Opinion by Steve Hungerford, Headlight-Herald Publisher, October 23, 2007

I'm going to offer some thoughts on Ballot Measure 49.

I do so fully aware that most of you could care less what I think. You've already made up your minds about the proposal to rewrite Measure 37, which gave Oregonians the right to use their property however they might have when they purchased it.

But I'm not trying to influence your vote in the upcoming election anyway. As years go by, I become comfortable with the fact that what I say or do has no real impact on this world. And I now avoid political discussions that do little more than alienate my friends and neighbors.

Yet I feel so strongly about enlightened land use in Oregon that I want to go on record supporting it.

When I first moved here in 1970, I fell in love not only with this state's natural resources, but also with Oregonians' efforts to preserve and conserve those resources. I had seen the Dark Side — California — and wanted no part of a countryside razed for housing subdivisions and parking lots.

Which is precisely what Measure 37 has turned out to be ... a developer's bill of rights.

Take Clackamas County, for example. There, claimants are asking to create, among other things, a 930-acre housing subdivision, a commercial scrap metal site, a 187-acre aggregate mine, an RV park, a location for billboards, a paintball park, a rock quarry, and countless other commercial developments.

We're not talking about a request for an aging grandmother's retirement house, regardless of what the big landowners would have us believe.

Here's what one Mt. Hood resident wrote in a letter to The Oregonian:

"As a cherry and pear grower in the Hood River Valley, I would like to respond to the people who don't see any harm in placing subdivisions on high-valued farmland.

"... (A) shocking 23.5 percent of the county's farmland has Measure 37 claims on it. Our own family orchards are completely surrounded by claims.

"Anyone who thinks that we can stay in business without the farmland protection of Measure 49 is sadly misinformed.

"I know from experience that when land is down-zoned, eventually all the parcel sizes will conform to the smallest unit permitted. Chopping up a commercial 80-acre Hood River orchard into 20-acre parcels, each with a permitted home, will take that land out of production.

"It is not feasible to farm 15 acres as a viable orchard, as the operating costs are too high for such a small parcel ...."

There is no better place to live in America than Oregon. I'm voting to help keep it that way. How you vote is up to you.