Milwaukee City Council Work Session: Parks and Green Space Goal Update - August 5, 2025
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Milwaukee City Council Work Session: Parks and Green Space Goal Update - August 5, 2025
This work session, held on August 5, 2025, focused entirely on updates to the city's parks and green space goal. Staff presented accomplishments from the past quarter, upcoming projects, and sought council direction on several key issues, including the Good Neighbor program, green space accessibility mapping, and ongoing negotiations with North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District (NCPRD) for Milwaukee Bay Park.
Good Neighbor Program Update
- The first application cycle closed June 30, 2025, with 7 applications received. One application (Johnson Creek Watershed Council) was withdrawn due to inability to secure a property owner agreement.
- Staff reviewed applications in July and recommended $188,738 in funding for four projects: North Clackamas Watershed Council (community stormwater engagement), The Wetlands Conservancy (boardwalk in Thorn/Love Springs area), Milwaukee Parks Foundation (Elk Rock Island Restoration), and Bird Alliance of Oregon (backyard habitat and nature walks). Minor modifications to scope are needed for some.
- Two lower-scoring applications (a small cleanup event and an ADA bench project) were not recommended. The program's geographic eligibility area was expanded under the new Good Neighbor agreement with West.
Three Parks Grant Closeout & Bell Park Safety Issue
- Staff announced the successful closeout of all grants for the three new parks: $2.25 million in federal ARPA (COVID) funds, a $300,000 Oregon State Parks grant (second highest rated in state) for Scott Park, and additional Metro and Nature in Neighborhoods grants.
- At Bell Park, a playground safety inspection identified a disagreement among experts regarding rocks near the embankment slide. To mitigate liability, staff will add bollards and chains and modify bench rocks to clarify they are not playground equipment. The solution is reversible and funding is available from non-grant sources.
Nature in Neighborhoods Community Choice Program
- Metro's community choice program received 152 ideas across Clackamas County; over half were in Milwaukee city limits. After filtering ineligible and duplicate submissions, 78 ideas remain and will proceed to public voting.
- Voting workshops begin in the fall, with the first scheduled for first Sunday in September at City Hall. Projects are capped at $250,000 with a 30% city match. Projects that qualify for this program may also automatically qualify for larger capital grants (up to $1 million) in future cycles. Staff noted potential synergies with the Good Neighbor program.
Green Space Accessibility Mapping
- Staff presented draft maps showing city-owned accessible and inaccessible green spaces, 10-minute walk sheds, trails, and the impact of schools. The Trust for Public Land estimates Milwaukee's population coverage at 88%.
- Council discussed including schoolyards and church properties as quasi-green spaces. Direction was to build an inventory and categorize spaces by availability (always open vs. limited hours). Trails like the Springwater Corridor were distinguished from road-parallel paths like Linwood and 17th Avenue.
- Staff will continue refining the maps and data, with population estimates noted as approximate.
NCPRD Negotiations for Milwaukee Bay Park
- Councillor Massey and the Mayor reported on four meetings with NCPRD since January. The city's priorities are: substantial delivery by 2027, maintaining the scope of the latest plans, and an equitable funding strategy.
- Progress has been made on a cooperative IGA, with staff-level negotiations advancing. The NCPRD board has not yet agreed to move the project from mid-term (5-10 years) to near-term (1-5 years), but the county administrator said they would take it on.
- The Mayor expressed concern about timelines, noting that if talks fall through by September, a bond measure for November would be challenging. Council agreed to continue good-faith negotiations but acknowledged that the 2027 deadline may be difficult to meet even under ideal conditions.
- Staff will continue working on both the cooperative and construction IGAs in parallel, with a goal of completion in September.
Private Events and Commercial Installations in Parks
- Staff asked council for direction on two questions: (1) permitting temporary one-day or multi-day events for private profit, and (2) exploring longer-term permanent commercial installations.
- Council expressed general support for temporary events (e.g., paddleboard rentals, food carts) but was cautious about permanent installations. Staff will incorporate this into the larger green space management strategy rather than making an immediate policy decision. Council agreed that a dedicated discussion could be added to a future agenda if needed.
Preliminary Green Space Acquisition
- The Mayor and Public Works Director conducted a tour of potential acquisition parcels. No funding is identified, but staff will continue to develop an inventory of possible properties to fill gaps identified in the accessibility mapping. Partnership opportunities with Metro were noted.
Key Outcomes
- Good Neighbor program: Staff to proceed with the four recommended applications after minor modifications and will begin second round planning.
- Bell Park safety fixes: Staff to implement bollards/chains and signage; funding from non-grant sources.
- Nature in Neighborhoods: City to host a voting workshop on the first Sunday in September; staff to continue feasibility analysis.
- Milwaukee Bay Park: Staff to continue parallel IGA negotiations with NCPRD, aiming for September completion. Council to evaluate progress and potentially explore alternative strategies if talks fail.
- Green space accessibility: Staff to expand inventory to include schools, churches, and other quasi-public spaces, and to refine mapping.
- Private events: Staff will include commercial use policies in the upcoming green space management strategy; no immediate regulatory changes.
- Green space acquisition: Staff to continue scoping and will report back in a future work session.
- LIDAR data: Expected in fall 2026; no update on tree canopy metric in 2025.
- The meeting then adjourned to executive session under ORS 192.660(2)(d).
Meeting Transcript
All right, we are on the air. It is our August 5th, 2025 work session, and we have only one item on the agenda, which is our parks and green space goal update. So I will hand it off. I don't know if I'm handing it to Peter or to Councillor Massey or thank you, Mayor. I'm Peter Passerelli. I'm the public works director, and with me this afternoon, also with Adam Moore of Parks Development Coordinator, and we've put together a presentation of our uh accomplishments that we have over the last quarter, what we see coming up in the future quarters uh from the staff perspective, but also some slides that reflect the reflecting up some council work that's been gonna later. Um so moving on April June staff uh accomplishments. I think we met last time in May, beginning of May was our first iteration uh where we we sat down and talked about the the action program and open book and for the next uh next two years or three years, I should say. Um so this is to spend a little bit of time on what we've done uh over April June at this quarter and where we're headed uh this quarter as well. Um I wanted to start off talking about the Good Navy program, and this might be a little premature because I had intended yesterday to have a discussion with our community utility advisory committee. That meeting, unfortunately, got canceled because of a lack of war. So uh I haven't really out, I haven't walked them through this yet, but our application period for our first uh cycle of uh for the for the program closed June 30th. Uh we ended up receiving seven applications. Um the applications uh Johnson Creek Watershed Council uh withdrew their application because they were unable to get like uh an agreement from a property owner that uh would would have would have been part of that project. Uh staff reviewed the applications uh during the month of July. Um we were recommending to the community utility advisory committee for applications for uh approval that would total up to 188,738. Uh there's a coup to the application we were looking at doing some minor modifications on. Uh so we're gonna have to sit there and we'll have to take a look at it in terms of some of the scope uh of work there, and then once we get done with that, we're gonna start working on the screen with things uh total 188,000. I believe at the end of July, depending on uh the EU's that we're one dollar for BD fee that we get from West. We should have possibly about fair 50,000 groups. I put together a little table. Uh all of the applications were eligible, they're all they were all within the uh the area, the geographic area that we had outlined on on the map. Uh we went through the scored and we had four uh evaluators, myself, uh Adam and Katie and uh Emma, one of our uh administrative specialists. Um they were all uh very well put together, but you could definitely tell that there were some ever put together. Uh so we're looking at moving for the North Clackness watershed council uh application, which had a focus on community stormwater engagement in our community in our community. Okay. And what does that look like? Um, just in Broadbrush. It it it relates to uh doing some for a second. Uh well, I was gonna say when I used to sit on that board at Celia back when I was a counselor, I was always pushing them to do more education about pesticides and stuff like that. Um, I think you know, people think if they can buy it at Fred Meyer, it must be okay, and that's not true. Um so um I didn't know if that was kind of what they were doing, or they were doing like you know, actual. Uh cool uh and you know, so water quality facilities or land gardens and things like that. I think there's a small demonstration project associated with it. Um I I don't know if I don't believe there's anything specifically called out the application purposing this decuse. Uh the wetlands conservancy, they've uh they've got a project where they're looking to uh build a boardwalk out in the wetlands in Thorn in Love Springs area. It's a multi-year project. This is a piece of their overall funding. Uh they're also they have some technical assistance uh from uh the interior parks found the National Park Service to help with that program as well. Uh so this grid the grid dollars here are going to be used for some wetland delineation and some design share that's for the community. Sort of that one's uh there's also some survey work and little last spend some more on their salaries as they work on this project. Uh the Milwaukee Parks Foundation uh has a large sort of uh they've identified a large Uprock Island Restoration Project. This is one of the projects that we want to have a discussion work about school work and and make sure that it's designed appropriately and and doesn't create uh doesn't create additional work for us. Uh so that's that's part of what we need to do there. Uh the Bird Alliance uh of Oregon, uh they have some program related to uh backyard for habitat and uh burden nature walks at Elk Rock Island and West Restoration. The same thing applies there. There's some some tweaks that we're gonna look for from them on them on their programs there just to make sure that it uh doesn't cause us some additional work, and it's not being do it's not being duplicated by maybe some of the I'm sorry, the Milwaukee Parks Foundation, Island Station NDA application that was programmed. Um and then we had solved and another island station ADA application. Uh those that you know they were eligible. They met some of the criteria, but they scored lower because they they didn't really meet sort of the full goals of the program.
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