News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The plan that is to guide the City of Sisters into the future is supposed to be completed this year, after being in limbo for a decade.
That will be a relief to County Commissioner Tom DeWolf, who has ruled on two recent, controversial Sisters-area land use actions without an updated Sisters master plan in place.
The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners ruled last week to allow approximately 98 acres for a school site into the Sisters Urban Growth Boundary (UGB).
Another separate county decision on proposed Sisters industrial parks has been taken to the Oregon Court of Appeals (see The Nugget, January 16, page 1).
Both of those issues would have been settled long ago if a comprehensive plan was in place.
"I am exceedingly uncomfortable with applications such as this and the Barclay Meadows (Business Park) application last year in the absence of an updated master plan for the City of Sisters," DeWolf said. "We're writing the Sisters comprehensive plan one land use application at a time."
The city has won a $20,000 grant to help get the job done, according to Sisters' city planner Neil Thompson. He is negotiating a contract with land use consultants Angelo Eaton and Associates of Portland, the firm that helped Sisters create its Model Development Code.
Eaton will work with the city to fix identified "deficits" in the comprehensive plan. According to Thompson, the task is to be completed within 10 months after the contract is signed. DeWolf said the city has assured him the plan will be done this year.
According to Thompson, there are four areas where either the state or the county or both have requested more data. Those include: residential development; commercial development; transportation (which is likely satisfied by the completion of a Transportation System Plan); and urbanization.
Urbanization is the most complex and delicate area, Thompson said.
"It's whether or not you need to expand your UGB," Thompson said. "That's the big one."
Thompson said he and the other city officials who worked on the plan provided data to back up urbanization plans "to my satisfaction."
However, he said, each time the plan was sent on to county and state planners for review -- in 1995 and 1997 -- it was kicked back to the city for more work.
"Urbanization is always the big sticking point," Thompson said.
Completion of the plan was also delayed by a decision to wait for fresh population data from the 2000 census, which is only now becoming available, Thompson said.
Now the plan is to start from 2000 data, update it to 2002, and project the plan across the next 10 years.
Thompson believes that this time, the plan can be finished to everyone's satisfaction.
"I think it can be done," he said. "The players involved are lining up to help me get it done."
That lineup indeed seems to be in place. The state Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) is administering the grant, and the county has vowed to help.
According to DeWolf, "Deschutes County has offered to do all within our power to help the City of Sisters to accomplish this critically important goal."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
Reader Comments(0)