second mapped the locations of housing and employment on that land. That is a backwards way to plan. In real planning, first the city’s accurate and desired needs for housing and industry should be analyzed, and only if those needs require more land should land be brought into the UGB.The UGB Concept Plan is based on outdated population growth figures. The housing land requested in the plan is based on a 2020 population forecast for North Plains, which estimated the city’s population would nearly double from 3,400 to 7,076 residents by 2040. By 2024, that population forecast was significantly downgraded to about 5,500 residents by 2040. Yet this “updated” UGB Concept Plan does not use the lower, more accurate 2024 population forecast; it still uses the outdated and excessive 2020 forecast to determine the number of homes and land the city “needs”. In fact, the city continues to pay to defend a lawsuit supporting the old Housing Needs Analysis in order to grandfather in that now-inaccurate and inflated population forecast. The city should not acquire more land than necessary or fund infrastructure beyond its means to satisfy outdated population growth figures. This gives a major financial windfall to developers and landowners at the expense of city taxpayers. Instead, North Plains should plan for the actual, much more modest, projected housing needs.The industrial land, which is far more acreage than a rural town needs, would likely be used for data centers and will be located right next to the Sunset Ridge homes and Atfalati Ridge Elementary School. The UGB Concept Plan is based on job projection figures from the old Economic Opportunity Analysis (EOA), which are only 4.78 jobs per acre. That ratio is very low – lower than any jurisdiction in the Metro Region and much lower than North Plains’ existing EOA. This job density is typical of data centers (mentioned 58 times in the EOA) and warehouses. The EOA was written when North Plains expected to host auxiliary industries for semiconductor fabrication — an industry no longer projected to come to the area. The EOA claims to emulate North Hillsboro’s industrial park, which consists primarily of low-job data centers and fulfillment centers. That is despite the fact that North Plains is outside of Metro, it is intended for rural industry, and the EOA states that “the greatest number of new jobs are forecasted in tourism-related industries, professional services, and education and health services.” To make matters worse, these data centers and related industries, which generate large amounts of traffic and pollution, would be located right next to the elementary school and residential areas of Sunset Ridge.For these reasons and more, we urge you to attend the June 2 meeting and speak out against the UGB Concept Plan.2) Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out LoudOn Thursday, June 11, at 6:00 – 7:00pm (doors open at 5:30 pm), at Atfalati Ridge Elementary Cafeteria, Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud will hold a listening session in North Plains. Please show up to share your concerns about being planned at and not for or with, using misleading and outdated information and a non-inclusive process. Please also share your thoughts on OPB’s survey here and here: opb.org/northplains.Thank you for standing up for your community.Friends of Smart GrowthPS – Some of you may have received an email yesterday from a group calling itself “The Real Friends of North Plains”. That is not our group (Friends of Smart Growth) or the original group that we folded in to Friends of Smart Growth called Friends of North Plains Smart Growth. We understand that this new group (“The Real Friends of North Plains”) is composed of the same former city councilors and special interests that supported the old, massive UGB expansion. They continue to claim that the best way for the city to increase its revenue is by building more housing than it needs and giving tax breaks to businesses that require expensive infrastructure. We just want to keep you informed and clear up any confusion.
Dirk Knudsen’s political footprint reveals a glaring contradiction: a man leveraging his platform to heavily influence the policies, zoning, and leadership of towns where he does not actually reside or pay property taxes.
Overstepping Local Boundaries
Unchecked Influence: Inserting outside agendas into hyper-local small-town elections and council decisions.
Democratic Distortion: Shifting the political balance away from the actual residents who must live with the consequences.
Erosion of Autonomy: Diluting the voices of local taxpayers by drowning them out with external commentary and political pressure.The “Out-of-Town” Disconnect
Zero Accountability: Campaigning for or against local measures without facing the financial or social fallout of those decisions.
Speculative Motivations: Using media platforms to steer development and zoning debates that may serve external business or real estate interests rather than community needs.
Preservation vs. Progress: Imposing rigid, personal ideologies on growing communities that desperately need to modernize their infrastructure and housing.
Weaponizing Local MediaFraming the Narrative: Utilizing independent news banners to masquerade as an organic, local voice in neighboring municipalities.
Manufactured Outrage: Stoking division among neighbors from the safety of a completely different zip code.
Displaced Priorities: Focusing intense scrutiny on neighboring town councils while avoiding the same level of accountability at home.
I am honored to be assulted by someone at the North Plains Chamber of Commerce- the email that sent this to the Herald is from them. W can see AI wrote this for you. Nothing we wrote is wrong. Your town is trying to put factories and commercial uses next to children and neighbothoods. And don’t lecture me about our story. We have every right to state opinions and facts about what some people in North Plains are trying to do to take advantage of others. And let’s not scream “outsider” when I have owned property in town and spent money and time there for decades. The outsiders are the Florida Land owners and partners, as well as others who own some of these lands your trying to grow onto. It’s becoming comical and if whomever wrote this wants to have a serious discussion there are many of us that need and want to do that.
Oh, this is from the North Plains Chamber of Commerce? That’s funny, because it sounds very similar to language used by a couple of other civic organizations: the Portland Metro Chamber and Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors—both of whom were notably active in North Plains during the last election despite it being a town in which members do “not actually reside or pay property taxes.”
And you know who else was a good buddy of the North Plains Chamber of Commerce during that cycle? The Oregonian editorial board! Sure, their newsroom is based on SW First Avenue and their publisher’s on the board of the Metro Chamber, but it seems as if the North Plains Chamber of Commerce was more than willing to flex its “not actually reside or pay property taxes” caveat for some much friendlier ink from the O.
Let’s make a deal NPCoC: Maybe when your half-effort commercial development doesn’t need the Hillsboro Little League, Hillsboro businesses like Amelia’s outposts, or duplicates of Hillsboro chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell to prop it up, we can talk about keeping people who do “not actually reside or pay property taxes.” But considering your burgh needs Hillsboro water and Hillsboro jobs to justify even modest expansion, maybe you should take a second and listen to people who’ve lived in a place where this scenario has already played out.
How do data centers create large amounts of traffic if they have very few employees? Just wondering.
Must’ve missed that “and related industries” part.
Thank you Jason for a civilized missive of your thoughts . .
As the proud owner of goats, as well as being an old goat myself. I am guessin that discussing issues by anyone is an interesting, educational, and good thing . . representing oneself to be someone you are not, whether by educational pedigree, or local cred is not . . how bout we all just learn to discuss issues as adults, rather than attacks on the decency, and immorality of folks . . .
This world is changing SO fast, and overwhelmingly threatening our ability to absorb those changes, without adding in the additional grief of personal agendas having nothing to do with issues . . I am NOT fond of anything that disturbs myself, the wife, or the goats any more than the next guy, but all this hostility and performative paranoia is childish, and not a whole lotta fun . . eventually we ARE ALL NEIGHBORS because we all get up in the morning, and must breathe the same air . . why the need to make an issue a weapon in a personal vendetta . . I have personally witnessed members of a volunteer fire department get all hostile with each other over WHO was proposing a new water cooler for the station . . and ditto, members of a Flower Club get all het up over which can opener to buy for the community kitchen . . . we are a silly group of animals . . and oughta knock it off . . the stakes are too high, for civilization, children, flowers, and other living things . . . .