The Gresham-Barlow School District and general contractor Perlo Construction are seeking bids from subcontractors to perform a variety of work for the .

Deep Creek is located in Damascus and serves students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. The upcoming project will include expansion of a K-5 building to accommodate middle school students.

Builders will add changing areas, four new general classrooms and a multi-purpose room for science; upgrade heating and cooling systems and the roof; perform other needed building repairs; install internally locking door hardware for all classrooms; modify the front entry and office to secure them; update furnishings and equipment for classrooms; install new low-voltage systems such as intercoms, fire alarms, cameras and emergency power; upgrade technology and wireless infrastructure in all classrooms; and add new playground equipment and surfacing.

The project team is seeking bids for: sitework, demolition, underground utilities, foundation concrete, rough framing, masonry, exterior metal siding, glass and glazing, doors and hardware, roofing, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire sprinkler.

Construction of phase one core and shell improvements is set to start Jan. 21, 2019 and finish by April 1, 2019. Roofing improvements will start in summer 2019.

This project is being paid for with money from a $291 million bond measure approved by voters in 2016.

Interested parties can learn more by emailing Drew Carter at dcarter@perlo.biz.

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When the 240 acres of rural property that Lowell Patton owns were annexed into the city of Damascus in 2004, he thought a decades-long plan was finally coming to fruition.

Back in 1971, he had purchased his land in what was then unincorporated Clackamas County with plans to develop it one day.  Having the land annexed into the city meant he finally would be able to tap into the sewage and water systems he would need to build on his land.

But then the city of Damascus failed repeatedly to adopt a comprehensive master plan. The lack of a formal plan meant no development could move forward.

Patton spent three years battling with the city before he managed to convince Damascus officials to de-annex his land. It’s a fight the 89-year-old man hopes other property owners stuck in development limbo in Damascus will be able to avoid.

House Bill 3085, currently awaiting Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s signature to become law, will ask the same voters who supported Damascus becoming a city 11 years ago whether the city now should be dismantled. Two other bills will shorten the process for de-annexation for the city and return leftover money from the city’s coffers to taxpayers should voters approve disincorporation next year.

Once the new laws go into effect, they will clear the way for landowners like Patton to develop or sell their land at market rate since they once again will be in unincorporated Clackamas County or, as some have done, annexed into another jurisdiction. But they’ll still be in the Metro urban growth boundary.

Jerry Schofield has dealt with frustrations similar to Patton’s. Schofield and his wife Kim had their 4.2 acre property annexed into Damascus. They watched a 130-unit subdivision being built right next to the land they were not allowed to build on, according to Schofield.

Schofield and his wife recently were able to have their property, which sits on the edge of Happy Valley, annexed into that city.

“As long as I was in Damascus, they wouldn’t touch my property,” he said. “Now I’m getting letters from developers.”

Even though he no longer has to deal with Damascus, he believes disincorporation of Damascus would be the right move.

“Damascus was born way too soon, and I don’t think they had an idea of what they wanted when they incorporated,” Schofield said. “And when the city council started suing citizens, everything went south.”

The charter for the city of Damascus requires a comp plan be approved by voters before being adopted. But acrimony between Damascus residents and previous city council members kept voters from approving a total of six plans.

Property owners frustrated by the lack of an approved plan began to request to have their land de-annexed from the city. When the Oregon Legislature passed a bill during its 2014 session that allowed the de-annexations, the city turned around and began suing the property owners, claiming the law was unconstitutional.

A new Damascus council that took office this past January withdrew lawsuits against citizens who wanted to de-annex. The new council, under Mayor Diana Helm, is trying to work with citizens, but there’s still mistrust, Schofield said.

“I feel bad for the new council members because they’re stepping into a hornet’s nest,” Schofield said.

Ted Reid, Metro’s chief planner, said the Damascus City Council and Metro Council recently held a joint work session about the possibility that Damascus might cease to exist as a city.

“The (Damascus) council said the voters are likely to vote for disincorporation, which will make development more likely,” Reid said. “As they annex into Happy Valley or unincorporated Clackamas County, I think a lot of challenges will disappear.”

Reid said Metro Council doesn’t direct development, but he thinks the western side of Damascus is less likely to be developed because it doesn’t have sewer service. He expects development will be more likely on the east side, closer to Happy Valley.

Hank Brown, one of the land owners who was sued by the city for trying to de-annex, expects that a disincorporation of Damascus will quickly be followed by a flurry of development. He acknowledges that new development could create new problems in the area, such as increased traffic. Still, he says he’s happy to no longer be fighting the city of Damascus.

“I’m just glad to move forward with my life since they held us hostage for quite a few years,” he said.

As for Lowell Patton, he was able to get his property removed from within the Damascus boundaries and is now considering having it annexed into Happy Valley. As for his decades-long dream, he still hasn’t given up on his plan to develop the acreage himself.

“I didn’t buy this land for someone else to make money off it,” he said.

The post Should Damascus be dismantled? appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Around 10 years after the urban growth boundary was expanded to include Damascus, its citizens are still wondering why.

“We don’t have any of the infrastructure needed to urbanize, nor do we have the money, nor are we getting the money from anyone,” City Council President Diana Helm said. “We have a topography that I’m not sure Metro looked at when they added us to UGB, so it’s kind of nuts.”

In addition, a recent Metro population forecast predicts that Damascus in 20 years will have approximately 30,000 residents – nearly 8,000 fewer than Metro expected in 2002, when the city was pulled inside the UGB.

That led to the creation of Measure 3-411, which will go before Clackamas County voters next month. If the measure were to pass, Clackamas County would ask Metro to consider retracting the UGB boundary in light of the recent population projection.

City officials considered simply asking Metro to change the boundaries, but they decided to let residents weigh in on the issue, Helm said.

“We feel it needs to come from the citizens,” she said. “I think it’s very important to ask the citizens what they would like to do.”

Damascus has approximately 10,300 acres. City officials believe only about half of those are needed to accommodate the projected population of 30,000.

Residents pay higher property taxes because their land is inside the UGB. If the boundary were scaled back (the council has not recommended an exact location for a new boundary line), citizens’ taxes would be lower and their “angst” would be relieved, Helm said.

The portion of the city likely to see significant growth soon would be left inside the UGB, Helm added. The area east of 172nd Avenue, close to Happy Valley, has developed the most since the UGB boundary was expanded, she said.

Based on what citizens have told City Council, there is a good chance the measure will pass, according to councilor Randy Shannon, who proposed it.

“What I’ve heard from citizens the last eight or 10 years I’ve been doing this is that a strong majority of them don’t want (Damascus) to change,” he said. “Under state rules, the only way that can happen is to not be in the urban growth boundary.”

However, even if the measure were to pass, the UGB may not be retracted. Metro will not consider adjusting boundaries until it performs a comprehensive study of the entire UGB at the end of 2014, according to Metro principal planner Ray Valone.

The measure would not persuade Metro to look at the boundaries any sooner, he said.

“The city has decided to ask their citizens whether they should try to ask Metro; that’s what it purely is,” Valone said. “We’re going to look at it in a year and a half because that’s our schedule.”

Metro believes the recent population forecast merely reflects Damascus’ failure to establish adequate infrastructure and zoning to accommodate the previous projection, Valone said.

“When we looked at Damascus and what has happened in these 10 years … they haven’t advanced very far in their planning,” he said. “That’s the reason that the numbers are different now.”

The city may never have the infrastructure and zoning needed for urbanization, Helm said. And the city already has too many amendments in place that would prohibit such change, she added.

Despite Metro’s stance, city officials still believe the measure could convince Metro to retract the UGB in the future, Helm said.

“People told us they don’t want to urbanize; they want Damascus to stay rural,” she said. “There are so many charter amendments that would prevent it from urbanizing in any way that Metro was envisioning.”

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Barely a week after Damascus voters passed a controversial land use initiative, a ripple effect extended to the .

“With recent passage of a voter initiative in Damascus requiring voter approval of all comprehensive plan and zoning actions submitted to the Department of Land Conservation and Development and Metro, it is unclear that the assurances as previously envisioned are sufficient for moving ahead to spend federal funds on planning work at this time,” wrote Kirsten Pennington, ODOT planning manager for region 1, in a March 20 letter to city staffers.

Measure 3-389, which passed by a 3-to-1 margin, requires voters’ approval before Damascus City Council can submit any land-use ordinance or law to the state.

In its letter, ODOT informed city staffers that it was putting on hold development of the city’s transportation system plan – essentially withholding from Damascus $1 million that Sen. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., earmarked for that very purpose.

Steve Gaschler, the city’s community services director, said officials are disappointed in the delay.

“Any way people get around town, getting goods and services from point A to point B – it’s a fundamental foundational piece of the (comprehensive) plan,” Gaschler said of the transportation system plan.

In 2008, the gave Damascus a one-year extension to complete its comprehensive plan, which is required by state law. Damascus City Council adopted a comprehensive plan in November 2010, but voters rejected it six months later.

In an attempt to keep the process moving, Gaschler said the city began concentrating on creation of a public facilities map. He said that public facilities and a transportation system are the two comprehensive plan aspects that take the longest to complete – usually requiring 12 to 18 months each. Officials have struggled to make progress.

“We are pretty much stuck at month one, and we’ve been stuck on month one for almost two years now,” he said.

ODOT’s decision represents a new obstacle in the process.

“We are stewards of the federal funds and so we have a responsibility of making sure that those funds are spent wisely,” said Rian Windsheimer, an ODOT policy and development manager for region 1. “And so there’s a process in place – including having a comprehensive plan and an idea of what that is before moving ahead – and we need some assurances of what that’s going to look like before we feel comfortable spending those funds.”

Windsheimer said the transportation system needs to serve the intended use of the land, so if variables like land use or density are not identified, a working plan can be difficult to craft. Basically, ODOT doesn’t want to spend money on a plan only to find out later that it must be changed, he said.

Damascus planners last week presented City Council with a 20-year population forecast for the city. That forecast is an integral ingredient in planning transportation. According to the report, Damascus’ population is predicted to increase from 10,686 in 2010 to 15,390 in 2025 and 35,804 in 2035.

Diana Helm, president of Damascus City Council, said the situation is frustrating.

“It’s really disconcerting because when a jurisdiction like ODOT pulls out of this process, even if it’s temporary, it means that there are some red flags going up,” she said. “I think it’s going to be hard for any jurisdiction, be it a water authority or anyone, to come in and partner with us in this when they don’t feel there’s ever going to be a comprehensive plan on the table.”

Helm said she wasn’t sure what the next step would be. Windsheimer said ODOT and city officials would meet sometime in early April.

“We’re going to come to the table and hopefully they’ll have some answers for us and hopefully it’ll be something that we’ll be able to do,” Gaschler said.

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City governance can be a thankless job – especially when land-use laws are involved.

“We’re not evil people like all the articles say,” said Diana Helm, president of Damascus City Council and owner of on Oregon Route 212. “We’re just citizen volunteers. We’re giving our time to the city to try to put together a comprehensive plan to make the bulk of the people happy … and at this point it’s just impossible. It’s impossible. I’ve never in my life felt hopeless, and I feel hopeless about Damascus and where we’re headed.”

Damascus, incorporated as a city in 2006, is required by state law to adopt a comprehensive plan. But six years later, the city is still at square one, and Damascus voters rejected a proposed comprehensive plan its counselors adopted in November 2010, by a two-to-one margin.

On Tuesday, residents will vote on Measure 3-389, which would require any new city ordinance or plan adopted by the council to be accompanied by a financial impact report and be subject to a public vote before the council could submit it to Metro or the state.

Helm believes the measure – generally expected to pass – is vague to a fault and could clog the system with futile processes.

“I think (some people) think if they vote it down then we don’t have to have a comprehensive plan,” she said. “But that’s not true. We’re required by the state to have one, and if we don’t do it, then one very well could be put on us by the state and it might not be the one we’ve been working on.”

But Dan Phegley, chief petitioner for the measure and leader of a group called , sees it differently. Phegley said he thinks the planning process has been exclusive and covert, giving rise to his battle cry, “They didn’t ask us in Damascus.”

“What we’re really up against is Metro and their forced land-use planning,” Phegley said. “Metro is a regional government that has been sending out disciples all over the world, but they’ve never gotten anyone to copy it and so they’re a big believer in spending money, and light rail is their religion.”

Some background

The city of Damascus recently conducted a phone survey to find out why people voted against the proposed comprehensive plan. Helm said the results weren’t too surprising.

Some people, she said, were concerned about conservation, and others worried about preservation of property rights. But many people just didn’t want growth.

“Most of the people moved here to get out of the city, to live in a rural community and not grow up,” Helm said. “Being in the urban growth boundary has been a big pill for people to swallow.”

That pill came in December 2002, when Metro expanded its UGB to include Damascus.

Robin McArthur, Metro’s planning and development director, said that expansion was the result of an urban growth report that Metro conducts every five years to identify the need for housing and jobs on a 20-year horizon.

In 2000, the population in the seven-county statistical area was 1.9 million people with approximately 973,000 jobs, according to Metro’s 2009-2030 Urban Growth Report. Metro estimates there is a 90 percent chance that by 2030 the population will grow to between 2.9 million and 3.2 million people, with between 1.3 million and 1.7 million jobs.

McArthur said Metro chose Damascus for the UGB expansion because, at the time, the state’s primary focus was on preserving farmland and forestland. However, Damascus, she said, has a lot of “exception lands” – open land not primed for farming.

State laws have since changed to protect more exception lands through urban and rural reserves for the benefit of businesses like wineries, vineyards and nurseries – often the first to go in a UGB expansion, McArthur said.

“So we changed state law and … if the new urban and rural reserve work had been in place, we may or may not have brought in Damascus,” she said. “But that’s water under the bridge.”

The controversy continues

Meanwhile, Damascus is struggling to comply with state requirements; the city’s incorporation in 2006 was arguably the first attempt by citizens to control the process. But with that move came a controversial price tag for the cost to provide infrastructure for development – $3.5 billion. That estimate motivated Phegley.

“They later did a study on the sewer and water supply, and that was between $2 billion and $8 billion,” he said. “That’s a heck of a spread and when you’re talking about a town of 12,000 people. We’re talking $300,000 per household, well over.”

John Morgan, Damascus’ community development director – the man tasked with forging a path forward for the city’s comprehensive planning process – said that interpretation of the costs for infrastructure is, “frankly, ludicrous.”

Morgan said the original estimate for infrastructure – i.e., sewer treatment, water treatment, a major sewer trunk line and extensions to new development – was $3.5 billion spread out over 50 years. He said most of that money would come from system development charges placed on developers, with some community block grants and/or bond measures picking up a small remainder of the balance.

“So the thought that the $3.5 billion is going to be paid for by the existing residents of Damascus is just completely out of the ballpark from how this stuff works,” Morgan said.

Meanwhile, Peter Walker, a University of Oregon professor and the author of the book “,” said the story of Damascus is indicative of a greater problem stewing in Oregon.

“(Damascus is) a symptom of a bigger problem of the state land-use planning system, which is that in many ways it’s really sort of lost touch with ordinary people and local communities, and needs to take seriously the concerns of local people, and actively engage in a bilateral and substantive process of political negotiation with communities,” Walker said. “Rather than saying, ‘By the power of fiat, this community will now become part of the city.’ ”

Instead of asking Damascus residents if they wanted to be included in the UGB, Walker said Metro started the conversation by saying, “ ‘This is going to happen. Can we work with you to try and make it happen in a way that you can live with it?’ ”

Moving forward

The answer, at least so far, has been a resounding “no.” But Morgan said he has a plan.

“It makes more sense to me to create a plan that revolves around the core values (of Damascus) in how it’s written and formatted, rather than the statewide planning goals,” he said.

Morgan said the original plan, the one rejected last May, took the exact opposite approach. Rather than centering around the legacy the city hopes to establish for itself, Morgan said the city previously made the state’s 14 land-use goals the top priority.

McArthur said she understands that some people are dissatisfied with Metro’s decision to bring Damascus into the UGB. But she added that the process also involves an extensive period of research and public hearings.

“I think the idea behind the comprehensive plan is for the community to manifest its own destiny, and Damascus has that opportunity as well,” she said.

Morgan said decisions will be reviewed to assess whether they align with citizens’ hopes. And by traveling that path, he said, meeting the state’s requirements should be a breeze.

Phegley is skeptical. He believes a comprehensive plan is not representative of the will of the people and that Measure 3-389 will bring accountability to local government.

Morgan, hoping to get buy-in from the citizens, doesn’t think the measure will hinder the process one bit.

Whatever happens, the winds of change are coming.

“The community is going to urbanize,” Morgan said. “That is a fundamental fact of change that is real. There is an extreme transformation that is going to occur over the next 40 to 50 years, and since that change is going to happen, how do we make that acceptable and desirable for the vast majority of the citizens of Damascus?

“That’s a challenge, and it’s a big one.”

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For citizen activist Dan Phegley, it’s pretty simple: If the taxpayers are going to pay for something, they should not only know what they’re paying for and how much it’s going to cost, but should also be able to have a say in it.

That’s why , a citizens group, has filed an initiative with the city of Damascus that, if approved, would require voter approval for any city planning document required by the state or Metro. The group believes the city is passing $3 billion in debt to citizens through creation of the state-mandated Damascus Comprehensive Plan without getting their input.

“This initiative is just an extension of what’s been going on out here,” Phegley said. “After everything that has gone on already, we don’t trust the (City Council) to make this decision, so we want the voters to get the final say.”

Damascus City Council has been assembling a comprehensive plan – an all-inclusive visioning document – since 2009. The document identified approximately $3 billion worth of projects to help manage growth sustainably into the future. The council earlier this year was ready to ship the plan to the state Department of Land Conservation and Development for final approval, but then Ask Damascus added a referendum to the May ballot that asked voters whether they agreed with the plan.

The comprehensive plan was shot down by 65 percent of the voters.

“If you take a town of 10,000 and put them in debt $3 billion, that’s economic suicide,” Phegley said. “And on top of that, the council didn’t tell us how much they wanted to put us in debt throughout the entire process.”

Diana Helm, president of the council, said it has since revisited the document, but she isn’t sure much will change.

“I’m not sure we will make any changes,” Helm said. “The changes they want fly in the face of our core values. But we are listening and re-examining the document.”

The comprehensive plan calls for dense, urban zoning surrounded by natural, open spaces. This includes 200-foot setbacks along any streams to protect the city’s water source.

The problem, according to Damascus Mayor Steve Spinnett, is that residents like the area’s rurality. When Damascus was incorporated in 2004, citizens agreed simply to avoid annexation into nearby cities, which would have made the area subject to those cities’ planning requirements.

“Planners have a tendency to do things the same way, like cluster development with wide-open green space,” Spinnett said. “But that’s not what the people want here. I don’t work for the city; I work for the people and the council needs to remember that they do too.

“I’m in complete support of what Ask Damascus is doing because the ballot box is the ultimate public involvement.”

The initiative was submitted to the city and is before the city attorney, who will draft the ballot measure language and then open a public notice period. Ask Damascus would then be able to start gathering the 400 verified signatures required for the initiative to go before voters.

If the initiative were approved, it would amend the Damascus City Charter and add a section titled Additional Powers Retained by Citizens.

The new section would read, “After March 1, 2011, the council shall not submit any ordinance or plan which affects property rights to Metro, the (Land Conservation and Development Commission), the DLCD or their successors until it is ratified by a majority vote of the city’s qualified electors voting in an election where at least 50 percent of the registered voters cast a ballot, or the election is a general election in an even-numbered year.”

The initiative also would require that the council include on the ballot an estimation of how much the plan would cost taxpayers after implementation, as well as a description of what it would do.

Both Phegley and Spinnett believe that the initiative will spur dialogue and potentially lead to compromises so a plan can be approved and sent to the state. But Helm warns that a change to city code could spin the entire process out of control.

“I just don’t think they understand that we are required to turn something in to the state, and just because they voted no on it, or vote no on it again, doesn’t mean that requirement, or the issue, will go away,” she said.

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Voters in Damascus Tuesday night voted against the city’s proposed comprehensive plan in resounding fashion.

Voters struck down Measure 3-375 with 65 percent of citizens voting against it. The measure was a referendum that asked voters whether they supported the city council’s decision to pass the comprehensive plan, which came in December.

The state-mandated comprehensive plan laid out $3 billion in future projects for the city of 10,000 people. When it was approved, a small group of citizens, calling themselves Ask Damascus, started collecting signatures for the referendum. The group wanted to give citizens a chance to vote on the plan, which the group felt was hurriedly put together.

The vote on the referendum doesn’t necessarily mean the city will have to start anew the process of developing a comprehensive plan. The council could choose to use as much of the comprehensive plan as it sees fit, but whatever the council decides to do, its decision will have to be made in a public meeting with public testimony.

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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.”

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