[Klickitat] 🥬 The Dollar Store Showdown - White Salmon August '26

White Salmon spent August getting three big decisions ready and making none of them. The City Council pulled a dollar store moratorium off its own agenda before anyone spoke, the Tree Board decided what a mature oak is actually worth, and a storm ratification quietly revealed a funding hole close to a million dollars. We also went looking for where the city's borrowed ordinance language came from, and found Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In This Episode

• Why the Council pulled Ordinance 2026-1189 before it was ever presented, and what happened when it came back
• Where the phrase "small-box discount store" comes from, and why the fresh food rule sits in one White Salmon document and not the other
• There is no dollar store in White Salmon. The nearest one is in Bingen
• The Tree Board's case study: one oak, two very different price tags
• A preliminary storm estimate of nearly two million dollars against a grant of up to one million
• A three minute special meeting that opened without a quorum
• Why the Planning Commission told staff its own draft was confusingly worded

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Our July White Salmon round-up, which laid out the tree ordinance comparison: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/balcony-solar-tree-credits-and-a-postponed-store-white-salmon-july-26-round-up/
• Our June White Salmon round-up, on the thirty percent rule and the Wyers Street appeal: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/
• White Salmon agendas, packets and meeting recordings: https://www.whitesalmonwa.gov/meetings
• White Salmon Municipal Code, Chapter 18.41, Heritage Trees: https://library.municode.com/wa/white_salmon/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TIT18EN_CH18.41HETR
• Columbia Gorge News on the postponement, and on the mayor's account of it: https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/business/center-market-in-white-salmon-is-separate-from-proposed-moratorium-code-changes/article_5c613efa-49da-4e2b-aaab-eb9ecbd12f7d.html

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm glad you're here. We're back with our month-end roundups from August, and we'll be starting with White Salmon in Clickitac County. August was, in my opinion, a strange month for White Salmon, not a quiet one. A month where the city got three big decisions ready and then didn't advance any of them. All three of those decisions actually rounded up to a final meeting on September 2nd, which is actually after our August reporting window closes. Today we're going to be getting the setup, and next month we'll be discussing the fallout. So, of course, we're going to start with the one that everybody's been talking about, the dollar store showdown. On August 13th, the city council called a special meeting at 3 in the afternoon. One real item on the agenda, a temporary moratorium on new small box discount stores downtown. Think uh the dollar store format, like the Dollar General in Bijan. And it never got presented. Mayor Marla Keithler actually asked the council to pull it right at the top because of how much public comment had come in. Councilmember Ben Giant moved to pull it, Patty Fink seconded, and the motion to remove it passed five to nothing. On the recording, you'll hear one member say, quote, I think it's a great idea, we're not ready, unquote. The mayor was blunter about it later. She told Columbia Gorge News on August 31st, quote, I made a bad call, unquote. The timeline hadn't left room for a public hearing. So now here's the part I want you to hold on to, because when the council pulled that ordinance, it also asked staff to bring back public comments and staff responses before the motion returned. When it did return on September 2nd, the packet had a 29-page national advocacy report attached to it, and none of the comment material. So regardless, it did fail. It happened just a couple of nights ago, with one vote in favor for against. The tally comes from the meeting recording, and we'll have that in next month's September Roundup. So let's talk about where the language in that ordinance, the small box discount store moratorium, actually came from. Because this is the part that I found genuinely interesting. Quote, small box discount store, unquote, isn't a description. It's actually a term of art. Planners invented it and you can trace it back through different policy examples. We found that it actually starts in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa's council defined the phrase in a temporary moratorium in 2017, and then we made a permanent rule the following April. And it's important to note that that permanent rule was not a ban on small box discount stores or dollar stores. It's actually a spacing rule. You can't put a new dollar store within a mile of an existing one. The district that it applied to was called the Healthy Neighborhoods Overlay, and its stated purpose was, quote, greater diversity in retail options and convenient access to fresh meats, fruit, and vegetables, unquote. So here's the mechanism. A store could step outside that spacing rule completely by dedicating 500 square feet to fresh meat, fruit, or vegetables. Food access was written right into the escape hatch, and that's the part that traveled to other cities. Now, White Salmon had two documents in play around this issue, and they're pretty different. The permanent code, which was the one that the Planning Commission is still working on, keeps a fresh food test. A store that gives 15% of its floor to fresh produce, meat, and dairy would not be captured by this regulation at all. The moratorium, the thing the council actually voted on, doesn't have that clause. It's got two carve outs. No gas stations or pharmacies would be counted, and that's it. So, one more thing, not only is there no dollar store in white salmon, but rather there also isn't any that's being proposed. The nearest one is the dollar store in general in Bingin, the next town over. And when residents wrote the summer opposing a different store downtown, several of them named the Bingin Dollar General as a reason the town is already well served. I think it's important that we both read the substance of those comments, but then also understand what policies are meant to address. I think we have different issues in play, which is how people view something like a dollar store versus what amenities are close or walkable. If you live in White Salmon, you know that Bingin isn't exactly walkable as an option for many types of retail. And so it's important that even though our towns are all very close knit in this small rural area and we depend a lot on each other, that we have to often step back and decide what policies are meant to support people with our own governance in our own town versus depending on other towns then to provide those same amenities. So I'm looking forward to seeing the discussions continue. I think there's been a lot of really vibrant feedback. Full disclosure, some of that feedback has been mine as well. I think we discussed this in a prior episode, but I am on the record with several comments in my personal capacity. And I welcome you also to participate and go to the written edition on the dispatch and to our show notes to find out how you can join the conversation as well. So, with that, I'd love to move over to the tree board. They met on August 10th and they finished the job the council gave them in the spring. When staff found the tree ordinance had no replacement fee filled in, the city dropped a $400 placeholder and asked the board for a real number. The board came back with $700 per replacement tree. And something bigger, to stop counting trees based on zoning and count them based on how big the tree actually is. They made the case with one tree. There's a big oak tree near the Hood River Bridge, 66 inches through, 76 feet tall. If you've driven onto the bridge on ramp, you'll notice it there, it's next to the bridge mart, and it is pretty gigantic. So, under the rules today, if we were to take it down, it would cost somewhere between $800 and $1,200. Under what the board is proposing with this change, that fee for replacement would be about $7,000. So, council adopted the $700 fee on September 2nd and authorized a state forestry grant application the same night, both without dissent according to the recording. So here's the wrinkle on that oak. A board member has been trying to get it named a heritage tree, but under the city's code, a heritage tree nomination needs the landowner's written consent before the city will even look at it. And that lot now has a building proposal on it. The developer says they aren't taking the tree down, and the board has accepted that, but the protection only exists if the owner agrees to it. So let's go back to the money story, and this one matters quite a bit. Back on August 5th, the council formally ratified the emergency from May 28th storm, routine five to nothing. The packet underneath it carries two numbers that don't get said out loud together, a preliminary engineering estimate of just under $2 million to fix the Northeast Skagot Avenue and Northeast Scenic Street, and a grant of up to $1 million. That's a gap of at least $998,000. And the grant is reimbursement only. The city has to spend it first and claim it back. Columbia Gorge News reported on August 20th that the grant covers roughly half the cost, and that the finance director told the August 5th meeting she was exploring multiple revenue sources. As of the reporting, she hadn't given counsel an update. So, two quick ones before we wrap. The Planning Commission indeed looked at the permanent small box code on August 26th and told staff politely that it doesn't really work yet. Three tests are joined by the word and, which read literally, would require a store to be a pharmacy, a gas station, and a grocery all at once. That would be super convenient if we did have one, but I don't think that's very reasonable for both most zoning and most owners to run. City planner Rowan Fairfield also said that they wouldn't want to be the person measuring 15% of a store's floor area. So I think it's important actually that this kind of feedback reaches all of us because we often have a lot of ideas on what kind of code we might want to see. But the cost of administration is super real and the amount of time that especially a small planning department has is really valuable. And so we want, of course, all of those types of policies to be reasonable, evidence-based, and sustainable. So on August 26th, the council held a three-minute special meeting to approve a voucher run. It opened without a quorum, and they waited for a third member to join, then approved about $342,000 in vouchers and adjourned. So what's next? September 11th is the state forestry grant deadline. September 14th, the tree board meets again, and the permanent small box code goes back to the Community Development Committee with the Planning Commission's drafting problems attached. Meeting notes for the tree board and the planning commission come in part from the Columbia Gorge documenters, powered by Upliff Local, and we use them under Creative Commons. As always, we're super appreciative because some of the recordings for meetings like the Tree Board really wouldn't happen without them. Much appreciated. So you can read the whole thing with every figure sourced in the written roundup at SchemaniaDispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of OpenGorge.org, home of the Schemania 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.