🛑 A Failed Moratorium and a Successful Appeal - White Salmon Sept '26

Enjoy the audio edition on Buzzsprout, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.

🏛 September 2026 White Salmon Municipal Round-Up

Agencies Covered: White Salmon City Council (September 2, September 14 budget workshop, September 16), Planning Commission (September 9), Tree Board (September 21), White Salmon Valley Pool Metropolitan Park District (September 10).

The Bottom Line: September was the month White Salmon said no to a fast rule and got on with slow ones. Council rejected the moratorium 1-4, then passed a mid-year budget that funds the storm repair by pulling back on planning work. The Planning Commission, told by a hearing examiner that it had skipped a step, read its own code in a builder's favor.

The Vibe: Tight money and long agendas. The mayor asked Council to be "a bit more disciplined in moving through our business items," and a Tree Board member described the budget workshop's message as "it's going to be another tight year."

🔎 What Changed

• The small-box discount store moratorium failed 1-4 on September 2. Only Ben Giant voted for it.
• The city's second budget amendment moved $1,000,000 in storm grant money into three funds and cut the comprehensive plan update from $50,000 to $10,000.
• The Planning Commission ruled that two duplexes may share an R2 lot, against its planner's recommendation, after the city's hearing examiner struck a costly alley-paving condition from the same project.
• The Tree Board's $700 fee took effect September 3, and Hispanic Heritage Month is now Latino/a/x Heritage Month in White Salmon.

⚠ What Escalated

• Two neighborhoods came to Council asking for answers: homeowners on SW Westwinds Road and SW Dogwood Lane about who owns their sewer line, and the neighbor of a condemned house on NE Wauna Avenue about why it has not come down.
• The budget slides say the Street Fund had to be reset partly because of the loss of anticipated state transportation grant (TIB) money.

🧭 What's Next

• October 14: Center Market's revised plans are aimed at this Planning Commission meeting, per the city planner.
• October: the Bridge Authority and the state Insurance Commissioner's office are both expected before Council.
• October 31, 4:45 to 7:05 p.m.: Jewett closes for Halloween, staffed by volunteers. Organizers need nine, including two certified flaggers; sign up by October 16 at 509-493-3630.
• Before the end of 2026: the Tree Board's rewrite of the tree ordinance, now being drafted by the board itself.

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🎃 Editor's Halloween Month Special: Cabinet of Curiosities

It’s the start of October and Halloween season. So I’m going to try each episode to crack into my Cabinet of Curiosities: my own personal archives of interesting historical stories from around the Gorge, dug up from old newspaper clippings and archives. Some are spooky, some may be a little more sad than scary, but many are tales of interest that might even make you laugh.

Let’s start with a quick trip into the White Salmon archives...

In the summer of 1907, the White Salmon Enterprise newspapers sized up the neighbors and their capacity to party. Carson had about 300 people... and six saloons. Stevenson had about 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. This 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 head count up to 400. Then it named the one thing it said White Salmon could never have: a railroad track and a depot in the center of town. "We do not have to walk a mile to reach the river."

White Salmon kept its dry reputation for a long time. There's an old story in town about Sam Hill. He signed a deal to buy the Jewett family's land on the bluff for his mansion (why yes, that is the Jewetts of Jewett Blvd). Then he proposed a drink to celebrate the deal. Jennie Jewett didn't drink, and she didn't sell. She was a "fierce teetotaler" and prohibitionist. And so she tore the deal up right there, and Sam Hill had to build Maryhill farther up the river. And that’s another favorite tale of mine that will one day get its own newsletter edition.

We look forward to sharing more fascinating findings from the archive all Halloween month long! Now, on to this month's business...

Source: The Skamania County Pioneer, Stevenson, WA., August 22, 1907, page 5

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White Salmon City Council

The Council met three times: a two and a half hour regular meeting on September 2, a three hour budget workshop on September 14, and a regular meeting with a budget hearing on September 16. The September 16 minutes are not yet public, so the votes from that night are as recorded on the meeting video.

🛑 How the moratorium died

Our August round-up reported the result and promised the debate. Here it is.

Ordinance 2026-08-1189 would have frozen new applications for small-box discount stores in the commercial district for six months. It was written as an emergency ordinance, which under its own Section 9 needed "a majority plus one," four of five votes. Morella Mora moved it and Doug Rainbolt seconded. That is how the city's procedure works: the mayor reminded Council that night that a motion "is what opens debate," so a member can move an item to discuss it and still vote against it. The vote was Giant aye; Fink, Rainbolt, Mora and Lindley nay.

The city has now put its own account of where the proposal came from on the record, in three places, and they fit together.

• The signed September 2 minutes record staff saying the issue "had been raised with the Community Development Committee for several years," and that "no current application prompted the proposed moratorium and that existing code must be applied to any complete application submitted under current regulations."
• The draft August 26 Planning Commission minutes, published in the commission's September 9 packet, say the draft amendments "had been drafted previously, but the unusual amount of public comments at the recent public hearing for the Center Market project prompted the city to revisit them," and that Center Market "would not be subject to the moratorium or the draft amendments because they are already vested under Washington state law with a complete application."
• Mayor Marla Keethler, answering a council question on September 2, traced it to a 2020 Dollar General proposal in Parkdale and said what moved it now was "the level of public comment we had this summer, and again, about a completely separate commercial use." In the mayor's words: "It is not the result of an application this summer. That application is moving forward."

Put plainly: the comments on Center Market got the old idea moving again, and the rule could never have reached Center Market.

The reasons councilmembers gave against it were mostly about process, not about dollar stores. Columbia Gorge News reported the debate and named who said what (its story dates the meeting September 3; it was September 2). David Lindley pointed to the city's 2020 moratorium on mobile home park conversions, which Lindley said had worked, and said this one did not meet the high bar for an emergency. Giant, the lone yes vote, worried out loud about the staff time it would cost. Fink and Rainbolt said regulating these stores had never been a council goal. Rainbolt raised affordability: "We tend to think that people here can afford the Harvest Market, like we all can. Well, some can't." Mora spoke about workers on early and late shifts who need somewhere to shop. One councilmember put it as a matter of principle: "planning is about planning, and it's not about reacting."

Dollar General told Columbia Gorge News it has no current plans for a White Salmon location.

In person, one resident testified, Elsa Jones, in support. Written comments came from six people, including White Salmon Main Street and White Salmon Properties LLC.

What is still alive: the permanent code change, drafted by the Community Development Committee, which the mayor says is part of an update of the commercial chapter now under way. It has not come back to the Planning Commission. And Center Market's revised plans are aimed at the commission's October 14 meeting.

💸 The budget reset

On September 16, Council adopted Ordinance 2026-09-1192, the second amendment to the 2026 budget, 5-0 on a roll call. Finance Director Jennifer Niel called it "a mid-year reset to align spending authority with what we now expect to complete."

The headline number is a $1,212,182.36 increase in total appropriations, to $25,720,632.36. Most of that is not new spending. $1,000,000 is the state storm grant, split among streets ($300,000), wastewater ($350,000) and water ($350,000), and much of the rest is bookkeeping to match actual 2025 year-end balances and a repaid internal loan. (The slides shown that night give $1.324 million; the ordinance Council adopted says $1,212,182.36.)

The General Fund, the money that pays for city services, shrinks by $53,625. To get there the city took back money for work that will not happen this year. The largest pieces:

• Comprehensive plan update: $50,000 to $10,000. This is the city's periodic update of the plan that guides zoning, which also carries a $10,000 state grant. Planning contract work dropped from $75,000 to $35,000.
• Code compliance contract work: $63,000 to $40,000.
• Park staffing: $105,000 to $52,500 in salaries.

And it added money in a few places: HR consulting from $10,000 to $79,000, computer and cybersecurity work from $90,000 to $125,000 "to meet SAO expectations," a reference to the State Auditor's audit of 2024 and 2025, which began the first week of September, and $15,000 more for municipal court costs because of a rising caseload.

The General Fund's unassigned reserve ends the year at a projected $461,284, above the city's 10 percent minimum.

Two other lines tell stories of their own. In streets, $128,400 that was set aside as the city's share of a state Transportation Improvement Board grant for the Church Avenue and Tohomish Street rebuild comes out, and the slides name "loss of anticipated TIB funding" as one reason the fund needed a reset. That is the grant the city committed its match to in July. In wastewater, a new $377,000 line pays Bingen for sewage treatment under the two cities' agreement.

The storm repair now has a plan. The Skagit Avenue and Scenic Street repair is about a $2 million project. The order of payment on the slides: the $1 million state grant first, which needs no local match and can cover insurance deductibles; then the city's property insurance claim, which Niel said staff "feel pretty confident about"; then, if needed, a state Public Works Board emergency loan the city has already been offered, 85 percent loan and 15 percent grant.

🏚 The house on Wauna Avenue

The code compliance cut drew a letter. Joe Turkiewicz, who owns the property next to 178 NE Wauna Avenue, wrote to Council before the budget workshop. By Turkiewicz's account of city records, the house was declared a dangerous building unsafe to occupy, a court gave the city authority to abate it in December 2024, and a city plan from last November set spring or summer 2026 as the earliest time to demolish it. That window has passed. The letter also reported repeated signs that someone is living there despite the ban, and asked 15 questions, starting with how much of the money Council set aside for the job had been spent.

A September 14 email in the packet from Public Works Director Chris True told Turkiewicz the city's code compliance officer "is no longer employed by the City," and asked that information go to True instead.

At the September 16 meeting, Niel read the city's written answer. The $63,000 was meant for several abatements, not one, and the property's separate budget line was retired in an accounting cleanup. The $40,000 that remains reflects the Wauna work the city expects to do by year's end, and "does not represent a decision to abandon the Wauna matter." Mayor Keethler said the two other abatements, both on public property, were pushed to 2027 when the city was bracing to pay the storm deductible out of its own pocket, and that it would be "premature" to promise Wauna is finished this year.

🚽 A sewer line nobody will claim

At both meetings, homeowners from a 2004 short plat on SW Westwinds Road and SW Dogwood Lane asked Council to settle whether the line their homes drain into is public. Their memo, signed by seven households, says every recorded plan calls the system public, that a former city administrator began calling it private around 2011, and that no public record shows the city ever reclassified it. Because of that, residents said, their plumber will not scope the line and the city will not maintain it. "We're just trying to say this two-inch line that we're connected to is in limbo," one told Council. Their request is simple: have the city declare it public and take responsibility for it.

Council does not respond during public comment, and no action on it appeared on either agenda.

✅ The rest, briefly

• Consent, September 2: vouchers of $247,438.81, the August minutes, and Richard Eatherly to the Wildfire and Emergency Preparedness Committee, all 5-0.
• Park and facility fees (Ordinance 2026-09-1190 and Resolution 2026-09-652, 5-0): the $150 deposit and garbage fee go away, a $30 water and $50 power hookup fee arrive, and hourly rates rise to their inflation-adjusted level on January 1, 2027, then follow inflation each year. Nonprofit community groups based in the city still pay nothing. The city's adoption notice has the summary.
• Lodging tax conflicts (Ordinance 2026-09-1191, 5-0): members of the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee must disclose conflicts and step out of scoring any application they are tied to. People in the tourism business can still serve.
• Latino/a/x Heritage Month (Resolution 2026-09-653, 5-0). Mora presented it: "The reality is that Latino and Hispanic are not interchangeable terms." The resolution notes that more than 33 percent of the school district's students identify as Hispanic and/or Latino. El Grito filled Rheingarten Park on September 13, its fifth year as part of the city's observance.
• Tree fee: the $700 fee-in-lieu took effect September 3. Asked how often it has been used, staff answered: "So far, zero."
• Forestry grant: Council authorized an application of up to $60,000 to the state Department of Natural Resources for tree work in Rheingarten Park and on NE Tohomish Street. No local match. DNR's own schedule has award notices going out September 30.
• Childcare: Johanna Roe of the Klickitat County Child Care Committee reported seven home-based programs and two centers opened with its help, and at least 100 children in the school district still without care.
• Water: the North Main booster station is running, which lifts a cap on new hookups near the high school. A newly fixed overflow leak at the Spring Street Reservoir should cut the city's water loss by about three percent.
• Ballots: in a note to the mayor, Klickitat County Auditor Heather Jobe said 90 ballots were rejected for late postmarks in the August primary, and urged drop boxes.
• Old minutes: on September 16, Council approved minutes from three 2025 meetings that a records review found had never been formally approved.
• County comprehensive plan: Evan Evangelopoulos, the county's long-range planner, walked Council through the county's rewrite, which Evangelopoulos said has not been updated since 1979. Community meetings for Trout Lake, Dallesport and Alderdale are planned for October.
• The bridge: Mayor Keethler said the Bridge Authority expected an answer on its federal Bridge Investment Program request around the end of September, and that "without that $530 million, that project will not move forward on schedule." We covered the funding cliff in March.
• Also on September 16: Patty Fink reported a pedestrian struck in August and asked for a conversation about low-cost traffic safety measures. Ben Giant said the finance committee will study how the city uses AI, with recommendations due by the end of the first quarter of 2027. A crosswalk signal near the school works in only one direction; staff put the fix at about $2,000.

The September 14 budget workshop was open to the public but in person only, and it produced no recording, notes or minutes. What councilmembers said about it two days later is all that is on the record: three hours on "budget pressures just from existing revenues," in the mayor's words.

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White Salmon Planning Commission

🏘 Two duplexes, one lot

The four-unit project at 130 SE Wyers Street has been on this commission's docket since May, and we have followed it through its 3-2 approval and failed reconsideration. In September it turned around on both of the points the applicants had fought.

The city's hearing examiner heard the appeal on August 14 and decided it on September 2. As summarized in the city planner's September 8 memo, the examiner concluded "the City failed to demonstrate that the cost of paving the section of alley abutting the site is roughly proportional to the impact of the proposed development," so the project must be approved without that condition. The examiner also found that duplexes are "a use that is not expressly prohibited or allowed in any zoning district in the City," and sent the question back to the commission to decide, as city code requires, whether duplexes are allowed in the R2 zone and whether two can share a lot.

On September 9 the commission answered yes to both. City Planner Rowan Fairfield recommended allowing only one duplex per lot, reading the code's definitions as requiring the homes to form "a continuous group" or a single building, but called the language "vague enough to go either way." Commissioner Brendan Brown moved the opposite reading: duplexes are allowed as long as the lot stays within the zone's four primary homes. Brown, Adam Elliott and Erika Price voted yes. Nate Loker and Chair Carl Trabant abstained.

Brown's case, in Brown's words: "I think it's better for the town to have two duplexes rather than one quadplex." Loker said the rule looked arbitrary if four townhomes are allowed, while adding that four units is too many for R2 in the first place. The practical effect is that the builder can return to the original design, two duplexes joined by a breezeway, instead of the single structure the commission required in May. The ruling also binds every future application until the code changes.

Commissioners flagged the next problem themselves: with two accessory dwellings allowed per R2 lot, two duplexes could in theory become six homes on a large lot. That is a question for a later meeting.

🗓 The rest

• The commission corrected its own August 26 minutes, which listed Loker absent while also recording Loker seconding two motions.
• The September 23 meeting, which was to open the first public hearing on the short-term rental rules for commercial zones, was cancelled. No new date has been posted.

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White Salmon Tree Board

🌳 The board writes its own ordinance

The board's September 21 meeting, moved a week to stay clear of the budget workshop, was the first after Council adopted its $700 fee. City Planner Rowan Fairfield went through the five changes the board's white paper recommended, and supported most of them: count replacement trees by the size of the tree removed rather than by the lot's zoning ("conceptually, yes"), and set minimum sizes and species for replacement trees ("a super easy change").

Fairfield also found a catch in the city's own "incentives" for saving trees. Two of them, reducing a setback to keep a tree and relief from ADU parking rules, appear to require a variance, which means a $750 fee and a hearing before the hearing examiner. That can cost an owner more time and money than cutting the tree down. The board wants the code to say so plainly.

The harder piece is "Oregon white oak woodland." The code bars cutting "any tree" in one without a permit, and nobody at the table could say where one is. The only map is a paper one on the planner's office wall, from 2013 or 2016. Fairfield explained the term really belongs to the state-required Critical Areas Ordinance, which a consultant is rewriting now, and recommended waiting for that. The board will write its version to point to that definition.

Then Fairfield offered to coach the board on writing the ordinance changes itself, and it took the job, with a draft aimed at its October 12 meeting.

On the Tree Walk, the city may put in about $500. The board plans to ask the Odd Fellows, Elks and Rotary for the rest of a budget it put at around $5,000 for a map and signs. Fink's advice to the board: staff "is pretty close to being overwhelmed," so volunteers will need to carry the work.

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White Salmon Valley Pool District

The pool district's September 10 agenda carried an executive session, action items on its capital project and on fundraising, and its 2027 budget schedule. The district has published no minutes or recording of that meeting, so what it decided is not yet public.

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🎃 Special: Help Close Jewett for Halloween

A flyer posted downtown makes a simple ask. "In order to close Jewett for Halloween we must have community volunteers to staff the road closure." The shift is 4:45 to 7:05 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, 2026. Organizers need nine people, and two of them must be certified flaggers. The other seven can be regular volunteers who guide traffic through the detour. The flyer asks people to confirm by October 16, 2026, at 509-493-3630.

If you have been reading this newsletter since June, you know why this matters.

Closing White Salmon's main street is expensive. In June the Community Development Committee learned that a full closure under the city's traffic control plan runs about $10,000, including roughly $3,300 just for the nine staff who manage the detours, and the committee chair called the price "just ludicrous to me" (June round-up). In July the committee worked out why (July round-up). Jewett Boulevard is State Route 141, so every closure needs its own state-approved traffic control plan. When the city is the one paying, public procurement rules and prevailing wage apply. And the company hired to write the plan was also the one hired to carry it out. The Fourth of July closure went ahead with a $1,000 state historical society grant toward traffic control and a $5,000 line in the city's September budget amendment labeled a "contribution to flagging."

The mayor has been working the problem since, telling Council on September 2 that the city was still talking with WSDOT about event closure costs, and on September 16 that WSDOT had given "good feedback" on how to improve closures. Nine volunteers is the other half of the answer: the people standing at the barricades don't have to be paid crews.

🦺 How to become a certified flagger

The two certified spots are the hard ones to fill, and the certification is within reach.

• What the law requires. Under Washington's safety rule for flaggers, WAC 296-155-305, anyone flagging traffic must carry a valid Washington flagger card, or one from Oregon, Idaho, Montana or another state with a reciprocity agreement. Cards last up to three years.
• An Oregon card counts. That matters in a river town. Chemeketa Community College's flagger program lists certified trainers in The Dalles and Hood River. The class is four hours, in person, and passing the test earns an ODOT flagger card.
• The Washington class. Evergreen Safety Council offers an eight-hour Washington certification class for $139, in person only. Community colleges around the state run it too.
• It can pay. Construction companies and traffic control firms hire certified flaggers, and on public works projects in Washington, flaggers must be paid the state's prevailing wage, which L&I sets by county and trade. A card earned for one Halloween shift is good for road work for years.

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⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context

A moratorium is an emergency tool, and the vote was about that. Washington lets cities adopt a moratorium before holding a hearing, but only as a stopgap: the city must hold a public hearing within 60 days, and White Salmon's draft declared an emergency so it could take effect at once. Several councilmembers said the situation did not meet that bar. None of them voted on whether dollar stores belong in White Salmon; that question is still in the permanent code draft.

The planning budget cut matters beyond this year. The comprehensive plan is where the city's zoning, housing and commercial rules get their direction, and several pending code changes, the commercial chapter among them, are being done in its name. Moving $40,000 out of the update for 2026 means less of that work gets done this year. The amendment does not say what the 2027 budget will put back.

Two sets of neighbors are waiting on the city. Neither the Westwinds sewer question nor the Wauna abatement has a public timeline. Both came to Council through public comment and letters, and in both cases the residents say their earlier questions went unanswered.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Emergency ordinance: a law that takes effect the moment it is adopted. In White Salmon, this one needed four of five votes instead of three.
• Vested: a complete application is judged under the rules in place when it was filed, even if the rules change later.
• Budget amendment: a formal change to the spending limits Council set for the year. Cities on a cash basis also have to amend for money that arrives, like a grant.
• Unassigned fund balance: money left in the General Fund that is not set aside for anything in particular. White Salmon's policy keeps it above 10 percent.
• Rough proportionality: when a city makes a developer build or pay for an improvement as a condition of approval, the requirement must be roughly proportional to the project's own impact. It comes from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dolan v. City of Tigard (1994), and Washington applies a similar limit through RCW 82.02.020.
• Code interpretation: under WSMC 17.12.030, the Planning Commission may decide that a use the code does not mention is "in general keeping" with a zone. The city must keep a record of these so later applicants are treated the same way.
• Abatement: a city fixing or removing a dangerous condition on private property, usually at the owner's expense.
• Critical Areas Ordinance: the local rules, required by the state, protecting wetlands, steep slopes, wildlife habitat and similar places.

🗓 How to Join and Learn More

• City Council meets the first and third Wednesdays at 6 p.m. at 119 NE Church Ave and on Zoom. October meetings: the 7th and the 21st.
• Planning Commission meets the second and fourth Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. October 14 is posted.
• Tree Board meets the second Monday at 4 p.m. at City Hall. October 12 is posted.
• Pool District meets the second Thursday at 6 p.m. Agendas with linked documents are at WhiteSalmonValleyPool.org.
• Agendas, packets and video for city bodies are on the city's meetings page. Written comment to Council goes to public.comment@whitesalmonwa.gov by noon on the Wednesday of the meeting.

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Tree Board recording come from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, used under CC BY 4.0. Cross-checked with September 21 notes by Caroline Elliott. Learn more about Gorge Documenters.

Disclosure: the Dispatch's publisher wrote to the Planning Commission in support of the 211 N Main application and against the small-box code change, and wrote to the Tree Board in July. All of that was in her personal capacity, not on the Dispatch's behalf.