Benton County planning commission launches countywide outreach, orders development-code cleanup

At a joint meeting in Monroe, Benton County planning commissioners outlined a new countywide outreach push and confirmed they have hired consultants to update the county's development code and begin a phased periodic review of the comprehensive plan.

The commission said the effort is intended to bring planning work out of Corvallis and into outlying communities and to solicit local feedback on housing, transportation, wildfire resilience, recreation, water and broadband.

Nick Fowler, chair of the Benton County planning commission, framed the effort as volunteer-driven and community-focused: "We're all volunteers and so we don't have unlimited time. We almost have unlimited goals." He said the planning commission aims to "listen to the community and get a better context for what the county is doing specifically around land use."

Petra, described in the meeting as a planning director on staff, told attendees the county secured general-fund money to contract a regional consultant to update the countywide development code. "This contract was just executed yesterday," Petra said. She said the first phase will correct administrative errors and internal conflicts in the code rather than change policy, and that the work is expected to proceed over the next six to nine months and could extend up to a year.

Petra and Shannon Bush, interim deputy director of community development, said the comprehensive-plan periodic review will be a separate, policy-focused phase and that the county received funding from the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) for phase 1. "Our task 1 in that project is to define what we've called an inclusive outreach plan," Bush said, adding that the consultant will help design outreach that reaches underrepresented residents and accommodates people who cannot attend evening meetings.

The commission also described smaller, topic-focused efforts that will run alongside the code and plan updates. Commissioner Greg Hammond and others said the planning commission has established a regional housing subcommittee to address housing affordability and availability across jurisdictions, and that the commission is coordinating quarterly working sessions with the Benton County Board of Commissioners on water availability and quality.

The planning commission flagged transportation, wildfire resilience and recreation as coupled priorities because "the county growth has had impact on transportation" and increasing recreational use of forest lands. Telecommunication planning to improve cellular coverage and broadband access also appears on the commission's long-term list.

Shannon Bush said the county recently received consultant bids to design a project that will coordinate permitting workflows across county departments, and she invited Monroe and other cities to participate in the Community Development Roundtable (CDRT), which is typically held quarterly and can be run remotely if towns ask.

The commission asked for local input on priorities and said the purpose of the listening sessions is to shape a work program that will feed the development-code phase that follows the comprehensive-plan phase. They urged residents to participate in future listening sessions and in the periodic review's iterative public hearings once draft materials are available.

Looking ahead, the planning commission said the next steps are a consultant kickoff for the development-code cleanup, continuing periodic-review outreach supported by DLCD funding, and formation of work groups for housing, water and other priority topics.