[Skamania] 🧾 The Emergency Ends - North Bonneville Sept '26 Round-Up

First, a Halloween-month tale of the night Skamania County's records left town. Then: North Bonneville formally ended its water emergency in September. The same month, the City Council paid a second contractor bill it said came with no breakdown, and voted down an independent review of how the city lost its operators. This episode covers the North Bonneville City Council and the North Bonneville Planning Commission for September 2026.

In This Episode

• Cabinet of curiosities: the Whiskey Flat heist
• Resolution 597 and the end of the emergency
• Ecology's 32-hour change and the new monthly cost
• The $13,918.75 invoice
• The independent review that failed
• A public hearing request, email rules and the Mayor Pro Tem
• Minutes that don't match the tape
• A master fee schedule
• Library hours and rent
• Fire department gear and turkey bingo
• The planning handoff to Skamania County
• Goats and sheep on East Cascade

Resources & Links

• Read the full written Dispatch at skamaniadispatch.com
• The Whiskey Flat heist, from HistoryLink: Skamania County Thumbnail History
• Last month's coverage of the emergency: A City w/o an Operator & Council w/o a Contract
• North Bonneville council agendas, recordings and minutes: northbonneville.net
• Planning Commission agendas: northbonneville.net/planning/meetings
• The state law on complaints and public hearings: RCW 42.30.110
• North Bonneville library hours: FVRL

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Open Gorge. It's our Halloween month, and that means another little something from the Cabinet of Curiosities. Before we get to the meetings, you know we love a story about public records. And this one out of North Bonneville is a wild one about when the public record makes a break for it. In the early 1890s, the county seat of Scamania County wasn't actually in Stevenson. It was down at the lower cascades, near today's North Bonneville. The courthouse was a plain frame building, 24 feet by 40. It's a cozy little cottage, isn't it? Then one spring night, a group of young men loaded the county's records into saddlebags and wheelbarrows and hauled them off in the dark. By morning, the records were sitting in a rough little building on Whiskey Flat, the Stevenson waterfront. Not to be confused with Whiskey Flat's Tavern across the river. Apparently every landing on the stretch of the Columbia had one. A little space where there were lots of saloons and taverns, a place to make yourself both famous and infamous. And from its own little whiskey flat, Stevenson declared itself the new county seat. Winner takes all, I guess. Henry Metzger of Carson called it a move made, quote, unauthorized and under cover of darkness, unquote. Some residents took it to court, and the men who did it, Metzger wrote, quote, got away with it without interference or punishment, unquote. Then came June of 1894. The biggest flood ever recorded on the Columbia ran right over the Cascades. It took the old courthouse and most of the town, and the town was actually never rebuilt. If those records had stayed put, they would have gone right down the river with it. In North Bonneville, arguments over the public record go back quite a long way. And with that, I think we're ready to take on September's business. If you caught last month's episode, you know the backstory. At the end of July, the city lost its only certified water and wastewater operator. Now there's a scary story. Mayor JB Tennyson declared an emergency and hired an outside company, OMT, to run the treatment plant. In September, the emergency ended, on paper at least. One note before we start, the council hasn't yet approved minutes that we can find so far, so the vote counts you'll hear are coming from the meeting videos. On September 8th, the City Council passed resolution 597, and City Attorney Dan Curtis walked the council through it. The key line orders the state of emergency terminated and hands contracting authority back to the council. From here on, anything outside that one emergency contract comes back to the council for a vote. What the resolution doesn't have is a spending cap. The council asked for one in August. Staff explained why it's missing. A hard cap stops work the moment you hit it, and if work stops in the middle of the day, you're right back at that same water emergency. So instead, there's an expected monthly amount. And there's a little bit of good news there. Staff told the council the State Department of Ecology has approved two changes starting October 1st. The contract operator can drop from 40 hours a week to 32, and city staff can run the weekend lab tests themselves, as long as they stay in touch with a certified operator. Interesting way to save a little bit of money. That'll bring the expected bill down. September was about $26,400. From October on, about $22,400 a month. That's of course before overtime or any emergency callouts. The council did add one rule of its own, five to nothing. Every OMT invoice now has to come to the council with its backup before it gets paid. There's a reason that matters. That same night the contractor's second bill came in. $13,918.75, about 111 hours. Council members said they had no breakdown of what those hours were for. Councilmember Emily Sabo said that the charges for August were now over $27,000 for one month. That just makes me really uncomfortable, she said. Council voted five to nothing to pull that bill out of the voucher packet. Then, worried about a late fee, it voted three to two to pay it anyway, with a direction that every future bill be itemized. Sabo and Councilmember Jeff Blakeley voted no. Then came the bigger ask. Blakely moved for an independent review of how the city got here. What recruiting was done, what alternatives were explored, what was done to keep the last operator. When the council was told, quote, this is not about assigning blame, he said. It's about finding out what happened, unquote. It didn't go far. Some worried it reached into personnel, which belongs to the mayor. Sabo seconded it so that it could be discussed, and then said she already talked to nearly everybody involved and didn't want to spend more money. The review failed. The roll call is only partly audible, but Sabo and Councilmember Ted Salka are among the no votes that you can hear. Two weeks later, on September 22nd, a council member moved to undo resolution 597, argued that it had been listed as a workshop, not an action item. Curtis said a resolution like this isn't legislation. Nobody seconded it. The resolution still stands. That's quite a lot of back and forth. I think one day we're going to actually dig into a little bit of how all of this goes through different types of councils and bodies. What does it mean when something's a legislation? When do people make a motion? What does that look like? And as of September 22nd, backup for that August bill still hadn't arrived. Moving over to the fight at the table. In August, Councilmember Mary Helms accused Blakely in a prepared statement of going around the mayor to city staff. In September, that fight turned into procedure. The September 8th meeting opened with a proposed closed session to hear complaints against a public officer. Blakeley asked whether it was about him and he asked for it to be public instead. Curtis read the statement out loud. It says, if the officer asks, the hearing has to be open to the public. Blakeley asked, and the answer is that it would be scheduled. It wasn't on the September 22nd agenda. Blakeley also raised how meetings end. The council's rules say the chair can ask if there's any more business for adjourning. Twice in August he said that didn't happen. The city's own type minutes now say so too. When the council came back from its closed session that night, the chair went down the row and asked each member if they had anything else. On the 22nd, Curtis offered to draft written rules on when council members can email each other, so nobody accidentally holds a meeting by email. This is an issue we've covered in a couple of other episodes. Basically, there can be some issues that if two or more people are consulting on a matter, then technically it might be a meeting which is subject to public records law. And you would have to have notes, recordings, or something else to indicate to the public what happened during that meeting. The council agreed, and Salka asked for a vote on a new mayored pro tem at the October 13th meeting. That post is Blakely's right now. Now, on to the money. On the 22nd, the council adopted a master fee schedule, every fee the city charges, finally one document. Staff said almost nothing went up. There's a library win, too. Chief Administrative Officer Taylor Chambers said the city pushed Fort Vancouver Regional Library about its short hours in North Bonneville. Right afterward, the branch added Monday afternoons. Now the city wants a higher rent from $240 to $847.50 based on fair market value. That's still being negotiated. Moving on to the fire department. Fire Chief Callista Hamilton said Engine 82 is out of service. She wants the old hammy-down turnouts replaced because she believes they carry the chemicals known as PFAS or PFAS. And the annual turkey bingo is in doubt. It takes about 15 volunteers for the night. So if you want to help, or if you want to be a firefighter, please get in touch with the fire department. Last stop, the Planning Commission. On September 1st, it held a hearing on a permit to keep goats and sheep to about eight acres of 1455 East Cascade Drive. Staff recommended approval with conditions, including the animal stay at least 20 feet from a house. City planner Richard Hall told the council that the permit has passed. It was one of Hall's last reports. Josh Neblock, Skamini County's lead land use planner, takes over the city's planning work in October. As of September 22nd, Neblock still didn't have access to Hall's files before that meeting started. Commissioner Mary Jokesalka told Hall, it's just not going to be the same without you. So what's next? The council meets October 13th and October 27th. Watch for the Mayor Pro Tem vote, contractors backup paperwork, and those email rules. The zoning rewrite goes to the state for an expedite to review, and October 1st is when the lower contractor hours will kick in at the water plant. For all the details, read the full written edition at Scamaniadispatch.com. You've been listening to production of opengorge.org, home of the Scamania Dispatch, and the Click a Tattler. You 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. We'll talk to you next time.