The Lake Oswego City Council met on January 6, 2026, at 8:00 AM UTC (actual meeting start time was in the evening local time). The agenda included public comments, updates on pedestrian improvement projects, the Foothills District vision, an economic development strategy, and a stormwater management manual update. The council voted unanimously to approve revisions to the stormwater manual and discussed forming a subcommittee to advance economic development priorities.
Crossing is right at the Williamette Shore trolley. Um, I personally have struggled to cross this until I got a pattern down. Um, it's still sort of dangerous though. I have to check to make sure that there's no trains coming. I have to turn my chair and pop a wheelie over onto the tracks. Then I have to turn my chair at ninety degrees and go up the tracks. Then I have to turn again ninety degrees and come off the tracks by popping multiple wheelies again. Um to do that, the whole process takes fifteen to thirty seconds. Um, so it's pretty dangerous and leaves me in a dangerous place. The other ways to get around this crossing is to take the thirty-five bus across it, or to use the um crossing at lower millennium park. That crossing has its own challenge with the gates that swing closed that are difficult for a wheelchair user to open and push through at the same time. I'm left on that pad of concrete while I wait for someone to either open and hold the gate for me or to pull the gate and push my way through. Um mobility aids struggling to get across. As well as regular people with um strollers or the elderly with carts. Um I also wanted to touch on how I think that this crossing is dangerous for the visually impaired. There's only one um tactile paver that's next to the Williamette um short trolley. The rest three of those sides don't have any visual tactile pavers at all. Um so I was hoping that if this is ever addressed, we could put the other three missing pavers in. Um that's all that I had to state. Yeah. Good to have you here. Matt Johnson. Excuse me. All right, thank you all for uh allowing me to speak. Um my name's Matt Johnson. My family and I uh live uh in the Brian neighborhood. There's five of us. There's five of us, three children, nine, seven, and four respectively. My comments today are really pertaining to the Lake Oswego Swim Club and the use of the Lorac. Largely for you know for background, the Lake Oswego Swim Club has about 255 swimmers, 92% of which live in Lake Oswego. So for quick math, that's around 234 uh Lake Oswego kids and their families that have been negatively affected by the move from the Lake Oswego high school pool to the Lorac. And challenges that we've experienced, by that I mean the Lake Oswego Swim Club, from moving from the old Lake Oswego High School pool to the Lorac have involved a lack of lane of a lack of lane availability that's forcing most of our squads to have to move over to the Lewis and Clark College to pool to practice. What that is also done in moving from the from Lake Oswego High School over to Lake Lewis and Clark, and so the Lorac has just forced us to change our practice times to accommodate more kids, fewer lanes, and less time available. Some of our younger swimmers also have to practice a much later times than in the past because of that those constraints. And also those constraints have also forced the Lake Oswego Swim Club not to be able to take on new swimmers, which is a problem, of course, because obviously growing and having more swimmers is what we all want to have, right? Um, and um on that note, the Lorac has also refused to let the Lake Oswego swim club host any uh swim meets there, too, for which um there's been a lot of enthusiasm. My family's participated, my children have in the swim meets. Um it's not just because it's a swim club oriented event, but it's more of a community event in which we can cheer on our kids and root for young people aspiring to be better at what they're doing. Um excuse me, and then lastly, on the Lewis and Clark side of things, it's going to be closed from April and May, which is going to become it's going to further complicate the logistics for the swim club and its practices. Um, the six communities lap um lap swim lanes are not fully utilized all hours of the day. So the the idea around this is that by uh you know the a planned use of the Lake Oswego swim club there, you're actually we're we're in a position where we can optimize the number of people using the swim lanes at one given moment in time, enabling a more efficient or greater use of the swim lanes writ large for the Lorac. So while it's concentrated, it's more kids swimming all at once, which enables a greater use of the pools and its service and its excuse me, services. Um now, to be fair, and my I don't think my timer ever started to be transparent. Oh well, are you almost done? Okay. Um I'll go quickly, yeah. Okay. So really quickly, while while there's going to be some considerations around the point of it being drop-in oriented, I would argue that this by the same token, by a concentrated effort of having you know multiple lanes used by one swim club, we're going to optimize and we'll maximize the number of people that are using the lanes all at once, which is great. And lastly, and this is probably the most important piece. Swimming is uh hands down the number one way kids die ages one to four by accidental death.