Grain, hay, grass seed, strawberries -- everything seemed to prosper in the rich dark dirt when the Schaber family settled it in 1875.
The 100 acres Len Schaber and his kin own today are situated in an area Metro has earmarked for development sometime in the next 50 years, in what is known as the Stafford Basin, the Stafford Hamlet and the Stafford triangle.
Len Schaber shows on a map the location of the 100-acre property in the Borland area that has been in his family since the late 1800s.
Stafford occupies nearly 4,000 acres of undesignated land outside the urban growth boundary in unincorporated Clackamas County between Lake Oswego, West Linn and Tualatin.
At about 1,600, Stafford's population is approaching that of the entire county around the time Schaber's great-grandparents bought their plot.
Now the area is the target of a bill that would validate urban reserves previously adopted by Metro and Clackamas County but recently remanded by the Oregon department of Land Conservation and Development. The bill is sponsored by the Committee on Rural Communities, Land Use, and Water, chaired by Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem.
An urban reserves designation is a prerequisite for inclusion in Metro's urban growth boundary and eventual urban development.
The Clackamas County Business Alliance, Clackamas County Board of Commissioners and Stafford Land Owners Association have expressed support for HB 3211, while Metro and Tualatin, Lake Oswego and West Linn city councils are among those who oppose it.
Len Schaber grew up working on the family farm, watching it dwindle. These days, he only grows grass seed. Schaber is for the bill, but he's also for a compromise the Stafford Hamlet board has proposed.
HAMLET COMPROMISE
In Salem, the hamlet board is fronting a plan that would designate about 1,000 acres around Borland Road as urban reserve, but leave the rest of Stafford undesignated with proposed zoning that would allow most residential, farming and agricultural-business uses. About 85 percent of Stafford voters favored that arrangement in a September vote.
Large-lot landowners who boycotted that vote question whether it's really what most of the people in Stafford want. Contrary to the hamlet's dual-majority requirement for elections, September's vote included Hamlet residents 18 and older and Stafford property owners who live in or outside of the Hamlet. Renters of property within the Hamlet who were at least 18 were, therefore, eligible. For property held by a corporation, the corporation got one vote, regardless of how many individual owners had shares of the LLC.
Tracking Stafford
was introduced Feb. 27 by the Committee on Rural Communities, Land Use, and Water. It had well-attended public hearings March 19 and 24. The bill is scheduled for a committee work session starting at 1 p.m. April 21.
Molly Ellis, a conservationist who recently stepped down from her position as hamlet planning chair, said the vote was unorthodox.
Ellis lives along Southwest Bergis Road, shortly before it turns into Skyland Drive. She grows what vegetables she can in a small garden. Her house is robin's egg blue and surrounded by greenery.
Based on a box full of surveys, comment cards and maps drawn by 349 Stafford residents and collected during Ellis' last two years as planning chair, she thinks the compromise is still what most of them want -- but she doesn't believe legislation is the right way to get there.
Of those surveyed, 232 favored conservation and no change. The other 117 were for change or development of some kind.
At her home, Molly Ellis sorts through a box of surveys and maps detailing what Stafford residents want the hamlet to look like, if and where they want development to occur.
Only Borland property owners requested full-scale, mixed-use development, to the tune of Lake Oswego's Kruse Village. Other requests ranged from four residential units per acre to adding a single unit for sale or for a family member.
STAFFORD TRIANGLE
Stafford has been called a triangle, not just for its shape, but because it is a place where agreement tends to disappear. What started out as a consensus between Metro and Clackamas County now has the two pitted on opposing sides.
In 2010, Metro determined that the steep hillsides, grassy meadows and thickly clustered trees in Stafford should one day be developed. A resolution that year designated urban and rural reserves to be adopted by Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties.
In August 2012, the Land Conservation and Development Commission approved a revised version of Metro's resolution.
But when the neighboring cities of Tualatin and West Linn appealed that decision, what had seemed a done deal became a prolonged debate mired in statewide planning process.
The appellant cities, along with Lake Oswego, have said developing Stafford would cause them problems because none can cost-effectively provide public services such as transportation, water and sewer.
After the two cities and more than a dozen other parties appealed the LCDC decision, the Oregon Court of Appeals agreed in February 2014 that the cities' concerns should be addressed. That prompted a series of meetings, a blitz of letters and an unsuccessful attempt by the state land use board to resolve the issue.
Metro would still like to hash it out with the cities, Clackamas County, and Multnomah County, which has a small parcel of land caught up in the Stafford rulings.
Clackamas County is tired of the delays and wants the Legislature to settle the issue, as it did for Washington County in 2014.
Metro doesn't think that's a good idea, even though it signed off on the "grand bargain," which legislated Washington County's urban and rural reserves for the next 50 years.
Stafford, near the intersection of S.W. Bergis Road and Cornell Street.
Metro President Tom Hughes in a letter dated March 18 said the so-called "grand bargain" was an "extreme situation" when the regional government supported the Legislature making local land use decisions. If the Legislature stepped in a second time, it might become a pattern.
Moreover, the areas in question are not close to being ready for inclusion in the urban growth boundary, Hughes wrote.
Borland property owner Robert Fallow is calling Metro's position a broken promise. As a result, Fallow and his neighbors are in limbo, unable to move forward with their own planning, he said.
"Yet we still sit," Fallow testified, "not knowing to build or to plant."
-- Hannah Leone
503-294-4001; @HannahMLeone