> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # πŸ•³οΈ An Empty Equipment Fund, Full of Questions - North Bonneville July '26 Round-up - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/an-empty-equipment-fund-full-of-questions-north-bonneville-july-26-round-up/ - Published: 2026-08-10T07:00:31.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-10T07:00:30.000Z - Description: North Bonneville seated a fifth councilmember in one night, found a typo blocking a grant, and learned its equipment fund was spent by January. Then the Army Corps came to talk Bradford Island and said it wasn't cleared to. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: North Bonneville, North Bonneville City Council, North Bonneville Planning Commission, Skamania County Enjoy the audio edition on Buzzsprout, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts. ## πŸ› July 2026 North Bonneville Round-Up **Agencies Covered:** North Bonneville City Council (July 14, July 28) Β· North Bonneville Planning Commission (July 7, cancelled) **The Bottom Line:** The Council filled its last vacant seat in one evening, fixed a clerical error that was holding up a grant application, and got its clearest look yet at a budget problem that started before the current administrator arrived. It also adopted a county services agreement considerably broader than its title, over one abstention, and heard the long-promised Bradford Island briefing. **The Vibe:** Warm and busy on July 14, with a new member sworn in between a parade and a festival. More sober on July 28, where a federal project manager appeared and could not answer questions, and the city's contract planner asked whether he was being replaced. --- ## πŸ”Ž What Changed - Norm Woods was appointed to vacant Council Seat #3 and sworn in the same night, restoring the Council to five members. - The 2021 Capital Facilities Plan was amended to correct which lift station was replaced in 2016, clearing the way for a grant application due at the end of July. - The July first-half vouchers passed at $44,552.48, after a $7,215 item was pulled and confirmed as an invoice that should have been voided. - The Council adopted an interlocal agreement with Skamania County, as amended, opening access to county public works and community development services. One councilmember abstained, citing county employment. - The Skamania County EDC contract was tabled 5-0 to the next meeting for city attorney review, over a dispute about paying for a term that began before anything was signed. - The Planning Commission's July 7 meeting was cancelled. ## ⚠ What Escalated - Chambers told the Council the equipment fund is running at 99 percent spent, the result of a 2025 expenditure that was paid out of 2026 money. The fund also opened the year with a negative balance that staff cannot yet explain. - Bradford Island came before the Council as promised, but the Army Corps project manager said a new policy on outside engagements meant she had not been cleared to speak. - Richard Hall, the city's contract planning advisor, used closing comments to ask whether his contract was being cancelled following the interlocal vote taken minutes earlier. - The county has been performing North Bonneville's bridge inspections with no agreement covering the work and no charge attached, a gap disclosed to the Council only during debate on the interlocal. ## 🧭 What's Next - **August 4:** Planning Commission public hearing on the draft Title 20 zoning update and periodic review, 7 p.m. at City Hall and online. - **August 11:** Council is expected to approve the July 28 minutes, which will be the first official record of that meeting's votes. - An interfund loan into the equipment fund is expected to come before Council later this year. - The Bradford Island Restoration Advisory Board meets regularly and is open to any community member. The Corps posts each meeting notice on its Portland District public-notices page, and Skamania County Commissioner Asa Leckie has invited North Bonneville to put someone on it. --- ## North Bonneville City Council ### πŸͺ‘ A Seat Filled in a Single Evening The Council spent the first half of July 14 turning one vacancy into one councilmember. - Two people had applied for Council Seat #3\. CAO Taylor Chambers announced that Bruce Greer would not be attending, leaving Norm Woods as the only candidate interviewed. - Woods answered four standard questions at the podium, after which the Council recessed into executive session from 7:10 to 7:15 p.m. to discuss his qualifications. - On a motion by Councilor Helms, seconded by Councilor Sabo, Woods was appointed on a 4-0 vote to a term ending December 31, 2027. - CAO Chambers swore him in immediately, and he voted on city business later the same night. Woods told the Council he had lived in North Bonneville about eight years and had run The Hungry Sasquatch for the five years it was open. Asked what he wanted to work on, he went straight to pipes. "I'd like to work on improving infrastructure in this town," he said, describing three major water breaks on the street where he lives, which he named in the recording as Columbia Circle, one of them directly in front of his house. "I know those pipes are what, maybe 50, 60 years old. And if that's the case across the town, we could have some real problems." He also asked about the trees felled near the Hamilton Creek bridge and left lying there, and about bike paths he thought had been funded the previous year. "I like our town now," he said. "It's a park-like town." This closes out a run of vacancies the Dispatch has tracked since spring: seats #4 and #5 were filled in April, and #3 has been open since. A five-member council matters for more than optics. Several of the year's bigger questions, including the sewer plan and the capital budget, need a full body to move without a tie. Woods arrived with a stated interest in water infrastructure, which is likely the most expensive problem the city has. ### 🚰 A Typo Standing Between the City and a Grant The shortest item on the July 14 agenda was also the most time-sensitive. - While preparing a Public Works Board grant application, CAO Chambers found that the city's 2021 Capital Facilities Plan said Lift Station #2 had been replaced in 2016. - It was actually Lift Station #3. - The grant the city is preparing would fund replacing stations #2 and #4, so a document claiming #2 was already done was a direct obstacle. - Per the minutes, Chambers confirmed the correction with City Engineer Devin Jackson and former Mayor Brian Sabo. - The amendment passed 5-0, the first vote of Woods's tenure. Chambers apologized for adding it late, explaining the application was due at the end of the month and the next meeting on the 28th was "just cutting it a little bit too close." North Bonneville has four lift stations, by the count given at the meeting. A five-year-old clerical error in a planning document nearly cost the city its shot at replacing two of them, which is a small illustration of a real structural problem for very small cities: the planning documents that grant programs require are written once, rarely re-read, and then become load-bearing years later. The city caught this one because an outside reviewer read the plan closely. For more on how the city has been mapping what it actually owns underground, see our [March 2026 round-up](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/what-lies-beneath-north-bonneville-maps-its-infrastructure-march-26-city-round-up/). ### πŸ’Έ The Equipment Fund Was Spent by January The budget priority session produced the month's most consequential disclosure. - Chambers told the Council the equipment fund is showing at 99 percent spent, and has been since she started. - The cause was a single expenditure approved by Council in 2025 that was paid out of 2026 money. It consumed essentially the entire year's equipment budget in one transaction. - The fund also reported a negative beginning balance for the year, which is separate from the misallocated payment and is not yet explained. - Because 2025 has already been closed out, correcting the allocation is difficult. Chambers said she and the city's CPA are working through it. - An interfund loan from the general fund will likely have to come before Council to get the city through the rest of the year. The equipment fund covers day-to-day water and sewer supplies. Councilor Blakeley asked directly where the money had gone. Chambers said she was still trying to reconstruct how anyone concluded there was a surplus, given the fund opened in the red. "At this point, I don't know," she said. "It boggles my mind a little bit." Mayor JB Tennison recalled the meeting where the roll-up door was approved in 2025, and Chambers agreed that expenditure should have landed in 2025. Councilor Helms asked that the coming budget include enough money for the Fire Department. Earlier in the meeting, Councilor Blakeley had pulled the July first-half vouchers off the consent agenda after spotting a $7,215 item for the Skamania County Clerk on page three. Chambers confirmed the invoice should have been voided but a step was missed, leaving the system to treat it as outstanding. The vouchers then passed 4-0 at $44,552.48. Two things are worth separating here. The roll-up door is a timing error, and fixable. The negative opening balance is different: it means the fund's own starting position was wrong, and nobody in the current administration knows why. That is the kind of finding that tends to surface during a state audit rather than in July. Reading it alongside the voucher catch, a pattern emerges in which the current CAO and an attentive council are steadily finding errors inherited from previous staff. Our [June round-up](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/who-pays-to-build-near-a-wetland-north-bonneville-june-26/) covered a similar voucher review and the city's short-staffing. ### ☒️ Bradford Island Reaches the Council, and the Corps Cannot Discuss It In our June round-up we reported that Councilor Jeff Blakeley planned to bring the Bradford Island Superfund cleanup to the Council on July 28\. He did, and he came with a timeline. Blakeley walked the Council through the site's history: dam construction from 1933 to 1938, then landfill and in-river dumping from 1942 to 1982, four decades of it. Toxic waste was identified between 1996 and 2000\. Hotspot dredging ran from 2002 to 2007\. The Superfund listing came in 2022\. As of this March, the Corps began cleaning up the land portion, which he put at 22 acres under a contract he valued at $7.5 million. His account tracks the state's own record closely, which is worth saying plainly: a councilmember reading the file in his spare time landed within a couple of years of Oregon's environmental agency on every milestone. Then the Corps itself was on the line, and could not say much. - A woman attending online introduced herself as the project manager for the Portland District of the Army Corps of Engineers on the Bradford Island investigation. - She said a new policy for outside engagements meant "I was not able to clear to come speak tonight." - What she could address was membership on the Restoration Advisory Board. She said the RAB is open to any community member, including people serving in government positions, and offered to send information on how to apply. - Skamania County Commissioner Asa Leckie, also attending, said he had raised RAB membership with a previous North Bonneville council years ago, that the only taker then was Councilmember Joshua Good, and that he was renewing the invitation to this council. - A speaker asked whether contamination in the riverbed, described as extending about a mile above and a mile below the dam, argued against boring a transmission line through that ground. - Leckie said he was limited in what he could say because he also sits on the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, which is adjudicating that transmission project. He did add, "I do have concerns, I will tell you that." The discussion also turned local in a way the Corps was not asked to answer. One councilmember raised long-standing talk of dumping closer to home: "I've heard rumors for years about dumping in Greenleaf as well." Councilors thanked Blakeley for the research. One said the subject had been easier to absorb laid out in front of them: "I've been hearing about this for years, but when it's right here in front of you in an easy to digest kind of thing, it really speaks to something." ### πŸ“œ Bradford Island: How a Landfill Became a Superfund Site If you have heard the name for years without ever getting the shape of it, here is the shape. Bonneville Dam began operating in 1938\. From 1942 until 1982, the Army Corps of Engineers used the east end of Bradford Island as a landfill, and dumped electrical components and other debris into the river off the island's northeast corner. A lot of that equipment was full of PCBs. PCBs do not break down. They accumulate in the tissue of fish that live in one place, which is why the problem did not end when the dumping did. Smallmouth bass near the island have tested at PCB concentrations as high as **183,000 parts per billion**, according to Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality. The level considered safe for human consumption is less than **1 part per billion**. Both states tell people not to eat what they catch there. The Oregon Health Authority and the Washington State Department of Health have standing "do not eat" advisories for resident fish near the island, and Oregon added sturgeon to its advisory in March 2022. The cleanup is older than the Superfund listing, and that is the frustrating part: - **2000 and 2002:** the Corps pulled PCB-containing electrical equipment out of the river. - **2007:** contaminated sediment was removed. - **2011:** fish and shellfish sampling showed PCB levels were still too high. - **2017:** the remedial investigation and feasibility studies were completed. - **March 2022:** EPA added the site to the National Priorities List, making it a Superfund site. Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chairman Delano Saluskin said at the time that contamination in resident fish remained alarmingly high even after two decades of work. - **April 23, 2024:** EPA signed a Federal Facility Agreement with the Corps, Oregon and Washington. That is the document that put the cleanup on an enforceable schedule, required EPA sign-off on key decisions, and gave EPA the power to pick the remedy if the parties deadlock. - **Since then:** Washington's Department of Ecology has pressed the Corps in writing to identify which state cleanup standards will apply to the site, a technical-sounding fight that determines how clean "clean" has to be. The Corps runs a Restoration Advisory Board for the site, the citizen panel discussed at the July 28 meeting. It first met in March 2023 and has met regularly since. Its most recent session was **July 14, 2026**, from 5 to 7 p.m. over Teams, the same evening North Bonneville was seating its new councilmember. **The Skamania County thread.** This county has been circling the site for years, largely through one persistent RAB member. In May 2024, Mitch Patton wrote to the Stevenson City Council as a RAB member, asking whether waste from Bonneville Dam in the 1960s and 1970s had gone into the old Stevenson landfill, and asking the county for old photos and monitoring records. In March 2026 his termination from the RAB came before the North Bonneville Council, where Councilor Blakeley questioned it. In May he filed written comments on Bradford Island PCBs. In June he emailed the Corps, copying EPA, asking for an accounting of construction fill volumes at North Bonneville and Hamilton Island. That last request is the written record sitting underneath the July 28 agenda item. **Where to read more.** The EPA's [Bradford Island site profile](https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.Cleanup&id=1002228&ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) is the official status page. EPA's announcements of the [Superfund listing](https://epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-adds-bradford-island-near-bonneville-dam-columbia-river-national-priorities-or?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and the [Federal Facility Agreement](https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-signs-agreement-cleanup-bradford-island-national-priorities-list-site?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) lay out what each step actually obligated. Oregon DEQ's [site page](https://www.oregon.gov/deq/hazards-and-cleanup/cleanupsites/pages/bradford-island.aspx?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) has the clearest plain-language history and the fish sampling figures. [Columbia Riverkeeper](https://www.columbiariverkeeper.org/campaigns/bradford-island-cleanup/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), which holds a seat on the Restoration Advisory Board, tracks the cleanup from an advocacy position and describes progress since 2022 as excruciatingly slow. OPB's [2023 report](https://www.opb.org/article/2023/03/17/superfund-columbia-river-bradford-island-pollution-cleanup-delay/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), headlined a year after the designation, covered the fact that cleanup still had not started. The Corps posts RAB meeting notices on its [Portland District site](https://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/Locations/Columbia-River/bradford-island/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). Two threads the Dispatch has been following separately met in this room. Bradford Island is a Superfund site in the Columbia just upstream of North Bonneville, and the Cascade Renewable Transmission project is a proposed buried high-voltage line that would run largely beneath the river. The question of whether the second disturbs the first is not new. Public comments filed with EFSEC in November 2025 raised exactly this concern, describing a line buried roughly ten feet into the riverbed near the Superfund site. What is new is a council asking it out loud, and finding that the two officials best placed to answer were each constrained, one by a federal engagement policy and one by the rules of the body deciding the permit. Background on the transmission project is in our [special report on the CRT](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/special-report-cascade-renewable-transmission-an-underwater-power-line-with-a-long-road-ahead/). ### πŸ—ΊοΈ The City's Planner Asks Whether He Still Has a Contract Two items of old business sat on the July 28 agenda. Only one passed. **The EDC contract was tabled.** Kevin Waters, Economic Development Director for Skamania County, came to answer questions about a contract the city had never signed. The sticking point was that the unsigned contract's term began January 1 of this year. One councilmember put it plainly: they were in favor of signing going forward, but not of paying for the stretch when no contract existed. Another noted the city had just voted to hire someone itself. Waters said the EDC has held a board seat for North Bonneville for some time and would welcome someone from the city filling it. The Council voted **5-0 to table the discussion to its next meeting** so the city attorney could review it. **The interlocal agreement passed, as amended.** And it is broader than "planning services" suggests. David Waymire, the county's Public Works and Community Development Director, told the Council the agreement is not just for planning: it would let the city draw on anything the county has under public works and community development, the same arrangement the county already has with the City of Stevenson, which includes paving and chip seal. He added that the county is already performing North Bonneville's bridge inspections without a contract covering the work and without charging for it, and that he had offered this same agreement about three and a half years ago to a previous council, which declined. The Council amended the agreement in three places before adopting it: Section 3, Section 6, and the CAO designation on the signature line. The Section 6 change specifies that the city's policy "shall be primary and non-contributory." City Attorney Dan Curtis had no objection, reasoning that if the county is doing city projects, the city's insurance should be primary. **One councilmember abstained, citing a conflict.** "I have to abstain, not because I disagree, but because I'm an employee of the county," they told the Council. The remaining four voted yes. We are not naming the councilmember: the recording's roll call is garbled at exactly that point, and no record on file establishes which member holds county employment. The August 11 minutes should settle it. Then came the part that made the vote concrete. During closing comments, Richard Hall, who has served as the city's contract planning advisor, addressed the Council. "Now that you've passed the interlocal agreement, I just need to know if you're going to be canceling my contract," he said, asking whether that would happen in the next thirty days so he could plan an exit. He was told the city would contact him the following day once dates were clearer, with reference to an overlap process discussed previously. Small cities in Skamania County have been steadily contracting services back to the county. Planning is a natural candidate, because it demands specialized expertise that a city this small cannot keep on staff full time. But Waymire's description reframes what the Council actually adopted: not a planning contract, a general services channel into county public works and community development, with an insurance clause negotiated on the floor. The detail worth sitting with is that the county has been inspecting the city's bridges for years with no agreement covering it and no invoice attached. That is either neighborliness or an uninsured liability, depending on which year you ask, and it is the kind of arrangement that only surfaces when someone finally writes it down. Meanwhile Hall, who has carried the Critical Areas Ordinance, the Cascade Business Park review, and the periodic zoning update now heading to hearing, learned his status by asking about it in public comment. ### 🌿 Moss, Moles, and Squirrels Closing public comment on July 14 turned to what is chewing up the town. - Terry Norris raised the moss on the city's concrete, including the bridges, and suggested volunteers could clear it. He also raised the mole problem, noting the moles cannot be poisoned. - Fire Chief Kalista Hamilton said it was not only moles. Squirrels are digging tunnels, and loose dogs dig larger holes chasing them. - A speaker described holes in the park being filled before Gorge Days, said the digging was starting to kill trees and grass, and warned about injury risk to anyone walking through. - Councilor Blakeley confirmed moss damages both concrete and asphalt by holding water that then freezes, and said iron filings will kill it. - Councilor Helms asked that iron filings not be used near any water source. It reads as small-town business, and it is, but the insurance exposure a speaker raised is real. A municipal park with ankle-deep holes is a liability question for a city already watching every fund. --- ## North Bonneville Planning Commission The Planning Commission's July 7 meeting was cancelled by formal notice. There was no July meeting. The Commission returns August 4 with a public hearing on the comprehensive zoning update and periodic review, the next step in bringing the city's zoning code current with state law. The current code was last amended under Ordinance 880 in 2005, and the new version will be codified in Title 20 of the municipal code. After the Commission acts, the state Department of Commerce reviews and comments. Documents, including the final draft and the Periodic Review Checklist, are posted at [northbonneville.net/planning/periodic-review](https://northbonneville.net/planning/periodic-review/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and available at City Hall. --- ## ⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context - **Two lift stations, one grant.** The Public Works Board application the city was racing to file would fund replacing lift stations #2 and #4\. Stations are the pumps that move sewage uphill where gravity will not. A failure is not a slow decline, it is an overflow. - **Why a closed year is hard to reopen.** Once a fiscal year is closed out and reported to the state, moving an expenditure back into it means restating figures already filed. That is why a payment landing in the wrong year cascades into "a whole bunch of allocations," in the CAO's words, rather than being a one-line fix. - **Federal staff and public meetings.** Agency policies governing when employees may speak at outside events are internal and can change without public notice. The practical effect here was that a council got the project manager's presence without her testimony. ## πŸ›  Jargon Buster - **Capital Facilities Plan (CFP):** the city's official inventory of major infrastructure and what it plans to build or replace. Grant programs require one, and require it to be accurate. - **Restoration Advisory Board (RAB):** a standing citizen panel that reviews and comments on an environmental cleanup. Membership is open to community members, including elected officials. - **PCBs:** polychlorinated biphenyls, industrial chemicals once used in electrical equipment. Banned in the US in 1979\. They do not break down, and they build up in the flesh of fish and the people who eat them. - **National Priorities List (NPL):** EPA's roster of the country's most contaminated sites. Landing on it is what makes a place a "Superfund site" and unlocks consistent federal funding and legal obligations. - **Federal Facility Agreement:** the contract that governs cleanup when the polluter is itself a federal agency. It matters because it converts good intentions into an enforceable schedule with an outside referee. - **Interlocal agreement:** a contract between two governments for one to provide a service to the other. Cities use them to buy expertise they cannot staff themselves. - **Interfund loan:** a city borrowing from one of its own funds to cover a shortfall in another, repaid later. It needs Council approval. --- ## How to Join & Learn More - **City Council** meets the second and fourth Tuesday at 7 p.m., in person at City Hall and online via Teams. Meeting ID and passcode are printed on each agenda. - **Planning Commission** meets the first Tuesday at 7 p.m. Next up: the **August 4** zoning hearing. - Agendas, minutes, and recordings: [northbonneville.net](https://northbonneville.net/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) - Zoning periodic review documents: [northbonneville.net/planning/periodic-review](https://northbonneville.net/planning/periodic-review/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) --- ### Want to help keep the Dispatch running? The Skamania Dispatch is a community-powered public service. Every meeting summary and audio briefing is free, and always will be. If you've been finding value in this work and want to help offset the costs of document requests and software tools, you can now join as a **Community Supporter for $5/month**. 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