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All Oregon cities are required by law to have comprehensive plans to guide zoning and development, but the effort to draft a plan for Damascus has been problematic.

“Damascus is a little unique in that anything like this has to go before voters,” explained Damascus communications director Todd Loggan.

Voters rejected the first proposed comprehensive plan in 2010.

“This is our second shot,” Loggan said.

Damascus Planning Commission members late last month approved a draft of the plan. It will go before Damascus City Council for a first reading on Monday. Barring complications, Loggan said, it should be approved by the council by the end of the month. Then it would go before voters in November.

Damascus voters are historically wary of development. The town is only 13 years old and was founded because residents rebelled against proposals to include the previously unincorporated areas of Damascus and Carver inside Portland’s urban growth boundary.

They responded with a ballot measure to create the city of Damascus to prevent further annexation efforts. As a result, they created the first new Oregon city since Keizer 22 years earlier.

The proposed comprehensive plan lists the capital projects that city officials may invest in over the next 20 years, and guides the location and character of public and private developments. Among the potential capital projects identified in the plan is a new city hall.

Loggan stressed that nothing in the proposal is chiseled in stone.

“All this is tentative as we are just now starting to get public input,” he said.

Details on Damascus’ comprehensive plan are available online at: www.damascusoregon.gov/departmentscommunitydevelopmentournewdamascuscomprehensiveplan.aspx.