FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LAKE OSWEGO, Oregon – November 7, 2019 – Save Cooks Butte is pleased to announce that the Lake Oswego City Council passed a motion Tuesday evening authorizing staff to inform Clackamas 800 Radio Group that due to the withdrawal of consents by the Emery family, the City is unable to allow a telecommunications tower to be constructed at Cooks Butte Park.
“This is a magical moment!” exclaimed Scott Handley, the fearless leader of this grassroots effort. “The power of the Lake Oswego community to mobilize should never be underestimated. We stand up for doing the right thing and protecting the values that make our community a special place. This is the 3rd time in 25 years the community has come to the defense for Cooks Butte. The message is loud and clear…this natural area’s land is not for installing telecommunication towers or any other development that is inconsistent with a natural area, ” continues Handley.
The Lake Oswego community expects by the passage of this motion for the City of Lake Oswego and Clackamas 800 Radio Group to immediately cease any further pursuit of installing this telecommunications tower at Cooks Butte and pursue other suitable sites that are not natural area parks.
“We can now focus our energy on the next phase…a ballot initiative that codifies protections for all natural area parks in the City of Lake Oswego’s City Charter,” says Handley. “The community has repeatedly expressed concerns, early in the Save Cooks Butte movement, that we didn’t have controls in place to protect all our natural area parks for development interests.”
The Marjorie and John Emery Natural Park Preservation petition for ballot initiative will launch this month. The petition needs signatures from 15% of Lake Oswego’s registered voter community by February 1, 2020, to be included on the May 2020 ballot. The community can keep informed on important updates by signing up at http://LoveLOParks.org . To support this grassroots effort, a GoFundMe has been set up to accept donations at https://www.gofundme.com/f/loveloparks
Save Cooks Butte is a coalition of Lake Oswego residents who are concerned about our natural parks. They are working to inform the Lake Oswego community about the City’s practices and procedures with Clackamas 800 Radio Group to place a telecommunication tower in Cooks Butte natural park. This coalition opposes telecommunications towers, or structures of any kind, in any of Lake Oswego’s natural parks. To date, the coalition has secured over 900 petition signatures from Lake Oswego residents in opposition to a telecommunication tower in Cooks Butte natural park.