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Apr 21st, 2005 - 21:10:55
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Letters to the Editor
Dear West By Northwest.org Readers:
I've been involved in attempting to modify Lane County land use behavior for five years now. It all started when Lane County's Land Management Division assisted a developer in attempting to break the zoning and increase housing density in my Lorane neighborhood.
The authorities in the LMD assured me that all the land use gambits they were trying to smoke past me in my 'hood were completely legal and if I didn't believe it, just ask them.While there are a few honest cops in the LMD, there are others who act as agents for developers and their consultants. As the LMD's budget is fee based, I guess this isn't surprising. One hand washes the other. The more money you are prepared to spend, the more preferential the treatment you can expect when you plan a multi million-dollar development that will hopefully crack Eugene's Urban Growth Boundary.
The big boys are invited to the "real" LMD meetings in the dark basement of our courthouse and the cozy Full City coffee bar across the street and are allowed to participate in land use decision making from which little people are excluded. Major money is generated by changing farm and forest zoned land into rural residential and creating more and more buildable tax lots on which to throw down McMansions.
Land Watch, Lane County has been resisting the never ending bayonet expansionism of the LMD/developer complex in rural Lane County. Land Watch members have come to the conclusion that the Complex cannot be fought strategically and so we have focused tactically on the two most used/abused tools of the LMD/developer complex used to create new tax lots.
These are the Lane County land use policies of "roads (real or imagined) dividing one tax lot into two or more--on both sides of the road," and the incredible LC "lot line adjustment" and its resultant migrating tax lot which shrinks, expands and moves to meet the exact specifications required by the developer.
We have people who "mine" the old records in the LC surveyor's office seeking the golden goose of a few lines on old paper where somebody might have thought about building a road a century ago. Even if it has VACATED (as in "abandoned") stamped on the plat, it will still serve to divide one lot into two if nobody challenges it. Any land use attempt that goes unchallenged in Lane County is automatically legal.
When I resisted the development of my Fire Road neighborhood, I discovered that an invisible road right of way supposedly divided one of the developer's lots and created another one, absolutely essential to justify rezoning the Sisulaw River floodplain across the fence. Then the LC lot line adjustment magically moved several lots (like Dorothy arriving in Oz) so that no part of their new, improved position touched any portion of their original location. This not only violates Oregon land use law, but Lane County land use policy as well.
At any rate, last year, the LC Board of Commissioners directed the Land Management Division to form a committee to regulate the formerly unregulated (anything goes) lot line adjustment and reach a conclusion as to the "road dividing lots" gambit. The fact that Land Watch has a Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) appeal in the wings on these two subjects has some small bearing on the interested parties participating in this committe.
Basically, there are three kinds of people at these committee meetings. County staff people paid to be there, consultants of developers as well as lawyers who serve the same and have financial interests in the outcome (I assume they are billing hours to developers), and Land Watch members who show up at their own expense or take time off from the salt mines to attend. During the past few meetings, a former county commissioner who now serves as an attorney for developers, served as "legal counsel" for the committee. "There are plenty of lawyers here" we were informed by the LMD's head planner after Lauri Segel requested a county staff attorney who had been personally involved in these problems. Some of us fear that there could be some lack of impartiality or even a conflict of interest in this arrangement.
We have made some progress on definition of roads that divide one tax lot into two. Nobody objected to an "intervening ownership" (such as an old RR right of way owned outright by a timber company) passing through your tax lot and creating two lots of one.
On the other end of the spectrum, the group was able to agree that "invisible roads" that do not now exist, or were never built in the first place, do not divide lots and double your money. Most County roads are built on easements and the the land owners still own the actual land under the easement. When I was fighting the development at the end of Fire Road, I spent two days in Lane County's Deeds & Records office tracing the ownership of the developer's acquisition that allegedly contained the old W. W. Hawley Road right-of-way that supposedly divided one lot into two.
W. W. Hawley Road may have existed past the dead end of our road at one time but there was not one mention of it in the deeds to the land starting from 1908 to the present day. Most of the early conveyances had specific language stating that the subject property was "free from all encumbrances" (meaning rights-of-way and road easements).
There was an old drawing of the continuation of the "road" with VACATED inked on it in big letters that the developer hoped to convince me constituted a road on his property. The LMD needed no convincing. There was nothing on the ground that looked like a road. I am reasonably certain that the developer received coaching from a member of the LMD on how to use this ploy in a zone breaking attempt.
Lane County's own land use hearings official has rendered a decision on paper against roads dividing one tax lot into two and has never explained the invalidation of this element of his decision when he obligingly reversed himself on the Fire Road decision when the LMD appealed his decision along with the developer after my initial win.
West Lane Commissioner Anna Morrison informed me with heat that the HO (hearings official) is NOT a county employee--rather he is a CONTRACTED employee. I mention this here although I discern no practical difference. I wasn't invited to supply my own HO and Gary Darnielle does draw a paycheck from Lane County. Whatever.
At any rate, these Board of CC directed meetings continue under the suspended hammer of Land Watch's LUBA appeal. Those who are paid to be there hope that those of us who are not will burn out and go away. The LMD/developer complex didn't have any problems creating new tax lots with resulting fees for the LMD, tax revenue for Lane County and windfalls of cash for developers before we came along, and if we would just go away, everything would be beautiful like it used to be and we would all live in North LAne County.
In an attempt to discourage Land Watch from appealing land use maneuvers, the LMD has taken to splitting up appeals so that LWLC has to put up three grand apiece for more initial appeals. There really needs to be a mechanism in place so that the LMD has to refund Land Watch its appeal fees when it (the LMD) loses.
Our latest meeting on 10 JAN 05 makes it clear that the LMD/developer complex doesn't want to give up anything they don't have to. Now that the Board of LC Commissioners is back three to two pro development, the complex wants to use the Board to preserve the status quo. Also Oregon's Legislature is soon in session and may supply some definition on some of the current land use practices.
Still, it looks like Land Watch Lane County is going to need to take its appeal on to the Land Use Board of Appeals in an attempt to keep Lane County from being paved from the Cascades to the Pacific.
Norm Maxwell
Norm Maxwell is a regular contributor to West By Northwest.org. Norm Maxwell received the Best of West By Northwest award for his article, The Fire of South Canyon: Remembering Storm King. Tens of thousands of readers have "voted" with their mouse by their selection of this story. Visit Norm Maxwell's other pieces about land use, firefighting and life in the country and more at West By Northwest.org.
Norm's Notebook: Measure 37 Fallout by Norm Maxwell
Norm's Notebook: The Wayward Bus
Norm's Notebook: New Bike and The Three Acre Wood
Norm's Notebook: A Helicopter and a Hometown
Norm's Notebook: A Different Kind of Pre-Emptive Strike
Norm's Notebook: "Goodbye Dear, I'll be Home in a Year"
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.")
A Homey Homage to the Homelite: The Stone Age of Powersawing
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>
Mentoring Military Style
Three Dollar Hammer
Remember Fire Road
Home, Home on Fire Road and more.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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