We are following up on our August 24 substack with a couple of items and invites.

First, please join Strong Towns and partners Farmland First and Friends of Smart Growth for an informational event about the city’s past and present efforts to grow unsustainably, and what smart growth could look and feel like. Everyone is welcome:

• When: Thursday, September 25, from 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

• Where: The Last Waterin’ Hole, 31594 NW Commercial St, North Plains

• RSVP to strongtownsnp@gmail.com

We also welcome you to come to the next two City Council meetings on Monday, September 15 and Tuesday, September 16 and encourage you to give written or verbal comments.

• When: Both meetings start with Work Sessions at 6pm and Public Comment at 7:10pm.

  • Monday, September 15, includes a vote on whether to initiate a UGB expansion process and a review the City Manager

  • Tuesday, September 16, to vote on a new Mayor

• Where: On Zoom or at Jessie Mays Community Hall & Park, 30975 NW Hillcrest St

• How to Comment

  • Written comment emailed in advance (ASAP) to info@northplains.gov.

  • Zoom Comment: You must pre-register by emailing the City Recorder at info@northplains.gov before 3:00 pm the day of the meeting. They ask for the email to provide your name, address, email, phone, and a general topic.

  • In Person Comment: Sign up by filling out a yellow card when you arrive.

As many of you know, a referendum of the voters in May 2024 overwhelmingly rejected the city’s proposal for the biggest UGB expansion by percentage in state history. It would have more than doubled North Plains’ size - adding 855 acres of North Hillsboro-style data centers and warehouses plus expensive housing, while costing at least $100 million for infrastructure. It seems that some in the city want to restart a very similar plan - based on the same documents and still nearly doubling the size of the city.

Given that, here are things you might want to comment on or ask you City Councilors about:

Why is the city spending a lot of money on a Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) expansion proposal that’s very similar to the last one without meaningful public input?

Here are some facts that you might mention in your comment:

• City staff urged the Planning Commission to initiate the UGB expansion without going through City Council, which is legal, but could hide the process from Council and the public until it feels like it’s too late to make a change.

• Staff and attorney are calling the UGB expansion by the generic term “comprehensive plan amendment,” which could make the public pay less attention.

• Staff have stated several different and large acreages, including 500 or 649, without justification for either one. It makes no sense to recommend a size without first publicly identifying the goals.

• The expansion proposal is not based on meaningful public engagement. The prior council formed a “ReLook” committee that included many landowners and developers who have a vested interest in sprawl. The committee never made a formal recommendation, but staff incorrectly claimed that the committee’s starting point for discussion (500 acres) was its final decision.

• The city continues to pay expensive attorney fees for UGB expansion, when it could be directing those funds towards public safety, the Urban Renewal Area, and other needed projects inside our current UGB. We understand the city plans to re-open a lawsuit to defend the city's now outdated Housing Needs Analysis (HNA). The HNA was based on an old population forecast that projected North Plains would double in size. A new population forecast estimates much more modest growth, but the city is attempting to grandfather in the outdated and now inaccurate forecast, which would force it to grow larger (and more expensively) than it needs to. It’s also very likely that the city will lose the lawsuit: the City Attorney has lost every time he’s brought a lawsuit on the UGB and the city has paid tens of thousands of dollars for his time.

• City staff claim that massive expansion is necessary to keep a transportation grant that it never qualified for, that is invalid because former Mayor Teri Lenihan signed it in secrecy without a resolution from the city, and that staff have neglected until now when there’s not enough time for good community engagement or analysis. This isn’t the only money available for planning - just last month the city failed to apply for a planning grant that it qualified for. And it’s nonsense to say that, in order to not lose a $200,000 grant, the city must use that money to hastily plan an unnecessary and unpopular expansion that will cost at least $100 million for infrastructure alone.

Where is the city’s 2021 audit, why have the 2022-2024 audits not been filed, and how can we ensure that the city’s finances are safe?

North Plains is not ready to expand, especially on an expedited timeline, considering it can't manage the basics of financial reporting or proper checks and balances. The city does not have audits, a basic state requirement for all cities, for the last four years. The lack of fiscal accountability is especially concerning here, since we estimate that the city has paid roughly $1 million for UGB planning over that time period.

Please do not appoint someone to the City Council who supported the last unwise UGB expansion.

Five candidates have nominated themselves to become mayor. One of them, Russ Sheldon, lost in the last election. As a former City Councilor, Russ strongly supported the massive UGB expansion and stated that he believed that those who didn’t vote supported his vision for the city - claiming victory when his pro-massive growth campaign lost the election by more than 40 percentage points. . We ask the City Council to appoint someone to Mayor who will respect the undeniable vote of North Plains residents to prevent an unnecessarily large UGB expansion, and who will focus city resources on improving our lives and businesses while supporting necessary housing and economic development that truly benefits North Plains residents and surrounding community members.

We hope to see you soon! Thank you for considering sharing your thoughts with the City Council, and please let us know if you have questions about the comments you wish to give.

Most importantly, THANK YOU for being part of the community.

Friends of Smart Growth

It’s been a while since we last wrote, so there’s a lot to report. We’ve been following the city’s actions, giving public comments, and hoping that city staff and officials would take the will of the people to heart. Unfortunately, it seems that the city is preparing to force a very similar expansion on its residents. Unless we stop it. At the bottom, see how you can raise your voice and come to Strong Towns’ meeting on Thursday, 9/25, 6:30-8:00 pm at The Last Waterin’ Hole.

As a recap, in June of 2023, the former North Plains City Council voted on an ordinance to more than double North Plains’ size, primarily for data centers, warehouses, and expensive homes. It was a real estate development plan, instead of a community-based, managed growth plan, and would have primarily benefited developers and landowners while leaving residents with huge infrastructure costs. In May of 2024, the people of North Plains voted 72-to-28 percent to overturn this expansion ordinance. Then in November, 2024, North Plains voters elected a Mayor and 3 Councilors who promised government transparency, fiscal responsibility, and to only vote for an expansion if it is reasonable and thoroughly vetted with the public.

Since then, a lot has happened.

1) Councilors Might Appoint a Mayor Who Helped Orchestrate the Big UGB Expansion: Mayor Goodwin had to step down due to health issues, so the city began a process to appoint her replacement. They issued a request for applications, but have yet to hold public interviews. We learned that Russ Sheldon (former City Councilor, UGB expansion booster, and failed Mayoral Candidate) nominated himself for Mayor. When he was a City Councilor, Mr. Sheldon denounced the referendum results, claimed that everyone who did not vote in the election would have supported the expansion, and said he wished to proceed with an expansion anyway. It is not yet known when the council will vote to appoint a new Mayor or what the process is. What we do know is this: to use a process that lacks public participation to appoint a man who lost his last election and who (while in office) publicly denounced the will of the people and claimed he would move forward in spite of their vote would be a breach of democratic principles and an insult to the community. Given this, City Council should reject Mr. Sheldon’s nomination or expect a swift recall campaign if they appoint Mr. Sheldon as Mayor.

2) City Staff are Still Pushing Through an Excessively Huge UGB Expansion: After losing the referendum, City Council (including Mr. Sheldon) appointed a “Relook” Committee that had a vague charge and was likely designed to make it appear that the city was engaging the public around a future Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) expansion. The committee was heavily stacked with UGB-expansion supporters, including some individuals and consultants who would make a lot of money if their land or the land they represented was brought into the UGB. The Relook Committee used methods that are not used in good planning, like evaluating where to expand and how much land to take without first identifying the city’s goals and how to achieve them. The Relook Committee did not vote on a final map. Instead, they agreed that a map expanding the city by 500 acres could be a starting point for a future conversation. They never had a final meeting. Yet city staff have since incorrectly stated that the Relook Committee recommended a 500-acre map to City Council, and that the city should actually expand by more than that – 649 acres, or 76% of the size of the original expansion and more than doubling the size of North Plains today. City staff also incorrectly claim that the Planning Commission can start the planning for this excessive UGB instead of City Council. And the city continues to pay to be represented by the same attorney who oversaw the original UGB expansion and was called out by a state agency for using “incorrect facts” to try to push the previous expansion at the county.

Here are a few more reasons to be very suspicious of this UGB expansion proposal:

• The city is basing this expansion proposal on old population growth projections that have since been reduced by half. North Plains is trying to grandfather in these old and inaccurate numbers so that they can claim more land. As a result, land speculators and developers would increase their profits.

• The proposal’s based on an old economic study that plans for data centers, warehouses, and a semiconductor factory, despite North Plains being outside of Metro, and despite a dramatic decline in neighboring Hillsboro’s semiconductor industry.

• The city has spent at least $850,000 that we know of (but likely closer to $1 million including attorney fees, etc.) to plan for this excessive expansion that voters rejected. As a city with a population under 10,000, this planning was not required by law. Instead, the city could have spent much less than $100,000 and used a law designed for small cities like North Plains to plan for growth.

• The city has tried time and again to overturn the referendum and the will of the people. The city supported legislation that tried to invalidate voter referenda on UGB expansions. A judge found that legislation to be unconstitutional and our referendum was upheld. But despite the referendum vote, the court decision, Mayor Goodwin’s request for the city to create a plan to rescind the UGB ordinance, and more, the city has refused to rescind the ordinance that authorized the first massive UGB expansion.

• Former Mayor Lenahan lobbied the Governor’s office to extend the deadline for a state grant to plan for development in the 855-acres in August 2024, soon after the voters rejected the expansion. Mayor Lenahan did not have the authority to sign this contract without a city resolution, and the city doesn’t qualify for the grant – the funds can only be used to plan inside an existing UGB. On the same day the Mayor signed that extension, the city’s consultant set up the structure for the “Relook” Committee. Now, city staff repeatedly claim that they need to expand the city or else they’ll lose this $200,000 grant. But it is misleading to say that you need to plan for a multi-million dollar expansion that the residents rejected in order to hold on to $200,000 that you never qualified for.

Add to this the fact that the City Manager:

1. Has no prior work experience working in city administration; his career was spent primarily as a consultant to developers

2. Was appointed by the prior Council and given unrestricted authority to manage the council’s agenda and limit their involvement in governing issues. That was right before the Mayor and Sheldon left office,

3. Was the architect of the last UGB expansion and has been pushing the new 649-acre expansion,

4. Failed to ensure a third-party audit of the city’s finances for the last 3 years, and

5. Has not gotten a surety bond to protect the city from fraud, despite being asked to do so by the Council many times in the last 9 months.

In a nutshell, things are not going well in North Plains. But we are organizing to ensure that your next Mayor is responsive to your wishes, that the same UGB expansion isn’t forced on you, and that your city government uses your tax dollars responsibly. You will be receiving more frequent (and shorter!) emails from us for the foreseeable future. For now…

Our Simple Asks:

1) Please reach out to your City Councilors today to demand the following:

• Do not appoint Russ Sheldon, someone who lost in the last election and who unabashedly supports a similar UGB expansion to what we overwhelmingly voted down.

• Do not expand the UGB like this. A UGB should not be expanded: without meaningful public engagement, if it’s based on expired information, if a referendum of the people voted down a very similar expansion, and if it’s approved through back channels.

Here are the emails to send a message to: info@northplains.gov, Aaron.dumbrow@northplains.gov, James.fage@northplains.gov, Mandy.hagedorn@northplains.gov, Michele.mccall-wallace@northplains.gov, Trista.papen@northplains.gov, Katie.reding@northplains.gov.

2) Please join us for the next City Council meeting. It’s not posted, but we believe it will be Tuesday, September 2 starting at 7pm, with public comment at 7:10pm. You can speak during public comment, or just come and support. To give comments on Zoom, you must request this by email to the City Recorder before 3:00 pm on the day of the meeting: info@northplains.gov. You can also send your written comments before the meeting to info@northplains.gov.

3) Please come to the community meeting being held by Strong Towns. It will be on Thursday, September 25, from 6:30-8pm at The Last Waterin’ Hole (31594 NW Commercial St., North Plains). RSVP to strongtownsnp@gmail.com.

4) Let us know if you have social media, graphic design, or communications expertise that you’d like to volunteer.

More to come… Thank you for your partnership in this work. We are a small and mighty team of volunteers and we cannot do this work without you.

In gratitude,

All of us at Friends of Smart Growth

I hope you are all well and I apologize for taking a while to get to this update. It’s not due to a lack of news, just a lack of time to get it written up!

The news is mixed. Certainly there has been real progress by our newly elected officials, especially to the budget that will result in real and visible change in the city. Our read of the budget is that it invests in the city itself rather than tucking tax dollars into ballooning savings accounts to build infrastructure for a landscape of data centers and Hillsboro like development.

At the same time we’re seeing push back, stalling, and furtive attempts to forward the UGB plans with little input from the citizens and at a speed that ensures no lessons will be incorporated from the last time around.

And worse yet, we’re seeing some in the city who are set on a political show of censuring the mayor on thin and unsupported charges - apparently in an attempt to find a way to overturn the repeated losses for massive UGB expansion at the ballot box with parliamentary politics that cost the city time and money but gain it nothing. We’ll start with that since it is imminent, but read on to the end to see some of the real progress that’s being made by the new councilors as well!

This Monday’s city council agenda is set to include a fight over censuring Mayor Goodwin for charges that haven’t been released to the public - they were read from a script but cannot be found in any board agenda or minutes. The council seems to be proposing to censure the Mayor on two counts: 1) for asking if someone could testify at a city council meeting via Zoom and 2) for asking for more outreach and public engagement before the city cuts down the flowering plum trees around Jessie Mays.

The facts of these charges seem to be in question. Eyewitnesses observed a very different interaction than the one described in the verbal censure for count 1, but, as far as the public knows, there has been no actual investigation of these charges. And the justifications for the censure are tenuous at best; it is unclear how the city could justify censuring someone for asking for the public to be allowed to weigh in on a plan that was only 60% complete and that would remove trees in the city’s main park. And if someone could be censured for voting No on any item, why would that item be up for a vote in the first place?

Further, even if some points of the many pages of council rules that were just posted online as an independent document for the first time this week are broken (and they are technically violated by a few councilors at almost every meeting) this sort of fighting just prevents the council from doing its work. We think this is exactly the point. As more progress is made in bringing the city back to spending on its current residents and UGB visions are brought in line with reality, those who benefit from massive expansion are trying to stall and distract.

The exiting city council actually passed a slew of new rules in their final meeting in office that ceded great deference to the City Manager and seemed designed to tee up future censures. And some individuals aligned with former city councilors have been hinting at censure and even a recall of The Four city councilors since before the new councilors took office. It seems to the outside observer that political interests set the table for censuring the new councilors and were just looking for a justification - no matter how feeble.

These sorts of censure fights have been used recently in Oregon to stall city councils and prevent change from candidates who were elected to make changes. In at least two cases, Waldport and Umatilla, the city ended up facing lawsuits and the turmoil has led to a lot of theater and very little governing. While people can have real and honest disagreements over how open the city should be to testimony and how it should engage residents, using censure to intimidate newly elected officials is not a way to settle those disagreements. At best, it’s a silly distraction that should stop so the council can get on with the real work - passing a budget, planning for growth that meets residents’ needs, and the many other tasks of elected officials. At worst the city, by applying its own rules unevenly, by identifying specific staff in their complaint against the mayor, and by potentially using a public process as a tool for political infighting, is opening the city itself up to complaints and even litigation.

This is the pattern we’ve seen since the new councilors have been sworn in. Meeting agendas have very little substance and big issues are worked out behind the scenes to be presented to the elected officials with little time to discuss and with their backs to a deadline. A lot of time and energy is spent on relatively minor fights and unfounded charges are leveled in place of real work being done. We worry that this is also how future UGB planning would go - quietly behind the scenes and presented as a complete (and expensive) package to the decision makers with no room for working out a better plan. Those who disagree would be attacked personally rather than based on the facts and reasoning. It’s not a path that has been successful in the city in the past and we’re unsure why it would work in the future.

If you have a few minutes before Monday 6/16/25 at 3:00 PM, please e-mail testimony to the council via the city recorder (info@northplains.org) asking that the city focus on the real work of governing and stop trying to litigate minor rule violations. Ask them to focus on governing and not the kind of infighting that makes mountains out of molehills when we have real problems to deal with.

But, before you get too down on politics and the city, there is good news too. The budget that passed the budget committee and is headed to the council seems to be a real improvement over the previous two year budget.

The council passed a set of guiding principles, called “The Pillars”, that invest in the current city and discourage massive UGB expansion. The city staff heard that directive and presented a budget that really does seem to invest in the current city. Over the last two years, the city has tucked away massive amounts of system development charges paid by developers into accounts that seemed poised to be spent to pay those same developers back with infrastructure meant to bring new land into the city. The city, while claiming it couldn’t invest in parks or even cut the grass and empty the trash, went on a hiring spree of upper level managers, ending up with more director level staff than cities with twice the staff as North Plains. And, of course, the city spent hundreds of thousands on consultants and plans for expansion that the citizens didn’t want.

But this budget appears to be more of a return to the kind of budget and spending needed to run a small city and invest in its future. There is a list of projects that the development funds will be spent on - they are all inside the city. There is renewed investment in front line services such as public works and, possibly, public safety. One director level position was cut entirely and another reduced from director to manager, putting the city more inline with what other cities its size spend on management. And, while some funding might appear from outside the city or in unallocated tax revenues, there seems to be very little money spent on UGB expansion.

While we think the budget could be better and we worry that the underestimate on tax revenue might leave unappropriated money that could be used in other ways, this is real progress and a win for the newly elected councilors who campaigned on just this issue. We hope the city can drop the distractions and focus on the real work and positive change that it has now shown it can make.

Thanks everyone! We appreciate the support. We’re happy to see some real victories since the last e-mail but we’re staying watchful and we’ll keep you informed too!

This is the second in a series of e-mails outlining what is happening in North Plains and what steps need to happen to make sure we don't end up with massive expansion despite voting it down twice. This one focuses on the city staff's attempt to make its own mandate for expansion after the state told them that expansion is entirely up to the city and its residents. And a logistics note here: I apologize for sending this e-mail to many of you twice - it seems we are having some issues with getting the substack out so I am sending this one both traditionally and through substack - if you want to stay up to date, it's best to subscribe to the substack!

The issue:

This Monday, the 5th, the city council will discuss the UGB again. They need support - and perhaps a bit of pressure to remember how the citizens voted. Please remind them that residents want to be proactively involved in the planning for and deciding on a new UGB expansion.

The most important issue right now is the city's backdoor attempt to force an expansion. North Plains is currently engaged in a lawsuit before the Land Use Board of Appeals to have their Housing Needs Analysis (HNA) approved despite it being part of the UGB package rejected by the voters and despite the fact that having it approved would force North Plains to expand to meet that housing need. The City falsely claimed a state mandate for expansion last May, a year later they appear to be trying to create their own - at taxpayer expense. Though the council is likely to have a wider ranging discussion, it is important they stop the city staff's attempt to predetermine a UGB expansion.

What you can do this week:

If you can, attend the meeting on zoom or in person at Jessie Mays, 7:00 PM. If you plan to testify on zoom, you need to register by 3:00 PM the day of the meeting with the city recorder: info@northplains.gov.

Please contact your council. You can just let them know you don't want a mandate or to pay for a lawsuit that would result in the citizens, and council, being cut out of an important part of any future UBG planning. You're welcome to use our template below our send your own!

Here's a template and who to send it to:

TO: info@northplains.gov, Ariel.goodwin@northplains.gov, Aaron.dumbrow@northplains.gov, James.fage@northplains.gov, Mandy.hagedorn@northplains.gov, Michele.mccall-wallace@northplains.gov, Trista.papen@northplains.gov, Katie.reding@northplains.gov

CC: citymanager@northplains.gov, lori.lesmeister@northplains.gov

Template to send before the next Council meeting:

Dear Mayor Goodwin and City Council,

I see that the UGB is again on your agenda for the next meeting. As you know, the last time this was put to a vote, the city resoundingly rejected massive expansion and did so with a good understanding of what we wanted. While it makes sense for the city to reach out to the community in an inclusive way to find out what type of expansion we might want, this work hasn’t been done yet. And, unfortunately, it is obvious that some in the city are still working toward a very large expansion and spending your tax dollars to do so.

Instead of continuing down the path of expansion here’s what residents would like to see from your UGB discussion:

• An end to the court case trying to establish your outdated Housing Needs Analysis as a state mandate. Use accurate data and let us choose how much housing we want and when we want to expand.

• An agreement that the next biennial budget will focus on services for the city residents of the current UGB - not focus on planning and building for future growth. This means earmarking some of our large savings for projects that benefit all of us rather than helping pave the way for future development that enriches only a few out of towners. This means shifting away from a staff that is focused on planning and implementing unprecedented change to focusing on the things we know we need and know how to do - sidewalks, parks, public works, and public safety.

• We’d like to see an agreement that, while resident-directed growth is still on the table, things like data centers and Amazon warehouses (like those being built just down Jackson School Road) are not. Consider directing staff or the planning commission to draft codes that prohibit such uses to help us better identify the kind of economic development we want.

Thank you for your time and service,

The details:

This is a complicated issue that has been in the works, mostly behind the scenes, for the last few months. It hinges on the fact that when the citizens voted no on the UGB they left the HNA in place as it was never referred to the ballot. The state land use agency (the DLCD) agreed to let North Plains use the HNA in a future UGB expansion if they wanted. But rather than simply saying thank you and returning to the citizens to see if that's what folks wanted, the city went to a different state agency (the Land Use Board of Appeals) to have the HNA accepted and to make it binding on North Plains. If that were to happen, the DLCD has told us that North Plains would then have to expand to stay in compliance with state law - in other words, North Plains executive staff are seeking their own mandate to expand. What is most frustrating is that this bloated HNA is twice the size of what the most recent state population numbers say the city needs. And the city manager claims that the reason North Plains is facing a revenue short fall in the future is that it has too much housing!

The city staff have not refuted this reasoning and have nor have they provided their own memo explaining why this is happening or what they believe the results will be. Instead they insist, again without analysis or data, that new state laws would force greater density if they were to restart the process. Fortunately, we did read the laws, talk to the state agencies, and people involved in crafting the new housing laws and found that at its size, North Plains is exempt from the stringent Housing Production Strategies and has a lot of leeway in determining how to incorporate density. And, the densities mandated by the state are almost identical to the numbers called for in the HNA the city staff are trying to force through right now.

The city needs to be guided by a professional staff who understand the laws and are willing to learn and engage in open debate as they reconsider the UGB. We can't trust the same group that insisted on false mandates and used "incorrect facts" (as they were told in a formal letter from the state) if it is unwilling to carefully document how it has come to its current conclusions. We can't trust the same lawyer who lobbied to take away the city's right to vote on the referendum to lobby to see a HNA approved in an irregular process. It's doubly suspicious as no one informed the current council that the city was even engaged in such action before the lawsuit until our group brought it up in public testimony. In fact, when the new council first brought up stopping UGB expansion, the city manager told them there was no spending on the UGB currently - despite the city at that time paying a lawyer to litigate two cases that would forward the UGB each with low chances of success. Since that point, it seems that the city is using a state grant to pay the same consultants as last time around to work on the UGB planning.

Below is our full analysis, submitted to council, about the HNA and why it makes sense to do a new one with a smaller likely outcome. It is a bit technical but explains the issue more in depth for anyone who wants to dive in.

Thanks again everyone! A quick e-mail to your councilors could make a lot of difference over the next few weeks. And it's much appreciated!

On the HNA.

An analysis of North Plains’ options for HNAs, the OHNA, and a recommendation by Friends of North Plains Smart Growth.

Overview:

In September of 2023 the North Plains City Council passed ordinance 489 as part of a UGB package including both that and the UGB ordinance, 490. While 490 was referred to the ballot in May of 2024 and defeated by a large majority of the voters in that election, 489 was left unrescinded. It is currently adopted by council but not yet considered or acknowledged by the DLCD. However, according to North Plains staff, DLCD has agreed to allow the HNA to be grandfathered in should a new UGB ordinance reach them. However, since the HNA was originally passed, new data has significantly decreased the projected population growth of North Plains. Further, the original HNA is currently the subject of a court case.

Complicating this picture, Oregon has passed a state level Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (OHNA) that supersedes some parts of the current HNA process. However, the rules are only partly finalized and not yet in effect, and cities under 10,000 are exempted from the more rigorous Housing Production Strategies that require plans and zoning codes that enable more diverse housing types meeting different income levels. However, the OHNA laws and the state’s housing projections for every city will still affect North Plains regardless of whether it uses its current HNA or a new HNA and regardless of how the OHNA affects the city.

Friends of North Plains researched the OHNA by reading the methodology reports, researching the data for housing densities and their sources, comparing the OHNA numbers and densities to the current HNA targets and by talking to a consulting city planner and a person who sat in on the rulemaking meetings for the OHNA. We have asked a few questions of the DLCD and are waiting for their answers but do not expect to see any change in this report should those questions be answered.

HNA Population Data:

Population growth for each region of Oregon is reassessed periodically and new population projections are given by PSU’s Population Research Center, which takes into account a wide variety of data points and survey results to estimate population on state, county, and city levels. The most recent forecast reduced its population estimates for North Plains to about 5500- a significant decrease from the previous estimate of 7076 people by 2040. This is still significantly above the county’s overall population growth, which is nearly flat. If a new HNA were done today it would likely show a need inline with the OHNA data (see below) of about 700 housing units rather than the approximately 1350 called for in the original HNA. As many of these units will come from unbuilt housing in Brynhill, the actual needed housing outside the UGB will be significantly less.

Court Case:

North Plains HNA is currently the subject of a challenge on rather technical grounds before LUBA. The land use watchdog group 1000 Friends of Oregon brought the LUBA appeal to prevent the city from registering the HNA as a separate document from the UGB package - a step that could then require the city to meet the Housing Need and expand its UGB. The city lost the first round of this when it argued that 1000 Friends was outside the window of appeal but was subsequently unable to show that they had properly and completely noticed those who had testified and were entitled to notice. The case is technical and our group has not engaged any lawyers on the issue so we have no opinion on how it will turn out. However, we assume that an organization as familiar with the land use laws as 1000 Friends has at least a decent chance of winning the case.

Maintaining the HNA as a separate document seems aimed at creating a “mandate” for a UGB expansion. Should the city win at LUBA and have its HNA adopted it would be an unmet housing need and the city would need to meet that need through expansion. The numbers in the HNA would not be simply grandfathered in but could force the city’s hand on the expansion. Should the city eventually lose at LUBA or move now to dismiss the case (saving time and city funds), the HNA could still wait at the DLCD for a companion UGB or be rescinded and replaced with a new, likely smaller HNA, based on more recent data.

OHNA

State Population Numbers and Mandated Densities

The Oregon Housing Needs Analysis (OHNA) started implementation in 2025. This requires all cities to use standard numbers for housing units. These numbers are compiled by DAS but are based on the same data as PSU and, at least for North Plains, conform with the current population projections. The ONHA finds a need in North Plains for 724 housing units built over the next 20 years. These numbers will be updated annually.

Much has been made of how the OHNA requires that housing be built to match certain income levels. However, this is not a change from current HNA requirements or from the Goal 10 requirements that HNAs seek to satisfy. In fact, by percentage, the OHNA requirements are very similar to the HNA requirements - the synopsis of the current HNA income level distribution says “About one-quarter of North Plains’ future households will have income below 50% of Washington County’s median family income (less than $41,108 in 2019 dollars) and more than one-third will have incomes between 50% and 120% of the County’s median family income (income between $41,108 and $98,658)." Page 59 of the OHNA methodology report shows that about 31% of new housing will be under 60% of AMI, about 30% will be between 60 and 120% AMI and the remaining 37%.

This means that, even if North Plains redid its HNA and was subject to OHNA data and housing requirements it would result in approximately the same ratio of densities as the current plan and would require significantly fewer houses over all.

New laws requiring greater densities

There are other recent laws that are already requiring land use plans to provide for greater densities and more affordable housing. At North Plains current size these laws require that any lot zoned for single family housing allow either a duplex or an ADU (but not both). Further, affordable housing is allowed as an outright use in many zones including those zoned commercial or Neighborhood Community. However, this is true with the current HNA, with a newly adopted OHNA compliant HNA, or with no HNA at all. As the city has seen with the Greenlight project, this can also happen in the current city.

Housing Production Strategies

Housing Production Strategies are the biggest mandate for cities for 10,000 and over in population to adopt land use plans and zoning codes to enable increased housing production, and at the targeted levels of affordability. Cities will likely be required to choose from a menu of housing production strategies, submit to audits to ensure that housing is being produced, and be compared to comparable cities in housing production. North Plains, as a city under 10,000 people, is not subject to these laws nor will it be unless and until it reaches 10,000 people. Most of the requirements that are being discussed around the OHNA are related to these strategies and thus will not affect North Plains. As was discussed before, previously existing legislation already required the City to plan for multiple income levels and the city’s current HNA does so.

Conclusion:

The OHNA is not a major change in the way North Plains will plan for housing. In fact the only change the city is likely to see is that the numbers for total housing and the distribution between the various percentages of AMI will be set directly by the State rather than at the city level. The total need for housing is significantly less than called for in the current HNA but likely inline with what would be called for should North Plains undertake a new HNA with the most recent PSU numbers. The State numbers for AMI break down - i.e. how many of the needed housing would be single family, duplexes, etc. - are largely in line with the city’s old HNA and would not change the percentage amount of lower or middle income housing brought into the city. The new zoning mandates will affect the city no matter what HNA it uses and the new Housing Production Strategies will not affect the city no matter what HNA it uses. In fact, the best way to avoid state mandates for housing and densities is to stay below that population threshold.

Recommendations:

On the lawsuit:

While it is not necessary to repeal the HNA until the city is ready to do a new one, we see it as imperative that the council end the court case by either repeal of the HNA or by instructing your lawyers to move to have it dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The later course would return the HNA to the DLCD to wait on a UGB expansion plan passed by council or for it to be repealed by this body. Should the city’s lawyers be successful in this case before LUBA, we believe that the acknowledged HNA would create a state mandate for a UGB expansion using the HNA numbers. This was likely the will of the previous administration - though they never publicly stated such - but we don’t believe the current council wishes to create a mandate for UBG expansion nor do they wish to have their power to decide timelines and the ultimate size of the expansion dictated by the courts when it is unnecessary. Further, it seems that by omitting mention of this court case and, to the best of our knowledge, not informing council of these details when it was brought up in the council meeting on 3/3, staff is trying to set policy direction on what is one of the most major policy decisions for council. As major policy decisions are the jurisdiction of the elected council, we believe that the case should be dropped and council, in consultation with the public, should set the direction.

On keeping or redoing the HNA:

As the OHNA is, for North Plains, a storm in a teacup, our recommendation remains unchanged. After a lot of door knocking and two elections we believe that the majority of the residents of the city want a very limited expansion that allows more housing that keeps with the character of the current town and some expansion of commercial activity that likewise keeps with the character of the town and helps the city see increased services and amenities. As far as the HNA is concerned, we believe the ordinance 489, the current HNA, is too large and thus incompatible with this and should be repealed. Further, accepting its inflated level of housing would require a lot more commercial and industrial land to balance the tax base and thus would exponentially increase the size of the expansion.

Adopting a new HNA would allow the current council to decide what they want to see in a UGB expansion in North Plains - particularly it would allow the current council to determine the size of the expansion. This choice would not be unduly burdened by state mandates as the new OHNA numbers align with the current city numbers and the city is exempt from the other mandates that would come with a new HNA in a larger city.

Besides being more in line with the will of the voters, a smaller expansion is likely a better long term option for the city. While more commercial land is likely needed, sprawl is very expensive and, if the city were to try to grow in a maximal way, those costs would eventually (and likely very quickly) be borne by the taxpayers. And while housing, especially the most expensive housing, is likely to be built by developers in North Plains (many of whom are extensively lobbying the city at many levels) it is a lot less clear that employment land will be filled by the sorts of businesses that actually produce tax revenue. While EOA land is outside the scope of this paper, expecting that large housing additions will be balanced by hundreds of acres of new employment land is a very unlikely scenario.

Some argue that a new HNA would cost the city tens of thousands of dollars. We find this unlikely. Much of the work can be saved from the previous HNA - including the analysis of the lands available presently and much of the background work. Further the new numbers are already mandated and provided by the state and will not require the analysis of population trends previous HNAs required. Further, North Plains now has an internal planning department which it did not have with its previous HNA work. While it is more complex than simply plugging in numbers, it can be accomplished by current staff in a relatively short time period.

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It has been a while since I wrote to you - we’ve been staying lower key to try to make space for the city to listen to the voters and pull back from massive expansion in favor of smart growth and focusing on the city and community we have. Unfortunately it seems that, despite two elections telling them otherwise, the city staff is still pursuing the largest expansion they can push through. Though we are disappointed with the tack the city staff have chosen to take, it is not surprising. If we’ve learned anything from the last year it is that monied interests and their experts will always be pushing to grow at your expense - the way we can check it and ensure that the city serves the community is by organizing and making our voices heard.

It’s time to be heard again.

The email below is pretty long and gets you caught up on what’s going on and why we worry that the city is continuing down the path of big spending and big expansion, but here’s what we’re doing and where we need your help.

1. Follow and share our free substack. A substack is a weekly(ish) newsletter where you can read what’s up in North Plains politics and where we’ll have the space to go into the details of things like budgets and court cases. Sign up! Send it to your friends! We’ll try to keep everyone updated on this platform to save flooding you with emails (substacks eventually will be reposted to our website as well). We’ll save emails like this for the most urgent situations.

2. Get involved - come to a council meeting and especially the budget hearing coming up on May 15th! Check out the Strong Towns North Plains chapter that is dedicated to building up the city and surrounding community without unprecedented growth. Email strongtownsnp@gmail.com to learn more.

3. Volunteer - we’re especially looking for folks with expertise in communications, from social media to graphic design. If you have other talents to offer, please let us know! Reply to this email to let us know.

4. Write to the city council by sending testimony to the city recorder and the city manager letting them know you still don’t want to see the town expand and you want a budget that reflects services for the city we have now, not an imagined mini-Hillsboro some want. There is a template below or craft your own message!

We’re excited (though, honestly, a little tired!) to be back and to organizing for smart growth. It’s appropriate that this movement that has been very steeped in direct democracy still needs us to show up and do the work to be heard by our elected officials and still needs us to hold city electeds and staff accountable to the voters! Read on for the details and, if you can, take one of the actions above to help us out.

Template to send before the next Council meeting:

Dear Mayor Goodwin and City Council,

I see that the UGB is again on your agenda for the next meeting. As you know, the last time this was put to a vote, the city resoundingly rejected massive expansion and did so with a good understanding of what we wanted. While it makes sense for the city to reach out to the community in an inclusive way to find out what type of expansion we might want, this work hasn’t been done yet. And, unfortunately, it is obvious that some in the city are still working toward a very large expansion and spending tax dollars to do so.

Instead of continuing down the path of expansion here’s what residents would like to see from your UGB discussion:

• An end to the court case trying to establish the HNA as a state mandate. Let us choose how much housing we want and when we want to expand.

• An agreement that the next biannual budget will focus on services for the city residents of the current UGB - not focus on planning and building for future growth. This means earmarking some of our large savings for projects that benefit all of us rather than helping pave the way for future development that enriches only a few out of towners. This means shifting away from a staff that is focused on planning and implementing unprecedented change and focusing on the things we know we need and know how to do - sidewalks, parks, public works, and public safety.

• We’d like to see an agreement that, while resident directed growth is still on the table, things like data centers and Amazon warehouses - as are being built just down Jackson School Road - are not. Perhaps directing staff or the planning commission to draft codes that prohibit such uses would help us better identify the kind of growth we want.

Thank you for your time and service,

_____________

What’s happening in North Plains

Since November, when the voters elected four new councilors on a platform of smart growth, there has been a concerted and organized effort by the city’s established politicians and their chosen staff to push back and to simply keep moving the expansion along despite push back from sitting city councilors, the mayor, and many in the public. We hoped this was just a misunderstanding and would be worked out as the new council got settled and started to change that direction. But now it’s budget season, the council has tried to push back on the UGB, and they find themselves stymied by obstruction from the city’s own staff and from legacy policies that the previous administration passed in their final month. While professional guidance from a skilled staff is a critical part of running a good city, that is not what is happening here. Instead councilors are told that new rules, passed in the 11th hour of the previous administration, prevent them from creating their own meeting agendas, and instead they are presented with agendas and are limited in what they can do. City staff running the meetings neither inform them of the important issues nor ask for their guidance on the very issues they ran on. Rather than guiding them, upper level staff suggest that they don’t have to follow laws passed by council and even the city’s charter and refuse to fulfill basic requests. City staff, some appointed committee members, and some on the council prefer a city that just doesn’t work to one that doesn’t follow their plans for massive growth. They are substituting their judgment for the law and for the pretty clear will of the voters - it is simply unacceptable in a democracy.

There are two very big specific issues before the city right now as well as the climate of obstruction the councilors are putting up with.

Grandfathering In an Outdated and Oversized Population Forecast to Create a Mandate for Big Growth

The first big issue is a court case where the prior city council attempted to grandfather in about half of their massive expansion plan by approving a Housing Needs Analysis (HNA). This HNA uses old data that estimates that the population of North Plains will more than double in 20 years. The most recent and more accurate population study cuts the city’s growth projection in half. The prior city council never acknowledged this court case in an open session and, amazingly, staff never told the new councilors that the city was spending thousands of dollars on attorney fees trying to push through their outdated Housing Needs Analysis (HNA). City staff also failed to mention that, if the court took the unlikely step of accepting the flawed HNA, the city would effectively mandate its own unnecessarily large expansion. Had our group not discovered this and had 1000 Friends of Oregon not sued to block it (it is currently being litigated - and North Plains taxpayers are paying for it), no one, including the new councilors, would have known what was going on. The councilors were likely briefed on this in executive session at their last meeting but, as far as we know, no action has yet been taken. To stop the creation of a state mandate, where none exists now, this case needs to end. The city could still use it’s old HNA documents if that’s what the community decides but they would also have the option of using modern numbers and cutting the housing expansion in half should the city decide to expand.

Obstruction by City Management Means No Progress

By far the most upsetting part of the prior administration’s plan to keep moving toward massive expansion despite electoral losses was their ability to convince upper level staff that the clear No vote in May and even their wholesale loss in November doesn’t really mean No. While most city staff are doing their very important jobs to keep the city running and have nothing to do with this obstruction, North Plains has a whole lot of expensive management staff - some of whose prior work experience had been in development, not city management. As we said above, the City’s executive staff are using their power to continue expansion planning, and even trying to make a mandate for growth, without informed direction from the council. And, most upsettingly, to keep their power to act, the staff intentionally keeps council from being effective and intentionally tries to keep important issues regarding expansion from coming before them.

This obstruction has been fairly clear from the start. In a planning meeting in February, the planning manager called the council (his bosses) “hell bent on getting rid of the UGB” and made it clear he didn’t agree. Other executive staff have made similar statements in public, City board members, who were appointed by the previous council, have come to meetings to attack the current council and from day one the City’s institutions have shown that they are dedicated to massive expansion no matter what the voters or the council might say. It is incredibly unprofessional and unusual for staff to publicly criticize and undermine council in this manner.

The city manager, who was granted many more powers by the previous council on their way out, is in charge of agendas and, most importantly, of taking council’s direction and implementing it in the city. There was no training or briefing offered to the new councilors by city staff and the city manager has worked hard to avoid direction on any issue, but most particularly on the issues related to the UGB. Multiple agendas in March were virtually empty despite a need to have clarity on things like UGB expansion and budget priorities. At the same time, the budget meetings have been moved back in the calendar with a clear intent to drop a last minute budget that doesn’t prioritize the current city over the costs of becoming the mini-Hillsboro that some special interests dream of.

Recently, as the councilors get closer to discussing the UGB and possibly giving him direction, the city manager has tried other forms of avoiding having to implement the will of the city on the expansion. Some of this borders on outright harassment: The city manager alleges that multiple harassment charges have been made against the new city councilors without offering any proof or a standard investigation into the matter that includes interviewing both parties. Further the City Manager suggested in the last council meeting that he need not follow the resolutions passed by council, or even the city charter, if he feels it isn’t necessary. This came up when it was revealed that, despite the requirements of the city charter and his employment contract, the City Manager chose not to get a surety bond - a type of insurance that protects the city incase the manager, who has no prior municipal experience, loses the city money through malfeasance or incompetence and is standard across Oregon.

Most upsettingly, this obstruction comes at the cost of building a better city. Rather than seeing what monkey wrenches he can throw in the works, the city manager could be working to see what council wants and how to best implement that in the new budget. Rather than trying to make mandates for a failed UGB expansion, he could be listening to the residents to find what kind of UGB expansion actually fits the city. Rather than holding the new councilors at arms length he could see that they were elected on a platform that had broad support in the community and he could try to bring those issues into the city. And we still hope that he will. But it’s now apparent that no progress will be made without us showing up online, over email, and at the meetings to remind council and the City Manager that the community wants a thriving small town and that we expect them to work together.

Thanks Friends! I hope you’ll follow along on substack, our website, and social media to keep updated and I hope you’ll help out!Thanks Friends! I hope you’ll follow along on substack, our website, and social media to keep updated and I hope you’ll help out!

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