[Skamania] 📡 911 Internet Failures - North Bonneville April '26 Round-Up

This month at the North Bonneville City Council, a long-simmering frustration with failing internet infrastructure escalated into a full-blown life-safety crisis. We break down the stark warnings from residents about disabled fire alarms, and how a regulatory gap leaves the city with limited leverage to fix the problem.

In This Episode:

• Water System Risk: Why the city had to authorize an emergency withdrawal from its Money Market account for a critical well pump.
• Fire Department Strain: Cascading vehicle failures and the ghost of a pre-COVID FEMA grant.
• The Dais is Full(er): Jeff Blakeley is appointed to Seat #4, and why the council rejected a mayoral pay raise.

Resources & Links:

• Read the full written Dispatch with comprehensive metrics and jargon-busters at skamaniadispatch.com.
• Join the next meeting: Stream or attend North Bonneville City Council on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month at 7:00 p.m.
• North Bonneville City Website & Agendas

Stay Connected with the Gorge

The Skamania Dispatch and The Klickitattler are community-led projects of OpenGorge.org.

To stay updated on local news, governance, and community events across the region, you can sign up for both newsletters at SkamaniaDispatch.com. For real-time updates and to join the conversation, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/OpenGorge.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, welcome back to another monthly municipal roundup. Today we're looking at the April meetings for the North Bonneville City Council. And if you're in the room for these meetings, you know it was a really heavy month. As one attendee perfectly summarized the marathon April 14th session, quote, it was a good meeting and not a great meeting at the same time. I think we've all been in a meeting like that. The biggest issue dominating the conversation right now is essential core infrastructure. And we need to start with a situation that has escalated from consumer annoyance into a serious public safety hazard. For months, residents have been dealing with failing Blue Mountain internet service, but this month residents and council members sounded the alarm that these outages are now threatening human lives. One speaker noted a recent incident where a furnace fire at the Hamilton Park apartments failed to trigger a 911 call, all because the network was down. These internet outages are also directly hitting city services. Just recently, the fire department had to abandon their local network and use personal cell phone hotspots just to conduct their Monday training sessions. The structural problem here is a regulatory gap. Because Internet service isn't formally classified under the Utilities Commission in the same way as water or power, local governments have very limited leverage to force private providers to fix these networks, even when these networks are carrying life or death fire alarm signals. So, moving over to public utilities, the city was forced to make an emergency unbudgeted purchase this month to avoid a catastrophic failure of the municipal water supply. That sounds pretty dire. Honestly, nobody likes to hear the words emergency unbudgeted and catastrophic failure in the same sentence as essential services like water. So the council authorized pulling nearly $39,000 directly from the city's money market account to replace a critical well pump and motor. It's a stark reminder of the incredibly narrow financial margins that small municipalities operate on when managing aging infrastructure. You can really have some huge, unexpected costs come up at almost any time. Fire Chief Callista Hamilton reported to the council that her department is battling cascading vehicle failures across their fleet as well, and they don't have enough gear to outfit their volunteer roster. The friction here is really structural. Everybody's inheriting unpaid bills from previous years, and it's complicating the current operations. Plus, as was revealed during the meeting, the department is still dealing with the fallout of a derailed pre-COVID FEMA grant that was supposed to fund a fire station generator, but never materialized. The department is now scrambling to pursue grants in local fundraisers. They have a looming inspection from the Washington Survey and Rating Bureau, and failing equipment could lead to a lower rating, which can directly increase homeowner insurance premiums for everyone in North Bonneville. So it's not just an issue for the agency, but it becomes everybody's problem. And so finally, a quick look at city administration. The council interviewed four applicants for their vacant positions this month, and ultimately they appointed Jeff Blakely to fill seat number four. If you're wondering why they didn't fill both empty seats since they had four candidates, it comes down to state rules. Seat four was vacated first, so it must be filled first. And now Councillor Blakeley will get to vote on who fills the vacancy at seat number five. In other administrative news, the council unanimously voted down an ordinance that would have increased the mayor's monthly compensation, trying to keep things austere these days. As you can hear, there's a lot of costs on the table. They also granted the chief administrative officer, Taylor Chambers, a day-to-day spending limit to help quickly clear out a backlog of old city bills. So what's next on the radar? Keep an eye out for the appointment to fill that final vacant council seat. And over at the Planning Commission, they're gearing up for a public hearing regarding a proposed childcare facility. Pretty big deal, as you can hear that childcare has been in many of our episodes as a very urgent issue for both Schamania and ClickAttack counties. To read the full written dispatch, find links to the raw meeting materials, or learn how to stream the next council meeting yourself, head over to the text version of this newsletter in the show notes. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home with the Schemania dispatch and the Click A Tatler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities, and in this case, safer communities. To support our work and to stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to schemania dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.comslash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.