[Klickitat] 🛑 Failed Moratorium & Successful Appeal - White Salmon Sept '26 Round-up

White Salmon's City Council voted down the dollar store moratorium with one vote in favor, then reset its budget around a one million dollar storm grant. The Planning Commission read its code to allow two duplexes on one lot after a hearing examiner ruling, and the Tree Board started writing its own ordinance. Plus: Jewett needs nine volunteers to close for Halloween, and how to get certified as a flagger.

In This Episode

• How the moratorium failed, and the city's two accounts of where it came from
• The budget amendment and the comprehensive plan cut
• The storm repair's three-step funding plan
• The house on Wauna Avenue
• The Westwinds sewer line question
• Two duplexes on one lot, and the hearing examiner ruling behind it
• The Tree Board and the white oak woodland puzzle
• Halloween closure volunteers and flagger certification

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• Our August White Salmon round-up: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-dollar-store-white-salmon-august-26-round-up/
• White Salmon agendas and minutes: https://www.whitesalmonwa.gov/186/Agendas-Minutes
• Washington's flagger card rule, WAC 296-155-305: https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=296-155-305
• Flagger classes near the Gorge (Chemeketa trainer list): https://www.chemeketa.edu/programs-classes/training-certificates/customized-training/flagger-training/

Tree Board recording come from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, used under CC BY 4.0. We cross-checked with notes by Documenter Caroline Elliott: https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/

Disclosure: the Dispatch's publisher wrote to the Planning Commission and to Council on the small-box store proposal and to the Tree Board on the tree fee, in her personal capacity, not on the Dispatch's behalf.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there, and welcome back to Open Gorge. I'm very glad you're here. Before we get to the meetings, it's the start of October and Halloween season. So I'm going to try for each episode this month to crack into my own cabinet of curiosities, or my own personal archives of interesting stories from around the gorge, dug up from old newspaper clippings and archives. Some of these historical tales are spooky, some may be a little bit more sad than scary, but many are tales of interest that might make you laugh. Let's start with a quick trip into the White Salmon archives. In the summer of 1907, the newspaper The White Salmon Enterprise sized up the neighbors and their capacity to party. Carson had about 300 people and six saloons. Stevens had 300 people and four saloons. And White Salmon, about 500 people, four general stores, two banks, one opera house, one large skating rink, and no saloons. The fight for the title of best town on the north shore of the Columbia River made it into the newspaper. Stevenson's paper reprinted the list and fired back. First it bumped its own headcount to 400 people, then it named the one thing it said it had that White Salmon could never a railroad track and a depot in the center of town. Quote, we do not have to walk a mile to reach the river, unquote. White salmon kept its dry reputation for a long time. There's an old story in town about Sam Hill, the highwayman. He signed a deal to buy the Jewett family's land on the bluff for his mansion. Then he proposed a drink to celebrate the deal. Jenny Jewett didn't drink and she didn't sell. At this time, Jenny Jewett was known as a fierce teetotaler and a prohibitionist. And so, Sam Hill had to build Mary Hill farther up the river, and that's another favorite tale of mine that will one day get its own episode. And with that, I look forward to sharing more selections from our Cabinet of Curiosities all Halloween month long. Now, on to this month's business. Today we're doing our White Salmon Municipal Roundup for the month of September 2026. Last time I told you White Salmon had three big decisions lined up and hadn't made any of them. Well, September is when things took a turn. So let's get into it. We'll start with the one that had everybody talking, the Dollar Store Moratorium. Or as they called it, the small box store moratorium. At its September 2nd meeting, the White Salmon City Council took up a six-month freeze on new applications for small box discount stores downtown. Think Dollar Store format. It was written as an emergency ordinance, which meant it needed four of five votes to pass, and it only got one vote. Councilmember Ben Giant voted yes, Patty Fink, Doug Rainbow, Marilla Mora, and David Lindley all voted no. Here's what I think is the most interesting part. The city has now written down where this proposal came from. Two places, and they don't quite match. The signed September 2nd minutes say no current application prompted the moratorium, and the idea had been raised with the Community Development Committee for several years. Mayor Marla Keithler said at the table that what moved it now was the level of public comment this summer, quote, about a completely separate commercial use, unquote. But the Planning Commission's own draft minutes from the August 26th say that the drafts had existed for a while and that, quote, the unusual amount of public comments, unquote, on the center market project, quote, prompted the city to revisit them, unquote. So one says no application prompted it, the other says comments on the application did. Both say the rule would not have reached center market because that application was already filed. And why it failed? Columbia Gorge News named Who Said What. Councilmember Lindley said their moratorium is for a real emergency, and this just wasn't one. Council members Fink and Rainbowt said regulating these stores was never a council objective. Councilmember Rainbowt put the affordability question plainly, quote, we tend to think that people here can afford the harvest market like we all can. Well, some can't, unquote. And Councilmember Mora talked about workers on early and late shifts who need somewhere to shop. The permanent version of the code is still out there, with the Community Development Committee, and Center Market's revised plans are aimed at the Planning Commission's October 14th meeting. Now, let's move to the money. On September 16th, Council passed the city's second budget amendment for the year. The vote was on five to nothing on a roll call. The minutes from that night aren't public yet, so the vote is recorded on the video. The headline number is about $1.2 million added to the budget, but most of that isn't new spending that the city has chosen. One million of it is the state's storm grant for the Skaggate Avenue and Scenic Street washout. Deverpair now has a plan. It's roughly a $2 million job. The grant will pay first, and then the city's insurance claim, which the finance director said staff, quote, feel pretty confident about. And if that falls short, the state is already offered an emergency loan. Part of the amendment I'd flag for you is what came out. The city pulled back money for work it doesn't expect to finish this year. The biggest one, the comprehensive plan update, drops from $50,000 to $10,000 for 2026. That's the plan that sears the city's zoning, housing, and commercial rules. Plan and contract work also drops from $75,000 to $35,000, and park salaries are cut in half. Meanwhile, HR consulting goes from $10,000 to $79,000, and computer and cybersecurity work goes up by $35,000, which the budget ties to what the state auditor expects. That audit covering 2024 and 2025 started in September. One more thing to know about the city had set aside $128,000 to match a state transportation grant for rebuilding Church Avenue and Thomas Street. That money now stays in reserve, and the budget slides mention, quote, a loss of anticipated TIB funding, quote, unquote, without saying which grant. Moving over to two neighbors who came to council with questions. The first is Joe Turkowitz, who owns the property next to a house on Northeast Wana Ave. The city declared the house a dangerous building, unsafe to occupy. The letter says a court gave the city authority to abate it in December 2024, and that a city plan put demolition in spring or summer of 2026. It hasn't yet happened. The letter asks 15 questions, starting with what happened to the money council set aside. The city's written answer, read into the records, said that money covered several abatements and $40,000 remains for the want to work expected by year's end. Mayor said the city met with a neighbor that day and that it would be, quote, premature to promise the job gets finished this year. The second is a group of homeowners on southwest West Winds Road and Dogwood Lane. They want the city to say whether the sewer line their homes drain into is public. Their memo says every recorded plan calls it public and that a former city administrator started calling it private around 2011. One resident put it this way: quote, this two-inch line that we're connected to is in limbo, unquote. The city didn't state a position at either meeting. Now to the Planning Commission, and a four-unit project on Southeast Wire Street that we've been following since May. On September 2nd, the city's hearing examiner ruled on the appeal. According to the city planner's memo, the examiner found the city hadn't shown the cost of paving the alley was, quote, roughly proportional to the project's impact. So that condition is coming off. The examiner also sent a question back to the commission. Can two duplexes share one lot in the R2 zone? On September 9th, the Commission said yes. City planner Rowan Fairfield had actually recommended the opposite while calling the code, quote, vague enough to go either way. Commissioner Brendan Brown moved to allow it and said, quote, it's better for the town to have two duplexes rather than one quadplex, unquote. Three commissioners voted yes, two abstained. Over at the tree board, the city planner walked through the board's five recommended changes to the tree ordinance and backed most of them. One catch came up. Two of the city's so-called incentives for saving a tree actually run through a $750 variance and a hearing, so they may work against the owner. And the phrase, quote, Oregon White Oak Woodland turns out to be a hard term to pin down. With the city map more than 10 years old, the board decided to write the ordinance changes itself. A few quick ones before we go, the council renamed Hispanic Heritage Month as Latino, Latina, Latinx Heritage Month. The $700 tree fee took effect September 3rd, and the county auditor told the mayor that 90 ballots countywide were rejected for late postmarks in the primary. So please use the drop box or get those in as early as you can. And one last thing because you, the listener, can actually help with this one. We've covered in previous episodes that there are a lot of costs for trying to close Jewett Boulevard for different festivals like Halloween. So for the end of this month, organizers need nine volunteers on Saturday, October 31st, from 445 to 705 in the evening. Two of those nine need to be certified flaggers. Back in June, the City's own traffic plan put a full closure of Jewitt at around $10,000. Volunteers are how the organizers are going to try to get around that cost. To sign up, you can call 509-493-3630. They're asking people to confirm if they can volunteer by October 16th. Do you want to be one of the two certified flaggers? Washington requires a flagger card, and an organ card also counts. Chemica Community College lists trainers in the Dalles and Hood River who teach a four-hour class. The cards last up to three years. Get hired for paid road work too. As you heard earlier in this episode, we've got a lot of that coming up for those road repairs after last year's winter storms. The tree board recording of that meeting came from Columbia Gorge Documenters powered by Uplift Local. We use them under Creative Commons. Our summary was cross-checked with the notes written by documenter Carolyn Elliott. You can read the whole thing with every figure source in the written roundup at Schkamaniadispatch.com. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the 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 Schemaniadispatch.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.