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Committee considers easing rules for one-time urban growth boundary expansions, but acreage and resource-land changes split stakeholders
Summary
House bill 4035 would ease eligibility for SB 1537 UGB expansions by shifting from a 'severely cost-burdened' threshold to a 30% rent-burden standard, clarifying 'undeveloped' tract definitions, allowing narrow resource-land use, and increasing net acreage for large cities from 100 to 170 acres; proponents and conservation groups disagreed on scale and safeguards.
Chair Pam Marsh presented House Bill 4035 as a work-group product to refine the one-time urban growth boundary expansion option created by Senate Bill 1537.
Marsh said the bill would remove the word "severely" from cost-burdened standards — lowering the threshold from households spending more than 50% of income to the more common 30% threshold — to let more cities qualify for the UGB option. She also proposed a clarified definition for an "undeveloped" 20-acre internal tract (no permanent buildings, no adjacent improved utilities, no final entitlements and not contiguous parcels).
On the question of resource land, Marsh said the proposal allows a city to use resource land only when at least 80% of…
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