Hoping to avoid litigation and salvage a roadway project that Clackamas County commissioners said they could set aside amid pushback, the Lake Oswego City Council plans to prepare a ballot initiative asking voters to alter a parks preservation charter amendment to allow the county to encroach upon a small portion of the Stevens Meadows natural area.
The council gave the go-ahead to staff to alert Clackamas County of its plans to prepare a ballot initiative during a meeting Tuesday, May 21.
The county’s project would include adding a roundabout at Childs Road, realigning an intersection at Johnson Road and Stafford Road, adding a southbound left-turn lane at Johnson Road and adding bike lanes along Stafford Road.
The council members expressed displeasure during an April meeting that they were just learning that the county planned to acquire about 9,000 square feet of Stevens Meadows, which is 20.5 acres and is owned by the Lake Oswego government but outside city limits. The use of any part of Stevens Meadows for a roadway project would violate the 2021 voter-approved charter amendment that largely prevents developments and improvements to city-owned parks.
The county could attempt to force the city to sell the property via eminent domain, but Mayor Joe Buck made clear at the April meeting that it would risk a court battle by doing so.
However, at the May 21 meeting, Buck expressed the council’s desire for the city to avoid what could be a prolonged and tenuous legal battle. In turn, the council will ask voters to narrowly alter the charter amendment to allow the park property acquisition.
Finding a compromise?
Buck said the community has expressed support for this roadway improvement project as well as preserving the charter amendment.
“We have discussed the various legal options before us. There is consensus that we want to allow the community to allow the county to construct this road project but do it in a way that preserves the charter amendment. ... The council does not want to unilaterally make a decision that would be in violation of the charter amendment,” Buck said at the meeting. “The charter is important. People voted on the charter to make sure that there were not these discretionary decisions regarding these particular properties. The remedy to that is to go back to the voters and ask them to approve this kind of project taking place on a portion of the property, Stevens Meadows, that they voted as a protected property.”
Buck further said it’s the city’s perception that the county would scrap the road improvement project rather than alter it to avoid Stevens Meadows due to budgetary and topographic challenges.
“It’s a project we feel would not fall under the county’s budget. They would simply back out of the project given financial constraints. That doesn’t seem like an outcome the community would desire,” he said.
‘We all thought this was what the community wanted’
In fact, Clackamas County commissioners expressed considerable frustration at a meeting May 1 about the criticism levied toward the county when it was offering money to fix a road safety issue. Chair Tootie Smith proposed the county to set aside the project until the council voices support for it in writing.
“We all thought this was what the community wanted because we get a constant barrage on ‘Why aren’t you fixing Stafford Road?’” Smith said. “We do something and lo and behold there is a huge opposition. I am distraught at what happened at that public meeting. It sounded like people really don’t want this.”
Smith later said she was not sure who was leading the city of Lake Oswego and the way the council treated county staff was “awful.” At the April council meeting, Buck has criticized staff for not notifying the city fast enough and councilors expressed frustration about the situation.
County Commissioner Ben West said at the May 1 meeting that the City Council had made a “spectacle” at the April meeting about the Stevens Meadows issue and disagreed with the comment posited by Buck and others that there wasn’t adequate communication to the city about the issue.
“The truth is publicly they were coming at us pretty hard at the county with a lot of disdain for the county publicly on bringing this $18 million piece of infrastructure that they don’t have to pay for that helps their community immensely,” West said, later adding: “Maybe this isn’t the project to be prioritizing right now.”
Fellow Commissioner Paul Savas expressed a preference for the county moving forward with the improvement project regardless of whether the city expressed support for it, noting the importance of making a well-traveled area safer.
When asked about the commissioners’ comments following the council meeting, Buck said that the county’s frustrations regarding the project are understandable and reiterated the uniqueness and difficulty of the situation as well as the city’s desire to work with the county on the project.
“I think both bodies would have liked to have known sooner (about the Stevens Meadows issue) so we could work together like we do on so many issues. Neither one of us did, which caused frustration, but now we’re working together to advance this public safety project while respecting the boundaries of the charter protections,” he said.
Next steps
Councilor Ali Afghan said he voted for the charter amendment before he joined the council but was also in support of the council’s tentative plan to refer the ballot initiative to voters so the county could move forward with the project.
“I voted ‘Yes’ to this initiative back then with the full intention of not wanting building, roads, nothing. I wanted it preserved,” Afghan said. “Having said that, I never intended to prevent a safety issue from being resolved. From my perspective I still don’t want a new road there, a building there, but if we have a situation where citizens or anyone’s life is being threatened, I want it addressed.”
City Manager Martha Bennett clarified that the city will send a letter to the county and, if the county gives the OK to delay the project until the charter issue is resolved, the city will conduct polling to gauge community interest for the ballot initiative.
“We will do polling to make sure voters are inclined to support this or not, so you don’t refer something you know is going to fail,” Bennett said.
The city will need to complete this ballot initiative process by July to place it on the November ballot.
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