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Measure 49 has landowners in a ... Ground war

BACK STORY • Oregonians differ on whether proposal will fix or kill land use law

By todd murphy

The Portland Tribune, Oct 23, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (81 Reader comments)

L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTOS

The Measure 49 debate is being played out on roadside signs across the state.

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Clackamas County nurseryman Jim Gilbert looks at what will happen if Measure 49 fails. And he sees disaster.

“If you look at that map,” Gilbert says, pointing to a map of Measure 37 claims for potential developments — big and small ones — peppered throughout Washington, Clackamas and Multnomah counties. “It’s like a cancer on our valley. We only have one Willamette Valley. We don’t have any more than this.”

Retired Clackamas County farmers Duane and Janice Weeks look at what will happen if Measure 49 passes.

And they see fundamental unfairness. And the end of their hopes to ever sell for a decent price the modest 20 acres of land where they have made a home. Twenty acres that pretty much represent their retirement fund.

Under an approved Measure 49, “they can stall you and stall you and stall you — until you’re broke or dead,” Duane Weeks says.

“Or both,” Janice adds.

Another battle is being stage in the war over Oregon’s land use system. State voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to approve or reject Measure 49 — which would amend the land use reforms that state voters approved through Measure 37 three years ago.

Nov. 6 will end the battle. It decidedly will not end the war.

The basics of Measure 37, approved by 61 percent of state voters in 2004, are that if land use regulations are imposed on a property after a landowner has purchased the property, the government must either compensate the landowner or waive the regulations if they have reduced the value of the property.

Measure 49, referred to voters with almost exclusively Democratic support in the state Legislature, pulls back some aspects of Measure 37.

It would remain relatively simple for a landowner to get approval to develop three homes on his land, and it would remain possible to build developments of up to 10 homes in areas that aren’t considered high-value farmland and aren’t short of groundwater.

But it would disallow any commercial or industrial development and many large subdivisions on certain lands.

Individuals and industries have spent more than $6 million on the campaign for and against Measure 49 — with wineries and a couple of land conservation groups heavily on the pro-49 side and the timber industry and developers heavily on the anti-49 side.

But even those millions of dollars, buying reams and hours of strident campaign advertising, don’t reveal the passion that Measure 49 — like all land use debates — has engendered across Oregon.

That passion is best revealed through men and women like Gilbert and the Weeks.

They passionately debate land, and property, and the right of people to keep the government from taking what should be theirs. And they debate community, and haphazard development, and the possibility of losing forever some of the things that are good and distinct about Oregon.

They also debate the innards of what Measure 49 would do, and whether it amends the land use reforms that state voters strongly approved — fixing problems with that measure — or guts those reforms.

Dave Hunnicutt, head of the property rights group Oregonians in Action, which sponsored Measure 37 and is the lead group opposing Measure 49, has a line he delivers every chance he gets. It’s about the Michigan physician imprisoned in 1999 for helping his patient commit suicide.

Measure 49 “fixes Measure 37 in the same way that Jack Kevorkian fixes his patients,” Hunnicutt says.

Hunnicutt says he doesn’t argue that some changes need to be made to Measure 37; “The issue is whether 49 actually makes changes or really just repeals the measure,” he says.

“My job during this campaign is to get people to read this thing,” says Hunnicutt, pointing to a copy of the text of Measure 49, which he often carries during debates. “And once they read it, I don’t think they’ll vote for it.”

He doubts, he says, that even small landowners will get easy approval on even simple claims under Measure 49.

“The people who are promised they’re going to get something under this measure … are going to be frustrated,” he says.

But supporters of Measure 49 say that Measure 37 — pitched as something that would allow small-time landowners to sell small pieces of their land to build one or two or three houses — has spawned plans for things that most voters never imagined, including sprawling housing developments in rural Washington County, large gravel mines in Clackamas County and huge billboards in Portland.

“No one who voted on Measure 37 was told they were voting to approve billboards,” Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen says.

Cogen and other Measure 49 supporters say it would keep the spirit of Measure 37, while also keeping sensible land use protections.

Measure 37 grants rights “to a landowner to develop his property,” Cogen says. “But it ignores the rights of a neighbor to not have a billboard, or a pig farm, right next to him. And it also ignores the right of a community to develop the way it wants to develop.

“I know it (Measure 37) was designed to address unfairness,” Cogen says. “But it creates at least as much unfairness. And it does it in a way that’s really not thoughtful.”

Election officials began mailing out ballots late for the Nov. 6 election last week. The debate — at least over this battle in the land use wars — ends two weeks from today.

toddmurphy@portlandtribune.com

YES ON 49

Island’s future hangs in balance

As the late morning rain showers battle with the sunbreaks, Shari Raider stands in front of rows of kale and cabbage and brussels sprouts that stretch for – well, they stretch for 14 years.

It was 1993 when Raider, from the East Coast, and looking for a place to begin a small organic farm, found her nirvana. A rich agricultural community – 12 miles from downtown Portland. Sauvie Island.

She has been here since. She and her husband have built a place on the island and a business – Sauvie Island Organics – that provides fresh products not only for a community agriculture cooperative, but also for some of Portland’s swankier restaurants.

But Raider says she worries what will happen to the island if Measure 49 fails. She worries about the 208 acres right across the road from her house – acres that have a Measure 37 claim for 31 homesites.

And she worries about the island as a whole – about whether some of the large Measure 37 claims on the island would signal the beginning of the end of the island as an agricultural community.

“Sauvie Island is such an incredibly special place,” she says. “And once you pave it, we’ve lost it.”

About half of the island’s 21,000 acres is a state wildlife refuge. But Measure 37 claims involve about 7 percent of the island’s remaining private land – 750 acres.

A few of the Measure 37 claims are for subdivisions that might include dozens or hundreds of houses. Raider says she worries, especially, about those.

“This is an agricultural community, so you have tractors on the road. You have combines at 2 in the morning,” she says. “If you increase the suburban pressures, it would be hard for farms to continue doing what they’re doing.”

Raider says she believes most island residents and farmers are supporters of Measure 49, believing it would allow small-scale development without changing the island.

But some landowners are Measure 49 opponents – and large anti-Measure 49 “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” signs dominate the road right after crossing the bridge onto the island.

Which Raider finds ironic.

“Ninety percent of the people coming onto this island at this time of year are coming because of the agricultural practices that are happening on this island,” she says. “They want to get a pumpkin. They want their kids to experience the country.”

They are greeted with signs that in essence would signal the ending of what they came for, Raider says.

“People don’t want to just drive to another subdivision out here.”

toddmurphy@portlandtribune.com

YES ON 49

M37 gave a ‘rubber stamp’

About 100 feet from their back door, Dave and Bobbie Eimers like to relax by one of two spring-fed ponds on their 14 wooded acres set on a hillside above Estacada.

On a recent morning, Bobbie Eimers tosses a handful of fish food into the pond, sending a few ducks flying overhead and bringing several 2-foot-long rainbow trout bobbing to the surface.

“We always dreamed of a getaway in the country, something exactly like this,” Dave Eimers says. “We had no idea what Measure 37 was when we got here.”

The Eimerses, from Chicago, came to Oregon two years ago by way of San Diego, where they had moved to take care of Bobbie’s parents.

On a house-hunting trip to Oregon, they fell in love with the property on South Day Hill Road, a mile outside Estacada. Dave Eimers has spent countless hours removing scrap metal left by the previous owner and restoring trails that wind through the property.

They had never been involved in politics, but now they’re fighting for a ballot measure that they believe will help them hang onto their idyllic lifestyle.

The Eimerses’ land is surrounded by Measure 37 claims, including two that could bring drastic changes to the landscape around Day Hill Road.

A pending claim across the street seeks to build one- to five-acre residential lots on 40 acres. An approved claim on the hill above the Eimerses’ home seeks up to 115 lots on 115 acres.

The Eimerses believe such a development would destroy the character of the area, bringing scores of cars to a narrow country road and drawing too much water from the aquifer in an area with no municipal water service.

“Spring Creek is on that property, and this is where they want to build. But it would mess up the water supply for everybody downhill,” Bobbie Eimers says.

Gerald and Roberta Curry filed the 115-lot claim. They originally filed for fewer homes on larger lots, but they say their attorney encouraged them to seek higher density, even if they never build that many homes.

The Currys want to set aside property for their five children, impossible with zoning that allows one house per 80 acres.

Development is inevitable, the Eimerses say. But they’re frustrated by the leeway Measure 37 gives property owners while leaving county government little choice but to “rubberstamp” claim approvals.

“They say Measure 49 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Dave Eimers says. “Well, Measure 37 was the lawyers and developers in a little old lady’s clothing.”

Anthony Roberts