Appeals have slowed plan adoption

In 1979, Sisters adopted its first Comprehensive Plan. This has served as the city’s only guiding plan over the last 26 years. The plan review process started in 1990.

After more than a decade of public involvement and a redrawing of the Urban Growth Boundary, in 2004 it was completed and adopted by the city council — temporarily.

By the fall of 2004, Deschutes County’s 20-year population forecast had been appealed by the Sisters Forest Planning Committee to the Oregon State Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA). (The Sisters Forest Planning Committee is not affiliated with the City of Sisters).

As a result of the appeal to LUBA, Sisters city officials decided to revise their own population forecasts that were outlined in the Comprehensive Plan.

City Manager Eileen Stein said, “We knew that there was a possibility that we could be derailed by the appeal of the county population forecast.”

In calculating the 20-year forecast, the city used a methodology called “transference of demand” — the theory that as outlying residential lands fill up, the only available land for housing will be within the cities and as a result the population of Sisters will be driven upwards.

Paul Dewey of the Sisters Forest Planning Committee had concerns because Sisters was the only city in the county that had used the transference of demand in its methodology. In order to avoid another appeal, Sisters removed the theory of transference of demand.

“Taking out the demand assumptions lowered the population forecast. It (the population) went down by about three or 400 people,” Stein said. “That also had the affect of shrinking our land needs in terms of our UGB expansion.”

The lower estimated demand for land has left developers with the possibility that their land might not make it into the UGB (see related story, page 1).

Before the revision, the estimated land needed for residential use was roughly 130 acres. Now the land need is approximately 30 acres.