Over a year and a half has elapsed since the Lake Oswego City Council voted to revisit its rules governing Oswego Lake access. That process has yet to begin.
The council decided June 16, 2022 to look at park rules passed in 2012 that banned access to Oswego Lake from Millennium Plaza Park, Sundeleaf Park or the Headlee Walkway following a ruling released in 2022 by Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Ann Lininger saying that the lake thought to be private is subject to public trust doctrine and therefore could be deemed public.
Plaintiffs Todd Prager and Mark Kramer filed the petition regarding the city’s lake access rules in 2012 and the case was heard at the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court before being remanded back to circuit court.
In the midst of a process that led to the removal of Lininger from the case — for contact she had with Prager and Kramer during her time as a state representative — the city postponed that review of the rules.
This week, City Manager Martha Bennett told the Review via email that legal counsel has advised the city not to initiate the process to examine the parks rules until after phase two of the trial, which will take place in April. Lininger was removed from the trial, but her phase one ruling stands heading into phase one. While phase one of the trial analyzed whether the lake was subject to public trust doctrine, phase one will assess the viability of the city’s rules preventing lake access.
The city had planned to hire a facilitator estimated to cost between $50,000 and $75,000 for the process of revisiting the rules. In a staff report for the council’s 2022 decision, the local government cited the impact of the phase one decision and the need to understand what it means, as well as allowing the process more time and transparency as the main reasons for reexamining the rules.
“With this information, the rules we put in place in 2012 might want to be changed,” former City Attorney Jason Loos said at the time.
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