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Sandy staff: city approved for state adjustment allowing use of local housing review process
Summary
City staff told the Planning Commission that Sandy was approved by the state to use its local process for certain housing adjustments under recent state legislation, giving the city authority to approve up to 90% of requests under that program and reducing reliance on the state review path.
Sandy officials told the Planning Commission on May 27 that the city received state approval to use a local process for certain housing adjustments created by recent state legislation. Kelly, speaking during the director’s report, said Sandy is the second city in Oregon to receive that approval and credited staff work on the application.
The approval lets Sandy use its locally designed review process for adjustment requests that otherwise would have fallen under the state-prescribed procedure. “With our process now, we can actually use the local process instead of the state mandated process, and we’re going to approve up to 90%,” Kelly said. She added the approval “does give us a little bit more local control and a little more local decision making authority,” while noting the city will still need to meet conditions and cannot deny all requests.
Why it matters: The change affects how variances and similar adjustment requests tied to housing applications are handled. Under the state legislation that prompted the application, cities could apply to handle those adjustments locally rather than routing them to the state process. Kelly said the city must be selective in denials because the program’s terms count denials against a capped allowance. She also told the commission staff will add explanatory material and a blurb to the city’s pre‑application notes and website.
Staff and commission discussion focused on implementation details and next steps. Kelly said Rebecca and Patrick handled much of the application work and that Rebecca logged 50–60 hours preparing the materials. Commissioners asked procedural questions about how the local process would interact with future subdivision applications and how many applications might be affected; Kelly said some applications will still use state procedures and that full local control was not achievable under the statute.
Next steps: Staff said it will publish explanatory material on the city website and include information in staff reports for future hearings. The item was presented as information; no formal action or ordinance vote occurred at the meeting.
