The Source just printed an 1,800-word piece on Skyline Forest as well as a pretty lengthy side-bar on the man with the money behind the whole effort to develop a large portion of the Skyline Forest. LandWatch was given a few mentions and quotes as well.

I particularly like the part where 11-year-old Javier Colton told The Source, “I don’t really know that many people who don’t want to save it.”

Really, the kid’s on to something. Frankly – aside from those who want to develop it themselves – who does want to see the Skyline Forest developed? The question everyone is asking, however, is what exactly is the best way to save the forest? And to that question there appears to be some notable disagreement.

News accounts of Skyline Forest are pretty slim, but I thought I'd post a few stories for those looking for some background information on the matter.

The Sisters Nugget printed this piece entitled "Skyline Forest Owner Seeks Development" on August 21st, and this letter on August 29th.

The Skyline Forest is a 33,000-acre piece of privately-owned forest land, bordered on three sides by National Forest and lying to the west of Bend and south of Sisters. Looking westward towards the peaks of the Cacscades, this piece of property constitutes the majority of the foreground view. More a more detailed understanding of the proeprtie's extent, take a look at these maps created by the Deschutes Basin Land Trust.

We had Deschutes County make this map (see attached pdf file) for us a while back, and so as to make as much use of it as possible, I figured I should post it here. It really is a striking map - resorts in blue, M37 claims in red. When compared to the size of our cities, it's startling to see the degree to which statewide planning and smart growth have been turned on their head in Central Oregon.

On Thursday, the Central Oregon Commission on Transportation (COACT) met in Redmond to discuss the issue of transportation impacts of destination resorts. I have to say, this sounded like a pretty dry meeting even for a wonk like me, but this is getting to be really big issue and the dialogue proved to be pretty entertaining.

To sum up, cities really don't care much for destination resorts. They don't collect any property taxes from them and bear many of their impacts. Counties, on the other hand, collect far more in property taxes than they have to shell out for impacts, so they generally have been very accommodating.

So I expected that the city reps would express concern but because they have to do regular business with counties would tone down their distaste. And because counties have been so unabashedly supportive of resorts, I expected the usual rhetoric about how wonderful resorts are and how lucky cities should be to get to house their workers, sell them their groceries, and so on.

But a funny thing happened on the way to meeting and not only did the city officials come out firing, but the county officials did little to shut them up or in many cases even refute them.

For those interested in keeping tabs on the Bend City Planning Commission's UGB workshops, the schedule is attached below. There are seven of them and each has a particular topic starting with Statutory Priorities, Urban Area Reserve, and Special Districts on Monday, September 17th at 5:30pm at the Deschutes County Building, 1300 NW Wall Street.

At its most recent meeting, Central Oregon LandWatch's Board of Directors voted firmly to support Measure 49, making LandWatch the most recent in a long-list of organizations supporting this effort to reform Measure 37 and prevent irreperable harm from coming to Oregon's rural landscape and natural environment.