Frequently Asked Questions

The City contracts with Clackamas County Building Services for processing of building, plumbing, and electrical permits. The County also performs inspections related to these permits.

If a building permit is needed, Clackamas County requires a site plan release letter from the City of Canby before the permit can be released. In most cases, the Planning Department encourages project applicants to submit materials to the City and County simultaneously so that processing can happen concurrently.

The Planning Department does not proactively look for code violations in the community. Code enforcement, unless excessively egregious, is based on citizen complaints. The City's Code Enforcement Officer is a member of the Police Department and may be contacted during business hours at 503-266-0797.

If you are building something on your property and are unsure if it is allowed, you are encouraged to contact the Planning Department to verify. Common code compliance issues involve placement and height of accessory structures (e.g., sheds, patio covers, and RV covers) and fence heights. If tree branches traverse over property lines, the City encourages property owners to work with their neighbors to ensure that trimming activities satisfy all affected parties.

The City's fence regulations require that residential fences within a home's front and side setbacks be a maximum of 3.5 feet tall (see Subsection 16.08.110 of the Municipal Code). These regulations have been in place for over a decade and are intended to accomplish a number of goals:

• Prevent a "fortress effect" where entire street frontages are dominated by sidewalk-adjacent full-height fences. Where applied excessively, the fortress effect is thought to make the neighborhood less friendly and less attractive by literally walling off the private realm from the public realm.
• Improve visibility for vehicles backing up out of driveways, both at the front and sides of residential lots. When driveways are adjacent to full-height fences, it is harder for drivers to see pedestrians on the sidewalk or other vehicles in the street while backing up, creating a safety hazard.
• Create more "eyes on the street." This is a urban planning principle that asserts that streets are safer and more secure when more people in homes or other buildings can see outward toward the street. For example, if a small child runs into the street and full-height fences block views from a home's front windows, parents may not see that their child is in danger.
• Lastly, streets with continuous walls or fences along the sidewalk are often observed to experience increased speeding by motorists, who don't feel the accountability that comes with high visibility from surrounding land uses.

The Planning Department understands that, for a number of reasons, some homeowners prefer to have taller fences. Staff encourage homeowners to talk to the department before building new fences so that they may maximize their yards' utility while also staying compliant with the City's Municipal Code.

If you feel like traffic congestion in Canby has increased in recent years, you are not alone:  this is a topic the Planning Department hears about regularly. Our community's roads and intersections have seen noticeable growth in traffic for a number of reasons:

• We're growing. Canby is an attractive place to live and do business, so people and businesses continue to relocate here.
• Commuting behaviors. For a variety of reasons, many people are choosing to live farther from work. This increases congestion, especially during morning and evening commute times (aka peak hours).
• Distribution and logistics uses. Our industrial park has increasingly attracted warehouse and distribution uses, which increase truck trips on the road network.
• Regional travel patterns. As the overall region has grown, Highway 99E has attracted more through-traffic. This phenomenon is expected to accelerate with the state's implementation of tolling on I-205, which will divert some drivers through Canby.

The City of Canby closely tracks traffic in a variety of ways. Development projects are required to complete traffic impact studies that analyze project-related trips. Approved projects are added to the City's custom traffic model, which is maintained by the consulting firm DKS and Associates. The City has an adopted Transportation System Plan (TSP) that identifies street classifications and lists transportation projects, among other things. For example, the TSP was recently amended to show the planned Walnut Street Extension, which will alleviate circulation issues between the industrial park and 99E. The City will be updating the TSP in the next two years. Lastly, the City closely coordinates with Clackamas County, which is also concerned with traffic patterns in our area and has its own list of highway projects, along with ODOT.

It is worth noting that traffic impacts and mitigation for development projects, as in other cities, are analyzed using the City's adopted performance thresholds, which are identified in the TSP. This is sometimes unsatisfying to the general public because traffic studies are perceived as saying that traffic is "no problem," which is not the intended message. Many projects do generate more traffic, but do not trigger failures at intersections based on these adopted thresholds. If you have questions on this topic, feel free to reach out to planning staff.