Don't let Illegal Activity be Rewarded
Deschutes County is considering weakening its code to allow property owners in violation of county code to further develop their property. Now is the time to let the County know that you do not support giving this benefit to code violators!
Planning Commission Meeting
Thursday, January 11th at 5:30pm
Barnes and Sawyer Rooms, Deschutes Services Center
1300 NW Wall Street
Deschutes County has limited resources to enforce the local laws set in place by the community in order to maintain the high quality of life enjoyed by Central Oregonians. Before 2015, Deschutes County treated landowners who had egregious code violations on their properties the same as law-abiding citizens. This set up a situation in which there was little incentive to follow local laws and in many cases disadvantaged those who were doing the right thing.
County Commissioners fixed this by adopting a code enforcement provision in 2015 based on examples from other Oregon counties and recommendations from a community advisory group. Now, the County wants to weaken the code enforcement provision it put in place after an application for a marijuana retail dispensary in Tumalo was denied due to existing code violations.
After an application for a marijuana retail dispensary was denied due to existing code violations on the property, Deschutes County began a review of the Code Enforcement rule to allow land use applications to be approved even when the property is in violation of county code.
Photo of farmland by Austin Montreil Leonard
Last summer, the county initiated a review of the recently implemented code enforcement policy and is considering allowing properties with code violations to be able to obtain land use permits. We believe this change is unnecessary and would undermine the rule of law in Deschutes County.The code enforcement policy is working the way it was intended to work. The county should not weaken its policy to allow code violators to get away with violations while law-abiding citizens follow the rules set in place by the community.
The Deschutes County Planning Commission is holding a hearing on this issue on Thursday, January 11th. Your comments to the Planning Commission will help ensure the County does not treat code violators the same as law abiding citizens.
Attend the hearing and/or send an email to PlanningCommission@deschutes.org.