On November 13, 2025, the Milwaukee City Council convened a special session to review the latest proposed terms from the North Clackamas Parks and Recreation District (NCPRD) regarding the Cooperative Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) and the Milwaukee Bay Park IGA. Staff provided a transparent update on negotiations initiated in January 2025, aiming to resolve a long-standing impasse and deliver the third phase of Milwaukee Bay Park by late 2027. The session featured an overview of the technical terms on the table, public testimony regarding equity and funding, and a unanimous vote authorizing staff to submit formal counter-proposals by December 2nd.
Okay. We are on the air. I want to call this special session on November 13th to order. As it's a special session, we don't have the normal uh script that we begin with. We can kind of get right down to business before I turn it over to the city manager. I just wanted to say, uh, as we've kind of said a couple times through the year, we've been um we started negotiations with the county in January. I had initially been helpful that we'd have a decision, have a um uh an agreement by summer. Here we are coming up on the end of the year, but hopefully we can move this forward in the next month and uh wrap it up. So I'll turn it over to Emma to tell us where we are and the decision points we have. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, we would love this to be a little holiday present. We can all conclude. Um good evening, everyone. It's great to be with you. Thanks for attending your special session tonight. We wanted to transparently give an update uh with our constituents about the status of these negotiations on Milwaukee Bay Park, um, how the special session will run. Where I'm gonna give just a brief background if you haven't been following this kind of convoluted trail about how we got to tonight. Um, then we will be reviewing um or recapping some council discussion on the latest proposed uh terms and some agreements we've been working uh back and forth with the NCPRD board of directors on. Umce we've reviewed our walked through council's latest thinking on those terms, we'd like to invite anyone who would like to contribute some public testimony to do so. We'll um limit that to three minutes each, and then at the end, we're just gonna ask for some decisions and direction to staff on next steps from council. So um again, this has been uh the mayor mentioned that we've been really at the table in the most recent round negotiations since January. But just in case you don't know the backstory here, I wanted to share a little bit about the history of the city's relationship with NCPRD and with Milwaukee Bay Park. Um NCPRD was formed in 1990, and that is when the original cooperative intergovernmental agreement, you're gonna call hear me say cooperative IGA a lot tonight, was first signed with the city of Milwaukee. Uh when that was signed, basically the city retained ownership of all of its parks, but NCPRD became the entity that operates and maintains those parks. So this IGA formalized that relationship. That cooperative IGA has been amended a few times over the years, the kind of most substantive one being in 2008 when it was updated to reflect new parks, uh including Riverfront Park, which is sort of the precursor name to Milwaukee Bay Park. Going forward, you'll let me say Milwaukee Bay Park or MDT. Um Milwaukee Bay Park, I think it goes without saying to our constituents of Jewel in the crown of our parks and green space um uh assets here in the city. It's a beautiful stretch along the Willamette River, and it's been for a long time a goal of Milwaukee City Councils to see that jewel developed. So the city led uh the first two phases of development of that park, including acquiring land there and um uh getting it to be the park that it is today. The first phase was completed by the city in 2012. The second phase was completed by the city in 2015. Um, so the park is wonderful, but it is not the finished product yet. And uh in 2017, um, the city was kind of gearing up to start doing phase three. Uh and at the time, the board the the North Pacamas Parks and Yak Department and CPRD requested the day to make the lead on phase three of Milwaukee Bay Park. Um, and the city agreed to that. Uh that then ensued two years of public involvement. Um, and the designs for phase three, which have been seen by lots of guys all over the city of Milwaukee, uh, was unveiled in 2019. Um that is sort of where the story gets a little more complicated. So once we had uh 50% designs, the two parties um attempted to come to some agreements about funding and constructing the park. There were draft uh funding and construction IGAs developed. The city approved them twice, once in 2020 and once in 2021. Um the NCPRD did not approve both of them. Um there was several meetings where it was removed from agendas, and um uh finally a condition was placed that it would not approve the funding IGA for phase three until the city engaged in an update to the cooperative IGA. There uh there was some frustration at that point, and uh a previous council was interested in looking into potential withdrawal from the district. Um that led to some dispute over whether the terms in the 2008 IGA regarding withdrawal method are valid. The city feels that what is written in the IGA is valid, um and the board uh contends otherwise. So we filed a validation action to understand that that is currently being heard by the Court of Appeals. I should be clear that I am while a previous council had discussed um withdrawal, this council has given no direction to withdraw from the district or taken any votes on that topic. This brings us to 2025.