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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 land within a quarter mile of the city's UGB is resource land, no qualified applications exist on higher-priority land and the chosen site ranks highest under the existing prioritization framework. "So just to recap, a city in order to use resource land has to be a city that indicates that it is surrounded on 80% of its periphery with resource land," Marsh said.
The bill would also increase the net residential acreage cap for large cities from 100 to 170 acres and explicitly require that complete-community elements — neighborhood serving commercial uses, parks and recreation — be included within that cap. Marsh acknowledged disagreement in the work group over the acreage recommendation and anticipated committee debate.
Witnesses and stakeholders were split. The League of Oregon Cities and housing developers argued the changes make the tool more usable and that a clarified acreage cap helps plan complete communities. Builders and engineering experts said larger acreage can lower per-unit infrastructure costs and enable mixed-income, amenity-rich neighborhoods. Woodburn city officials and the Oregon Realtors supported clearer definitions and the proposed changes as a way to allow some cities surrounded by resource land to participate.
Conservation and land-preservation groups, including 1000 Friends of Oregon and Central Oregon Land Watch, opposed the acreage increase and urged maintaining the original net-acre caps and tighter resource-land limits, warning the change could expand UGBs beyond the original negotiated intent.
Committee members pressed staff and witnesses on whether the "complete community" elements would be guaranteed within the cap or left to developers; DLCD staff and the sponsor said the bill clarifies those elements must be included and that density and other 1537 requirements would remain. Chair Marsh closed the public hearing; members and stakeholders signaled amendments and further work would follow.
Ending: The committee closed the public hearing on HB 4035; no vote was taken and members indicated they would continue deliberations and possible amendments in future work sessions.
