OUR VISION
A Lake Oswego that elevates and retains the beauty of our City’s natural surroundings through thoughtful and careful development policies.
OUR MISSION
To support and influence policies, organizations, and candidates that advocate and advance protecting, preserving and maintaining Lake Oswego’s natural environment.
OUR HISTORY
LoveLOParks is a Lake Oswego grassroots effort organized by residents to protect Lake Oswego natural parks from future development that is inconsistent with preserving and maintaining these lands as natural habitats. We are an independent entity operating as citizen oversight to the City for Lake Oswego. Our natural parks define our beautiful City’s character and are nestled into the very fabric of our neighborhoods. We want to keep it that way for the enjoyment of their natural splendor and wildlife for generations to come.
Our grassroots movement is rooted in decades of City plans, exploits, and development of our natural areas; many times, requiring significant community involvement through a tedious and costly “public” process that discounts citizens voices. We formed the LoveLOParks grassroots effort in the Fall of 2019 soon after Saving Cooks Butte for the 3rd time from a significant telecommunications facility. Majorie and John Emery deeded Cooks Butte with the intention for this heritage landscape to remain forever wild and free from commercial development. Fortunately, with the assistance of the Emery family and steadfast citizens, Cooks Butte remains a natural beacon across Lake Oswego’s skyline today.
While soliciting support to Save Cooks Butte, we learned:
- residents across Lake Oswego shared our frustrations with the City’s decades of development ambitions at the expense of our natural parks and their habitats.
- the City’s development code for Parks and Natural Resource Areas (PNA) and Sensitive Lands (SL), as well as the LO citizen involvement process failed to sufficiently protect our natural parks from development.
- the City’s failure to prioritize and produce park-specific master and management plans for a majority of our natural parks after decades of acquiring these lands; such plans would further define the intent to protect these parks as natural habitats.
- citizens in the 1970s protected Springbrook Park from high-density housing and a major a major athletic facility by a citizen-initiated measure being overwhelmingly ratified 3:1 by voters, enacting Chapter X – Park Development Limitation in the City’s Charter. Springbrook has been protected for over 40 years; and most recently, from City plans for the Tennis Center expansion.
By listening to hundreds of friends and neighbors, it was clear we needed reasonable legal safeguards to prevent future residents from having to bare the effort and cost to express the community’s desire to protect these natural habitats from City development.
In November 2019, we launched citizen initiative petition, 2020IN-1, to replace Chapter X and began informing and educating our community on the protections we sought. After 18-months navigating the global Covid-19 pandemic, wildfires, and ice storms, our coalition of volunteers and donors succeeded in collecting more than the required 15% qualifying signatures for the ballot.
On November 2, 2021, Lake Oswego voters ratified citizen-initiated Measure 3-568 thereby replacing Lake Oswego’s City Charter Chapter X – Park Development Limitation with legal safeguards limiting development to keep 15 natural parks natural — garnering 62% of the vote. By Lake Oswego voters approving Measure 3-568, they have chosen to leave an everlasting legacy of wilderness to future generations. They have chosen to help in the global fight against climate change (at our local level) by protecting these natural parks from development. They have chosen a legacy that conserves our natural habitats for the abundant wildlife that call them home and for future residents to enjoy all their splendor.
While our natural parks are now protected by Chapter X – Park Development Limitation’s the significant land use regulations, we’re committed to remaining organized as an independent citizen oversight (or Guardians of the Parks) to ensure the City upholds the voters’ will.
Sincerely,
LoveLOParks Steering Committee:
- Betsy Wasko
- Brad Home
- Scott Handley
- Kirsten Sommer
- Michael Louallier