[Skamania] 🧾 A City w/o a Water Operator - North Bonneville August '26

North Bonneville lost its only certified water and wastewater operator at the end of July, with what staff called less than twenty-four hours of notice. The mayor declared an emergency and signed a six-month contract that the City Council never got to vote on. Then the first bill arrived. This episode covers the North Bonneville City Council and the North Bonneville Planning Commission for August 2026.

In This Episode

• Why the emergency declaration left the council with exactly one lever, and why that lever still has not been pulled
• The two structural failures that will outlast the contract: a job that was never advertised, and a statewide mutual aid network the city does not belong to
• What the first invoice actually says, including a rate the council had wrong and a detail about who is running the plant that appears on no recording
• Three objections from Councilmember Jeff Blakeley, checked against the document
• The zoning rewrite, STEP housing, and a state deadline in December
• Two Planning Commission seats whose terms had already expired on paper
• City Planner Richard Hall on losing his own job to a county agreement
• Brown water, hydrants, and the city's fire insurance rating

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Prior coverage, the equipment fund and the county interlocal: An Empty Equipment Fund, Full of Questions
• Prior coverage, the voucher-review fight: Who Pays to Build Near a Wetland?
• North Bonneville council agendas, recordings and minutes: northbonneville.net
• North Bonneville periodic review documents: northbonneville.net/planning/periodic-review
• What STEP housing means, and the state mandates behind it: Skamania County's Critical Area Ordinance Update
• The statutory deadline: RCW 36.70A.130

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Open Gorge Podcast. It's time for another August municipal roundup, and today we're in North Bonneville. I want to start with news that the city got at the end of July. Its only certified water and wastewater operator is leaving. Staff later told the council that they had, and I'm quoting, less than 24 hours notice that we had to get somebody. I want you to think about what it means for a town this size. There's nobody licensed to run the plant that cleans your drinking water. Nobody licensed to run the plant that handles sewer treatment. So Mayor J.B. Tennyson declared an emergency. Under North Bonneville's own code, that's his call to make and he makes it alone. He signed a six-month contract with an outside company, and the council doesn't get to vote on it. That single decision is frankly the whole month. Every meeting in August was the council trying to get its hands back on it. And here's the part that I think matters the most. When a mayor declares an emergency in North Bonneville, the code hands the council exactly one job. It has to pass a resolution setting the rules and procedures for handling that emergency. City Attorney Dan Curtis told the council that in most cities, a resolution like that is a formality. North Bonneville's code asks for a little more than that. The council met twice in special session to write it, once on the 18th and once on the 20th, and it's still not adopted, at least at the time of recording this podcast. Four things the council asked for are still sitting there: a spending cap, written rules and procedures, a way out of the contract, and a plan to actually go hire somebody new. Now two things came out at the August 11th meeting I think are going to outlast this contract. The first is that the job was never advertised. A speaker at that meeting went looking, he checked the Association of Washington City's job board, he checked the State Department of Health operator listing, he checked the city's own jobs page, and in his own words, there was never a posting for a replacement operator. The second is a safety net the city isn't part of. Washington actually has a quote unquote mutual aid network built for exactly this situation. A utility that loses staff or equipment can call it, and other utilities send help. It's called Warren, W-A-R-N. But unfortunately, North Bonneville is not a member of that network. And as that same speaker put it, we didn't even have the opportunity to ask. So let's talk about the bill. For most of August, the council was arguing about a number nobody actually had. One member said, quote, nobody knows the numbers and we haven't even gotten a bill yet. Another said this is going to tank the budget if it's on the high end. That bill is public now and we read it. For the first two weeks of August, the city was charged $14,200. That's three pieces. $6,400 for the month's operations oversight, billed for the whole month, $1,000 for one weekend, $6,800 for the operator on site for 80 hours of work. And there are two things in that document that nobody said out loud in any meeting. The first is the rate. So at the August 20th workshop, everyone was working from $125 an hour for a full-time replacement operator. Every projection came off that $125 an hour number, roughly $24,000 a month, $50,000 inside of two months. So the invoice bills the weekday operator at $85 an hour. That higher rate only applies to the weekend. So the second is who's sitting in the chair. The invoice calls him an operator in training, not a certified operator. That's the same gap the emergency was declared over, and you frankly won't find it on any recording. It's on just the bill. Councilmember Jeff Blakely raised three objections to that invoice on August 25th before the document was public. He said the city was filled a full month against a contract that starts August 3rd. He says it was billed $1,000 for August 1st and 2nd, before the contract even existed, and he said the hours ran past what the contractor had promised the council, which was quote, what you will just see is the 40 hours a week. We checked all three of those objections against the actual invoice, and indeed he was right on all three. The council voted three to one to pay it anyway, and Blakeley was the only no. Councilmember Norm Woods was absent. And you can imagine why all of this causes such a strain. North Bonneville is a small town, and like many of the small towns in Scamania County, every dollar counts. But listen to what Councilmember Emily Sabo said while she was voting yes. She asked that the discussion be kept with the contract. Her words, you guys will get audited on this contract. The auditor will be upset that we are outside of a contract with the dates, whether it's a clerical error or not, they don't care. Don't want another failed audit, unquote. That's a council member voting to pay a bill and building the file for the state auditor at the same time. Moving over to the Planning Commission now because there's a deadline that all of us should know about. The commission met once on August 4th and recommended the city's rewritten zoning code up to the council. Most of what's in it isn't really North Bonneville's idea, it's mostly state homework. The code now has to allow shelters, transitional housing, emergency housing, and permanent supportive housing in any zone that already allows hotels. Planners call that step housing, S T E P. Cities aren't allowed to ban it or put a moratorium on it. One number that the city got to pick was the density bonus for religious organizations that build affordable housing on their land. The council landed on 50%, by consensus and not by vote. So here's the deadline. Under state law, Scamania County and the cities inside of it have to finish this round of Growth Management Act updates by December 31st at the end of this year. And after the commission's final action, the state gets 60 days to review it, and that's not a lot of room. So two more things from that meeting. The Commission amended its own bylaws for the first time since 2024. The change was small and maybe a little bit strange. Two of its five voting seats had terms written to expire at the end of 2025. Those two seats got moved out to 2029, which means two commissioners sat and voted through the whole 2026 code rewrite on terms that had already run out on paper. I know this is actually a common problem across many different agencies. These deadlines kind of come and go, and often it's a little bit tough to get replacements in time. So city planner Richard Hall told the commissioners that his job is going away. The county agreement the council signed in July hands North Bonneville's planning over to Scamania County. His words, this is a change that will eliminate my position. He's been carrying this code review since 2024. His successor is Joshua Nieblock, the county's lead land use planner, who already does this work for Stevenson. He's already running the county's own version of that same deadline. Hall's goodbye was gracious. Seven years in town, his words, that's been a good ride for me. A few quick ones before we go. If your water ran brown in August, Fire Chief Hamilton has your answer. Hydrant training stirred up sediment. Run your tap for a minute. Her crews have now been through every hydrant in town. The council finally approved its economic development council contract, prorated three to one, and the Portiscomania County will reimburse the city for engineering work on the Cascade Business Park. So here's what's next. That emergency resolution still needs to be adopted. The corrected August 11th minutes will come back to the council, and the city's master fee schedule is expected to reach a first reading. The council meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at City Hall and on Teams. That's September 8th and September 22nd. So one last thing, and I want to be straight with you. No other newsroom covered any of North Monteville's four August meetings, and the city has not published minutes for what you've heard comes from meeting recordings, two of which are a little bit incomplete. We are always working on our best way to try and make sure those transcripts are up to date and from trying to get some invoices. So we're leaning on a recording, we'll say so in the written version. You can read that written version with every figure and link at SchemaniaDispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the 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 Schemania Dispatch.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, and we'll talk to you next time.