Correcting Misinformation Sent by Developer Interests
All residents in the 97133 zip code received an unsolicited, flashy mailer filled with misinformation this week. The flyer makes misleading claims about the resignation of City Manager Bill Reid who failed his duties in multiple ways (see below). It criticizes councilors for requesting a parliamentarian to help them navigate the obstructive rules left for them by the departing City Council. And it criticizes councilors for having left office - three of them for personal or family health reasons (one died soon after leaving) and one for a work reason. Any dysfunction current councilors are having to address is the result of the mess left for them by the departed City Manager and the 2024 City Councilors.
Here’s the list of things you can do:
Join a Community Meeting to learn more this Thursday, 7/16 at 6pm at The Rogue
Ask to be removed from Real Friends of North Plains’ mailing list by emailing therealfriendsofnorthplains@gmail.com
Attend or testify at the upcoming North Plains City Council meeting on Monday, 7/20, at 7:00pm
Volunteer on the campaign here
Volunteer for the city on committees or in other leadership roles. Email us to learn more: hello@friendsofsmartgrowth.org
Donate to Friends of Smart Growth if you can
Here’s more detail: The flyer positions Dave Hunnicutt as a “land use expert,” but he was the architect of the bill that tried to strip away North Plains residents’ right to vote on the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). Hunnicut, while soliciting money from landowners in the area and profiting from the controversy, testified for and likely helped draft House Bill 4026in 2024 along with the prior city council and their staff. This bill was introduced as a surprise, leaving very little time for organizers to educate legislators and gather testimony. Attorneys for the legislature wrote that, if House Bill 4026 did anything, it was likely unconstitutional because it used legislation to limit our constitutional rights. Yet a vast majority of the legislature voted in favor of this bill thanks to Mr. Hunnicutt’s lobbying. The prior North Plains City Council spent over $70,000 trying to enforce that new law and overturn your vote, but a judge indeed found the law to be unconstitutional. With “real friends” like Mr. Hunnicutt, who needs enemies.
Mr. Hunnicutt’s statements in the flyer are also misleading. North Plains is not opting out of Urban Growth Boundary planning. North Plains simply rejected by a 71-29 margin a proposal driven by land speculators and developers to more than double the city’s size for data centers and expensive housing. North Plains could have spent a fraction of the cost doing a smaller, scale-appropriate UGB expansion to meet actual future housing and commercial and employment needs, which your current City Council is working on. But before he left, City Manager Bill Reid was pushing through another massive 600+ acre expansion. It would have brought in minimal city tax revenue and you would have been on the hook to pay the future infrastructure costs. Real Friends of North Plains is attempting to rewrite history and the law to benefit real estate developers and undermine voters.
This missive is very likely paid for by developer interests who advocated for the expansion in the first place. Their purpose is likely to undermine councilors who are trying to right the city after years of mismanagement. Real Friends, which, unlike Friends of Smart Growth, does not publish its donors and is not accountable for the secret money it takes in, likely wants to elect councilors to bring back mismanagement that has led to 4 years without an audit and an estimated $860,000 to one million spent to plan to turn the city into North Hillsboro, which the city rejected. They have many financial resources behind them - during the referendum we were outspent 10 to 1 with the opposition receiving donations from realtors, industrial development companies and homebuilder associations that are likely funding their current efforts.
Friends of Smart Growth is mounting a campaign to address this misinformation and to counter the political push by development interests to reclaim political power. Here’s how you can help:
Join a Community Meeting this Thursday, 7/16 at 6pm at The Rogue: Hear what we know and raise your questions and concerns.
Ask to Be Removed from Real Friends’ Mailing list: email therealfriendsofnorthplains@gmail.com to ask them to stop sending you mailers.
Testify at the Upcoming Meeting: Let us know if you’d like talking points and support in testifying at the next North Plains City Council meeting on Monday, 7/20, at 7:00pm
Volunteer on the campaign: There are so many ways to help, from organizing events to knocking doors and waving signs. Please sign up here and let us know how you’d like to help.
Volunteer for the city: There are always opportunities to serve on committees or in leadership roles in the city. Please email us if you’d like to learn more: hello@friendsofsmartgrowth.org
Donate: We are a small, volunteer-run organization that depends on donations to do things like mailers, social media, signs, and events. Please consider making a donation to our organization to continue the fight for North Plains. Our total fund raising goal is $18,500. Every donation counts and we can do it with your help!
Thank you for your partnership. Community members like you have always been what fuels North Plains and helps us protect the city we love.
Many thanks,
All of us at Friends of Smart Growth
Background Information
The information above was high level. Here’s a deeper dive.
At their meeting on June 15, your City Council accepted the resignation of City Manager Bill Reid. It is not known for what transpired because he requested an executive session. However our viewpoint is that it was the right decision for many, many reasons that we have seen and have experience with.
Mr. Reid had no prior experience in city management. His background before coming to North Plains was as a real estate economist for developers.
At first as Finance Director and then as City Manager, Mr. Reid failed to complete audits of both the city budget and the Urban Renewal Area for 4 years. That means at least 2 city budgets were created without knowing what the city’s starting balance was.
When an auditor was finally retained she found 30 serious issues with the 2022 audit at first blush. Despite being asked by council multiple times to provide information to help the auditor proceed with the audit, Mr Reid did very little to that effect.
This is especially concerning considering the amount of money the city has spent on plans for an extremely large Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) expansion. We calculate that the city spent at least $866,000 on planning for expansion, but it’s difficult to know how much without an audit. After the voters rejected the first massive expansion, Bill used another $250,000 of taxpayer grant money to justify a 600-acre UGB expansion.
The UGB expansion and its real estate potential seemed to be Mr. Reid’s primary objective and he let other essential administrative responsibilities lapse that will take time to repair.
The lack of Urban Renewal Area (URA) audits is also concerning because Mr. Reid, as executive director, authorized unusually large transfers from the URA to the city account for planning and administrative purposes - these transfers could be in violation of the terms of the URA’s allocation of funds. We see no evidence that the URA had its own bank account, which is required by law. Staff funding and consulting expenses far exceeded all other URA projects in capital projects d The exception has been property purchases on which there has been no progress on for several years.
Meanwhile, Mr. Reid denied URA grants to downtown businesses that the funding was intended to support
His and his staff’s lack of progress on implementing a $1,000,000 EPA Brownfield grant for the last year endanger the city’s ability to access these funds
Instead he continued to plan an unnecessarily large expansion of more than 600-acres for data centers and warehouses next to the homes and elementary school in Sunset Ridge, despite the city's strong opposition.
One way that he orchestrated this planning was by monopolizing city power in himself - in addition to being City Manager, he appointed himself Acting Finance and Planning Director. As a result, he could move swiftly with an ill advised expansion plan.
For these reasons and more, City Council did the necessary thing by accepting Mr. Reid’s resignation.
But the work is not over. The prior city councilors left a field of landmines for current councilors to navigate. That includes:
Council rules that were changed right before the old council left made it more difficult for council to make decisions and vested significant power in the City Manager.
A lawsuit to defend a Housing Needs Analysis based on outdated 2020 figures that claimed the city would double in population in 20 years. North Plains’ 20-year population projection was greatly downgraded in 2025, but old city councilors wanted to force the city to overbuild housing by grandfathering in the excessive 2020 population projection. As a result, the city has spent tens of thousands of dollars on legal bills to defend a housing plan that’s against the city’s own best interest. As far as we saw, the current City Council wasn’t informed of this litigation at meetings, but the case will go to court this year (and continue to cost tens of thousands in tax dollars) unless current councilors can pull the plug.
While the referendum undid the old city council’s decision to expand the UGB, it did not undo the comprehensive plan, Economic Opportunity Analysis, and Housing Needs Analysis that the prior council had put in place to force an unnecessarily large UGB expansion. Ending these plans and creating new, community aligned plans is an important next step for reasonable growth that improves existing city services first, considers the cost of infrastructure, and serves the needs and vision of residents.
Disarming a mine field is delicate work, especially since current city councilors must abide by the legal processes and transparency that they owe to you, their constituents. That process is made more difficult by the meeting rules that the prior city council passed in the 11th hour. To help them follow the required process, councilors have requested that a parliamentarian join them at the next meeting to advise on proper meeting procedure. This is a normal, affordable, and highly responsible solution that many city councils use to navigate complex decisionmaking.
Please note that one former city councilor and Urban Renewal Agency chair who lost reelection twice, Russ Sheldon is leading attack pieces on current councilors. He has stated many times that he does not honor the vote to undo the UGB. As some of his final decisions before leaving office, Russ voted to hire Mr. Reid as City Manager and to pass city council rules granting sweeping authority to the City Manager. He is now chastising a city councilor for requesting a parliamentarian to navigate the challenging rules he helped put in place that obstruct city business. And he is likely planning to run again to be your City Councilor.
Going forward, we’ll keep you updated as your city councilors move forward in improving this city for all and share opportunities to give comments. Your councilors have taken on a tremendous responsibility and they hold their duty to you very seriously. We look forward to seeing what they can accomplish.