Milwaukie City Council Work Session on Business Registration and Kronberg Park Enhancements - July 21, 2026
Milwaukie City Council Work Session on Business Registration and Kronberg Park Enhancements - July 21, 2026
This work session of the Milwaukie City Council focused on two main agenda items: a deep dive into proposed changes to the city's business registration code, including fee structures and exemptions, and a discussion on community enhancements at Kronberg Park related to the Kellogg Creek restoration project. The council reviewed staff recommendations, discussed trade-offs, and reached consensus on several policy directions.
Discussion Items
- Quarterly Goal Update & Business Registration Code Changes: Staff presented a midpoint check-in on the council's three-year goals, noting a shift to deep dives on specific topics. The primary discussion centered on six proposed changes to the business license program, based on prior council input, peer city research, and a business survey.
- Allow Business License Revenue for Economic Development: Staff proposed a code amendment to change the revenue purpose from "for revenue purposes only" to "for revenue and economic development purposes" to fund business assistance. Council members supported the flexibility but emphasized the need for clear accounting to track how dollars are used. Consensus was reached to move forward.
- Lower or Exempt Fees for Home-Based, COVID-Certified, and Small Rental Businesses: Staff recommended lowering the home-based business fee from $175 to $75, exempting COVID-certified businesses, and exempting long-term rentals with two or fewer units from the base fee. After discussion, council agreed on an opt-in approach for these exemptions, with applicants providing proof. A fourth element—incentivizing affordable rents for larger rentals—was parked for the affordability goal conversation.
- Switch Rental Fee to Per-Unit Basis: Staff proposed changing the rental fee from per-employee to $4 per unit to better align with footprint. Council asked for revenue neutral analysis and examples. The change will be included in the fee schedule, not code.
- Tiered Fee Increase for Larger Businesses: To offset revenue losses from exemptions, staff proposed increasing the base fee for businesses with 20 or more employees from $175 to $275. Council supported this, with some interest in exploring higher tiers. The goal is to be revenue not-negative overall.
- Do Not Compare to Gresham's Rental Model: Staff recommended not using Gresham's rental license fee structure as a comparator because it funds rental inspections, which is a separate policy issue. Council agreed but requested more information about Gresham's program for future consideration.
- Do Not Pursue Business Income Tax Model: Staff reported that Multnomah County is the only jurisdiction in Oregon with a business income tax, and adopting such a model would add administrative burden. Council accepted this conclusion, with some desire to learn more about pass-through revenues to other cities.
- Kronberg Park Community Enhancements (Kellogg Creek Restoration): Public Works Director Peter Casarelli and Parks Manager Adam Moore presented draft community enhancements for Kronberg Park as part of the Kellogg Creek restoration project. The park will be used for staging and will be restored to at least existing conditions. Staff recommended supporting enhancement features consistent with the 2015 Kronberg Nature Park Master Plan but opposed a concentrated nature play area (Feature A) due to the park's remote location, visibility issues, and existing challenges with vandalism and illegal camping. Council debated the merits, with some members favoring the play area to increase park usage and visibility. Ultimately, a majority of council supported staff's recommendation to omit a consolidated play area and instead spread nature play features along the trail. The council directed staff to work with NCPRD to secure a long-term maintenance commitment and to return on August 18 with more details on costs and NCPRD's response.
- Other Business: Councilor Sandjordan announced a proposed emergency fund for businesses vandalized or broken into, pledging $1,000 from her personal council budget to start. She will bring further updates.
Key Outcomes
- Consensus on Business Registration Changes: Council agreed to move forward with the six proposed policy directions outlined above, with specific direction to:
- Bring code amendments for consideration (including the revenue use change and exemption listing).
- Provide detailed revenue impact analysis (revenue losses from exemptions, gains from per-unit and tiered fees) before the item returns to council.
- Ensure exemptions are opt-in with verification requirements but at an appropriate level of rigor.
- Avoid placing dollar amounts in code; use the fee schedule instead.
- Kronberg Park Direction: Council approved staff's recommendation to support community enhancements consistent with the 2015 plan, with the modification that no consolidated nature play area be installed. Staff will ask the Kellogg project team and NCPRD for a written commitment to maintain new amenities and will report back to council on August 18.
- Next Steps: Business registration code changes will be brought forward for a hearing in the coming weeks. The Kronberg Park design decisions must be communicated to the design team by August 31 to meet the 90% design deadline.
Meeting Transcript
Um just so you know, this will be true probably in the other goal sessions as well. But um you all have the packet, you all have our track tracker, so you can certainly read and see what we accomplished over the last quarter, what we're gonna move forward with, and we'll definitely have a time where we can ask questions about that later. But we thought using this time with you all to actually provide some uh be more intentional about certain items within that tracker that we actually need your feedback on. That was a more useful uh usefulness. So that's what we're gonna focus on today. We're gonna focus and drill down on the business registration conversation that we started a few months ago and some of the progress that we've made and some of the research and analysis this year has done and walk you through the kind of a staff version of what we heard, what we've learned, and kind of our direction moving forward and get any other feedback when you see that. So if I don't just jump in there just to say um, as Jessica said, this is gonna I think be a tact that we try to take going forward. We had a we're halfway through your goal period, hard to believe, um, of three years, and so the staff goal leads had a couple of sort of midpoint check-ins to talk about how the process is working. Um we've learned a lot, and there's a lot that's going really well. I also think that you know the the kind of tedium of using every quarterly check-in to go through every single bullet point was maybe not the best use of time. So I do really encourage you to continue to read those in your packet. They are also always put on the website um after we have our quarterly work sessions. They're already up. Amazing. Um but we'll do these deep dives, and we also are gonna get back uh in a better habit of supreme meets between staff goalie's and council goalie. So you're up next, Councilor Massey, you'll be having a combo with me and the parks goal leads before our parks one. The last update I want to share is just uh starting this month in the pilot. We will be doing a goal deep dive each month. Um, because one and a half years in, you guys have actually accomplished a lot within these goals, and I think it's really important to do that storytelling and celebrate um the progress you've made. So parks is up first in August, then we'll do affordability in September, and economic development in October. Before we go on to that, I just want to thank uh you folks for that. You know, the the business development you know update is just so detailed and so comprehensive, you know. And even when I think I know what's going on, I always find new things in there. So um, it's it's kind of must read, you know. It is just it is just very comprehensive. The CD report. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And I know it takes a lot of time. It's a lot of hands-on deck. So I think you'll see some things are um, you got about 30 people looking at document every month. So it's uh oh, that's fun. Yeah. Well, I will say the island station neighborhood sends that out to people on their email list. They don't send out Jason's Friday emails, which kind of drives me crazy. But um, but they do send out uh CV report. That's the thing they send out. Do you hear that, Jason? He's watching. Yeah, of course. Thanks, Councillor Massey. Appreciate that. Okay. So Joseph gave a bit of a review, but just to ground us here before we jump into what we heard from you all last month, what our proposals are. Um or not last month, last quarter. Um so we met in April, and we gave not only updates on the internal feedback we've been hearing and the peer research and the business survey, um, but we also received input from you. We wanted to know your priorities as we move into this um draft final stage of these proposals. And so today is round two, where we want to just confirm with you all that there's consensus around what we heard, if it's still true, um, and if there's consensus around what we proposed, and just have a couple of discussion items um to make sure that we're moving in the direction that everyone wants us to meet here. Um, so I'll dive into the six things we heard, and we'll stop at each slide, each each of those six things and have a brief discussion to make sure everyone's good with how proposed what we heard before we four. Okay.
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