FAQs

Each city in Oregon* maintains an urban growth boundary. These lands are located outside of the city limits and typically adjacent/contiguous to the city. Urban growth boundaries are intended to account for the cities determined 20-year land supply for both residential and employment lands i.e. how much land the city will need to account for population and employment growth over a 20-year period. Cities and adjacent counties work together under guidance from the state to maintain urban growth boundaries. 

More information about urban growth boundaries can be found here: https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/up/pages/ugbs-and-urbanrural-reserves.aspx

*The Portland metropolitan area that is within Oregon shares an urban growth boundary, that includes 24 cities managed by "Metro." 

Oregon House Bill 2001 required cities over 10,000 to have a current Housing Needs Analysis and Buildable Lands Inventory. These studies anticipate a city's housing need over a 20-year period and evaluate the supply of available residential land to meet that need. Population estimates are taken from Portland State's population forecasts. Cities that do not have enough land in their current urban growth boundary to meet the 20-year need are required to expand their urban growth boundaries to meet that need. 

Molalla adopted its housing needs analysis in the summer of 2023 and is currently looking at an urban growth boundary to accommodate both the housing need identified in that study and subsequent employment land needs from its economic opportunities analysis adopted in 2025. 

The City's grant agreement with the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) requires that the City adopt an urban growth boundary amendment by the end of 2026. The City anticipates hearings with City Council and Planning Commission by the end of the year and in front of the County Board of Commissioners by December 2026. This webpage, among other notification sources will provide updates on precise timing as dates are chosen. 

This has not yet been determined though much of the groundwork has already been set. 

Generally speaking, the expansion will occur in the lands directly outside of the City. Rules around Oregon Statewide Planning Goal 14: Urbanization give prioritize where expansions can happen. Molalla's "non-resource" lands, meaning lands whose zoning designations are currently not catered to resource development like farming, mining, and forestry, are all located directly south and southwest of the City. The City has already conducted Goal 14 analysis (see Step 6 under documents on this page) that identify the most suitable lands to expand to. 

Our Council and Community expressed concerns that some of the non-resource lands south of Molalla may be impractical to expand to due to cost constraints from infrastructure development to those lands. The City is currently conducting supplemental Goal 14 analysis to determine whether those cost constraints are enough to support exploring "lower priority" resource lands as part of the expansion. 

The City's Goal 14 analysis estimated an approximately 228 acres of land need for residential land based on: 

1. The projected housing need from the City's adopted Housing Needs Analysis; 
2. Projected changes to that housing production within the existing Urban Growth Boundary based on zoning changes from Step 5 Efficiency Measures; and
3. A 25% allowance for public facilities including parks, roads, schools, and utility structures. 

In addition to the residential land need, the City will be looking at including a large parcel or parcel to account for the projected need for larger industrial parcels identified in the City's adopted Economic Opportunities Analysis as no larger parcels for such development exist within the current urban growth boundary. 

Yes! 

There are a few points where you can participate. 

1. The City will hold a town hall style event likely in late August/early September. The dates and details of the town hall event will be publicized in local papers, sent to landowners surrounding the City, and advertised on this webpage. 
2. Once the boundary amendment is proposed, City Council and Planning Commission will hold adoption hearings which will be advertised in local news sources and on this website. These hearings are likely to occur in September. 
3. You are welcome to attend any upcoming City Council or Planning Commission meetings and speak during the 3-minute blocks provided for general feedback if an urban growth boundary topic is not on the agenda. 
4. You are otherwise welcome to submit comments for review by the Commission and/or Council to communityplanner@cityofmolalla.com. 

Follow the project on this page for updated documents on the proposed expansion and background studies as they are completed. 

Once the urban growth boundary is expanded, properties within the expansion area will remain under County zoning until the property is annexed into the City limits. Meaning, these properties will still be allowed to exist under the same rules and restrictions that they always have until they are brought in. These annexations are typically owner/applicant driven and the City does not have plans to compel owners to annex nor to initiate annexations. 

While the City will not speculate on the impact upon property values for any individual properties, City zoning designations typically allow for substantially more dense development than existing County zoning designations and increased development opportunities are often associated with increased property values.  

In short, yes!  The City of Molalla provides water and sewer service within the city limits and has been continually updating and upgrading these systems to ensure we can meet demand as the city continues to grow. . 

Water: The City owns over 4 million gallons per day of water rights on the Molalla River and currently utilizes just less than half of that during peak flows in the summer months.  So, there are plenty of water rights for a community twice our size.  The City is also in the process of designing a new water intake structure to create system redundancy and ensure water can reach the intakes during low flows. Additionally, the City is in the process of determining feasibility for an Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) system.  This system allows the city to put water into a wellhead of sorts during the wet season which helps the groundwater table, and to draw up to 90% of it back out if/when there is a need.  

Sewer: The City is currently at 50% construction on a new SBR style wastewater treatment plant.  This will increase capacity to approximately 16,000 residents, which we are estimated to hit circa 2046.  So, the new plant will serve the city's growing population for at least 20 years.  Add to that the new SBR plant is modular in nature, this means the City can construct additional SBR's whenever there is a need, and without the massive changes in process that were required for conversion to the SBR from the activated sludge lagoons currently in service.