The Metro Council voted 6-1 Thursday to adopt the last piece of an historic 50-year plan for protecting farm and forest land while allowing for additional housing and jobs in limited areas outside the current urban growth boundary and focusing additional investment and redevelopment in existing communities. The ordinance establishes the urban and rural reserves map for Washington County in Metro’s code, along with the findings that support those reserves. This is the last product of nearly four years’ effort on the part of Metro and Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, plus citizens, land owners, business leaders, city and county officials, farmers and others, to allow for sufficient land needed to support future growth while protecting farms and forests that contribute to the local economy and define the character of the region.

The state board tasked with reviewing the region's proposed urban and rural reserves put off its decision for a week, saying it still had questions about controversial proposed urban reserves near Forest Grove, Cornelius and Hillsboro.

As a Metro Council, we all recognize that there are key decisions we face that will greatly affect the lives of our children and our grandchildren. This is clearly one of those moments. We need to get this right. During the worst economic downturn in 80 years, Oregon can't afford to be in caught up in years of litigation. We need an agreement that provides certainty for both development and agriculture and gets people working again. We need to resolve this problem, not create a new problem in our haste. I strongly supported the region's request to the Legislature to create a more rational process for making urban growth decisions. The law and rules we worked to get adopted promised to reduce conflict between urbanization and rural interests by focusing the discussion on the best places to grow while protecting high quality farmland and natural resources. This has not occurred.

After more than two years of research, study and public input, Metro and the three counties in the Portland metropolitan region are nearing the end of an unprecedented process to agree on where and how our region will grow in the next several decades.The reserves process is unique in the nation - never before has a metropolitan area mapped out a decades-long plan that identifies areas for urban growth and lands that should be set aside as rural reserves.

At its meeting Wednesday night the Metro Policy Advisory Committee recommended the Metro Council and the Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington county commissions adopt an urban and rural reserves map that reflects the suggestions made by MPAC at its Jan. 27 and Feb. 1 meetings.

Concerns were raised by several MPAC members that their committee's recommendations were not discussed by the Core 4 at its Feb. 8 meeting, and that MPAC's recommendations may have been ignored in the development of the final Core 4 consensus map.

The four elected officials representing the Metro Council and Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington county commissions - the Core 4 - agreed to protect more than 270,000 acres of the region's best farmland and key natural features in rural reserves while securing just over 27,000 acres in urban reserves to accommodate efficient regional growth for the next 40 to 50 years. Two years ago the counties and Metro began studying a 400,000-acre study area encircling the region's urban growth boundary. Today, these four governments are down to negotiating the final 2,357 acres before establishing urban and rural reserves for the next half century.

A personal message from Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder

Throughout my career in advocacy and public service, I have been motivated to protect the places we love: the farms and forests, rivers and streams, parks and playgrounds that define our region and enhance our quality of life. 

My work at Metro has been consistent with our shared values of thoughtful, long-term planning and preparing for future growth in a way that is consistent with our goals of transportation choices, dense, walkable urban centers, and open space preservation. 

After two years of discussion and negotiation, the region is poised to make a very important decision about our future: where future urban growth may occur. Our opportunity to engage in such a long-range discussion is unique: nowhere else in this country do we have a public discussion of this nature.

The Oregonian feature editorial for Jan. 5, 2010

The election for council president in 2010 could be the most thoughtful and provocative in the history of the regional government

This year, the Metro regional government will make a momentous decision, perhaps the most important in its history. But the principle behind it is surprisingly simple: Minimize waste.

Oregonians detest waste. Increasingly, they understand that land can be wasted as surely as money can be wasted - and, in fact, that wasting land is a form of wasting money.

This year, along with Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, Metro will distinguish land that it would be smarter to develop eventually, called urban reserves, from land that it would be smarter to set aside for generations, called rural reserves.