[Skamania] 🅿️ Rethinking Downtown Parking - Stevenson June '26 Round-Up

This episode: Stevenson's June meant a sewer-ordinance rewrite that's almost across the line, a move to scrap downtown parking minimums, and a Board of Adjustment that granted one hotel parking relief while sending an accessory-dwelling-unit case back for more homework. We cover the Stevenson City Council (June 18) and the Stevenson Board of Adjustment (June 10), plus a city-administrator hire that fell through at the last minute.

In this episode:

• The revised sewer ordinance: who has to connect, who doesn't, and the one clause still holding up a vote
• Why Stevenson wants to drop its downtown parking minimums, and the national movement behind it
• The Artbliss Hotel parking variance, granted
• A continued ADU variance, and a fact-check on whether ADUs are "just money makers"
• A CPA hired for financial oversight, and a stalled administrator search
• What's next: the July 9 retreat, the July 16 council meeting, and a mid-July Board of Adjustment hearing

Resources & Links:

• Read the full written Dispatch, with every source linked, at skamaniadispatch.com
• City of Stevenson agendas, packets, and meeting video: ci.stevenson.wa.us/meetings and vimeo.com/cityofstevenson
• Going deeper on parking reform: Strong Towns (strongtowns.org/parking) and the Parking Reform Network (parkingreform.org)
• The ADU data: UC Berkeley's Terner Center and the Florida Housing Action Lab

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Transcript

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Hey there and welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm really glad you're here. We're doing another citywide roundup. This is for June for the city of Stevenson. The city council met once this month on June 18th and the Board of Adjustment met on June 10th. We've got sewers, parking, and a hiring that fell apart at the last minute. Let's get into it. First up, the sewer ordinance. If you live in Stevenson, you've heard about this one for a while now. The city is rewriting the rules for who has to hook up to the public sewer and who gets to keep their septic system. June was the second reading of that change, and there's real news for septic owners. The new draft says if your on-site septic system works and it's approved, you will not be forced to connect just because the sewer line happens to run nearby. That old 300-foot rule is now gone. And selling your house no longer triggers a hookup. There's even a carrot. If you connect within a year of sewer becoming available, the city waves the connection charge, which can run thousands of dollars. But the council did not adopt it. One sticky clause held things up, and it's the part about what happens when a septic system, quote unquote, fails. Brian McNamara, a property owner who jokes he sat through the 20th plus version of this thing, told the council the wording was just too broad. Quote, when you think of a trigger, he said, you're thinking of tens of thousands of dollars to the homeowner. Unquote. His worry is that a routine repair could be read as a failure and force an expensive hookup. Former council member Pat Rice wrote in with the same concern. So the council agreed to tighten it up, so that only a true, unfixable failure, flagged by a health department, might trigger a connection. City attorney Robert Mouth is redrafting it now, so you can expect it back on July 16th, just ahead of the penalty moratorium that expires on August 31st. Now, parking, and this is a fun one. The council is moving to scrap its downtown parking minimums. Those are the rules that force a new shop or apartment to build a set number of parking spaces on site. The city's own studies say those rules make it hard to reuse those small downtown lots. And there's actually plenty of parking already. Folks just can't find it. So the plan pairs dropping that mandate with some simple wayfinding signs. And here's the part worth knowing. Stevenson didn't dream this up. Ending parking minimums is a national movement, going back to a UCLA professor named Donald Schupp and his book, The High Cost of Free Parking. Groups like Strong Towns have helped more than 200 cities and towns roll back these rules. Buffalo did it, Spokane right here in Washington has done it, and so have they across Oregon. And the case is actually strongest for small towns like ours, where the lots are tiny and historic, and where on-street parking usually handles the load just fine. The payoff is more housing, more open storefronts, without the town spending a dime to build it. The council liked the idea and they'll dig in at their July 9th retreat. And honestly, the timing is almost funny because just a week before the council talked about scrapping that parking rule, its own Board of Adjustment had to grant one business an exception to that very rule. So that's our next stop. The Board of Adjustment, which met June 10th. What is a Board of Adjustment anyway? Think of it as a small court for zoning exceptions. They had two cases. The first was the Art Bliss Hotel. Its new four-unit edition on 2nd Street needed six on-site parking spaces under code, but the lot can fit only three. The board granted the variants and dropped the requirement. Why? Because the city, frankly, dropped the ball. The county planner, Joshua Neblock, said that the building permit went out years ago with no real parking plan on file back during the handoff of Stevenson's planning work to Scamania County. Councilmember Dave Cox, speaking as a regular citizen in this case, put it plainly. I'm frustrated that the city has dropped the ball, he said. I don't think Tom, the property owner, should be penalized. Board agreed, and to be clear, this just lowers the on-site requirement. It doesn't hand the hotel any reserve spots on the highway. The second case was an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, out on Kanaka Creek Road. The owner wants to put a small second home 84 feet from the main house. City code says 40 feet is the max. The board didn't decide and decided to continue it to mid-July, partly because the applicant didn't show up. But here's something I want to flag. During that hearing, a board member said, and I'm quoting, ADUs do not give you more affordable housing, they act as moneymakers, and I want to gently push back on that because the data actually says otherwise. The biggest study we have from UC Berkeley's Turner Center found that only about 8% of ADUs end up short-term rentals. Nine in 10 are long-term homes. A separate Florida analysis found just 3% were active Airbnbs. They did another survey of homeowners in the South Bay of California and actually found that 20% of those were being offered for free to family or friends. Now, ADUs are not a magic fix for housing, and no serious researcher would say that they are, but they tend to be cheaper than other new housing, and a lot of them house family or aging parents. It's worth getting right because both the council and the board are about to rewrite that very rule. In fact, Stevenson's 40-foot limit is already stricter than state law allows. So a few quick hits before we go, the council hired an outsides consultant, Teresa Johnson, for up to $15,000 to tighten the books ahead of a state audit. And the search for a new city administrator hit a wall. The city had picked someone, negotiated the salary, and then finalists pulled out the last minute for personal reasons. So Mayor Jenny Taylor is back on the phone with a recruiter. On public works, Cascade Avenue paving is nearly done, and the city is watching the Rock Creek water intake closely in what staff called a dangerous low water year. And Under Sheriff Tracy Wykoff gave the May report and said that the trauma debrief for the city's first responders went really well. So what's next? Grab your calendar because the council retreat is July 9th. And then the next regular council meeting where that sewer ordinance can finally pass is July 16th, bringing to a close many months of quality discussion. And the Board of Adjustment picks up that ADU case back in mid-July. You can read the full written version of all of this with every link and source in the Scamania Dispatch. So, you've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home of the Scamania Dispatch and the Click of Taddler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the Gorge, head over to SchemaniaDispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com/slash opengorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.