Milwaukie city council votes 3 to 2 for more crammed infill

---

Milwaukie City Hall does not care about existing residents, as it is part of a cabal that seeks to remake Milwaukie into a place for those very dependent on government assistance.  This trend in Milwaukie governance repeats the same mistakes made by neighboring city of Portland, which used to be the place to move to but after adopting these government hand out programs (such as "affordable housing"), is now the place to avoid.

The printed block outlined in red, above, is an ordinance that Milwaukie City Council is likely to pass this coming Tuesday, August 19, 2025.  It makes it easier for Milwaukie City Hall to fund, with taxpayer monies, more "affordable" housing shacks like the one pictured in the panel just to the right of this panel.

Milwaukie City Council adopts this ordinance even as existing residents complained vehemently against these types of housing developments at a July 28, 2025, townhall meeting.  Milwaukie City Hall is controlled by progressive politicians who simply to do not listen or care about existing residents.  Milwaukie's politicians are dead set on increasing the population density of Milwaukie, designing in more poverty rather than protecting the interests of Milwaukie's existing middle class single-family neighborhoods.

Before Milwaukie City Hall became controlled by progressive politicians, Milwaukie is a blue-collar type of town where hardworking people earned a piece of the rock, namely a single-family home with a yard.  Now, Milwaukie's progressive-controlled city hall aims to prostitute its city by importing less ambitious people and those who are more prone to commit crime (statistically speaking).

When you hear the government talk about affordable housing, it is housing that is funded by government via taxes on those who actually work hard and earn their own living.

(posted by Elvis Clark on August 16, 2025)

Pictured above is one of Milwaukie City Hall's newest "affordable" housing projects on Harvey Street and about 37th Avenue.

It crams 15 two-story shack-like houses onto a half-acre lot, leaving no open space and those who will live here will depend on parking their cars on the nearby street, which already has limited parking.

If this were not enough, those who build their own home with their own monies in the city of Milwaukie pay a construction tax, that goes to Milwaukie City government and then is used to fund these crammed government funded shack houses.

To add insult injury for existing residents, these dense developments do not have their own parking spaces but instead result in rows of parked cars on nearby streets.

It gets even worse for existing residents of Milwaukie, because while the people living at these government funded houses will require more police services and other basic government services; these new residents of government funded houses will not pay much if any in property taxes to fund the basic services they will require.  

Instead, Milwaukie City Council is also planning to add a new fee onto water bills to fund the growing demands on the City's police department, caused by the growing population of Milwaukie, that Milwaukie City Hall bends over backwards to help cause.  (This new fee is also scheduled for City Council's approval this coming Tuesday, August 19, 2025.)

Low Income people will be exempt from paying this new water bill fee, euphemistically called a public safety fee.  So, City Hall is imposing a new fee on the middle class while bending over backwards to bring in poorer people who do not pay much in taxes to pay for the police and other basic services they require.

So, how can you think any differently: that Milwaukie's City Hall does not listen or care about its existing residents - as the electorate naively votes for a progressive city hall, not aware of an appointment system that favors continuing Progressive politician representation?  You simply can't deny these conclusions.

The above is a photo of a column written by Milwaukie Council President Will Anderson, appearing in the June 2025 "Milwaukie Pilot."

The next column panel over is the second half of Anderson's column.

(sorry about the fuzziness of the Milwaukie Pilot photos here.

(posted by Elvis Clark on June 17, 2025)

Here's the link to Milwaukie's Survey for setting its new goals:

   City Council Goals (2025-2027) | Engage Milwaukie 

The Survey requires you to choose three new goals.  So, I just checked the first three proposed goals, but for each of these goals I added a comment saying:  "But do so without cost."

Then there is a box for writing further comment on the City's push to expand. Here's what I wrote in this Goal Survey comment box:

"I want the Council to focus on keeping down increases in taxes and fees while maintaining basic services, such as police, roads and public works. When the Council adopts new goals, it usually requires new taxes/fees either directly, such as the increased city franchise taxes on electric and natural gas utilities, or indirectly by robbing monies from the General fund. To me, Council Goals are Mission creep costing Milwaukie residents in new taxes and fees or loss of basic services. I support eliminating the Climate Action Plan and its costs to utility customers in the City. When the Council promoted the Climate Action Plan to citizens it did not talk of its costs, and so residents were left without important information. The council and staff need to explain and note the costs of any goals it proposes to pursue. The Climate Action Plan no longer makes any sense since it is a national and international issue by hypothesis, and yet the U.S just voted to shelve Climate Change as a priority and the rest of the World only gives lip service to following any climate agreement. So, if the Council wants to adopt a new goal it should drop the Climate Action Plan, altogether.

The City of Milwaukie before last summer charged a right-of-way tax for Northwest Natural Gas and PGE electric utility bills of only 1.5%.  But in order to fund its "Climate Action Plan," it hiked its right-of-way tax for these utilities to 5.5% in the case of natural gas service and 4.5% for electric utility service.  (And so, Milwaukie residents are now paying three times and more for Milwaukie's tax on their utility bills, because of Milwaukie's Climate goal.)

And what do we get for this extra cost burden?

We get to know that Milwaukie now employs a Climate czar to push paper pretending that Milwaukie is somehow changing the temperature of the earth in some discernable way.

This Climate czar probably has a total cost exceeding $200,000 per year when factoring in salary and benefits, plus consultant contracts and travel to far away conferences flying on jet fueled planes.

(posted by Elvis Clark on December 17, 2024)

This coming Monday evening the City of Milwaukie's Budget Committee is scheduled to meet.  As part of this meeting, the Budget Committee is provided a Quarterly Financial Report by the City Finance Director, Toby LaFrance.

The above chart introduces this Quarterly Financial Report.  The Chart was created to appease former Mayor Gamba who complained, in effect, that the residents of Milwaukie do not pay enough in Property taxes.  The Yellow Bars (that exceed the dark colored bars) are the City's General Fund Operating Costs in total.  While the dark color bars represent the City's property tax proceeds.

But I intend to question the fairness of this chart at this Monday evening's Budget Committee meeting.  First off, in the latest year (FY23), the cost of operating the City's Library (the Ledding Library) is included in the Yellow Bar, which represents total City General Fund operating costs.  However, the property taxes collected by the Clackamas Library District (which fund the bulk of the Ledding Library's operating costs) are not included in the dark colored bar.  Instead, the property taxes collected by the Clackamas Library District are counted as an Intergovernmental Transfer (excluded from the Budget chart above here).  

This alone adds $2 million dollar to this year's reported gap between City Operating Costs and Property taxes collected.

Secondarily, the City Council in the year 2016 under the leadership of then Mayor Gamba approved creating an Urban Renewal District largely for downtown Milwaukie.  This Urban Renewal District diverts property taxes into a City slush fund of sorts, thereby reducing the City's property tax collections available for meeting General Fund Operating Costs.

  This raises the question:  if the City Council felt ok with reducing property tax collections for the General Fund (what with its creation of an urban renewal district), how can it also subsequently demand higher property taxes.

For more on the negative impact of Milwaukie's Urban Renewal District, click 'City Gov News' and then click 'MIlwaukie Urban Renewal.'

If Gamba had his way, property tax limit laws would be repealed, and property taxes would be effectively doubled.

Oregon Constitutional Measures 5 and 50 limit property taxes such that without them, property tax bills would be double current levels.  Without Measures 5 and 50, property taxes would be based on the yellow line in the Chart above here (in other words, the market value of a home or other real property); and not the lower, darker colored line representing the tax assessed value of a home or other real property.

(posted by Elvis Clark on November 9, 2023)

The above table is from the Portland Bureau of Transportation, as reported by BikePortland organization.  What it shows is that the percentage of people bicycling has been flat for over ten years now in Portland, despite Portland's addition of bicycle infrastructure.

People commuting by car (either alone or in carpool) is still about two thirds of all commuting trips when including working at home (pre Covid-19 data or pre year 2020.  If you exclude remote working as a form of commuting, then Auto commuting in the Covid year of 2021 is equal to 80% of all physical commuting trips. (46.8 plus 6.2, this sum divided by (1 minus 34.9%).)

Milwaukie launched its Transportation Committee to update Milwaukie's Transportation System Plan, on October 19, 2023.  Milwaukie Mayor Batey (photo above) spoke to this committee, and revealed that she supports dropping the speed limit for neighborhood streets down to 20 mph, from the current 25 mph.

But what is most sad, in my books, is that the transportation committee is made up of people who are mostly wanting to make it more difficult for other people to drive cars.  I come to this impression after hearing each of this committee's members mostly talk of their enthusiasm for bicycles and transit.

But there needs to be people on this committee who are more representative of the broader community of Milwaukie.  Seniors, for instance, for whom bicycling, walking and standing around for a bus;  Or having to ride an unsafe Orange Max train; are not really options.  Most folks as the data in the table to the left above demonstrates, commute and get around by car.

(posted by Elvis Clark on October 20, 2023)

Currently, North Clackamas Parks District manages Milwaukie's city parks.    Clackamas Parks charges the average home owner in Milwaukie about $135 per year, or a levy of 54 cents per $1,000 in tax assessed home value.

Up until this week, Milwaukie City staff and City Council thought if Milwaukie took back the management of its parks from Clackamas Parks that the parks property tax would simply remain the same.  But this week it is discovered that it would cost the City of Milwaukie 85% more to manage the City's Parks than it is cost Clackamas Parks District currently.

So, Milwaukie City council has pulled back its take over of City Parks and a proposed May 2023 property tax levy renewal.

The main reason it would be costly for the City of Milwaukie to take back the management of its parks from North Clackamas Parks District is the Milwaukie Community Center and surrounding Park.

Clackamas Parks is subsidizing the large senior meals program provided by the Milwaukie Community Center and the maintenance of the surrounding park - by the tune of $1 million per year.

(posted by Elvis Clark on February 17, 2023)