The dream of building a new kind of city, one that provides urban amenities while preserving rural character and beauty, seems to be dying in the rolling hills southeast of Portland.

On Thursday, four Damascus residents filed paperwork to start the process of dissolving the city, created by voters in 2004 as a way to maintain local control amid Metro's largest ever expansion of Portland's urban growth boundary. Regional planners designated the 18,000 acres of farms, forests and crossroads communities as the area's next big suburb.

Voters approved a tax increase to fund planning their new city.

Then the recession hit, the infighting began, and the good-time projections of growth and rising property values began to look like fantasy.

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"It just didn't work. Failure. Failure. Failure," said George Samaan, one of the men leading the effort to disincorporate. He and three others plan to start circulating an initiative petition in the next few weeks and place a measure on the November 2013 ballot. "We spent about $6 million, and we have no useful product to show for it."

A decade ago, Samaan couldn't imagine he'd be leading the movement to give up local control of the area. When residents banded together, Samaan voted with them. He wanted to build a city.

City councilor Mary Wescott, whose father-in-law served as the city's first mayor, felt the same way. "We wanted to sail our own ship," Wescott said.

Now she supports disincorporation.

"We thought we could build a 21st century city, a city that would shine," Wescott said. "It's not possible."

There was no breaking point, according to Samaan and co-petitioner Wally Bothum, just a mounting series of disappointments.

One of the biggest was the failure to approve a comprehensive plan, used to create zoning and guide development.

In May 2011, after six years of planning, community meetings, writing and re-writing, Damascus put a draft plan to voters. They defeated the plan 65 percent to 35 percent, sending the city back to square one. Mayor Steve Spinnett estimates that the failed process cost $6 million.

The city is working on a new plan, as is required by state law, but residents remain deeply divided about the details about where and how development should occur.

What's next

Thursday

: Group files for permission to circulate an initiative petition.

Dec. 13:

Deadline for city to affirm petition meets constitutional requirements and forward language to city attorney.

Dec. 20

: Deadline for city attorney to prepare ballot question.

Jan. 2

: Deadline for residents to challenge ballot question. If there is no challenge, petitioners may submit a signature sheet and cover page for city approval and begin collecting signatures. Petitioners have two years to collect the required 304 signatures but think they can do it in a weekend.

November 2013

: Ballot measure goes to voters.

January 2014

: If measure passes, the city dissolves.

Source: City of Damascus

State transportation officials have said flat-out that they doubt Damascus will ever be able to create a comprehensive plan, partly because it would have to be approved at the ballot box. This year the Oregon Department of Transportation pulled federal and state grant money Damascus was using to fund transportation planning.

Chris Hawes, another of the petitioners, questioned the entire regional planning process.

"This was an unintended consequence of regional agencies making these local decisions," Hawes said. "When you're looking at a regional planning system at the 30,000-foot level, you won't see that on the ground there are problems."

Hawes particularly questions Metro's attempts to forecast population and growth trends decades into the future.

"You're planning for human lives for the next 30 years. It's futile. I wonder if Damascus isn't symptomatic of a problem. Has regional planning become so far removed from the people who are living there? Something is wrong."

Even some within Metro have questioned the wisdom of bringing the vast tract inside the urban growth boundary.

"It was a serious question about whether we should have done as large of an expansion as we did in the Damascus area because of the lack of transportation to get people to jobs, and jobs themselves in that area," Metro Councilor Carl Hosticka said earlier this year. "In hindsight, we probably made too big of an expansion."

Damascus' biggest landowner, 86-year-old Lowell Patton owns 230 acres he dreamed of developing into a winery, a vineyard, houses and an urban center. But the city's inability to create a development plan – and therefore lack of zoning – have prevented progress.

He is suing the city for $66 million in lost revenue.

"They have held us hostage all of these years," Patton said Thursday. "It would be beneficial to me to have the city go away. Since the city was incorporated my taxes went up, and I got no benefit from that whatsoever."

When the city incorporated in 2004, property taxes rose about 24 percent. According to the petitioners, disincorporating would immediately roll them back.

Mayor Steve Spinnett, acknowledges frustrations but urged residents not to give up.

"The voters voted to incorporate to keep local control," Spinnett said. "We don't want to be annexed by another city. We want to determine our own destiny. It hasn't happened to date, but we are working on it."

It's unclear how Damascus residents would vote on disincorporation. Last month, a ballot measure to take part of the city out of the urban growth boundary failed by just a few dozen votes.

But that measure wouldn't have reduced taxes, and Damascus voters have strongly supported tax and spending limitations.

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