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In Damascus, one local group says the small town’s 10,000 people are not being heard when decisions are made about the city’s future.

A month after Damascus City Council approved its state-mandated comprehensive plan – which laid out $3 billion in future projects for the city – Ask Damascus, a self-described nonpartisan political action committee, has responded. Its referendum on the May ballot will ask citizens to approve or reject the plan.

“The problem is this plan was rushed and put together over the last six months with no public input by an outgoing mayor and a changing council,” said Josh Lattin, the chief petitioner for the referendum. “We’re not asking them to throw this plan out.

“We are asking them to give the people a chance to work on it with the council.”

Citizen involvement has been a thorn in the side of Damascus since it was incorporated in 2004. In April 2010, all seven members of the city’s Committee for Community Involvement, a state-required committee to oversee public involvement on city projects, decided unanimously to disband because they felt the city wasn’t listening to their pleas for more involvement.

“We made over 20 recommendations on the (comprehensive) plan that not only didn’t make the plan, but weren’t even acknowledged by the council,” said Louise Neilson, formerly a member of the committee. “Anything we said or did was discounted, ignored and met with hostile opposition.”

City councilor Randy Shannon said the community was involved in development of the plan. He cited four coffee meetings during which city officials asked citizens for insight.

But Lattin said those meetings, held throughout summer 2009, drew only 118 total attendees. Many were counted more than once because they attended more than one meeting, and others weren’t even citizens of Damascus, he said.

“We’ve done extensive outreach through these coffee klatch events,” said Shannon, one of the councilors who voted to approve the plan. “To me it seems like (Ask Damascus members) didn’t get their way so they are saying it’s because of a lack of community involvement.”

But the argument against the plan isn’t grounded only in a perceived lack of citizen involvement. Mayor Steve Spinnett has joined Ask Damascus in taking issue with the plan’s stream setback requirements and environmental overlay zones.

The city wants to use streams and other waterways to provide some services – like drinking water and irrigation water – rather than installing a network of pipes and pumps. The approved comprehensive plan calls for 200-foot environmental setbacks near streams and wetlands in order to protect them and to ensure accessibility by the city.

The problem, according to the mayor and Ask Damascus, is that the state required minimum for setbacks is only 75 feet.

“There are a lot of good ideas in this plan, but these setbacks would make us the town with the most restricted land in Oregon,” Spinnett said. “That’s a difficult thing to swallow.”

The population of Damascus is expected to reach nearly 45,000 in the next 20 years, according to Metro. Zoning restrictions could limit the city’s ability to provide housing and services to accommodate a growing population.

Spinnett supports the referendum and expects voters in May to kick the comprehensive plan back to the council. He said citizens have a right to vote on the future of their city, and added that the city shouldn’t block such actions.

Shannon pointed out that the comprehensive plan already is two years past due. The state has notified the city that if it does not complete its plan soon, the state has the legal authority to create a comprehensive plan for the city.

“My fear is that the state is going to take this thing over,” Shannon said. “If that happens, it will be (state officials) making the decisions on the future of Damascus.”