[Klickitat] 🐂 Running of the Bull - Goldendale August '26 Round-up

Goldendale's quietest month of the year still managed to leave the City Council with a question about its own rulebook that nobody at the table could answer. A resident asked for livestock to be banned from R-1 neighborhoods with no exceptions, and the discussion that followed turned on a 4-H permit the council believed sat outside its ordinance. It doesn't. We read the chapter.

In This Episode

• Why a $285,000 drop in Goldendale's retail sales tax probably isn't about the price of cereal in Hood River
• The 4-H livestock exception, and where it actually lives in the city code
• One thing in that same chapter that nobody at either meeting raised
• Two old fire command vehicles head to the Trout Lake and Wahkiacus fire districts
• The fire the city's own record never named, and why it won't be reimbursed for it
• Two weeks after the ADU code passed, the next housing fight opens on single-wide mobile homes
• What's next: a Tuesday council meeting, an October ordinance, and a November grant decision

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Goldendale Municipal Code chapter 6.08, livestock, fowl, wild animals and animal traps: https://ecode360.com/47077496#47077608
• RCW 82.08.0293, Washington's sales-tax exemption for food and food ingredients: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=82.08.0293
• Washington State Patrol, state fire mobilization for the Red Sky Fire: https://wsp.wa.gov/state-fire-mobilization-authorized-for-the-red-sky-fire/
• Washington State Patrol, state fire mobilization for the Lyle Hill 2 Fire: https://wsp.wa.gov/state-fire-mobilization-authorized-for-the-lyle-hill-2-fire/
• Transportation Improvement Board, 2026 Call for Projects: https://www.tib.wa.gov/tibinfo/NewsItem.cfm?stid=397
• Goldendale City Council agendas, packets, minutes and meeting video: https://www.ci.goldendale.wa.us/your-government/city-council/agendas-minutes

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge Podcast. We're doing one of our last monthly roundups for August, and that's going to be for Goldendale today. August was Goldendale's quietest month of the year. Two council meetings, one of them 24 minutes long, no ordinances, no hearings, and just two votes on the whole month's record. But it left the city with a question about its own rule book that nobody in the room could answer just yet, so let's start there. On the 17th, one resident came to the microphone. Mark Harmon told the council he lives inside city limits and read a prepared statement. He wants four-legged livestock kept out of the R1 residential zone, with no exceptions, not even for the 4-H youth market program. His argument was noise, sanitation, and the welfare of animals themselves. Here's a line that landed quote, unlike a rooster that may crow in the morning, sheep do not stop, unquote. He pointed the council at chapter 6.08 of the city code, and he had that right. That's the livestock and foul chapter, the one that lets you keep up to six laying hens fenced at least 25 feet from a house. Then the council started talking, and I think this is where it got kind of interesting. A counselor said the city does regulate livestock. There are acreage rules, but there's a 4-H permit that, quote, bypasses all of our ordinance stuff, unquote. That became the assumption around the table. The ordinance is one thing, and the 4-H permit is some other thing. Sitting outside of it, overriding it. So we went back and took a look for ourselves. And the permit does not sit outside the ordinance. It is the ordinance. It's the last subsection of it, and the code says that for any 4-H or FAFA or FFA project, that's Future Farmers of America, the mayor and department heads may approve a variance for a temporary amount of time. So let's think about what that means, especially like that especially the term variance. The council doesn't need new authority here. It already has it. The exception is theirs written to their own code, and their mayor is one of two people who can grant it, which is why the mayor could promise in the meeting to go count how many of these permits the city has actually issued for the year. The chapter answers the other question too. Members kept asking how long a permit lasts. For the base livestock permit, it's on the page. You file a management plan, the mayor and the department heads approve it, and it runs through December 31st. Every year you have to file again. The 4-H variance is the piece that's genuinely open. It runs, quote, for a temporary period of time, unquote. And the code never says how long that is. And that might be a real gap. It's not just the gap that the council thought it would be looking at. One more thing in that chapter that nobody raised on either night, there's a section listing animals strictly prohibited inside the city. Roosters, stallions, swine, and bulls. And it seems like it might be for good reason because for four days before that meeting, the police department was actually chasing a bull through town. So no record yet says whose animal that was or where it was kept. There's no evidence it was, for example, a 4-age project or anything of that kind. Those two subjects actually never met in the same conversation, but I thought it was kind of funny that it happened on the same month. So it was the 13th in the middle of fair weekend, and the chief said the animal was very aggressive, so the department used its reverse 911 system to push a shelter in place message to the neighborhood. A local family turned out with horses and ropes and got the bull under control. Nobody was hurt, and the damage was to some fences. So now that that kind of exciting chapter is over, we're gonna move over to the money. The second quarter budget review landed on August 3rd, and it's the first quarter this year where the story is revenue rather than timing. So we reported previously that general fund revenue was down about 9% from the same point last year, and the drop came almost entirely from one line. Retail sales tax. Last year at this point, the city had collected about $588,000, but this year only about $303,000, a whole of roughly $285,000. That's pretty hefty. The city's accountant gave two explanations and refused to pick. Either people are nervous and holding off on big purchases, or they're leaving town to spend elsewhere. Her advice was to find out which before trying to fix anything. The council had a theory ready. One member said neighbors drive to Oregon for bulk shopping, some going as far as Hood River just to hit the Walmart. The example was a box of cereal, seven or eight dollars in Goldendale, four or five dollars across the river. Then the room corrected itself, which I think has very helpful. Another member pointed out that there's no sales tax on food. That's right. So Washington does not tax groceries, it taxes prepared food and soft drinks bottled water. So here's what that means for you. That serial price gap is real, and it is a real reason that people drive to Hood River, but it isn't really what puts a $285,000 hole in the sales tax line, because those groceries are not taxed to begin with. So whatever move that number is something else, possibly a combination of different factors, and the city just doesn't know which yet. So we're going to look next to the fire department, which spent the first weekend of August out of the county. The city was looking for local crews for initial attack, and Goldendale sent a command pickup and one of its captains as strike team leader, alongside four engines and a tender from Click Attack County. The city's own record never names which fire, and we looked it up. It was the Red Sky Fire near Union Gap in Yakima County. The state authorized mobilization the evening it started when it was already 600 acres and growing. So here's the part that matters for the budget. Unfortunately, Goldendale won't be paid much for it. A command vehicle earns mileage and not much else, and the real money flows through a state mobilized fire inside Clickitat County, not one next door. Roughly $10,000 the department expects this year is for a different fire. Lyle Hill two fire back in June inside the county. Same department, same trucks, two fires, only one at home reimburses. I think this is a really important issue that we're all going to have to pay closer attention to as fires start to become a every year part of our lives, as for many of us they already are. We want that kind of mutual aid or the ability for different fire departments to be able to go out and help each other because we depend on that same mutual aid structure too. But if it becomes costly to individual counties or individual departments, it makes that system less strong. And it calls into question then how all of us are going to collectively work together. As of course, fire doesn't stay inside of one jurisdiction, one county, or even one state. So the council's only two votes of the month were also fire business and both were unanimous. The city surplused two old command vehicles, a 1994 Chevrolet went to the Trout Lake Fire District, and a 1967 Jeep, which came from the civil defense back in the 70s or 80s, went to the Waukiacas District. The Fire Chief's case was use, not price. On that Jeep, he said, it's a little slow, but it's really good. So two weeks after Goldendale finally passed its accessory dwelling unit code, Steve Johnson opened the next housing fight. He asked the Ordnance Committee to look again at the city's ban on putting single-wide mobile homes on city lots, and he was direct about why. Same reason the ADU code even exists. Affordable housing. His argument is that the ban dates to the 1990s, driven by mostly how the old trailers look and how badly 70s era's units were built. And neither reason holds up anymore. Modern mobile units have 2x6 walls, pitch roofs for snow load, real siding, and a lot of different designs that can be fit into almost any kind of neighborhood. A new 14 by 60 runs $50,000 or $60,000 against the cost of building a house. The fire chief backed him up on the first real data point in the record. A newer single wide on Woodland Road caught fire this year and it actually held up really well. It's those older ones that go fast with thin walls and cheap wiring. So, one more before we go, the city put in two grant applications on the State Transportation Improvement Board for rebuild of Mill Street and an overlay on Railroad Avenue. Riding aside the Mill Street application is the fix for mill and second intersection that's held the project up for a couple of years now. The state suggested a four-way stop instead of buying property to straighten the road. Jost's reaction was, I think, the honest one. Quote, it's almost too simple of a fix to be believable, unquote. Sometimes that's what we hope for, so I'm hoping this one pans out. So what's next? The next council meeting was actually held on September 8th at 6 p.m. We'll cover that in our next roundup. A Tuesday instead of the usual Monday because of course it was Labor Day. The one after that is going to be on the 21st. So October and the Critical Areas Ordinance will come back once its comments period closes. And there's still a publicly held hearing on that one. You've been hearing about critical areas ordinances across a couple of cities in the gorge. We covered also Stevenson the other day. And mark November 6th, that's when the Transportation Improvement Board meets. And Mill Street and Railroad Avenue decisions will come right after that. For the full written version, with the codes quoted and links to everything we checked ourselves, head to Schemania Dispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, home to the Scamania Dispatch in the Click of Tatler. 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 open gorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.