## Facts

- A landowner applied to partition a 20-acre rural-residential parcel into three lots near Pendleton, Oregon.
- Access was via Jerico Lane, an approximately 3,500-foot road serving about 18 existing properties.
- A county development ordinance required a developer to improve adjacent/affected roads to county standards when a partition increased traffic.
- Applying the ordinance strictly would have required widening Jerico Lane and obtaining 10-foot easements along the road from multiple neighboring landowners to dedicate additional right-of-way.
- The county found the partition would increase daily traffic on Jerico Lane by about 15%.
- The county approved the partition but declined to require the full road-widening/easement acquisition, concluding the condition would be disproportionate and would raise constitutional exactions concerns.
- Nearby residents/landowners appealed to the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA); LUBA remanded for clarification; the county reaffirmed its decision on remand.
- LUBA affirmed, and petitioners sought judicial review in the Oregon Court of Appeals.

## Issues

1. Whether the ordinance’s road-improvement condition, as applied, constituted an individualized exaction subject to the “rough proportionality” analysis for property dedications.
2. Whether the county lawfully approved the partition while declining to enforce the full road-widening/easement dedication requirement on constitutional proportionality grounds.

## Decision

- The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed LUBA.
- The court held that applying the road-improvement provision required discretionary, case-specific determinations and therefore fell within exactions doctrine governing individualized development conditions.
- The court agreed that enforcing full widening and requiring acquisition/dedication of easements along the entire road, given only a modest traffic increase, presented a proportionality problem.
- The county permissibly applied the ordinance to avoid imposing a constitutionally problematic dedication condition.

## Legal Principles

- Development conditions requiring conveyance or dedication of real property interests, when imposed through individualized adjudicative determinations, are subject to “rough proportionality” review.
- An ordinance is not treated as purely legislative for exactions purposes when its enforcement depends on case-specific judgments about impact and the scope of required mitigation.
- A local government may approve a development application while declining to impose a dedication condition where the demanded mitigation is not roughly proportional in nature and extent to the development’s incremental impacts.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the county’s approval of a three-lot partition without requiring comprehensive road widening and related easement dedications, concluding that the ordinance’s case-by-case application triggered rough proportionality review and that the demanded property dedication would be disproportionate to the project’s traffic impacts.


Dudek v. Umatilla County, 69 P.3d 751 (Or. Ct. App. 2003)