Part 1: North Plains Had a Plan to Avoid a Fiscal Cliff. The Smart Growth Coalition Helped Kill It.
Updated: Jul 22
Friends of Smart Growth North Plains promised a smaller path to jobs and a stronger tax base. More than two years after the vote, North Plains residents are left asking what happened.
North Plains did not suddenly discover a money problem after the 2024 referendum. The city had been talking about it for nearly a decade.
The city’s own UGB Re-Look FAQ traces the public conversation to the North Plains 2035 visioning work that began in 2015. Residents wanted to protect the city’s character, add local shops and jobs, improve parks and maintain services. The planning work that followed put a hard question underneath those goals: How would a small city with a mostly residential tax base pay for them?
How North Plains Reached the Fiscal Cliff
A four-part series on the decisions, the money and the ongoing breakdown at City Hall - and what it could cost North Plains Residents.
North Plains’ property-tax burden had been shifting toward residents for years.
By 2023, it was approaching an 80% residential, 20% business split. This spelled trouble for the city's long-term finances. While homes add assessed value, they also add households that need streets, parks, water systems, public safety and staff. Commercial and industrial property can add recurring tax value without the same household-service demand.
The city’s plan sought to rebalance it by creating substantially more room for commercial and industrial investment. In other words, closing the long-term budget gap with property tax revenue from businesses.
North Plains has a permanent property-tax rate of about $2.17 per $1,000 of assessed value. That is among the lower city rates in the region. And it's important to remember that Oregon law generally limits how quickly assessed values can rise, even when wages, insurance, construction and contract costs rise faster. Which they do, frequently.
That was the fiscal problem the city was trying to solve in 2023 through a proposed UGB expansion: a small tax base, growing service expectations and too little business property to carry more of the load.
The city’s answer was real—and too large for voters
As part of Oregon's legally-required and deliberative land-use process, the city adopted a Housing Needs Analysis in 2021 and an Economic Opportunities Analysis in 2022. The studies identified a need for more housing and employment land over the next 20 years.
The final growth plan adopted by the city council in 2023 added 855 acres to the UGB, with a significant portion of the acreage intended for commercial and industrial use, rather than subdivisions. Less controversial was the adopted vision for completing the neighborhood, parks and trail system around the existing Sunset Ridge development and Atfalati Ridge Elementary School.
Oregon's long time land-use advocacy organizations who historically have rightly fought to protect high quality working farm lands, characterized it as too much too fast. Organizers flooded town.
Advocates raised enough reasonable questions to have an impact. They correctly argued that, while the city has a real obligation to address its adopted housing need, there is no state mandate for the city to absorb every acre identified for employment.
In an environment where unbiased, factual information was hard to find, the Smart Growth coalition presented a frightening vision of strip malls and data centers.
Residents were right to be concerned in thinking that the area's swift growth in industrial data centers was racing towards their doorsteps. Only one problem: it wasn't true.
Despite the repeated claims, this investigation has uncovered no information regarding any current or former plans to locate data centers in North Plains. (editors note: we welcome any documents or leads on this topic)
The concept of a UGB under Oregon law is to maintain a 20-year land supply for future planned (smart) growth. Land still must be annexed, planned, served with roads and water, and developed by someone willing to invest. A community planning process takes more time than most people would imagine.
It appears claims made by the Smart Growth Coalition about data centers were grounded in a passing reference to a large list of possible common conforming uses found in planning documents. There are no proposals, applications, presentations or correspondence we can find relating to data centers as part of the UGB process beyond materials submitted by anti-growth advocates.
City consultants and PGE officials have previously told North Plains officials that it lacks the power infrastructure necessary for even one large data center.
But that information didn't reach voters, and people were right to be shocked. The community's voice was loud and clear: 855 acres was too much, too quickly.
Residents demanded a smaller and safer plan.
The No campaign made a promise
Friends of North Plains Smart Growth organized the referendum effort. Katie Reding, who later became a city councilor until her resignation, was the chief petitioner. Aaron Nichols, who farms "just North of Hillsboro" according to his website, became one of its most visible organizers and spokespeople.
The campaign did not simply say North Plains should stop growing. It said the city could reach the same goals with less land and a better plan.
In a public open letter, Nichols wrote that the city’s goals for jobs and a more diverse tax base “could be achieved with far less land.” He said the community could do better and that the work toward a better plan would begin with a No vote.
That promise was central to the campaign’s credibility. It allowed voters to reject the city’s proposal without accepting a future of no jobs, no business growth and higher household costs.
The movement then became a governing slate. Save North Plains publicly promoted Ariel Goodwin for mayor and Aaron Dumbrow, Mandy Hagedorn and Katie Reding for council. All four won.
The Smart Growth coalition claimed credit for killing the original plan. But it never accepted responsibility for producing the workable alternative it promised. |
The Re-Look was supposed to move quickly
After the referendum, the city launched a UGB “Re-Look.” The official FAQ said the work was expected to take four to six months beginning in October 2024. It included advisory meetings, public meetings and concept planning intended to address land use, transportation, utilities, parks and financing.
There was a flurry of activity. The city held meetings, continued concept-planning work and improvements to the public-engagement format. The public poured in and the committee ultimately recommended a much smaller plan.
Then, beginning in January 2025, the Smart Growth Coalition took power. And for 18 months the community-driven plan has been mostly left sitting on the shelf.
As of July 2026, the city has not published a final UGB recommendation, adopted a smaller boundary, presented a parcel-by-parcel employment strategy or shown residents a full financial model connecting growth, infrastructure, staffing, taxes and services. Nor have they taken action to address the threat of data centers
The four-to-six-month Re-Look has stretched far beyond its expected window. The answers to the city’s most important long-range questions remain unanswered.
Despite council inaction, city staff took the major project of hosting more public presentations to inform residents of the very real budget shortfalls the city will face in just two years time if no action is taken. Despite council members also attending the public presentations, council has taken no meaningful action.
A smaller plan still needs real numbers
The Re-look has already determined that a smaller, targeted employment expansion is a better answer. It produced a map that protects more farmland, costs less to serve and earned broader public support through the visioning process.
But the city council has refused to take any of the obvious next steps.
Residents are asking for details: How many acres? Which parcels? What type of employers? What roads and water improvements? Who pays up front? How much recurring revenue? On what schedule? What happens if development is slow or construction costs rise?
There are answers to these questions. And, if they know, city council leadership won't say.
The people who won now own the answer
Astute readers already know that the original slate has not remained intact. Shortly after taking office Goodwin resigned as mayor, citing health-related reasons. She has since appeared at city council meetings to chastise the remaining councilors, indicating a potential split in the coalition.
Reding resigned from the council in May 2026, for reasons that are unclear. Dumbrow, who had been elected to council, was later appointed mayor to fill Goodwin's seat. Hagedorn was promoted to council president.
Dumbrow and Hagedorn, the two remaining Smarth Growth electeds, have craftily used appointments to backfill the losses. This has produced a council with a majority that is comprised of members who were not elected by the public that they claim to represent.
Put another way, a group of people residents didn't choose are now in charge of their city's future. Among their accomplishments: hiking fees on residents in June 2026 and pushing to replace the city's legal representation with a parliamentary service.
The Smart Growth coalition has owned the responsibility to deliver a smaller, more balanced UGB plan for nearly two years.
The movement worked hard to convince voters to help stop a strategy the city spent years developing. It appears to have worked less hard on delivering real results for taxpaying North Plains residents.
Its candidates asked voters to trust them with City Hall. The remaining leaders and loyal appointees now control the public process.
Where is plan?
Coming Next Tuesday, July 28
Part Two: Follow the Money: How an Outside-Backed Network Built North Plains’ Governing Majority
Campaign records show how the UGB referendum organization, a political action committee and four aligned candidate campaigns operated as parts of the same political network. We examine who financed it, where that support came from and how it helped capture City Hall.
BOTTOM LINE They helped defeat the city’s proposed answer to financial sustainability, won the authority to choose a new path, and after 18 months local residents have little to show for it. |
Read the records• City of North Plains UGB Re-Look FAQ — Official timeline, land-need studies, tax-base rationale and Re-Look description. • Friends of North Plains Smart Growth open letter — The campaign’s promise that jobs and tax-base goals could be met with less land. • Save North Plains candidate events — The four candidates presented together as an endorsed slate. |
