The Harold Haynes Citizen Involvement Award

Harold Haynes was active in 1000 Friends of Oregon and the Washington County Committee for Citizen Involvement.  In honor of his memory, an award was established to recognize citizens who are involved in public activities.

Are there Code Enforcement issues in your Neighborhood? Please plan to attend a Code Enforcement and Citizen Citation Process Workshop to learn about and comment on proposed code enforcement changes to the Community Development Code:

• Wednesday, July 9th, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
• OSU Extension Service18640 NW Walker Road, Room 1411 E, Beaverton, OR 97006 

The workshop will cover the following:

• CPO Announcements and Discussion (neighborhood meetings and development status)
• Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue Report
• Community Announcement
• “It’s Your CPO” Open Mic

7:50 - Metro Councilor Harrington Report

Recycling update

• How is the commingling working? Is it getting better recycling rates?
• Why can’t we recycle AAA-D cell batteries?
• Any other new items on the horizon? Food waste?

 Urban / Rural Reserve process.

• An overview and discussion of areas adjacent to Cedar Mill.
• Public involvement in the process.
• Can this facilitate making local food sources a priority?

 Metro's efforts to build great communities: How to benefit Cedar Mill.

• Urban revitalization funding?
• Can Metro provide Cedar Mill help in planning?

 WACO Urbanization Forum.

• Metro's goals for participating
• Reflections on the expected outcomes from the process.

As I write this, the next meeting of the Urbanization Forum is tonight. (Citizen notes taken at the April 24, 2008 forum here.)

I applaud all the elected and appointed officials who are pursuing this effort. And I am glad to see it get started because from personal experience over many years, I know the pace at which changes to complex issues proceeds; it is slow and deliberate but not guaranteed.  I have found that to make a change in county policy and have it take effect is, at best, a 2-year effort.  (At a recent CPO 1 meeting, the citizens who successfully brokered the deal between the Beaverton School District and the Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District to create a park from unused school district property at the new Bonny Slope Elementary School said they spent 2 years in the process.)

Doing some gazing over the horizon, if it takes 1 year to agree on the list of items that need addressing (an optimistic estimate indeed), 2 years for county, city and service district staffs to converge on a set of proposed policy and technical solutions, 1 year to educate the public and hold an election to approve the proposed solutions and 2 more years to implement them (another optimistic estimate), that puts us 6 years from now before any effect of this effort bears fruit.  This is ‘quick’ in terms of major civic change.

Local Control of Neighborhoods

In our April meeting, we were fortunate to have Jim Crawford, the Permit Chairman of the Homes Association of Cedar Hills (HACH - www.cedarhillshoa.org), join us in the discussion of neighborhood associations, including Conditions, Covenants and Restrictions (CC&Rs) the restrictions governing the use of real estate. These are usually enforced by a homeowners' association and are passed on to the new owners of property. For example, CC&Rs may tell you how big your house can be, how you must landscape your yard, what vehicles you can park on the street or whether you can have pets. If property is subject to CC&Rs, buyers must be notified before the sale takes place. The HACH has its own permitting process and CC&Rs that, in some cases, are more restrictive than Washington County’s (see the April CPO 1 minutes for details).  These are politically and legally enforceable because they were created when the Cedar Hills development was originally created.

Many of us were left wondering how it would be possible to institute such controls ‘after the fact’: How could neighborhood activists hope to get 100% of a community to voluntarily restrict use of their properties? 

The county is starting its Urbanization Forum which will have to grapple with the issue of more local control. Visit www.co.washington.or.us/deptmts/cao/st_cty08.htm ‘Challenges Ahead”.

View Virginia and Bruce's “Urban Needs – Rural Government” article series at cedarmill.org/news/archive/UrbanNeeds.html.