> ## 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. # β˜€οΈ Balcony Solar, Tree Credits, and a Postponed Store - White Salmon July '26 Round-up - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/balcony-solar-tree-credits-and-a-postponed-store-white-salmon-july-26-round-up/ - Published: 2026-08-07T07:00:17.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-07T19:58:03.000Z - Description: White Salmon committed $360,000 to chase state street grants, watched its biggest land-use hearing get postponed before it opened with 69 people already on the record, and learned its tree replacement fee is the lowest in its own board's comparison. Here's your July. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: White Salmon City Council, White Salmon Community Development Committee, White Salmon Planning Commission, White Salmon Tree Board, White Salmon, Klickitat County *Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19595310?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.* ## πŸ› July 2026 White Salmon Municipal Round-Up **Agencies Covered:** White Salmon City Council (July 1 and July 22), Planning Commission (July 8 and July 22), Tree Board (July 13), Community Development Committee (July 20), and City Lab (July 20). **The Bottom Line:** The city committed $360,000 of its own money toward $3.6 million of street work it hopes the state will fund, the convenience store proposed across from Rheingarten Park was postponed before its hearing could open with 69 people already on the comment record, and two volunteer boards spent July documenting how the city's own rules get in its way. **The Vibe:** Procedural, and unusually candid about it. Three separate bodies spent the month saying some version of the same thing: the rule as written does not do what we meant it to do. ### πŸ”Ž What Changed - Council approved two Transportation Improvement Board grant applications, committing a 10 percent match on a **$850,000 Church Avenue to Tohomish Street rebuild** and a **$2,750,000 Jewett Boulevard rebuild**. - The hearing examiner's rate went from **$230 to $330 an hour** through the end of 2028, and three Planning Commissioners were confirmed after Council held the appointments over from June. - Phase 2A of the water project connected its **new 20-inch main**, and the city can already see the difference in how fast the reservoir refills. - The Planning Commission voted to have staff draft an ordinance scrapping the short-term rental "30 percent rule" in commercial zones and replacing it with a flat table, capped on the recording at four permits per parcel. ### ⚠ What Escalated - **211 N Main.** Staff recommended denial, 69 people wrote in, the room filled, and the applicant postponed the hearing before it opened. It returns in the fall, redesigned. - **The cost of closing Jewett Boulevard.** The Community Development Committee spent the longest stretch of its 58-minute meeting on why it is so expensive, and left doubting anything can change before Halloween. - **The tree ordinance.** A board member's line-by-line comparison against seven other Washington cities found White Salmon's $400 replacement fee the lowest of the group, and questioned whether the Oregon white oak rule can be enforced at all as written. - **Federal grant rules.** The mayor flagged a proposed rewrite of the rules governing every federal grant, warning that awards could be pulled mid-stream. ### 🧭 What's Next - **August 5:** City Council, with the Latino/a/x Heritage Month resolution and a proposal to eliminate park reservation fees. - **August 10:** Tree Board at 4 p.m., and City Lab, which voted to move its August meeting up from the 17th, with Klickitat PUD invited. - **August 17:** Community Development Committee. - **Fall:** the 211 N Main application returns with a fresh notice and a new comment period, most likely in September. - **September 2:** the Tree Board aims to have its fee-in-lieu recommendation in front of Council. --- ## White Salmon City Council ### 🚧 Two Streets, Two Grant Applications, $360,000 of City Money Council held a special meeting at 11:30 on the morning of July 22 for a single purpose: get two letters of commitment signed in time for the state's 2026 Transportation Improvement Board round. Both passed on the consent agenda, 4-0 on the recording, along with a voucher total of $448,883.75 (July 22 minutes are not yet published). - **Church Avenue to Tohomish Street:** estimated total cost **$850,000**, city match not to exceed **$85,000**. Roadway reconstruction, sidewalks and seven curb ramps, curb and gutter, storm drainage and signing. The staff report's stated benefit is better pedestrian and vehicle travel, and **better emergency access to the Fire Hall**. - **Jewett Boulevard, Riverwatch Drive to Estes Avenue:** estimated total cost **$2,750,000**, city match not to exceed **$275,000**. Pavement repair, sidewalk and curb-ramp replacement (22 ramps), storm drainage, enhanced crosswalk markings, and **$550,000 of the estimate in illumination alone**. - Both estimates were prepared by the city's engineers at Anderson Perry. Both council reports say **Transportation Benefit District** funds may be used for the match. Both signed letters go into the city's application. A 10 percent match is the price of admission to a state program, and the city is committing $360,000 of local money, contingent on award, against $3.6 million of work. Jewett is a corridor the city has been pursuing state safety money for [since the spring](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/mail-stalemates-middle-housing-march-26-white-salmon-citywide-update/), and the June minutes record a previously funded Safe Routes to School project on Skyline Drive and SR-141/Jewett moving forward later this year. The reason the street keeps needing separate applications is the same reason it keeps appearing in this newsletter: **Jewett Boulevard is State Route 141**, so the city has to coordinate with WSDOT to rebuild it, and, as the Community Development Committee spent most of a meeting discovering the same month, to close it for a parade. ### πŸ’§ The 20-Inch Main Is Connected Public Works Director Chris True reported that Phase 2A hit its milestone. The typed minutes record that reservoir recovery time has improved and the project is already benefiting the system. On the recording he put numbers to it: the Los Altos reservoir now fills "almost 500 gallons a minute faster than it did previously," and recovery time is "at least a third better" (those figures are from the recording, not the minutes). Leak-loss rate comes later, once the line has been in service a while. He also offered an unplanned proof that the work was needed, again on the recording rather than in the minutes. When crews went to abandon the old line under alternate 141 the next day, it was already empty, with no service connections, when it should still have been full. "That just goes to show that that line was leaking, and this project was necessary." Storm repairs are moving more slowly. A contractor has been activated to strip the asphalt off NE Scenic Street so the full extent of the failure is visible, with a temporary gravel surface as the near-term goal. True said an earlier resurfacing was itself part of the failure, so the fix has to go deeper. The city is talking to the Department of Commerce about an emergency management grant and working its insurance carrier for the rest. ### 🧾 Appointments, an Examiner, and a Budget Misread The July 1 consent agenda passed 3-0, with Ben Giant and Morella Mora excused. It carried six items, two of them routine June minutes and one the approval of vouchers totalling **$799,967.18**. Three are worth naming: - **Planning Commission appointments confirmed:** Nate Loker (Position 1) and Erika Price (Position 5) reappointed, Adam Elliott (Position 2) new. Council had pulled this item on June 17 and asked to see the applications first; this time they were attached, redacted under state law. - **Hearing examiner renewed.** Joe Turner, PC stays on as the city's contract hearing examiner through December 31, 2028, at **$330 an hour, up from $230**. Staff called the increase substantial but a fair market rate, and said it can be absorbed: of $9,000 budgeted in planning and $63,000 in code compliance for contractual services, **$62.50 had been spent to date**. - **Resolution 2026-07-650** honored retired Planning Commissioners Greg Hohensee (2020 to 2025, and a former chair) and Michael Morneault (2019 to 2026). The examiner item was the one thing anybody stopped to discuss. A council member reading the packet thought the year's budget had nearly been spent and asked what had gone wrong. On the recording he reads the figure as sixty-some thousand; the packet says $62.50\. "Under budget," someone said, and the meeting moved on. ### πŸ‘Ά "Childcare Is Economic Infrastructure" Gabrielle Gilbert returned to public comment with a narrower ask than usual. She credited the city for what it has done, the priority list and some zoning work, then named what is missing: "What hasn't been seen is you in a newspaper view at a ribbon cutting for an actual building for childcare." Her request was structural. She wants childcare handled the way the city handles its other economic questions, as a recurring item with a real conversation, in the economic development committee's meetings. Her closing line: "We're still a desert, and we're not seeing anything." The Klickitat County Child Care Workshop meets a fourth time in August, tentatively, with Garfield County presenting how it opened a childcare building using a nonprofit, a donated building, and a state grant, and the Department of Commerce presenting on the grant program itself. Councilmember Patty Fink followed up by asking whether the county's childcare appropriation is still available to White Salmon or only to Goldendale. The mayor did not know the current status of that money, said the city spent last year trying to get the administrative change needed to expand its use, and offered to invite the county childcare committee in for an update. Gilbert is not only asking White Salmon. Three weeks before this meeting she stood in public comment at the Klickitat County commissioners and asked them "what kind of county land or buildings exist around Bingen and White Salmon on those borders" that could hold childcare, reported that she had a meeting lined up with a state representative who sits on the early education committee, and noted that ESD 112 is opening a full-time preschool this fall and hiring a teacher. Chairman Ron Ihrig's answer, on the same recording, was agreement in principle: "Gabrielle's right. You need a facility because there's money to remodel existing facilities." No search was committed to. That is the shape of this beat at every level of government, and it is the reason her ask in White Salmon is procedural rather than financial: [we have covered the county's side of it since the spring](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/childcare-as-economic-infrastructure-klickitat-bocc-4-21-4-28/), and the pattern is sympathy without a standing agenda item. The question also runs straight into the Planning Commission's July file. One of the letters on 211 N Main made the same argument about exactly that building, which the state used to own: "White Salmon and Klickitat County are desperate for childcare, that location would have been a fantastic location and there has been extensive funding available to support that." ### πŸ› An Audit of Everything Council Ever Wanted Staff asked every council member to email their priorities. On the recording the clerk asked for them "within the next month or so," and the mayor described the method behind it, which is a genuine attempt at institutional memory: staff are auditing at least two years of council meetings for everything that was flagged, requested, or raised and then never voted on. Her example was the viewshed ordinance overlay, something that "didn't move with a vote ultimately." The result comes back as one structured list and a better internal tracking habit. Committee meetings, meanwhile, are now on a fixed cadence following this spring's committee-rules ordinance, with the full calendar posted on the city website. June was thin: Public Works crews were working around the clock on storm damage, so those committees did not meet. ### πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ A Federal Rule Change Worth Watching Mayor Marla Keethler told Council there is an open federal comment period on proposed changes to the **Uniform Guidance**, the rules that govern how every federal grant is administered. Her concerns, as stated: grants could be pulled mid-award over a determined misalignment with an agency's priorities, and the administrative burden would grow. The city is coordinating with the Association of Washington Cities and may file comments of its own. She tied it to the largest thing on the local horizon: "That bridge doesn't happen without federal grants." --- ## White Salmon Planning Commission *Disclosure: the Dispatch's publisher wrote to the Planning Commission in support of this application, in her personal capacity as a White Salmon business owner and not on the Dispatch's behalf. Hers is the letter the city's tally sheet marks "Support."* ### πŸͺ The Hearing That Never Opened The biggest land-use decision of the White Salmon summer was over in minutes on July 8, and produced no decision at all. Before opening the public hearing on **211 N Main Avenue**, a proposal to convert the long-vacant former state Department of Social and Health Services building into a Center Market convenience store, the chair announced that the applicant had asked to postpone and submit revisions. The item will be re-noticed once a new date is set, in August or September, and the applicant waived any objection to the state's 120-day permit clock to make room for the redesign. The applicant confirmed on the record, saying they had learned of conditions in the July 6 staff report they had not known about, and were "okay with all the conditions." What they were reacting to was a **recommendation of denial without prejudice** from City Planner Rowan Fairfield. Most of the application passed. Retail is permitted outright in the Commercial zone. Parking works: 16 existing stalls against 15 required. Drainage, refuse screening, exterior colors, window trim, three shade trees and a separate sign permit are all routine conditions. Three standards did not pass, and they all point the same direction: - **Entry orientation.** The main entrance would move deeper into the lot, oriented to the parking area and further from the street. - **Form-based building orientation.** Same problem, under the downtown design code. - **Glazing.** The demolition plan removes most of the windows: one of two remaining on the west front, four of six on the parking-lot side, none of five on the alley side, none of two at the rear. Staff would grant a deviation on the alley wall and an exception at the rear, holding only the front and the parking-lot side to the standard. Staff's conclusion is that the remodel "increases the nonconformity" of the building and "requires a re-design of the remodel building plans." Notably, staff also granted the other side of the argument, writing elsewhere in the report that design standards are "somewhat more difficult to apply to existing construction, minor remodels, and changes of occupancy," and waiving the wall-articulation standard as reasonably inapplicable to a change of occupancy. The heaviest item is not in the design findings at all. Public Works attached a condition requiring the applicant to either **rebuild the NE Lincoln Street right-of-way** or **convert NE Lincoln to one-way traffic**, at the applicant's cost, on the strength of anticipated traffic. ### πŸ“¬ Sixty-Nine People, and a Missing Sign The city's tally sheet, which covers only comments received before 2 p.m. on the day of the hearing, counts **69 people across 58 letters**: one in support (see the disclosure above), one neutral (NW Natural, confirming gas service is available), and the rest opposed. Fourteen more letters arrived that afternoon, after the sheet was made. The concerns, as the city tagged them: proximity to Rheingarten Park (35), aesthetics and character (30), proximity to the school and youth (25), economic effects (20), traffic and parking (19), health, alcohol, tobacco and junk food (19), nuisances (9), and missing notice (3). The letters that go beyond preference sort into three arguments the Commission will have to answer in the fall. One is competition: several writers describe Harvest Market as the community's only full grocery on this side of the river and fear a second market threatens it, with one writing that losing it would leave White Salmon a food desert. Another is chain versus independent, which several writers ask the city to treat as a land-use distinction, and which one commenter noted staff had already ruled out of scope at the May hearing on a different application; the July 6 staff report on this application does not address it. The third came from a supporter, who argued that state law and federal case law require an exaction to be roughly proportional to the impact a project actually causes, and that a roughly $200,000 interior remodel does not support a street rebuild. Public Works rested its condition on the anticipated increase in traffic, and the applicant's own project narrative is the source of the numbers on both sides of that: 150 to 200 customers a day, plus one delivery van and one to three box truck deliveries a week. The letter landed two days after the staff report was written, so neither staff nor Public Works has had occasion to answer it. He also pointed at the Commission's own recent history with [the contested Wyers Street multiplex](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/), which it approved in May with modified conditions rather than denying, scaling the alley requirement down to the property's own frontage. The process itself took a hit. The notice posted at the site went missing during the comment period, which three commenters raised. Staff acknowledged it on the record: the post "was missing or was vandalized. In any case, it wasn't where it was supposed to be," and thanked the people who reported it, adding, "We've only got two eyes in between all of you. You've got about 120." Staff also conceded that the website and Voyant alert listings "aren't legally required in the same way a physically posted notice is," and promised improvements. The postponement solves the immediate problem: everyone gets a fresh noticing period, and prior commenters can keep or amend what they submitted. The chair's own summary, to the fullest room he had seen in that chamber: "Obviously, the community is very interested in this topic, and when we do revisit it, we will be looking forward to hearing all of your comments then." When this comes back, the argument on the record will not be the argument in the room. Most of the letters are about the park across the street, the character of downtown, and what the store would sell. The staff report is about where the door is and how many windows there are. The code does reach some of what the letters raise: parking, traffic, lighting and screening are all in the staff report or in the Public Works conditions. What it cannot reach is who the tenant is and which lawful products they stock. That is why the applicant's redesign, moving the door back toward Main Avenue, may satisfy the code while satisfying almost none of the letter writers. ### πŸ› The 30 Percent Rule Becomes a Table On July 22 the Commission finished the short-term rental item it opened in June, voting 4-0 on the recording to have staff draft an ordinance for the Commercial zone. (July 22 minutes are not yet published.) The [existing 30 percent rule](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/) caps short-term rentals at 30 percent of the dwellings on a parcel, which rounds a single-family home in a commercial zone down to zero permits. That was the problem the Commission was asked to fix, and the city's own June minutes note that a second chapter of the code already suggests one rental is allowed on properties with up to five units, so the two halves of the code disagree. What the Commission actually debated was the opposite end of the scale: at 30 percent, a 20-unit mixed-use building could put six units into short-term rental, which commissioners read as taking real long-term housing off the market. The tiers they landed on, worked out on screen during the meeting and not yet in any written packet: - **1 to 5 units:** one permit - **6 to 10 units:** two permits - **11 to 14 units:** three permits - **15 or more units:** four permits, and no more The effective percentage falls as a building grows, which is the point. Two guardrails shaped it. The definition read from the code at the meeting describes a hotel as generally having at least seven rental units, which gives a large project a legitimate path: split off a hotel component and license it as one. And the Commission was wary of creating a cliff that discourages housing. As one commissioner put it, "if we would slap together one of our ideas right now, there would not be a development bigger than 10 units, and that's not a win if we're trying to make long-term rental units." Two pieces of scale, both from the meeting rather than a written report: the class of properties this affects is **fewer than 10**, and city short-term rentals sit at about **5 percent against the 10 percent residential cap**, with renewals down this year. The clerk's read is that the economics stopped working and owners are reverting to long-term rentals or selling. The companion change keeps the ban on new short-term rentals in ground-floor space with commercial street frontage, exempting legacy permits and single-family structures that existed before 2022. One commissioner warned there was "a risk" in coming back to Council with more than last September's joint work-plan meeting authorized. The Commission went further anyway, sending up a rewritten table rather than the narrow fix it was handed. The item Council did explicitly reserve to itself is downtown parking, which staff will raise in a department report before the Commission touches it. --- ## White Salmon Tree Board *The Tree Board's July 13 meeting was not recorded. This section is drawn from the meeting agenda, from Davy Stevenson's own written comparison, and from Columbia Gorge Documenters notes.* ### 🌳 "Our Math ... Is Wonky" One hour of the Tree Board's July 13 meeting went to a single presentation, and it reads less like a fee discussion than a rewrite request. Board member Davy Stevenson, working with Karen Jenkins, compared White Salmon's tree ordinance against seven other Washington cities: Carnation, La Center, Covington, Burien, Bellevue, Mountlake Terrace and Redmond, with Seattle largely set aside as too complex and Tacoma as street-trees-only. Her overall finding is that White Salmon's ordinance is scaled like a city of 20,000 to 100,000 people, not one of about 2,500. Five problems, from her own written comparison and the meeting: 1. **Two sections of development incentives duplicate each other.** A copy-editing error, and a simple fix. 2. **The incentives that exist are scattered and thin.** White Salmon does offer development enticements to keep trees, a stormwater runoff credit, an off-street parking reduction, and reductions in setbacks and yard requirements, but Stevenson wants them reviewed against what other cities offer and gathered into one place. She also argued an owner can use the annual removal allowance, one to five significant trees a year depending on lot size, to strip a lot over time before development starts, sidestepping the protections that attach to a development application. 3. **"Must retain trees to the maximum extent possible" is undefined.** Stevenson called it a "meaningless phrase." Jenkins said it would not be "defensible in a courtroom." Fink defended the flexibility it gives the planner; Stevenson's answer was that the annual removal allowance functions as a "get out of jail free card," which makes the planner's recommendations optional. 4. **The replacement schedule keys off the lot's zone,** not the size of the tree or the size of the lot, which she found in no other city. In her words: "Our \[ordinance\] has nothing to do with the tree itself, and nothing to do with even the size of the lot. It has everything to do with what zone the tree is in, which is, again, super weird, right?" Her summary of the whole problem: the city's "math for figuring out how many trees someone should replace their tree they're cutting down with is wonky and doesn't match anything else anyone else is doing." 5. **The Oregon White Oak woodland rule may be unenforceable.** The code bars removing any tree without a permit in such a woodland, but the term is undefined for White Salmon, because the reference document's threshold depends on being east or west of the Cascades and the city sits on the line. Read literally, "you could cut down a one-inch sapling ... and the city could slap you with a $5,000 fine." ### πŸ’΅ A $400 Tree in a $1,000 World The numbers are the part that will reach Council. White Salmon charges **$400 per replacement tree** when a developer cannot replant on site, which Stevenson's comparison records as the lowest value among the cities she checked: Burien charges $700, Covington $1,000, Bellevue about $1,300 per tree credit (its published 2026 rate is $1,381.69), and Seattle charges either $17.87 per square inch of trunk or $2,833 per tree depending on the tier. La Center has a fee but does not publish the value. White Salmon requires one to three replacement trees depending on the lot's zone, and two for one for an Oregon white oak, where Mountlake Terrace scales three, five, seven or ten by the diameter of what was removed. Stevenson's proposed direction is a replacement table keyed to the removed tree's diameter, which makes the fee scale on its own without any further argument about dollars. Her other proposal, borrowed from Burien, is a **tree credit chart**: a property must maintain a minimum total of credits, and bigger existing trees are worth more of them, so keeping a mature tree is cheaper than replacing it. Two local examples she worked through: a 0.63-acre teardown listing on N Main would need 27 credits, meaning 14 to 27 new trees if everything existing came down; and a 4.33-acre lot proposed for 21 lots, now mostly bare grass with two large oaks, would otherwise mean roughly four to eight new trees on each of the 21 lots, where keeping the oaks could buy a lower planting requirement. Jenkins framed the whole thing as one question: "What is the value of that giant white oak at the bridge?" She asked whether the community would accept that cutting it is worth the same $400 as any other tree in town. Fink floated a fee as high as $100,000 for a tree in a new "exceptional" category, an idea Stevenson raised from other cities' codes: a tree above the significant-tree threshold, perhaps 36 or 48 inches, that cannot be removed unless it is dying and at risk of falling. Jenkins also put a finger on why this keeps coming back. The city paid a consultant two years ago to update this ordinance, and that update happened "in a bubble," without the planning commission, the development process and other stakeholders at the same table. Stevenson and Jenkins are taking a memo to Council, using the oak by the bridge as the worked example, with a proposed fee schedule and replacement options. It is not urgent unless someone applies to remove that oak, and the board is aiming at [the fee-in-lieu work it has been building since spring](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/4-units-1-lot-multiplex-drama-tree-fees-strs-white-salmon-may-26-round-up/) landing in front of Council on September 2. ### 🏘 The Housing Question Inside the Tree Question There is a housing question folded inside the fee question, and it is the one most likely to decide whether a new schedule survives contact with the city's other goals. A fee that scales with tree size lands hardest on small, tight lots, because a duplex, an ADU or a cottage cluster has to use most of its site to pencil out, while a large-lot house can simply build around its trees. Set the schedule wrong and the city ends up charging the most for exactly the housing it says it wants, and the least for the houses with room to spare. White Salmon's own code already sorts housing types this way, and not in the direction you might expect. Under WSMC 18.40.040(B)(3), a tree can be approved for removal when keeping it would squeeze the buildable footprint below a set floor, and the floor changes by housing type: **1,000 square feet for a single-family home, 900 per unit for townhomes or multi-family, and 700 for an accessory dwelling unit.** The higher the floor, the easier it is to qualify for removal. A detached house gets the most generous trigger and an ADU the least. This is not theoretical: it is the provision staff used on Wyers Street, where the oak "would prevent these units from having 900 square feet, so its removal can be approved." Four West Coast cities have written the same trade-off into their codes, in different ways: - **Bend, Oregon: exempt the small sites outright.** The tree preservation standards Bend's council adopted in June 2024 exempt residential development on sites of one acre or less from tree preservation requirements, mitigation included. The code has been amended since, and as it stands now it also lets other applications on sites of an acre or less, or on any site with three or fewer regulated trees, satisfy the requirement with mitigation alone. Above that, the clear-and-objective options are preserving at least 20 percent of priority trees (20 inches diameter at breast height or larger), at least 25 percent of the combined trunk diameter of all regulated trees (6 inches and up), or at least 5 percent of that combined diameter plus mitigation by replanting or paying into a city fund that can be spent on maintaining existing public trees as well as planting new ones. Bend pairs that with incentives of its own: exceed the thresholds and the review authority may grant up to a 30 percent setback reduction, 20 percent more lot coverage, and other allowances. Bend's version has already been stress-tested: the nonprofit affordable housing developer Thistle & Nest challenged the code as discouraging housing through unreasonable cost and delay, and in May 2025 [a hearings officer upheld it](https://bendbulletin.com/2025/05/27/bends-tree-code-upheld-after-challenge-by-affordable-housing-developer/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) as "sufficiently clear and objective" under state law, in a decision that never reached the cost question. ([Bend's tree regulation code](https://bendoregon.gov/resources/city-codes-policies-ordinances-and-resolutions/tree-regulation-code/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), codified at [BDC 3.2.200](https://bend.municipal.codes/BDC/3.2.200?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)) - **Portland: exempt by geometry, not by judgment.** [Portland City Code 11.50.040(B)](https://www.portland.gov/code/11/50?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) exempts private trees on sites under 5,000 square feet, and on sites with existing or proposed building coverage of 85 percent or more. It is objective, it is easy to administer, and it concedes the physical fact that a site cannot be both fully covered and fully treed. - **Mountlake Terrace: pay in bonuses rather than penalties, and waive the fee for affordable housing.** One of the cities already in Stevenson's comparison, Mountlake Terrace raised its minimum tree retention from 20 to 25 percent and paired it with a carrot aimed squarely at this problem: under [MTMC 19.30.045(D)](https://ecode360.com/48222451?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), a development that performs the minimum retention **on site** can earn increased lot coverage, floor area and height, plus setback reductions, and the code says outright that the bonuses were "crafted to offer value to middle housing development." The detail that matters most here is what does not earn the bonus: replacement trees and fees in lieu do not. Only keeping the tree does. And in the [tree chapter itself](https://ecode360.com/48224854?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), the fee is simply waived when at least 20 percent of a development's units meet the state's affordable housing definition. - **Bellevue: price middle housing on its own line.** Bellevue's published [fee-in-lieu schedules](https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/development/permits/permit-fees-payment/fee-lieu-schedules?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) break middle housing out separately rather than folding it in with everything else, and carry the tree replacement fee-in-lieu as its own annually adjusted line: $1,345.37 per tree credit in 2025 and $1,381.69 in 2026\. That is the live figure behind the $1,300 in the board's comparison, and it is roughly three and a half times what White Salmon charges. Two things follow that the board has not yet put on paper. The first is that **the housing waiver already exists in a city the board is studying.** Mountlake Terrace waives the tree fee-in-lieu for developments where a fifth of the units are affordable; White Salmon could adopt that and go one step further with a discount for missing-middle projects, so the tree code points the same direction as the city's housing goals instead of pulling against them. Worth noting that a fee waiver alone would not touch the sharper constraint, which is the footprint threshold above: an ADU still has to be squeezed below 700 square feet before a tree can come out for it. The second is the unglamorous one. Whatever schedule the board recommends, somebody has to administer it. A finely graded fee keyed to species, size and site conditions takes staff time to assess and more to enforce, and White Salmon has two planners, the same two who staff the Planning Commission. An estimate of that workload, and a clear answer about whose desk it lands on, belongs in the recommendation rather than after it. ### 🌲 Also at the Tree Board - **The Liberty Tree is alive and being watered.** Jenkins said Kelly Mitchell "did a really outstanding job" with the tulip poplar dedication, and that the Freemasons are keeping their watering commitment. She asked board members to alert her at the first sign of stress in the tree: "We cannot let that tree die. It has a lot of historic importance." - **Dead branches hang over the city playground,** which Stevenson flagged as urgent because children play beneath them. The board wants a consultation with Public Works, which has been consumed by unexpected work, in August or September. - **Heritage Tree designation is again waiting on board member Craig Wilson,** who holds the nomination on the oak near the bridge project, described at earlier meetings as roughly 350 years old. The ordinance puts the burden of contacting the landowner on whoever nominates the tree, and the Documenter observing the meeting read the nomination as dead in the water. - **Tree Walk funding stands at $12.** --- ## White Salmon Community Development Committee *The committee publishes no minutes or packet. This section rests entirely on the Columbia Gorge Documenters: their recording of the July 20 meeting and their notes on it. The figures below have no typed source.* ### πŸŽƒ Halloween, Minus the Haunted House The committee's July 20 meeting was mostly a post-mortem on the Fourth of July and a preview of a Halloween problem. The preview came first, and it was blunt. There is no haunted house planned this year. Chamber director Tammara Tippel, who has led it and spent seven years asking for volunteer help, said she still cannot get enough, that none was held last year, and that nobody else has offered. The city also cannot call it a haunted house anymore, for insurance reasons; the approved term is now "Halloween scenes." That matters more than it sounds, because the display is what justified closing the street. Without it, Tippel said, "there's a lot less need to close the street." What the event draws, from her door counter: about **1,400 visits in a heavy year**, around **800 in a slower one**, in a city of roughly 2,500 people. Councilmember Ben Giant, who chairs the committee, pushed back on reading the event through the businesses alone. Businesses are one constituent among many, he said, and Halloween brings out residents who otherwise do not spend time downtown. Mora agreed: Halloween is "the city's favorite holiday ... I just don't see them show up for the Christmas stuff or July 4 parade ... But everyone is at Halloween." Giant took the action to ask the mayor, in his words, "what do we need to do to recreate the magic of years past, and are there creative ways to not make this a ten thousand dollar bill to shut down Jewett for a couple hours?" He also asked Tippel to sound out the business community, and to help look for someone willing to lead a Halloween scenes display. ### 🚧 Why Closing Your Own Main Street Costs So Much The committee spent the longest stretch of the meeting on a question it has been [circling since June](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/): why a few hours of street closure costs what it costs. Three answers came out, and together they are the clearest explanation the record has produced. **First, Jewett is a state highway, so the city plays by WSDOT's rules on its own main street.** Every closure needs an approved traffic control plan, and a plan is not one document that covers the year. Each event needs its own, for its own closure footprint, which means July 4, Halloween and October's Mountain Town Throwdown are three separate submissions. **Second, the city is a more expensive customer than the chamber.** Tippel ran the Fourth of July traffic control herself and believes she paid less than the city would have. Committee members attributed the gap to city procurement rules and prevailing wage, with Giant's shorthand for the constraint being that "public gifting of funds is the big worry." Nobody at the table had the figures in front of them. **Third, and this is the part worth remembering: the company hired to write the city's traffic control plan is the company hired to perform the traffic control.** A committee member's read, on a recording that does not label speakers: "They obviously made it as robust as they could so that their paycheck was as robust as it could be. That's what I have analyzed out of that." Tippel had written a simpler plan herself before the city's existed, and it worked. On adopting the city's instead: "Without really analyzing it, I rolled with that, and I regret it." City Clerk Erika Castro Guzman, newly the committee's staff resource, added a lead worth chasing: a committee member recalled at least three road-shutdown plans drawn up a couple of years ago covering different segments of downtown, and suggested following up with Public Works. The city can amend its plan. The path runs through Council ratification and then WSDOT approval, and Giant does not expect it finished before Halloween; his framing is that the work would make Jewett routing easier for future committees next year. Mora's objection to letting it drift: "If shutting down Jewett becomes so cost-prohibitive that now the town is running out of events, that just seems really silly to me." Meanwhile the next event is already exposed. **Mountain Town Throwdown, October 10**, has been handed off by Everybody's Brewing to the White Salmon Business Alliance, and traffic control is the piece nobody has funded. That is the same group, now becoming the White Salmon Main Street organization, that wrote to the city two weeks earlier asking it to deny or further review the Center Market application. Tippel's summary of the sponsorship math, from the Fourth: "I don't know if I could get a sponsorship for five grand to close the street." ### πŸ—“ Two Resolutions Headed to Council - **Latino/a/x Heritage Month.** The committee finalized the rename of Hispanic Heritage Month, with "Latine" as the plural form, and is sending it to the **August 5** Council meeting as a business item rather than a consent item, so the change gets discussed on the record. Mora will introduce it and provide the historical and modern context. Giant's process note: the mayor still has to agree it belongs on the agenda, "this is our recommendation." - **Park reservation fees, eliminated.** The committee is recommending Council zero out the reservation fee by resolution, keeping the application process. Two charges are in play: a $150 deposit the city has not actually kept in years and then has to refund by check, and the reservation fee itself, which varies by group and is charged by the hour including setup and cleanup. The mayor is supportive. - **The move of Mental Health Awareness Month to August is on hold.** The argument for moving it was that April carries two observances and August carries none. The counterargument was that it is a national designation with national programming of its own, so moving the city's recognition to a month of its own would ask partner agencies to duplicate what they already do. The committee split and held off. Also from the meeting: Giant is taking point on rehabbing the fading **"Before I Die" installation**, which needs recoating and re-stenciling and which he expects done within about six weeks. Mora asked to put **Day of the Dead and El Grito** on the next agenda, with the aim of supporting the organizers rather than duplicating them, possibly by adding a harvest-celebration element honoring agricultural workers, and suggested this committee recommend the nominees for the community award the mayor presents at El Grito. And her general principle for the committee's programming: more free events, because much of what happens downtown is priced in a way that leaves people out. --- ## White Salmon City Lab *New to this round-up. City Lab is the city's climate and emission-reduction advisory board, created in 2021 after the city declared a climate crisis. It is the body that brought Council* [*the EV-ready ordinance adopted in June*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/)*. Like the Community Development Committee, it publishes no minutes or packet; this section comes from the Columbia Gorge Documenters' recording and notes, plus the slide deck presented at the meeting.* ### β˜€οΈ The Solar Panel You Plug Into an Outlet City Lab spent its July 20 meeting on a technology that Utah legalized in 2025, that Third Act counts nine more states adopting this year, and that is still not legal to plug in here. Anne Shields of Third Act Washington, a group of people 60 and older working on climate policy, walked the board through **balcony or plug-in solar**: a solar panel, portable or fixed, connected to a microinverter and plugged into an outdoor outlet. It reduces what a household draws from the grid rather than feeding power back into it. Germany has more than five million registered systems, adoption having taken off when electricity prices spiked after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The case for it, from her slides: an estimated **$100 to $600 a year** off a utility bill depending on location, a **typical payback around five years**, and **53 million U.S. households that cannot install rooftop solar at all**. A plug-in system needs no roof, and a renter can take it along. Safety is the objection, and there is now a standard for it. **UL 3700**, issued in January 2026 and amended in March, classifies kits between 200 and 1,200 watts as household appliances, which in the states that have legalized plug-in solar takes them out of the utility approval process. Certified systems cut power in under a second if unplugged and stop producing during an outage, so a utility worker on the line is not exposed. ### πŸ› What Happened in Olympia, and What the Board Does About It Washington's plug-in solar provision died in committee this year, and Shields' account of why is a small case study in how a bill fails. Legislative leaders on the energy committee expected an easy win. The bill went to a newly appointed legislator filling a vacant seat. Utility lobbyists raised safety and electrocution concerns. Nobody told the committee that a UL certification was already in draft, so the state agency with oversight concluded the safety issues were insurmountable, and the plug-in provision never made it out of committee. A second piece, legalizing **meter socket adapters** that let a household add EV charging without rewiring the electrical panel, was buried under late amendments from an investor-owned utility that would have stretched inspection timelines. What survived is SHB 2296, the same bill stripped of both, carrying only an optional conservation program for rental housing that lets utilities recover their costs by billing tenants. Shields' verdict on that: "I'm not sure I think that's a win." The whole experience, she said, "really rattled a lot of solar advocates." Shields also flagged **net metering**, the 1:1 credit that makes home solar pencil out, telling the board Washington's rules "expire in February" and that a legislature-commissioned study is pending on what replaces them. The Documenters' note on that meeting adds a correction worth carrying: the February 2027 change is Pacific Power moving from net metering to net billing, and other Washington utilities must maintain net metering until June 2029 or until they hit a set share of past peak demand. Klickitat PUD is not Pacific Power, which is part of why the board wants the utility in the room. The board's response was practical and small. City Lab agreed to **invite Klickitat PUD to its August 10 meeting** and find out whether the local utility sees a problem with any of this. Chair David Lindley pitched it as feeling them out, a follow-up to an earlier conversation in which PUD representatives seemed open. Fink said she did not yet feel informed enough to carry the case herself. The board also weighed handouts, a booth, and bringing Shields back, with the plan being to get the utility in the room in August so that a table at HuckFest in September can carry materials and possibly a live demonstration. The sharpest question of the night came from Kate Bennett, a former City Lab project lead who still attends: if the city ever encourages or funds these installations, how is it protected when residents install them badly? Most people, she pointed out, do not know whether an outlet is on a 15-amp or 20-amp circuit. Shields conceded the behavior, describing a video of "five guys on a roof installing nine plug-and-play systems they bought off the Costco rack," while saying her technical consultants rate the real-world risk as low. The question is still open, and it is the one City Lab will have to answer before it asks the city to do anything. **Follow it yourself.** Third Act pointed the board to four places to read more, and it is worth knowing that all four argue the same side of this. Volts, the energy podcast by Seattle writer David Roberts, ran ["What's the Deal with Balcony Solar?"](https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-deal-with-balcony-solar?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) in November 2025 with Bright Saver co-founder Cora Stryker, which is the friendliest introduction going. [Bright Saver](https://www.brightsaver.org/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) is a California nonprofit that both advocates for plug-in legislation state by state and sells kits, at member pricing, so read it as an interested party. [Permit Power](https://permitpower.org/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) works the broader problem of permitting and inspection delays for rooftop solar and home batteries. And [Third Act Washington](https://thirdact.org/washington/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) posts its own legislative updates, which is where the next bill's shape will show up first. The deck's safety slide also points at UL's own testing and certification framework and its plug-in solar white paper. Those are Third Act's answer to the safety objection rather than the objection itself, but they are the documents the whole fight turns on, and they are worth reading before anyone takes a position. --- ### ⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context - **One fact explains two different July arguments: Jewett Boulevard is State Route 141.** It is why the city needs WSDOT coordination to rebuild the street with grant money, and why closing it for a parade requires a traffic control plan the state has approved. The other half of the cost story is not the highway at all: it is that when the city is the payer, public procurement rules and prevailing wage apply, which is why the chamber running the same closure is cheaper. - **A quasi-judicial hearing is narrower than a public debate.** In a Type II site plan review, the Commission decides whether an application meets the code, not whether the use is a good idea. That is why letters about alcohol, traffic and small-town character sit beside a staff report about entrances and window glazing. The code reaches the traffic and the parking. It does not reach the tenant. - **A commenter raised a proportionality test that has not been briefed.** One letter argued that state law and federal case law require a condition like the NE Lincoln Street rebuild to be roughly proportional to the impact the project actually causes. It arrived after the staff report was written and before any decision, so nobody at the city has answered it yet. - **On sourcing.** Council's July 1 meeting has typed minutes, though some detail in this edition comes from that meeting's recording and is marked. The July 22 special meeting and both Planning Commission meetings have no minutes yet, so tallies and read-aloud figures from them come from the recordings. The Tree Board meeting was not recorded at all, and the Community Development Committee and City Lab publish no minutes or packets. Those three sections exist because Columbia Gorge Documenters volunteers were in the room: the Tree Board section comes from their notes and a board member's own written comparison, and the other two from the Documenters' recordings and notes. This edition covers meetings through July 22. ### IπŸ›  Jargon Buster - **TIB (Transportation Improvement Board):** a state agency that funds city street projects. Applicants have to put up a share of the cost themselves, here 10 percent, which is the "match." - **Transportation Benefit District:** a separate local funding district a city can use for transportation work. White Salmon says it may pay its grant match from it. - **Type II site plan review:** the mid-level land-use process. Staff write a report and recommendation, the Planning Commission holds an open-record hearing and makes the decision, and a party of record can appeal to City Council within 30 days. - **Denial without prejudice:** a no that does not bar the applicant from reapplying with a corrected proposal. Here the item came off the agenda before any decision, so nothing was actually denied. - **The 120-day rule:** the state clock that limits how long a city can take to decide a permit application. An applicant can waive it, which is what happened here, to buy time for a redesign. - **Form-based code:** design rules about a building's shape and its relationship to the street, such as where the entrance goes and how much of the ground floor is glass, as opposed to rules about what happens inside. - **Fee-in-lieu:** the payment a developer makes when they cannot meet a requirement on site, here replanting trees. The money goes into a fund to do that work elsewhere. - **Missing middle:** the housing between a single-family house and an apartment block, duplexes, triplexes, cottage clusters, ADUs. It is the housing type most affected by per-site fees, because it uses more of a small lot. - **Prevailing wage:** the state-set wage rate a public agency must pay on public work. Committee members pointed to it as one reason a city-run closure costs more than a chamber-run one. - **Net metering:** the rule requiring a utility to credit rooftop solar back to a customer at the full retail rate. ### πŸ“ How to Join and Learn More - **City Council:** Wednesday, August 5, 6 p.m., 119 NE Church Ave and on Zoom. Written comment goes to [public.comment@whitesalmonwa.gov](mailto:public.comment@whitesalmonwa.gov) by noon that Wednesday, and lands in the packet and the official record. - **Planning Commission:** no first-August meeting. The second August meeting, the 26th on the city calendar, depends on whether a commissioner is available to chair, and the 211 N Main application is expected back in September with a new comment period. - **Tree Board:** Monday, August 10, 4 p.m., 100 N Main Ave (the July notes say August 8, which is a Saturday; the city's meeting calendar says the 10th). - **Community Development Committee:** Monday, August 17, 5 p.m. - **City Lab:** the board voted on July 20 to move its August meeting from the 17th to Monday, August 10, with Klickitat PUD invited. The city's calendar may not have caught up, so check the posted agenda for the date and time before you go. - Agendas, packets and recordings: whitesalmonwa.gov/meetings. *Three of the five meetings in this edition were covered by Columbia Gorge Documenters volunteers, and would otherwise have gone unrecorded: the Tree Board on July 13 by Caroline Elliott, the Community Development Committee on July 20 by Kathy Pickering, and City Lab on July 20 by Rowan McKenna, all edited by Swen Carlson. The recordings of the two July 20 meetings are theirs as well.* *Columbia Gorge Documenters is powered by Uplift Local and published under CC BY 4.0:* [*https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/*](https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*. Facts drawn from their work; the writing is ours.* --- ### β›΅ New on the site: a wind cam at the green buoy We put a camera on the river. It watches the Columbia at the Underwood green buoy and posts a fresh picture about every five minutes, day and night, so you can check the water before you drive down. The same camera catches the trains, and the page keeps a small gallery of the best paint that rolled past this week. There's a serious job under the fun: every train is recorded and kept for a trailing week, and if one is ever suspected to be involved in a fire, we can provide video on request. Have a look: [https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood](https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood-green-buoy-river-conditions-updated-every-5-minutes/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)