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Last Updated:
Apr 21st, 2005 - 21:10:55
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Voices of the Northwest
On the evening of the 17th of February, the Lane County Planning
Commission voted to approve a narrow motion from the Board of Lane County Commissioners that makes a legal lot verification an official land use decision, to notify citizens, and to be subject to challenge from impacted citizens of Lane County. The Planning Commission's only other option was to deny the motion.
While this was a small step in the right direction, the LC Planning
Commission immediately turned around and voted to advise the Board that much more definition was needed on Lane County lot line adjustments and the road dividing one legal lot into two, a gambit as performed in Lane County, and other related land use issues.
At the hearing, a representative from Oregon's Dept of Conservation & Development spoke on how Lincoln County had been served an enforcement order to cease and desist the permitting of the division of lots with the mere crossing of a road easement. The lawyer who was involved with that
enforcement order, as well as the early stages of Lane County's own Fire Road decision, amplified his message and covered lot line adjustments as well.
Lane County's recently retired surveyor took the podium and delivered his professional opinion that our Land Management Division has been consistently operating in violation of Oregon land use law concerning lot line adjustments and road easement divisions of property.
These are not rabid NIMBYists who are ignorant of land use law, fighting a developer in their own neighborhood. Rather they are knowledgeable land use professionals with decades of experience and practical application at their command and they are all saying the same thing.
On the 18th of February in the afternoon, the Board of County
Commissioners was faced with a petition to change a zoning from forest to farm to enable a pair of prominent developers to build a private school on a former log decking site for a mill.
This is one of the least obnoxious development attempts I have seen in some time, but still, involved in the precursory stages of the paperwork, was a questionable lot line adjustment.
East Lane Commissioner Don Hampton observed that it seemed like there was a lot line adjustment involved in at least half of all the contested development attempts that came before the Board and perhaps it was time for Lane County to regulate lot line adjustments like most of the other counties in Oregon.
The LMD's legal lot expert said that he would certainly develop
regulation for the Lane County lot line adjustment like the dutiful public employee he is, if so directed by the Board. The time has come.
I have been on the warpath for years when it comes to these Lane County phantasm land use decisions that take place in the darkness of the LMD basement with no official notice to anybody. They have all been based on the precepts that anything that isn't challenged is therefore legal. Anything that isn't noticed (as in announced) isn't challenged. And: if you don't believe it, just ask us.
I have way more personal experience in Lane County land use policy than I ever wanted. I was forced to fight an attempted development at the end of Fire Road all the way to Oregon's Court of Appeals before I won. The presiding C of A judge informed Lane County's staff lawyer who was representing the developer's interests at no charge to the developer, that the land use actions permitted at the end of Fire Road "smells."
On the 14th of January, the Board voted three to two to not vacate the easement of the 1912 WW Jackson Road easement near the junction of McBeth and Fox Hollow Roads. A developer had used the invisible Jackson road as a boundary line to create at least one tiny lot and now hoped to vacate the easement so he could grow his new lot to the most advantageous specifications. The developer is now stuck with at least one unusable lot. He will most likely wait for the changing of the commissioners over the
decades and keep trying to vacate the easement.
It is time for our county commissioners to roll up their sleeves and fix what is broken in Lane County's land use policies. The root problem is that our Land Management Division is fee based. It doesn't take much abstract thought to see where this might cause the LMD to service developers and their consultants at the expense of the common citizen.
I think the Board should dig into the many questionable land use
practices that went into the development attempt with the Jackson Road easement. It is an excellent example of most of our bad land use policies that conflict with state law. County land use policy may not be less restrictive than state land use law. It may be more restrictive. It is Our Land Management Division's duty to apply and enforce Oregon land use law in Lane land use policy. I exhort the Board of Commissioners to fix this problem.
Norm Maxwell
block captain (ret)
Fire Road Defense League
Copyright © 2004 by Norm Maxwell
Visit Norm Maxwell's pieces about land use, firefighting and life in the country and more at West By Northwest.org:
Norm's Notebook: A Recovering Tree Planter
Take Two: Jackson Road
Norm's Notebook: Battling Broom
Norm's Notebook: A Last Look from the Big Rabbit
Norm's Notebook: From Forest to McMansion, How It Could Happen Here
Norm's Notebook: A Few Acres, a Few Chickens–Who Is Living on the Land Now
Remembering the 30 Mile Fire
Old Men and Fire
The Fire of South Canyon: Remembering Storm King
Wee-wee for BB
Norm's Notebook: The Story of the Spruce Tree, and Mosby Creek, a New Land Use Lot Adjustment>
Norm's Notebook: Dead Cars and the Six Million Dollar Manx
(Editor's note–Norm's "Dead Cars" story inspired a feature story in the Register Guard, "Heaps of trouble in the woods.")
Mentoring Military Style
Three Dollar Hammer
Song of the Open Road
Remember Fire Road
Home, Home on Fire Road and more.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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