Old Town Neighborhood Board Priorities for 2026-27: are these your priorities neighbors?

Derrith Schmidt
4 hours ago
6 min read

What should our neighborhood focus on next year?

We want to hear from our neighbors before we finalize our priorities.

The Old Town Neighborhood Association (OTNA) Board believe these are our neighborhood priorities for 2026–27. We use these to advocate for our neighborhood priorities with City Leaders and the City Council. These priorities are not ranked. We believe they are all important to the livability, safety, and future of Old Town.

Our Old Town-specific priorities

Provide adequate parking enforcement at George Rogers Park during the summer, when visitor demand is highest.

Develop an ordinance addressing people sleeping in vehicles on neighborhood streets. People can't sleep in any vehicle at GRP but they can sleep in vehicles for 72 hours right next to our homes.
- Wilsonville has had an ordinance for this since 2023

Repave Ladd Street, particularly given its proximity to George Rogers Park and the amount of traffic it experiences. Safety concerns for kids/people coming and going into GRP need to be addressed along with water runoff and erosion.

Develop and implement a proactive summer traffic and pedestrian plan for George Rogers Park before the summer season begins. (We've asked for this for 3 years. The City does this very well for the Arts Festival but not for the rest of the summer when GRP is so busy in the summer)

Improve pedestrian safety throughout Old Town.

Educate and prepare neighbors for emergencies so we can help each other.

Create a “Good Neighbor Policy” for George Rogers Park and Old Town that holds the City and specifically Parks & Rec for considering and collaborating with your neighborhood to protect our livability and safety during the summers.

Citywide priorities that matter to Old Town—and to all of Lake Oswego

Some issues aren't unique to Old Town, but they have a significant impact on our neighborhood and on the entire community. Again, these are not ranked in priority order.

Keep LO Safe

Fully fund, staff, motivate and retain top performers at our police and fire departments so residents can count on timely emergency response and continued excellent collaboration with neighborhoods on safety concerns.
Improve pedestrian safety through proactive traffic management that identifies and addresses neighborhood concerns before they become safety problems.

Increase Financial Accountability & Transparency

Determine a financially responsible path forward for the library while ensuring that the existing library remains open until there is an operational replacement available to the community. OTNA Blog Post About This

Make the City's budgeting process and financial trade-offs more understandable and transparent to taxpayers. Residents should be able to understand how the City decides what gets funded, what gets delayed, and what doesn't get funded—and why.

Update Ordinances

Strengthen the City's noise ordinance, including addressing excessive noise from pickleball, gas-powered leaf blowers, construction and other significant sources of neighborhood noise. Specifically, one of our OTNA Board Members and the LO Sustainability Council would like the City Council to ban gas blowers.
- OTNA Blog Post About This

Advocate for greater local flexibility in responding to state housing mandates, particularly where increased density creates parking, traffic, or neighborhood-character concerns. We want the City to find ways to meet or change state requirements to protect the character and livability of Lake Oswego neighborhoods. All housing needs enough off street parking for renters/owners.

Greater Collaboration & Accountability to Neighborhoods

Make City government more responsive and accountable to residents. We would like to see City staff and City Council proactively listen to, respond to, and act on citizen and neighborhood input. This includes bringing back stronger customer-service practices and meaningful performance measures for City services.

Create a clear point of contact and process for neighborhood planning. In the past, neighborhoods had someone they could work with to develop neighborhood plans and coordinate priorities across City departments. We believe that kind of collaboration would help neighborhoods and the City work together more effectively.

Conduct an independent, professional Citizen Satisfaction Survey of Lake Oswego taxpayers to measure satisfaction with City government overall and with individual departments, as well as progress on goals that matter to our neighborhoods.

Manage Major Construction Projects and Investments Well

Build a new wastewater treatment plant that will provide safe, clean water for everyone. And not smell. The cost for this will be $369.6 million for the wastewater treatment plant project, whose contract was presented to City Council on September 1. Mayor Buck described it as “the biggest check the City will write.” Paying for it will increase all our water/utility bills for 25 years.

Unlock Foothills District potential - significant challenges remain, including Highway 43 access, the railroad crossing, and the Tryon Creek culvert leading to the Willamette River. Plus building the new wastewater treatment plant and preparing the land where it was for other uses. Determine a financially responsible path forward.

Prioritize funding for the repair and safe continued use of the two Oswego Creek bridges nearing the end of their service life, including the Highway 43 bridge at George Rogers Park connecting Lake Oswego to West Linn.

Continue to Add ADA ramps and sidewalks throughout the City

What progress have we made representing Old Town neighborhood priorities to the City staff and City Council?

Our neighborhood priorities aren't new concerns for OTNA.

Last year we developed our Old Town Neighborhood Priorities for 2026 and sent them to the City Council and City leaders across multiple departments. We met with them.

Our Old Town Neighborhood Priorities And Progress July 2026 - How Can We Work Together to Balance Public Access and Neighborhood Livability at George Rogers Park?

We're learning how the City works—and what neighborhoods need to do if we want to turn a concern into a City action.

We've especially appreciated the help we've received from Interim City Manager Lynn Peterson who is a long-time LO resident and former City Councilor.

We hope the new City Manager, Denzel Maxwell, who begins October 5, and the new City Council will continue—and strengthen—a more customer-focused, collaborative approach to working with Lake Oswego's neighborhoods. Learn more

It sounds like that may be a culture shift that Mayor Buck and our current City Council are looking for.

Mayor Buck wrote in Hello LO this month,

"Denzel's experience includes (among many other things) improving service delivery, advancing digital transformation, overseeing major capital projects, and supporting long-range community planning through thoughtful engagement.

What impressed the Council most went beyond Denzel’s technical experience. He spoke with genuine passion about the human side of public service, empowering employees to do their best work, approaching challenges with a strategic mindset, and engaging meaningfully with residents, community partners, and City staff. He understands that local government is about people serving people, and that even a strong organization like LO must continue learning, adapting, and preparing for what comes next."

We don't expect the City to say “yes” to every neighborhood request.

We do expect residents to be heard, given a clear explanation, and treated as partners in making our community better.

City Manager Doug Schmitz was known for this. Neighbors talk about how he came over to Old Town with a clipboard and walked around listening to and writing down problems and then returning to his City Staff to work with them. And then he can back to the neighborhood with an action plan. Excellent communication, accountability and collaboration were things I hear neighbors say about him.

Interim City Manager Lynn Peterson, who is a LO resident, former neighborhood association chair for First Addition, and former LO City Councilor shared this at the Neighborhood Chairs meeting in July and it's stuck with me:

"The small stuff matters too."

"It's important to solve problems in neighborhoods quickly."

We want to hear from our Old Town Neighbors!

This is your neighborhood, and these are your priorities. We want to "walk our talk" for how we want the City and City Council to work with us by doing that with you, the neighbors we represent:

Are these your priorities?
What did we miss?
What should we add?
Are there priorities on this list that you think should be changed or clarified?

Please share your thoughts with us

And join us for our Old Town Neighborhood Annual Meeting on Wednesday, October 7, where we'll discuss these priorities before we finalize them for 2026–27. Learn more

We want our priorities to reflect what matters most to the people who live here.

Related OTNA Blog Posts: