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found the use of this special service district, whose boundaries exceeded the city's urban growth boundary, to be inconsistent with the Metro Plan. The Metro Plan's directive that only cities should provide urban services supports the state's land use planning program, which limits the amount of growth outside urban growth boundaries. Since most city services are provided only within the City limits, properties must be within a City's urban growth boundary and eligible for annexation in order to receive the services necessary to develop at urban levels. If urban services were provided by special service districts whose boundaries and services extended outside the urban growth boundaries, there would be less control over urban sprawl, depending, of course, on whether the services provided by the district enable development (e.g., water and sanitary sewer). Ballot Measures 5/47/50 significantly altered the property tax structure after the Metro Plan was adopted. Lately, there has been interest expressed by elected officials of both Metro cities and the county to revisit the Metro decisions to avoid special service districts. The Boundary Commission's decision makes it clear that the most successful method would be to amend the Metro Plan's basic principles. Metro Plan amendment(s) would likely take the form of either of the following: 1. Many small text changes so that all the directives limiting service provisions to the cities have one or more exceptions, or 2. A more comprehensive change in which a new basic principle for services were adopted. Because urban services are closely associated with the state's growth management strategy, a more comprehensive amendment may be preferable. In this manner, the Metro Plan's partner agencies could decide which services contribute to growth outside the urban growth boundaries, which services should be provided by the cities and which could be provided by special districts or other means, whether special district boundaries should be coterminous with the urban growth boundary, and a host of other issues that have bearing on the region's growth. There are also existing special service districts providing services to city residents, such as Willakenzie Parks District and Rainbow Water District, that could be acknowledged and accommodated in a new set of comprehensive policies. The Metro Plan amendment procedures are outlined in each jurisdiction's land use codes. In summary: · Text amendments as described above are a "Type 1 amendment" and may be initiated by either city council at any time. · A non-site specific text amendment must be approved by all the Metro Plan's three governing bodies. · A joint hearing of the three Planning Commissions is required. Each must make a recommendation to their governing body. · The three governing bodies must hold a joint public hearing. Their decision must be based on the evidence collected by the Planning Commissions. · The governing bodies can modify the procedural requirements for a government-initiated amendment. · If the three governing bodies do not adopt identical ordinances, the Metropolitan Policy Committee will act to resolve conflicts. The amendment can be denied due to Committee inaction or lack of consensus. · The amendments must not make the Metro Plan internally inconsistent and must be consistent with Statewide Planning Goals. The amendments will be subject to state approval as a post acknowledgement plan amendment (PAPA). Amendments to the Metro Plan typically take 6-12 months, or more, depending on the level of government agreement and the amount of public input.