🍼 Childcare as "Economic Infrastructure" - Klickitat BOCC 4/21 & 4/28

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🏛 April 21 & 28, 2026 Meetings

The Body: Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners

The Bottom Line: The BOCC is exploring public-private partnerships to address the local childcare shortage while simultaneously bracing against the financial and operational weight of state-level mandates, such as impending energy codes and public health cuts.

The Vibe: Pragmatic and defensive. Commissioners are focused on practical infrastructure fixes and community lifelines, while actively managing the impact of state policies.

Executive Summary

🔎 What Changed:

• The Board finalized and awarded bids for major county infrastructure, including Courthouse exterior wall repair (Olympic Roofing), stucco replacement, and painting (Portland Coatings Inc.).
• Contracts were awarded to Dirt & Aggregate Interchange, Inc. for county-wide guardrail upgrades.
• Approved an Open Space Land Classification for the Spatz property.
• Agreed to a 3% annual rate increase for the next three years for Adult Probation contracts with local municipalities.

⚠ What Escalated:

• State Public Health Cuts: The local Health Department is preparing for lean operations to absorb impacts from a $21 million statewide public health funding cut.
• State Mandate Friction: Frustration over uniform state building and energy codes continues to grow, with the building department warning that new mandates will hinder affordable housing efforts.

🧭 What’s Next:

• May 12: Public hearing to consider a supplemental budget and amendments to the 2026 budget.
• May 13: Emergency Management roundtable exercise to coordinate regional evacuation plans.
• Late May: The Planning Commission's newly amended Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) standards are expected to go before the Board.

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🍼 Childcare as Economic Infrastructure

The county is shifting how it views childcare, moving away from treating it as a private family issue and toward treating it as critical infrastructure required to keep the local economy functioning.

• Officials extensively reviewed the Boardman, OR model (the Neal Early Learning Center) as a successful case study.
• The Board discussed leveraging enterprise zones and corporate sponsorships to subsidize local facilities.
• Major regional employers like Lamb Weston were highlighted as examples of partners who could help underwrite the costs to ensure childcare staff receive a living wage.

Rural counties are realizing that economic development is directly tied to the workforce having reliable childcare. Now they're exploring the use of enterprise zones to instead subsidize childcare, as these typically offer tax incentives to businesses for equipment or building development. In doing so, Klickitat County may seek to bypass federal and state grant bottlenecks, just like the Neal Early Childcare Center in Boardman, OR successfully accomplished. This highlights a realization that traditional free-market childcare models fail in rural areas due to low density and high operational costs, requiring intervention akin to building a public utility.

🏛 Legislative Strategy & Energy Code Friction

The county received legislative updates from Potts and Associates lobbyist Zak Kennedy. Concurrently, the building department discussed the impending impact of state energy code updates.

• The State Building Code Council is moving forward with mechanical and energy code updates, tentatively scheduled for May.
• Local officials expressed deep concern that these codes are "very prohibitive" and will worsen the affordable housing situation by drastically raising the cost per square foot for new construction.
• Eastern Washington counties are increasingly "bowing their necks" against these uniform mandates.

Much like the increased relative costs of building childcare centers with required code and safety standards, state energy codes potentially risk increasing the cost of new housing beyond a breaking point. These new codes require higher efficiency standards in new construction, and threaten to stall rural development by raising building costs beyond local median incomes. The county faces a difficult choice: adopt the costly codes (many of which are critical safety revisions and wildfire-conscious updates) and freeze out low-income buyers, or risk state audits and potential fines for lack of enforcement.

🗺️ Editor's Note: The National Playbook on Energy Codes

The friction between aggressive state climate goals and rural building costs is not unique to Washington; it is escalating nationwide. Local leadership is closely watching how other rural jurisdictions are successfully pushing back against uniform mandates.

• Federal Reversal: In April 2026, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the USDA formally rescinded a rule that would have required new homes financed with FHA or USDA rural loans to comply with strict 2021 energy codes. The agencies acknowledged the mandates drove up new home prices to unsustainable levels for rural residents.
• The "Trigger" Loophole (The Colorado Model): Rather than granting outright exemptions, some states tie new energy mandates to local base code updates. As seen in legislation like Colorado's HB22-1362, if a rural county simply delays updating its standard electrical or plumbing codes, the new energy mandates are temporarily kept at bay.
• Tiered Timelines: Across the West, successful rural lobbying often abandons the demand for permanent "flat exemptions" and instead negotiates for delayed implementation dates (e.g., pushing compliance out to 2032 to allow technology prices to drop).

Klickitat County doesn't need to invent a new legislative wheel, it just needs to run a smarter playbook. Flat defiance framed purely as "government overreach" rarely survives state supreme courts. Instead, by echoing the recent HUD/USDA reversal, local lobbyists might be able to frame the energy code fight strictly as a workforce housing and affordability issue. The ultimate goal may not be a permanent exemption, but rather a legally sound, negotiated delay that allows the local supply chain for say, heat pumps and high-efficiency materials to mature before costs are passed directly to local homebuyers.

🏘 Housing & Land Use Tweaks

The Planning Commission continues to adjust local zoning laws to address the housing shortage without sacrificing neighborhood character.

• The Planning Commission voted on formal recommendations regarding Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) standards.
• The new rules establish a strict 200-foot proximity requirement for ADU placement relative to primary structures.
• The amendments explicitly remove the Short-Term Rental (STR) condition from these specific units.

The county is working to incentivize homeowners to build "in-law" suites to increase the long-term rental housing supply, while addressing the common worry that these units will be converted into Airbnbs. By strictly defining the physical footprint (the 200-foot rule) and stripping the STR capability, the county hopes to organically boost workforce housing density without requiring massive subdivision developments or inviting speculative real estate investment.

The Paradox of "What-If" Zoning: Are Short-Term Rental Fears Blocking Real Housing?

As local governments scramble to fix the rural housing shortage, a well-intentioned but destructive anxiety is paralyzing the development of "missing middle" housing: the fear of the Airbnb. However, leading housing research suggests this fear is vastly overblown. A massive survey by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that, despite immense local hand-wringing, only 8 percent of new Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) actually end up as short-term rentals.

Furthermore, preemptively banning STRs to "protect" neighborhood character actively worsens the housing crisis. An analysis highlighted by the James Madison Institute demonstrated that removing a homeowner's ability to rent short-term actually caused ADU permits to plummet by 16.5 percent. Economists attribute this to a loss of "option-value"—building an ADU is a massive financial risk, and homeowners need the safety net of short-term flexibility to secure construction loans, even if they plan to rent to a long-term local.

As Daniel Parolek, the architect who coined the term "Missing Middle Housing," frequently argues: if cities want to successfully build duplexes, cottage courts, and ADUs, they must focus on objective design and ease of permitting, rather than micro-managing hypothetical uses. By regulating ADUs based on fear, communities are at risk of accidentally freezing the exact housing supply they desperately need.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Enterprise Zone: A designated geographic area where businesses can receive tax breaks, regulatory relief, or financial assistance from the government to encourage economic development and job creation.
• ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. A demographic term used to describe young, working adults who struggle to afford basic needs like housing, vehicles, and the actual cost of childcare despite being fully employed.

📅 How to Join & Learn More

Join the Conversation: The Klickitat County Board of Commissioners meets on Tuesdays. You can attend in person at the Klickitat County Services Building (115 West Court, Room #201, Goldendale, WA) or virtually via Zoom.

Explore the Raw Materials: View the official meeting agendas and packets at the Klickitat County website.

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