La Grande City Council holds March 4 hearing on land-development code amendments

La Grande City Council will hear a package of land-development code amendments at its regular session Wednesday, March 4, 2026, beginning at 6:00 p.m. in council chambers at La Grande City Hall, 1000 Adams Ave., where councilors will consider proposals that would make subdivisions and major land partitions administrative decisions and convert the administrative variance process into an over-the-counter “adjustment.” The city’s Planning Commission reviewed the package in February 2026 and the city engaged Cascadia Partners through an Oregon DLCD technical assistance grant to audit residential land use codes and recommend changes to conform to Oregon state housing laws.

The meeting will be streamed on the City of La Grande’s YouTube page and on EOAlive.TV’s Facebook page; a full agenda is available online. After the regular session the council will adjourn into executive session to conduct deliberations on labor negotiations, and councilors will not reconvene into open session for further public business that night. The March 4 agenda also lists other action items: accepting the final plat for the True Addition, adopting a tiered allocation framework for the city’s opioid settlement funds, and proceeding with planning for a gas tax referral for the 2026 general election.

The proposed code changes as summarized in the city materials include updating definitions and updating terminology from “family” to “household,” eliminating the medical hardship residence option as a temporary use, and “making the administrative variance process an “adjustment” in order to make it an over‑the‑counter process.” The package would also increase public notice circulation area for certain applications such as subdivisions, large housing projects and large commercial projects, clarify and delineate between duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and multi‑unit dwellings, clarify size and design standards for accessory dwelling units, clarify allowance of recreational vehicles in manufactured home parks, and modify duplex division standards to be consistent with state law.

City staff describe the changes as the product of the DLCD-funded audit and Cascadia Partners’ recommendations; the record supplied to the Planning Commission in February 2026 is the basis for the ordinance language council will consider March 4. The March 4 hearing notice does not provide an ordinance number or a numeric public-notice radius; those specifics are in the staff report and ordinance text in the City Council packet that the Community Development Department and City Recorder maintain.

These land-development code amendments are separate from prior Comprehensive Plan and urban growth boundary actions. The city’s earlier Comprehensive Plan Ordinance 3269, Series 2024 and related 2025 Goal 14 UGB Expansion Report followed a 2024–2025 adoption schedule that included Planning Commission hearings April 8, 2025, and City Council readings May 7 and June 4, 2025, with Community Development Director Michael Boquist listed as presenter on council action materials. Union County has pursued related ADU policy changes at the county level — notice LG-20169 set a July 17, 2024, Board of Commissioners hearing on County Ordinance 2024-03 to allow accessory dwelling units by conditional use in specified rural zones — but the March 4 code amendment package is a distinct city-level regulatory action.

Residents and property owners interested in the March 4 land-development code hearing can watch the live stream and consult the City Council packet online for the staff report, ordinance text, and any maps that show the revised public-notice circulation area. The council’s decision on March 4 could change how duplexes, ADUs, subdivisions and administrative approvals are processed in La Grande.