On May 21st, 2024, the election on growth in North Plains will go down. The Herald has been following this story for some time now. You can catch up on this fascinating story, which has pitted local citizens and farmers against the town’s Mayor and City Council, by clicking here https://hillsboroherald.com/tag/north-plains/. Measure 34-327 is a local referendum brought by the people of North Plains to force a vote on the growth of their city by over 100% in size, approximately 855 acres of additional land. Fair enough, that is how America works.
What happened next has been both unpredictable and wild. First, to stop the people of North Plains from having a say in the future of their town, State leaders, reacting to the North Plains Mayor and Council, filed a special House Bill to not only stop North Plains citizens from voting but to make sure no town in Oregon could ever vote on growth again. This effectively means that Big Brother and Big Sister in Salem will force towns to grow, even if the local people don’t want it. The Oregonian covered House Bill 4026-1, which was championed by Democratic Senator Janeen Sollman of Hillsboro, who, in this letter to the Senate, makes it clear that people do not have the right to Vote on growth issues but rather should lawyer up and sue if they don’t like what their leaders want. Sollman may be a Democrat, but her actions in the past few years have shown she is not concerned about land use or how the environment or people are affected. Her office time shows she has values that depart from her party’s major agenda items. With her leadership, House Bill 4026-1 passed in a rush, ensuring this upcoming vote won’t matter.
The Portland Association of Realtors entered the fray last month, donating up to $60,000 to sway the vote to a Yes For Growth decision. The Herald spoke to PMAR seeking meeting minutes and additional information from the non-profit but has been unable to obtain any records so far. Using that money, the Yes campaign has poured money into a Portland agency specializing in swaying public opinion – Swift Public Affairs. In speaking with residents of North Plains, the money has hit their doorsteps and mailboxes repeatedly-daily in fact, to get the outcome.
There are a lot of questions arising from the streets and fields of this beautiful small town at this point:
- Why is PMAR pouring all this money into a fight like this?
- If the Vote won’t matter, thanks to Tina Kotek and Senator Sollman’s championing House Bill 4026-1, why spend any money?
- Why did the City of North Plains and its lawyer, Chris Crean, take legal action in Washington County to block the Vote altogether?
- Is there something much bigger going on here? Reports to the Herald indicate that a large Industrial user has land options in this contested growth area. That would explain why the North Plains Mayor, the Council, and Sollman would trample all over their own people.
- The vote will happen on May 21st, 2024, thanks to Washington County Judge Andy Irwin, who refused to allow North Plains and Crean to block it from happening. That is a man doing his job.
- Will North Plains leaders sue the Washington County elections division to stop the count or reporting of this vote?
God, what a mess. While the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors was pouring cash all over this matter., and SWIFT was out using its mind-bending expertise on voters, the Friends of North Plains Smart Growth was having a tractor parade down the streets of the town and a free concert. The event held last weekend drew hundreds of people and was as small-town America as anything seen in recent years.
Votes, growth, lawyers, Senators, Realtors, money, Mayors- all have coalesced to create a very important and unprecedented vote in this small Oregon town. It is a David vs. Goliath story and one we should all ponder and follow. The outcome will be very important.
Here is a message sent out to the supporters of the Friends of North Plains Smart Growth today:
- Say the expansion is “modest” when North Plains would grow the city by 2.2 times – the largest expansion by percentage in Oregon history
- Claim that North Plains will retain its small town charm, when a major transportation arterial will need to be built through the center of town to connect hundreds of acres of what the city calls “North Hillsboro style development” (read data centers and warehouses) to the east and west.
- Claim that the expansion is required, when cities of populations under 10,000 only have to do periodic review – the state didn’t require it to do two Economic Opportunity Analyses in a period of just 6 years that requested more land each time. And the state never required it to double in size. Nothing stops North Plains from coming back to the table to develop a more realistic plan with resident involvement.
- Imagine that the city can invite data centers and warehouses that command huge tax breaks and massive amounts of water and energy without increasing taxes, when the city has not done a study of how much expansion will cost or how to pay. A land use planner found that transportation and water alone will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The city has no plan for who will pay for this.
This is obviously a slanted story. News reporting should use the good and bad of both sides leaving the reader to decide for themselves. I am disappointed that this article is so biased.
Hello Herbert,
This story is part of a Column I write. This story is part of the “The Real Story” in which the title/graphic clearly states it to be so. Perhaps you need a definition of what a Column is? This is on repsected dource on the matter. https://www.thestatehousefile.com/commentary/the-differences-between-articles-editorials-and-columns/article_0d6c0170-4f00-11ec-bf86-a381c3701056.html#:~:text=But%20a%20column%20is%20the,publication%20believes%20is%20worth%20publishing.
Quote: “A column is similar to an editorial in that it too is expressing an opinion. But a column is the opinion or the viewpoint of the individual writing it. It does not represent the viewpoint of the publication itself, just one perspective that the publication believes is worth publishing.”
I write columns to provokle thoughts, to make people considering the opposing foces and what their motivations might be. I see you might be a local citizen and that perhaps you are a retired military officer? If so, I want to thank you, Sir, for your service to our great Nation. A Nation built on opposing ideas and freedom of speech. Thank you, if I am correct, for helping to provide the freedom under which I, the Smart Growth, and the Yes on Growth factions are able to express themselves.
Keep commenting- I would like to hear more about your opinion on the matter since I offered mine.
Do you believe the town people of North Plains should be silenced, Sir? Do you approve of the City Council and Mayor using your public money to pay their attorney to file a Court injunction to silence the people? Do you support reported use of foul language by the City attorney towards the matter and the Judge once he was told that an injuntion was denied?
I know myself and others want to hear open debate. That was offered to the Mayor, the Senator, the Council, and all sides at an event they were invited to two weeks back. They did not show up.
What is your take, Sir?
Thank you-
Dirk
Keep up the good work. I recommend that you check out Strong Towns if you haven’t already. They are all about how cities make bad decisions under the guise of economic development. But it’s always a bad decision for the long-term.
Aren’t you directly related to one of the Mayor’s best friends? There are a lot of facts here plain and simple.
Herbert’s wife is the head of the “Yes for North Plains” campaign. You can see her name in the donation list.
Excuse me, not wife—either his daughter or other relation. Sorry, I didn’t know how to edit my comment.
Please explain the good in the City’s land decision Herb. Explain what is good about paving over the Class 1 soils found only in a very few places in the world.
“News reporting should use the good and bad of both sides leaving the reader to decide for themselves.”
I love when the local Redditariat—after weeks of saying how little they care for the Herald’s “writing style”—comes into the comments with all the journalism knowledge of a bale of fescue.
That group calling this a “NIMBY” publication—and, therefore, calling farms “backyards”—explains why columns like this one exist. That group not knowing what constitutes “good soil” and simply speculating what that term might mean from the confines of their sod-ensconced eighth of an acre explains exactly why the farmers don’t value their opinions. That group telling anyone who’ll listen that the people against North Plains expansion “aren’t even from North Plains”—indicating that they have no idea where that extra land comes from or who lives and works on it—makes it clear why adults have grabbed the mic.
Herb, we all wish you a long and continued retirement.
When are people going to wake up and realize that many of these houses will be owned by companies. They will use them like Air BNB’s and make alot more money than if they rent them. They are houses with no neighbors, have nothing vested in the community and usually have too many cars for the house sucking up street parking and cluttering up the neighborhood – which can be hazardous especially now that street parking is so limited in the new developments. You can thank our currect and past governor for pushing this through.
The law change that allows companies to buy houses in our neighborhoods has drove the price of a house up to the point that most of the people in the current generation will never be able to afford a house with both parents working.
What is happening is North Plains is happening in Forest Grove too… Insufficient infrastructure from roads to schools that will not be able to handle the growth and LOTS of farm land being used irresponsiblly.
Kotek only sees more TAX money coming in…..
Before Brown or Kotek acted they had to be educated by local people like Sollman, Callaway, Lenahan, and city councils. None of these people give a damn about the soil quality. They were all elected by out of state, imported folks with their Socialist – Liberal persuasions.
None of these elected officials have an ounce of integrity…only greed. They are afraid to face common sense or decency. Just look at their President…”Set it up”…….🤣
Kate only sees money in her pocket. These industrial users and mega builders don’t pay taxes and don’t build infrastructure. That bill left for the midclass tax payer to foot..
After 3 Covid forced years living in Mississippi – a state controlled by an aristocracy that aims to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer (and it is quite successful in that regard) I was so looking forward to returning to a democracy in beautiful Washington County. Alas, I find my adopted city of Hillsboro to have a city council that uses various ploys to deprive its commissions and citizens of input into the decision to purchase a baseball stadium. And now, the city council of North Plains has deemed it best to attempt to deprive its citizens of input into how its city is to grow – and we’re not talking about some little zoning change. This is a huge change and makes one wonder if the making of money is the main motivation behind all of this. It should be noted that only four House Democrats voted no on this so called emergency bill to prevent the citizens from voting and two of them were Nathan Sosa representing Hillsboro and Susan McLain representing Forest Grove. I will support them in the next election and certainly not Senator Sollman.