[Klickitat] ✂️ Between Budget Gaps & Data Centers - Klickitat BOCC 8/19-9/15

About 150 people, by Columbia Gorge News's count, came to a September 3 workshop to ask the Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners to pause data centers, and the Board took no action. We start on August 11, with the moratorium motion the Goldendale Sentinel reported and the county's own minutes did not, then follow the question through September 15. Plus the 2027 budget gap, and the levy limit running under both.

In This Episode

• August 11: the moratorium motion the Sentinel reported and the minutes left out
• September 3: a full room, no motions allowed, and three sentences of minutes
• Staff's best-case 90 days to an ordinance, with or without a pause
• Klickitat PUD's Dan Gunkel on siting, studies and who pays for upgrades
• September 8: "punt, punt, punt," and the case for an ordinance instead
• September 15: an October 1 draft target, and a dispute over how the request arrived
• The battery storage pause, extended a fourth time to March 4, 2027
• The 2027 budget opens $3,752,084 short in the general fund
• The levy limit under both, and what it did to the 2025 levy
• The RV park rewrite, and 500 to 2,000 workers over ten years
• On the calendar: September 22, 24 and 28, October 1 and 6, and March 4, 2027

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners: 115 West Court, Room #201, Goldendale, Washington; 509-773-4612; bocc@klickitatcounty.org; Zoom meeting ID 586 587 651
• The county's Data Center Information page: https://klickitatcounty.gov/1710/Data-Center-Information
• Goldendale Sentinel on August 11 (https://www.goldendalesentinel.com/news/animal-shelter-starts-agenda-at-county-meeting/article_c88e4126-3cbc-4f3a-8c6d-03fa459f0e96.html) and on the September 3 workshop (https://www.goldendalesentinel.com/news/residents-urge-county-to-slow-down-on-data-centers/article_488526ae-7f64-4bf2-80be-31240af19757.html)
• Columbia Gorge News on the September 3 workshop: https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/data-center-moratorium-fails-during-klickitat-county-commissioners-meeting-despite-public-support/article_cc7187c4-b33e-4b0f-ae77-663d836b7b85.html
• Gorge Country Media on the September 8 meeting: https://gorgenewscenter.com/2026/09/09/9-08-klickitat-county-commissioners-meeting/
• Our last Klickitat edition, "The County That Didn't Pause Data Centers": https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-county-that-didnt-pause-data-centers-klickitat-bocc-7-28-to-8-18/
• Open Gorge's Public Benefit Lab: https://www.opengorge.org/public-benefit-lab

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to the Open Gorge Podcast. The Suzu Roundup for Clickitac County Board of County Commissioners, August 19th through September 15th. We start on August 11th because everything since will point back to that day. The Goldendale Sentinel reported in a story by Roger Nichols that at the afternoon session that day, Commissioner Todd Andrews moved an interim ordinance adopting a moratorium on permit applications for data centers. Sentinel reported that before there was any discussion of any vote, unknown persons hijacked the Zoom feed and put a video of a man vomiting on public stream. The session closed in seconds. Pretty quick work by the folks on board there. I appreciate that. When the meeting came back, the motion died for want of a second. The county zone minutes for August 11th record neither thing, not the motion or the intrusion. Click Attack keeps action minutes and says so at the bottom of every set, so a motion that dies for want of a second produces no action. So there's actually nothing for an action minute to record. What the minutes do show is the board scheduling a workshop for data centers on September 3rd. So let's jump to September 3rd. Columbia Gorge News put the crowd at about 150 and counted more than 40 speakers. Nearly all of them asked the county for a pause. Chairman Ron Irig set the terms. In workshops, there are no motions, he said, so no vote was possible. The board could still give staff a direction by consensus, but it reached none. The three commissioners split in public. Andrews, who proposed the moratorium, argued a pause by six months in time for public comment. Commissioner Laurie Zoller wanted a straight ordinance instead, something the board can move quicker than a moratorium that may get mired down. The chair said plainly he does not support moratoriums and also said, quote, data centers don't belong in residential areas, period, unquote. Here's the part I think is worth sitting with. The county's own minutes don't name anybody specifically, but the whole public comment period, every one of those speakers, could be summed up in about three sentences. Citizens who signed up were called, members of the public spoke about data centers and possible moratorium, and the concerns were pretty shared. Water, power, and noise. So that's how the minutes round up that morning. Note on sourcing. The September 3rd quotes actually come from a transcript that was circulated publicly, and I can't verify where it came from just yet. The county's minutes say a digital recording of the workshop is on file as part of the official record. We'll look for that in a little bit. Now the staff answer that helps shape everything after. Community development director Scott Edelman put a best case ordinance at about 90 days, 30 to a draft, 30 through the Planning Commission, and 30 through environmental review and adoption. Quote, that can be done with or without a moratorium, he said, unquote. That cuts both ways. It takes away the schedule argument for a pause and against one. So, under a 2023 Planning Commission interpretation, a data center in the county's industrial park zone is treated like a warehouse, which makes it an outright use. Anywhere else, Edelman said, could come through a conditional use process, and that's his number one concern. Economic development specialist Keaton Curtis brought his department's written suggestions, data centers only industrial zones, bonds for infrastructure and decommissioning, which means that it would hold its own costs that it would take to take that center back apart should the company close it down, and every available means of making development pay for the public infrastructure that it needs. These are some of the details also that we go through in something called our public benefit lab, which are examples of how other towns and cities have structured ordinances around heavy infrastructure, including data centers. So we're going to link that in the show notes so you can go check it out. Moving to September 8th, Roger Nichols called into public comment from the Dalles. If the board can write an ordinance in 90 days, he asked, the only requirement he knew of was a hearing within 60 days, what does a pause cost? Gorge Country Media reported Chairman Irig's answer was, quote, I believe we have plenty of time to react right now, and we need to be leaders and do the ordinance, unquote. It also reported Zoller's second argument. A moratorium means waiting on legal counsel first, then doing the ordinance anyway. After public comment closed, a commissioner appointed at the county's own battery-stored moratorium, extended two weeks earlier for the fourth time. He said, it's punt, punt, punt. Then a commissioner had the last word. Quote, we should not manage government by moratoriums, manage government by leading, unquote. On September 15th, community development told the board that Curtis is leading the draft with the target of October 1st and a possible board check-in on October 6th. Staff called that quite ambitious. Staff also said an application would be reviewed under the code in place when it's deemed complete, so the ordinance and any application are in a race. And asked where a data center can go under the code is written, staff said that because every zone ends in a catch-all clause, there's a danger that it could be in any zone. Now the money, because I actually think it runs under all of this. At a September 10th budget workshop, Finance walked the board through the 2027 preliminary budget and landed on a general fund gap of just over $3,750,000. The county published no agenda packet or minutes for that workshop, so we'll have to take a look at the exact numbers on that budget in a little while. That gap is the status quo figure, no cost of living raise, no new department asks, and none of the landfills requests, which came about $900,000 above the revenue budgeted for them. So here's the limit underneath, and it's one that you've heard us talking about in many episodes. The landfill is one big source of county income. The other is the county's general property tax levy, and the state lets that grow at most 1% a year without a vote, plus what new construction and a few other add-ons bring. Clickat does have some money on hand. In 2022, it raised about $1,560 a person from its own local sources, mostly taxes, fees, and charges. But it has levied exactly the most the Washington state tax levy limit 1% allows for three years running, with nothing held back. For 2025 levy, that 1% increase came to only about $55,000. New construction and improvements added nearly the same again on top. A rise in the value of utility and railroad property added about $21,000 more. And new construction swings. It added about $171 million in taxable value for 2023 levy, but only $64 million the next year and $52.5 million the year after. A new building actually adds on top of this levy limit only once, but then it is still only allowed to grow 1% just like the rest of it. So that means a single big project, be it an industrial center, housing, energy projects, it is a step upwards, but it does not change that 1% slope. Which is exactly why these two stories I actually think are one story, both the budget and the data center moratorium. It's why so many counties and cities across America are struggling against the same question. Because people have concerns about things like data centers, but at the limit, a pause on any new kind of building can delay one of the few ways that a county's levy can grow faster than 1% without a vote, which can be really critical to keep up with the 4%, 6% or more of inflation. That holds whoever proposes the pause, and no matter what you actually think of data centers. The limit is state law, and it bound this levy for years before any of those data center discussions actually started. The commissioners gave their own reasons, and we've reported them. Process, legal review, time, cost, and of course, how that battery moratorium is still going on the record. Two more things. On September 15th, the board approved a rewrite of the county's RV park code, opening a path past the 60-day limit on RV intent sites for workforce and emergency housing. The reason is in Director Edelman's August memo, and it's the only estimate in the county's record of what's coming. 500 to 2,000 workers needed for short-term housing at peak periods over 10 years. That can come from projects like the Pump Storage Project, solar and wind farms, data centers, and even wildfires. And on August 25th, that hearing drew no testimony, but the board extended its battery storage moratorium a fourth time to March 4th, 2027. On the calendar, September 22nd, hearings on a short plat and accessory dwelling unit amendments. September 24th and October 1st, budget presentations. September 28th, the Planning Commission's Solar Energy Overlay Hearing. And October 6th, a solid waste workshop and a possible check-in on that data center draft. The full written roundup has all of it with links and the county's own documents at schemania dispatch.com. 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 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.