After the historic vote this past week in North Plains, 72% of the people in the fine rural Oregon town had much to celebrate. So did supporters of preserving the world’s best farmland (Western Washington County) and those who want the people of Oregon to have a voice in their collective futures. We covered this issue for three months and did so in a way that looked at both sides of the argument but also pointed out how nasty Mayor Lenahan in North Plains and her Council were to the citizens who rose to fight their city more than doubling in size.
Victory For The People Of North Plains Comes Via Landslide Vote
Victory For The People Of North Plains Comes Via Landslide Vote
Post Vote, Mayor Lenahan spoke to the Hillsboro News-Times about the landslide drubbing she and her Council took. Despite saying in the Voters pamphlet that the City had a poll that 70 percent of the residents would support her plan, the result was the opposite, with a 72% to 28% ass-whooping. She indicated she wanted to extend the olive branch and come together in one statement, and another accused the opposition, who want “smart growth,” of “resorting to spreading misinformation.” This is how Lenahan operates- bullying, gaslighting, and attacking. She and her Council refused to meet with the opposing side or attend a growth forum ahead of the Vote, which featured scholarly reports from high-level planners. They were not available to defend their arguments. Either way, they were proven to be out of sync with their voters, and all will face elections to be replaced or recalled, it seems. Read her comments here-https://www.hillsboronewstimes.com/news/north-plains-voters-push-back-against-urban-growth-boundary-expansion/article_9c062e5e-17c3-11ef-85ec-735c1cec8256.html
No Requirement To Grow – The Big Lie Exposed
The Hillsboro-News Times had an information sidebar when they published the story above. This information was a high-level look at what laws are involved and what requirements Cities in Oregon must meet. Here is one excerpt:
Cities across Oregon must plan for 20 years in the future, according to North Plains City Manager Andy Varner. With a recently completed housing needs analysis and an economic opportunity analysis completed last year, the city says it has proven its need for new industrial land and space for housing.
Lenahan stated in that article:
“In the coming weeks, I will join my colleagues on the North Plains City Council to meet with our North Plains residents and make a plan for how we will meet our obligations under state law and do what is right for the future of North Plains,” Lenahan said.
So Varner and Mayor Teri Lenahan have continued to pound the drum that they are only trying to meet State law requirements. They know that is untrue, yet they continue to state it as a fact. It is not.
I pursued a 100% factual answer to this issue. Does a City like North Plains, outside the control of METRO, have to grow? Are there laws that state that and if so, what are they?
The 1000 Friends of Oregon provided this quote to the Herald, which came directly from Ethan Struckmeyer, the Housing Director of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. There is no higher authority in our state to handle this matter. What did he say?
“A city with a population below 10,000 outside of Portland Metro is not required to update their comprehensive plan, housing needs analysis, or economic opportunity analysis on a regular schedule. Cities with populations above 10,000 outside of Portland Metro need to update every 8 years, but cities below 10,000 are not obliged to update those plans – it is voluntary. This is due to HB 2003 of 2019. For confirmation, see that North Plains is not listed on the Housing Capacity Analysis Update Schedule for Oregon Cities attachment to OAR 660-008-0045 “
So, the facts are that the City of North Plains can stay the way it is. Anyone stating anything counter to that to forward a growth agenda is simply using a political tactic – tell a Big Lie, repeat, and tell it until people believe it. That point needs to be made ultimately clear. Growth is not to be had just because Realtors sit on the Council, landowners are schmoozing people, or someone wants to tax factories for revenue. Yet that is the reality playing itself out here.
The City has added hundreds of units in recent years. The opposition group, Friends of North Plains Smart Growth, advocates for growth. However, as Lenahan and their Council proposed, they will not support putting chemical plants, fabs, and data centers next to Atfalati Grade School and neighborhoods. They want utilities to be established and in-depth property planning considered. That is not what Lenahan was promoting at all.
Enter The Oregonian Editorial Board-
The steam had not yet stopped rising from Lenahan’s comments in the HNT when the Oregonian Editorial Board weighed in. In the section titled County at a Crossroad– the Board took some real liberties with their collective powers. Those included:
- Oregonian Editorial Board: After pointing out that Intel in Hillsboro is expanding, they opined: “North Plains is well situated to house the industrial, commercial, and residential growth that such investment will generate.”
- Our Response: Really? North Plains has no water supply. How will that work exactly? Is the Oregonian sitting on a few hundred million you desire to send to North Plains? Also, did you even look at the plan? About 20% of the 855 acres is housing. Your statement basically says growth is good—and we don’t know or care what the consequences are. Maybe speak to some of us from Hillsboro, and we will enlighten you.
- Oregonian Editorial Board: Regarding the referendum to allow the Voters to actually “Vote” on growth, the Board sided with Kotek: “rightly recognizing that such administrative decisions should be handled through the existing process that allows for public appeals”
- Our Response: You take issue with Judge Andy Irwin, who is highly respected in Washington County, and indict his decision to allow the vote while backing our Governor, who recently signed Senate Bill 4, which will enable her to grow Hillsboro’s Industrial Land base by 1,700 acres with the store of a pen, and NO APPEAL allowed. Do you think Kotek cares about the people of North Plains or Hillsboro? Maybe in Portland you feel comforted by her embraces, not out here. We rarely see her; when we do, it is nothing we need. She is more interested in converting high-value farmland to tech fabs to bathe in the cash generated via tax revenues in the Governor’s mansion. Meanwhile people in the West Valley suffer the traffic, bad air, chemical off-put, and loss of our farmlands and sense of place.
- Oregonian Editorial Board: Regarding our Housing conundrum and how this referendum somehow adds to it, they said, “The state has been underbuilding housing for decades, and our shortage of 140,000 units is driving up rents, home prices, homelessness and contributing to declines in the state population.” Really?
- Our Response: Again, you show you have not studied this issue but prefer to skim the surface and look smart. Great. Only 20% of the North Plains Growth would be for houses, leaving 684 acres for industry and jobs. You did realize that those jobs will consume more housing units than the remaining residential land in this package can support. Or did you not consider that? Why have you not written anything on how Hillsboro charges $60,000 dollars for a home with 1 bedroom to be built- or how permit fees across the state are crippling us. Also, building permits for a single-family home can take up to 8 months. Now that you’re housing Pros, what else would you like to add? Come on, folks, do your work. It’s called research and journalism.
I appreciate good opinions. I expect people to back them up, and if they give them, they need to take them. But the Oregonian allows no comments on any of its articles. We allow them, so jump in. Let’s have it out in the comments below because your Opinion was nothing more than drivel, unbacked by facts or data.
Bring it on!
The good people of North Plains shocked the world and the establishment. Now, the pushback comes via the largest media in the Region—for a little longer, I suppose. The more they react, the more you must have gouged them. Keep it going, you good people. causing that Good Trouble!
“Enter The Oregonian Editorial Board-” This is far from the first time OEB has popped off without fully investigating the issue and shutting out the opposition.
Back in 1998 a group of 4 of us visited the OEB. The editor at the time was the late Bob Caldwell. A rather pompous chap who had his board members in the room, David Rheinhard for one. Why you ask were we there? Well it was an election matter that would affect every Oregonian for years to come. CITE: https://pdflink.to/c37c1429/
Caldwell did not offer to expose our investigation, but told us we should sue the Oregon Secretary of State. We did!
Unfortunately the court in Salem declined our case stating that we were a day late in filing our complaint. This was caused by the SOS playing games and causing us to lose time and thus be late by a day!
This is being recalled now to educate our current neighbors of the shenanighans employed by the Oregonian, State and local governments to forge their agendas, Citizens be Damned!
Meet the Portland Metro Chamber, formerly and recently known as the Portland Business Alliance: https://portlandmetrochamber.com
Much like Sport Oregon, the Metro Chamber is a collective of somewhat-related businesses often tied together by the common thread of missing how things in Portland/the metro area/Oregon “used to be.” The definition of the latter varies by member, as there are the folks who miss the 2011-2019 tall bike/coffee/beer/food cart/bird-on-it Portlandia era, those who miss the straight-shootin’/Meier and Frank Shoppin’/Rose Parade attendin’/freeway drivin’ midcentury era and those who really wish we’d just log some damn trees again. The “Drugstore Cowboy”/Pearl-as-railyard/squatter’s paradise/heroin hole era and exclusion laws/Vanport Flooding/Albina blockbusting eras don’t typically merit mention.
Anyway, not only is the Oregonian Media Group an active member of this organization—their view from nowhere is definitely from somewhere—but OMG president Tom Maher sits on its board. So if that group decides that the price per square foot downtown isn’t quite where they’d like it to be for land acquisition—and there’s been a lot of downtown acquisition since the pandemic—their narrative that the whole place is a shithole and should be hollowed out and that where people should ACTUALLY live is by a fab plant in North Plains without any real water source, they’re going to beat that drum as loudly as the op-ed page will allow.
The common misconception about the Oregonian is that it has a political leaning. It does not. It doesn’t function well as an urban progressive or liberal platform, a suburban conservative paper or a statewide libertarian/contrarian voice: More so than Oregon Business or the Portland Business Journal, which actually cover the area’s businesses, the Oregonian serves as the house organ for local business interests. Its old guard had become accustomed to having a seat at the table in civic discourse and influencing the direction of the region.
No longer possessing the resources to affect those changes through journalism, it simply regurgitates the polls and press releases forwarded to it by the Chamber and its associates. I would imagine that having their plans for an urban island just beyond the Metro borders rebuffed by the people who happen to live and farm there must’ve stung both the Chamber and what remains of the Oregonian editorial board—”Wrong? Us? No. Can’t be. Can it?”
The success of projects like the doubling of North Plains relies on the officials and landowners of that area acting like the rubes the city folk envision them to be. Like North Plains’ mayor, they should be simply overjoyed that anyone even realizes they exist, never mind wants to build in their lil’ ol’ town. That kind of “how can we help ya?” boosterism is what made Hillsboro the ill-planned polyglot it is today, and it’s all a group like the chamber needs: Someone to pay them for projects that not only won’t affect them, but might clear out some of the undesirables so they can start wooing some real money into that Ritz-Carlton.
As the Oregonian locks more content behind the paywall and reduces the printing schedule, its influence in the state wanes. Even before then, however, people learned to take its board’s recommendations with a heavy lump of Nestucca Bay salt. All that op-ed does is remind the Chamber that they don’t have the votes out here.
The real writer has just entered the room. Man, I think I have the absolute makings of a movie script in your passage, my friend. You nailed it. I imagine they perhaps heard of my disdain for their rag papers “opinions” and are carving our a spot for me along the sea wall- at the bottom. They really have lost their way…the fact that a hack like me can garner thousands of views on articles with no financial support or help of any kind beyond my Bennett’s Coffee says it all. They have no idea of what has happened to them, their world, or the City they believe they built.
‘Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong – they just don’t know when to stop.
Margaret MacMillan”
When they say it’s about “growth,” ask them to define the term. North Plains discovering that industrial “growth” and “development” don’t always mean “jobs.” https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2024/06/semiconductor-equipment-company-asml-will-open-big-new-oregon-warehouse-next-year.html