Wilsonville senior planner Kim Bridal told the City Council at a work session on Oct. 20 that changes from the 2025 Oregon legislative session require the city to revise residential land-use review procedures so some applications are decided administratively without a public hearing.

"One of the bills that came out of the session was Senate Bill 974, which among a few other things, requires cities to review certain residential land use applications through an administrative land use process," Bridal said, noting the state compliance date is July 1, 2026.

The presentation framed the work as a faster-than-planned acceleration of an action (Action C) in Wilsonville's housing production strategy. Bridal said the city will compare the housing strategyrecommendations and existing local procedures against the statutory requirements and seek to preserve public access and transparency while meeting the new state timeline.

Bridal described Wilsonville's three-tier review framework: Class 1 administrative reviews (decisions by the planning director or designee with no public notice and appealable only by the applicant), Class 2 administrative reviews (planning director decisions with public notice and written public comment; appeals or "call-ups" to the Development Review Board are possible), and Class 3 quasi-judicial reviews (decisions by the Development Review Board, with public hearings and appeal routes to the City Council). She cited the Coffee Creek Industrial Area as an example where clear-and-objective standards and a Class 2 process have been used in the past.

Bridal said the city will analyze differences between existing local notice radiuses and the statutory notice requirements, and will work with legal counsel and a lane-use consulting team to interpret the statute because "there is not a state rulemaking process associated with this particular bill," and the early guidance is to "consult your attorney."

Councilors asked about outreach and stakeholders to involve. Councilor Shevlin asked about developer outreach and said predictability is a frequent developer request; Bridal said developers are among the constituencies staff will contact. Council President Berry and other councilors recommended soliciting input from past applicants and from the Development Review Board and DRB panels, which have historically provided useful feedback.

Bridal outlined the next steps: staff will prepare a memo digging into statutory requirements and options, identify affected development code sections (including appeal provisions), and propose an outreach plan. Bridal said the memo will be presented to the council and to the Planning Commission in December, followed by public outreach in early 2026; draft code amendments are planned for March 2026, a Planning Commission hearing in April, and a City Council hearing in May so changes would be effective July 1, 2026.

Bridal emphasized objectives the council identified in the housing production strategy: balancing a customer-friendly, predictable review process for residential development while maintaining opportunities for public input. She also noted that under current practice roughly one-quarter of Development Review Board applications since 2020 were solely for new residential development, so changes would affect a meaningful portion of the DRB workload.

Bridal and councilors agreed staff should involve DRB members in work sessions similar to those held during the Coffee Creek process.

Ending: Bridal will return with the statutory analysis and implementation options in December; councilors asked staff to include developer outreach, DRB input, and specific proposals for notice, appeal rights, and code edits in upcoming materials.