Living on Sensitive Lands

The beauty of the city draws people in.  Lovely trees, well-kept homes, windy, country-lane residential street, clean and cool, relaxed.  People want to live here.

Until they find they have Sensitive Lands overlay on their property. They also discover the  beauty of the city and THEIR property isn't as important as freedom from government control.

To learn more about the Sensitive Lands program, go to the LO Stewards website:  lostewards.org.  See the "Issues" section (under the About tab) for a SL program summary.

City Council Study Session 
on Sensitive Lands

June 10, 2014

See the video of the meeting when available, and Staff Report / exhibits on the 

City Council Agenda website.

The Council Chmbers was full with few empty chairs for late-comers.  Citizens had come to see how far the city had come to ridding them or the city of some of the most controversial and disliked regulations in the city. The regulations are made worse by the fact that many are more stringent and require more compliance measures than were ever required by the State or Metro.  In this instance and others critical to the life of the city (codes and zoning issues), more is being required of Lake Oswego residents than need be. Backtracking is essential no matter how difficult.

Staff presented a revised SL program to the council.  I won't go into details; instead of simplifying the program, it became more complicated.  The audience was at times derisive and angry at what they were hearing.  They had come to hear how their property would be freed from the grip of government interference, and went away believing no easy solution was to come of this effort.  (After hearing about a push toward landscaping with native plants, one person muttered, "Next they'll be telling us what color of flowers we can plant.")  Several on the Council peppered Staff with questions with less than satisfying results.  All show, no go.  After the break you could have had your pick of almost any seat in the house.  

To give the Tech Committee a boost, here is are suggestions for program revisions:  

1. Abandon the name Sensitive Lands and throw away the code book.
2. Take out a Metro map of identified water resources and figure out which ones need any regulation according to statute.
3. Use model Metro regulatory codes to craft a new "Lake Oswego Natural Resourses Conservation Program" for Lake Oswego.  
4. Remove deed-restrictions properties, unless All land that have DEQ requirements are required to have these.  Further proof of this requirement is necessary.

Anything more is unnecessary stuff the Lake Oswegans don't want to keep stepping in.  Voluntary programs are fine, but why go to the trouble if we are only regulating what must be regulated anyway.  Rethink this one after the main objective is accomplished.  

 Always look for the simplest, easiest and most elegant way to do things, and not the most intrusive and complicated.  A wise administrator does not make work for themselves nor anger their customers - just because they can.