[Grovenet] Measure 37

[Meredith Bliss]

Right, M37 was approved so a little old lady could put a retirement home on 
her property, now she wants to put a housing development there so she can 
build her retirement home in Florida. Most likely she paid a price for the 
property in line with nearby land prices at the time, probably agricultural 
land. Now she wants to be compensated at the full price of prime developable 
land. Pure speculative profit, not just compensation.

There was nothing "unworkable" about the land use laws before M37. But it 
assumed that elected officials would not be asleep at the switch. 
Unfortunately, the planners went wild with the laws and the elected officials 
who were supposed to be providing oversight did nothing. The greatest 
promoter for M37 were the professional planners at Metro with their planning 
for Goal 5, a process which had grounding in neither science nor logic. They 
boasted of their background research, but as far as I could tell, they 
totally ignored it when they developed their standards. Goal 5 was rather 
vague about what "habitat" should be protected, but instead of starting with 
establishing a definition, Metro never even bothered to define what kind of 
"habitat" they wanted to protect! So then they just charged ahead and decided 
to protect everything that looked like "habitat" (using unknown standards) 
from aerial photos.

I tend to view M37 as a rejection of professional planners who think they can 
plan as if people didn't matter.

On Friday 08 December 2006 15:54, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
...
> Indeed, Measure 37 is a response to an unworkable part of the current land
> use laws. And the voters agreed and approved it, twice!
...
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
> Behalf Of allnutt
> Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 11:47 AM
> To: Forest Grove local interests list
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Fwd: ACTION ALERT: Call for Measure 37
> Suspension&Hearings
>
>
> I see it as the pendulum swinging back the other way.
> Measure 37 'fixed' some of the hardships that vexed individuals who just
> wanted to put a house on their land but opened up a pandora's box for the
> corporate land owners who are now working the system.

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Just happy to be here, but speaking 
only for myself!
Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
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