News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Last week, the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners approved a 53-acre increase in the City of Sisters Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), signing off on the Sisters Comprehensive Plan.
The plan is to guide the city through the next 20 years.
The UGB expansion includes 30 acres of residential land at McKinney Butte (just north of Sisters Middle School) and city acreage within boundaries of the sewer plant.
The acreage also includes Conklin’s Guest House and a nearby property owned by Dick Carpenter, both of which have been approved for annexation by Sisters voters.
The UGB expansion is supposed to take care of Sisters’land needs over the next 20 years. However, some residents, developers and even city councilors have expressed doubt about that. When the city council approved the expansion last month, Councilor Lon Kellstrom said he expected Sisters to be “back at the table in five years.”
“A lot of that just depends on how quickly we grow as a population and how much pressure we begin to feel,” City Manger Eileen Stein said.
According to Assistant City Planner Brian Rankin, Sisters population in 2025 is projected to be 3,747.
“The population estimate assumes we’re going to grow ... at about 11 percent this year and next year,” Rankin said. “That will slow to about 4 percent till around 2010 and then about 3 percent after that.”
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.
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