Homeowners Appeal Oswego Lake Opening, Ask City Council to Join Them

The Battle of Oswego Lake rages on.

Ten days after Clackamas County Circuit Judge Kathie Steele deemed the lake public and ordered it opened to the public, the homeowners association known as the Lake Oswego Corporation filed an appeal.

The Lake Oswego City Council will hold an executive session Friday to discuss whether to join the Lake Corporation in continuing the fight against swimmers and kayakers accessing the water. The city manager says the council will not make a decision tomorrow.

The politicking is well under way. The Lake Corporation sent notice to the Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday. The same day, Justin Harnish, a real-estate broker and board president of the Lake Corporation, sent an email urging Lake Oswego residents to ask city councilors to join the appeal.

“If you haven’t been following,” Harnish wrote, “the judge ruled that the lake is to be open to the public and since then it’s been the wild west with paddlers, kayaks and fisherman hitting the water with no regard to private property, the rules of the lake or with any respect to what we know and love. On Monday a kayaker capsized in the middle of Lakewood Bay and had to be rescued by a homeowner in a paddle boat...so now our citizens are lifeguards?”

Harnish added that residents should ask city councilors and Mayor Joe Buck to at least ask the court for a stay that would “buy us time to 1) appeal and/or 2) create the proper safeguards, rules, regulations etc so that when the homeowner powerboats and paddles arrive with warmer weather we aren’t waiting for a catastrophe to happen.”

The Oregonian first reported the appeal filing earlier today.

Mark Kramer, the Portland lawyer who joined Lake Oswego arborist Todd Prager in liberating Oswego Lake—a 13-year effort that wound through five courts—told WW today he’s dismayed that the city council would hold the conversation behind closed doors.

“I think it’s a travesty that the process is not open to the public,” he said. “Already [the president of] the Lake Corporation has contaminated the process by rallying Lake Oswegans to urge the council to pursue an ill-fated appeal that will surely lose.”

In response to an inquiry from WW, City Manager Martha Bennett wrote that the council is holding an executive session to consult with its attorneys. “Additionally, the City will hold an open and noticed public meeting, if necessary, to implement the Council’s direction about any next steps that relate to the litigation,” she added. “They will not be making a decision in executive session.”

The city of Lake Oswego has marched in close rank with the Lake Corporation since Kramer and Prager first filed a federal lawsuit in 2012 to open the waters to the public.

Reached by phone this afternoon, Harnish told WW that his primary concern was safety on the water this coming summer.

“Bottom line is safety,” he said. “The most important thing is the lake is governed by a set of rules… The Lake Corporation wasn’t given enough time to put the proper guidelines in place. Imagine the sun going down on a sunny evening, there’s 50 boats out there. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Kramer said those concerns are overblown.

“This hyperbole about a capsized kayaker on Monday—well, that’s unfortunate,” Kramer said. “But anybody who’s ever been on a paddleboard knows you fall in the water. You don’t close the lake because of it. This appeal is just an attempt to delay and obfuscate.”

(Kramer and Harnish offered differing accounts of whether the plaintiffs seeking to open the lake had engaged in talks with the Lake Corporation about time, place and manner conditions. Both sides agreed that creating such conditions would be a positive step.)

Harnish also pushed back against how homeowners living along Oswego Lake have been portrayed by the media, including WW.

“Lake Oswego gets a bad rap,” he said. “We’re still Oregonians. We still love the outdoors. We just happen to have a lake in the middle of our city. I’m tired of hearing that Lake Oswego isn’t an inclusive society. Stop that rhetoric. We’re good people. We want people here. We didn’t gate the neighborhood and say, ‘Nobody come to Lake Oswego.’ And yet it’s been painted that way. Wealth doesn’t mean you’re an asshole.”

For his part, Kramer credited 2012 coverage of Oswego Lake by WW’s then arts and culture editor Martin Cizmar for inspiring him to sue. Kramer said he hopes the city will drop the matter. He paddled Oswego Lake in a kayak last Saturday, and says the event was quiet and orderly (except for someone who keyed his car while he was in the water).

“The world didn’t end,” Kramer said. “The lake didn’t split in two. Property values didn’t dip. Why do they continue shooting themselves in the foot by pursuing this ill-fated litigation? That’s my question.”