[Klickitat] ☀️ Balcony Solar and a Postponed Store - White Salmon July '26

White Salmon's biggest land-use hearing of the summer was over in minutes, before it ever opened. Sixty-nine people had already written in about a proposed convenience store across from Rheingarten Park, staff had recommended denial, and then the applicant asked to postpone. In this episode: the White Salmon City Council, the Planning Commission, the Tree Board, the Community Development Committee, and City Lab, the city's climate board, which we are covering for the first time.

In This Episode

• Two street grant applications, and the three hundred sixty thousand dollars of city money riding on them
• Why the city's own main street is the most expensive place in town to close
• A tree ordinance that charges four hundred dollars for a tree, and the housing question hiding inside it
• The twenty-inch water main, and the leak nobody knew about until they went to pull the old pipe
• Balcony solar, and why it died in Olympia
• Childcare, asked for again, at two levels of government

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• White Salmon agendas, packets and recordings: whitesalmonwa.gov/meetings
• Written comment to Council: public.comment@whitesalmonwa.gov, by noon the Wednesday of the meeting
• Our June round-up, including the thirty percent short-term rental rule: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/
• Our coverage of childcare at the county level: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/childcare-as-economic-infrastructure-klickitat-bocc-4-21-4-28/
• Meeting notes for the Tree Board, the Community Development Committee and City Lab come from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, CC BY 4.0: https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm glad you're here. We're back today with a very hefty White Salmon July municipal roundup, so let's get into it. If you have only a minute this month, here's the one to know, which is that White Salmon's biggest land use decision of the summer was over almost before it started. On July 8th, the Planning Commission was set to hear a proposal to turn the old state social and health services building at 211 North Maine into a convenience store. A center market, it's that vacant building across from Rheingarten Park. Sixty-nine people have written to the city about it, fifty-eight letters by the city's own count, and that count closed at 2 in the afternoon on the day of the hearing, and then 14 more came in after that. The city planner had recommended a denial, not because of what the store would sell, but because of where the front door would go. And then before the chair could even open the hearing, the applicant asked to postpone. Why was that? So here's what happened. Most of the application actually passed. Retail is allowed outright in that commercial zone, so the debate is not over whether a convenience store can operate in that lot. It absolutely can. The parking works, 16 stalls where 15 are required. And what didn't pass actually was the design for the remodel itself. The intent of remodel moves the main entrance deeper into the parking lot, away from the street, and takes out some of the windows. Staff said that makes the building less conforming than it already is, and that the plans need a redesign. Public Works added something even heavier. It wants whoever builds this to either rebuild the right of way on Northeast Lincoln Street or convert Lincoln to one-way traffic at their own cost. So, first of all, nothing's been actually imposed. The hearing never opened because the applicant wanted more time to prepare because of the list of asks. The condition is a recommendation sitting inside a staff report that recommends denial. And the applicant told the commission that he's okay with the conditions and is actually redesigning. So what's missing though is a number. There's not yet a traffic study on the file, and the only trip figures anywhere come from the applicant himself. So the applicant is redoing the plans now. Staff expects it back in September with a fresh notice and a new comment period. And if you wrote in already, your letter stays in the record and you can add to it. One more thing from that night. The public notice posted at the site went missing during the comment period. Staff said so on the record. Their words, it was missing or vandalized, and either way it wasn't where it was supposed to be. The planner said something I liked, which is that we've only got two eyes between all of you, and you've got about 120, unquote. The postponement fixes it and everybody will get a fresh notice. So moving over to City Council, the council held a special meeting at 11.30 in the morning on July 22nd for one reason to sign two letters in time for a state grant deadline. The first is Church Ave to Tahoma Street. About $850,000 of work, the city puts in $85,000. The second is Jewett Boulevard from Riverwatch to Essays Avenue, $2.75 million with $275,000 from the city. So if we add that up, the city is committing $360,000 of its own money, and if it wins, it's against $3.6 million of very necessary street work. So here's the thread that ties the whole episode together. Jewett Boulevard is State Route 141 and it's a state highway. The city does not fully control its own main street, and that's part of why rebuilding it needs the state at the table. And, as you'll hear in a minute, it's why closing it for a parade costs what it costs. Public Works Director Chris True had better news underground. Phase 2A of the water project connected its new 20-inch main. The minutes say recovery time is improved. On the recording, the director puts numbers to it. In the Los Saltos reservoir, it's filling about 500 gallons a minute faster than before. Then he gave the accidental proof. When crews went to abandon the old line the next day, it was already empty, no service connections. It should have been full of water. So in his words, quote, that just goes to show that that line was leaking and this project was necessary, unquote. The council also renewed its hearing examiner at $330 an hour up from $230 at the end of 2028. And it confirmed three planning commissioners that had held over from June. In a public comment, Gabrielle Gilbert came back on childcare. Her line, childcare is economic infrastructure. What she wants is simple and procedural. She wants childcare treated like every other economic question the city handles as a standing item with a real conversation. Her closing, we're still a desert and we're not seeing anything. And she isn't the only one asking white salmon. Three weeks earlier, she stood up at the Klikatak County Commissioners meeting and asked what county land or buildings near Benjamin and White Salmon could hold childcare. She got an agreement in principle, no search. And as a bit of a little fun tidbit for you here over at Open Gorge, we decided to help out with that project and turned over a list of what county land or city land might be available with the correct zoning. So if you ever have a question like that on how to use public records or what might be available on zoning maps, please reach out. With that, we're going to go to the tree board. Remember, Davy Stevenson spent an hour walking through White Salmon's tree ordinance next to seven other Washington cities. The finding? The city charges $400 per replacement tree, but that's the lowest of the group. Burgen charges $700, Covington $1,000, Bellevue about $1,300. But the sharper finding was that parts of the code may not work as written. The ordinance says a developer must keep trees, quote, to the maximum extent possible. Nobody has defined what that means, and the replacement schedule keys off which zone the tree is in, not how big the tree is. In other words, it has everything to do with what zone the tree is in, which is again super weird, right? So Karen Jenkins frames a real question. What is the value of that giant white oak at the bridge? Because right now, cutting it costs the same $400 as any other tree in town. There's a housing question folded inside this too, and it's worth knowing. A fee that scales with tree size lands hardest on small lots, which is where duplexes and accessory dwelling units get built. White salmon's own code already sorts this way. A tree can come out when keeping it drops the buildable footprint below a thousand square feet for a house, but for an accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, the floor is 700. The detached house gets an easier path. Other cities have dealt with it, so for example, Mount Lake Terrace waves its tree feet entirely when the fifth of a project's units are affordable. That's a model sitting right there that we can think about. Over at the Community Development Committee, there are two big things. First, Halloween. So there's no haunted house plan this year, and the chamber director has spent seven years asking for volunteers and can't get enough. The city can't even call it a haunted house anymore for insurance reasons. It's now Halloween scenes. That matters because the display is what justified closing the street. And on a good year, that display draws about 1,400 people through the door in a town of about 2,500. Second, why closing Jewitt is so expensive? Three reasons came out. It's a state highway, so every closure needs a plan the state approves, and each event needs its own. The city pays more than the chamber does because public agencies follow procurement rules and pay prevailing wages. And third, the company wrote that the city's traffic control plan is the company hired to carry it out. A committee members read on the recording that they obviously made it as robust as they could so that their paycheck was as robust as it could be. Councilmember Ben Giant is asking the mayor what could be done. His question, are there creative ways to not make this a $10,000 bill to shut down Jewitt for just a couple hours? Last stop, and this is a new one for us, City Lab is White Salmon's Climate Advisory Board, and it's the group that brought council the electric ready vehicle ordinance back in June. In July, it actually heard about balcony solar. That's a solar panel plugged into an outdoor outlet that cuts what your house pulls off the grit. Germany has more than 5 million of them, they're legal in Utah, and in nine more states as of this year. It's not legal to plug in here just yet. The board's next step is small and smart. Rather than campaign for something they can't yet explain, they invite a click-a-tap PUD to their August meeting to find out whether the local utility has a problem with any of these. So what's next? On August 5th, City Council, with a resolution naming Hispanic Heritage Month to Latino, Latina, and Latinex Heritage Month, and a proposal to get rid of park reservation fees. August 10th will be the Tree Board at 4 in the afternoon, and City Lab will follow that evening with PUD invited. August 17th, the Community Development Committee. And in September, that convenience store application comes back, redesigned with a brand new comment period. If you write a letter in July, you'll get a notice. So one last thing. Three of the five meetings in this episode were covered by Columbia Gorge documenters, volunteers, and two of them would have no record at all without them. So we're very grateful to Caroline Elliott, Kathy Pickering, and Rowan McKenna. Thanks so much. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home of the Scamania Dispatch, and the Click of Tattler. 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 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.