🏨 Eyeing a Lodging Tax Hike - Bingen Oct '26 Round-Up

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🏛 Bingen October 2026 Municipal Round-Up

Agencies Covered: Bingen City Council (meetings of October 6 and October 20, 2026).

The Bottom Line: Bingen spent October on money it might raise and money it can stop spending. A proposed lodging tax increase met a skeptic, the city voted to drop a $3,450 software contract it decided it could do without, and the creek buffer fight moved from science to paperwork.

The Vibe: Two practical meetings, a stack of December deadlines, and a council counting down to the end of the year with its city attorney on his way out.

🔎 What Changed

• Council voted October 20 to cancel Granicus, the service that watches online listings for vacation rentals.
• Bingen adopted Klickitat County's new solid waste plan.
• Council signed off on the mural addendum with Big Fish Properties, and Big Fish signed it. The mural dispute is closed.
• The draft creek ordinance went to the state with Bingen's current buffers in it, not the wider ones the consultant recommended.

⚠ What Escalated

• Councilor Dale Grinstead-Mayle proposed raising the lodging tax by one percentage point. Councilor Craig Trummel said he won't back it without knowing how the money helps Bingen.
• The joint police department's 2027 budget came in 15% higher, enough to let Bingen negotiate it down.

🧭 What's Next

• November 3, 2026: lodging tax grant awards, a property tax hearing, the first public hearing on the Critical Areas Ordinance, and the appointment to the vacant council seat, per the schedule Administrator Krista Loney read October 20.
• November 17, 2026: hearings on the preliminary 2027 budget and the monthly sewer rates, which Loney said will not go up.
• December 15, 2026: target date to adopt the Critical Areas Ordinance, and a hearing on a new children and family services sales tax.
• December 2026: Council's vote on a new city attorney.

Bingen City Council

🏨 A bigger slice of the hotel bill?

Bingen collects a 2% lodging tax on hotel and vacation rental stays. It brings in about $50,000 a year, and most of it goes back out as grants to the Mount Adams Chamber of Commerce and the Huckleberry Festival. That 2% doesn't cost visitors anything extra: it's carved out of the state's sales tax rather than added on top.

On October 6, Councilor Dale Grinstead-Mayle proposed adding one more percentage point. The state lets a city stack a special lodging tax of up to 2% more on top, and that one the guest does pay. By his memo, 1% would raise about $25,000 a year for tourism marketing, festivals and events, and tourism facilities. It would take an ordinance, a public hearing, and 75 days' notice to the state Department of Revenue.

His case: last year's grant requests "tapped out" the money available, so any new event means less for the old ones. He's working on new events now, and he chairs the two that will apply as new proposals this year, a Concrete & Canvas festival and a holiday festival, with the money flowing through the Chamber. He also pointed across the river. Hood River lodgers pay 9.5% today, he said, and that rises to 10.75% in 2027 when Oregon's state lodging tax goes from 1.5% to 2.75%.

Councilor Craig Trummel was not sold. The minutes say he is opposed to a tax, or a tax increase, "without knowing how the tax increase will benefit Bingen," and he asked for a full accounting first: what the grants have paid for, who got them, and how residents have benefited. No vote was taken.

The topic came back in public comment on October 20. A resident asked the city to consider using lodging money for whatever permits it would take to let adults have a beer or a glass of wine at sanctioned events in Daubenspeck Park, outside a fenced beer garden, and urged the city to be careful with public money going to private groups that can't show a clear return. This year's grant window closed October 23. Awards are scheduled for November 3.

🔍 Bingen cancels its vacation-rental watchdog

Granicus is the company Bingen pays to watch Airbnb and VRBO for local vacation rentals and flag any running without a permit. Last December Council kept it for one more year at $3,118.50. This fall the renewal notice came in at $3,450.35, a 10.6% increase, renewing automatically November 30 unless the city gave 30 days' notice.

Loney, who issues the permits and enforces the rules herself, recommended cancelling in a memo for October 6 and made the case in person on October 20. With about a dozen vacation rentals in town, she said, the city has spent more on Granicus since 2024 than it has collected in permit and application fees. She showed Council how she'll do it instead: search the listings herself, the way she did before. In a town this size, she said, you can usually tell whose house it is from the photos. Mayor Kelsey Ramsey put it simply on October 6: he'd rather miss the permit fee on one unpermitted rental than spend more than $3,000 a year. Trummel said he'd defer to Loney if she could carry the work.

Council voted October 20 to let Loney cancel the contract.

🏞 Dry Creek, read closely

When we left off in September, the consultant had recommended wider creek buffers and Council had said no. In October the no went into writing. On September 23, Loney sent the consultant, FacetNW, a version of the draft ordinance that rejects the buffer changes and keeps Bingen's current numbers. The environmental review comment window ran September 30 to October 13. Loney reported October 20 that it drew no comments, and that the city sent the state Department of Commerce its required 60-day notice of intent to adopt on October 15.

The most detailed comment came in writing on October 6, from Peter Wright, a White Salmon resident who owns property in Bingen. His point was that you can't size a buffer until you know what you're buffering. State maps show Dry Creek as two disconnected pieces: the lower part classified as a non-fish stream, the part above Oak Street as fish-bearing. A state fish passage report lists no fish use potential where the creek crosses SR 141. Above Oak Street, the creek runs almost entirely through a 60-foot-wide White Salmon parcel, so any buffer wider than 30 feet lands on Bingen lots. And the consultant's draft had dropped the current 15-foot buffer from Lincoln Street to the railroad without saying where the creek stops being an open stream and becomes a pipe.

Council members read it differently. Trummel said that however Bingen feels about it, the state statute leaves no room to argue Jewett and Dry Creek aren't critical areas, so the city should move forward and fight about widths later. (On September 15, City Attorney Chris Lanz told Council he did not see that either creek meets the definition.) State law lists fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas among critical areas; which stretches of a creek count is a classification question, which is the one Wright raised. Councilor Eric Schroder argued that squeezing lots with wider buffers amounts to a regulatory taking, and said he won't vote for them. He floated a different idea from a property owner: let people grow hedges on the creek side, change the fence code to allow it, and help pay for the plants. Councilor Ryan O'Connor said he generally supports taking care of riparian areas.

Mayor Ramsey said anyone who thinks the buffers should be larger can appeal to the Department of Commerce. Under state law that appeal would go to the Growth Management Hearings Board, not to Commerce, which reviews the draft and can comment. A resident in the audience questioned rejecting the buffers outright, saying flat rejection could open a can of worms.

The first public hearing is set for November 3, with a final hearing and adoption targeted for December 15. Loney said the draft can still change based on what comes in.

🐢 Twenty through town

On October 20 Council reached consensus to ask the state for slower speeds on the highways through Bingen. The idea on the table: 20 mph on SR 141 starting where it drops to 25 coming down from White Salmon, 20 through downtown to about the 400 block of West Steuben, then 25 instead of 30 past Dollar General to where it turns 40. Trummel offered that 25 as a middle step. Neighborhood streets would be 20 unless posted. The new apartment complex going in along the highway, with its driveway onto it, came up as a reason to slow things down. One person in the room said they weren't in favor of lowering it, since turning traffic near Dollar General already slows drivers, but said it would help if Council went ahead.

Bingen can't do this alone on the state routes. Any change on a state highway inside city limits needs approval from the state's secretary of transportation, though a city can set 20 on its own non-arterial streets. Loney will send WSDOT's Southwest Region the request and track it in her status reports. A resident's public comment the same night supported lower limits and more ticketing of speeding semis and log trucks.

🚲 Every e-bike is out

The free e-bike library Bingen signed on to host in June came back on October 20 with a report card. Forth, the Portland nonprofit that runs it as Gorge Rides, said its 30 bikes at three hubs have been checked out more than 120 times since the July 25 launch and ridden more than 4,700 miles. About 20 riders took one-on-one coaching. When the team checked, every bike was booked out to the 31st.

Riders are using them less as a novelty and more for regular trips, Forth said: to work, to the grocery store, to appointments when gas money ran short. The team has nearly met every goal in its WSDOT grant, with 80 more new users to go. It hasn't heard whether the state will fund a second round. Running the program about another year and a half would cost $70,000 to $100,000, mostly insurance and staff time. The fallback, planned from the start, is giving the bikes away. A fall group ride is set for November 7.

🗑 Where the garbage goes

Bingen adopted Klickitat County's new solid waste plan on October 20 by Resolution 2026-10. O'Connor, who sits on the county's Solid Waste Advisory Committee, walked Council through it: better education, and restoring a full-time county solid waste director. Mackenzie, from the county's solid waste program, joined on Zoom. After all three cities adopt, she said, the county adopts and the state Department of Ecology reviews it once more.

She also answered the question everyone has. If Republic Services picks up your trash, it goes to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill. Clean recycling goes to a sorting center in Seattle and is sold on. Glass and metal from the drop sites go to Portland. Much of the county's income depends on the landfill, she said, and most of what goes into it comes from outside Klickitat County.

🚒 Police, fire and the plant

Police budget. The joint Bingen-White Salmon police department's 2027 budget came in 15% higher, to buy body cameras and a new vehicle. Under the interlocal agreement, an increase over 6% lets Bingen negotiate. The sergeant's October 20 report added that Frank Randall is retiring after a 30-year career in law enforcement.

A grant that didn't come through. Bingen Fire paid a grant writer $5,000 for a FEMA firefighter grant for new breathing apparatus, about $200,000 worth. The program awarded $219 million against more than a billion dollars in requests. Another $1,000 buys a resubmittal, and the next window may open in November. Chief Carl Spratt told Council he's unsure about moving forward.

Growing the next operator. The wastewater plant's two operators, hired in 2023 and trained through the Evergreen Rural Water apprenticeship, asked the city to start training a third. Operators are scarce and can make $15,000 to $35,000 more by moving to another plant, Loney said, so the city grows its own and ties them to a service contract. Tuition alone is $6,000 a year. She supports it but has budget worries; the 30-year-old plant needs a rehab once its capacity study is done this winter. "It's an investment slash gamble," she said. No decision yet.

⚡ The cable seat, reopened

In July, nobody on Council took Bingen's seat on the state siting council (EFSEC) for its review of the Cascade Renewable Transmission line, the power cable proposed for the bed of the Columbia. On October 6, Mayor Ramsey said he's looking again for a Bingen representative, after a River Keepers meeting on the line in White Salmon. Schroder explained why he gave up the seat: the cable runs under moving water, he said, so its effects reach far past Bingen, and nobody from Bingen should have a louder voice than someone in Wenatchee. He suggested the Mayor write the state siting council and ask for more voices in the decision. (We covered what the science says about the cable's heat in September.)

🚧 Loose ends and small print

The mural is settled. On October 6, Council authorized the Mayor to sign an addendum carving the wall above the door, left of the column, out of the mural agreement so Big Fish Properties can use it for signs. Schroder objected that nobody from Big Fish was there to ask for it; the motion carried anyway. By October 20, Loney said, Big Fish had signed and returned it.

The Quiet Zone and the corner of a building. At a meeting about the Maple Street crossing, SDS Lumber's Mike Engel made clear SDS won't pay to move the corner of its building at the Walnut Street crossing. If the money isn't there, Mayor Ramsey said, the city would have to consider closing the Walnut crossing. Plans go to BNSF next at 65% design, expected in January.

The flood ledger. Two more claims from April's water main break are settled, Loney said October 20. Chips is the last one waiting on paperwork.

Ten gallons of berries. The October 20 bills included $625 owed to the Huckleberry Festival. Bingen Fire had assumed the Huckleberry Festival Committee donated its berries, two years running. They weren't, Loney said, so she paid for both: ten gallons at $62.50 a gallon.

Money in the pipeline. Bingen learns November 20 whether it gets about $60,000 from the state Transportation Improvement Board to pave Cedar between Humboldt and Franklin and the gravel east end of Franklin. The Alder and Cedar sidewalks could go to bid in December or January. And Loney is trying a third time for a state records grant to digitize the city's old permits and maps, because large-format scans cost $4 a page.

A new sales tax on the December agenda. The December 15 hearing is on a children and family services sales tax the Legislature allowed this year, at up to one one-hundredth of one percent.

Holiday downtown. The Bingen Business Alliance is planning a one-day holiday event on Small Business Saturday, November 28: shops open noon to five, the tree lighting, Santa, and bells in the street trees sponsored by local businesses (the working name is "Sleigh Bells on Steuben").

The record, caught up. The typed September 15 minutes have arrived. They show that the "not science, bureaucracy" line in our September edition was Councilor Schroder's, and that the title-professional objection that tabled the Skyline Hospital sewer deed was Councilor Trummel's. The motion tabled the deed to the following meeting, October 6. It was on neither October agenda.

⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context

• Who asks, who decides. Lodging tax money in Washington has to go to tourism. The councilor proposing the increase also chairs the two new events that would apply for the money, which the minutes record openly. That is allowed, and it is one reason a public accounting of past grants, as Trummel asked, would help residents weigh any rate change.
• The buffer fight is now a mapping fight. With the wider buffers out of the draft, the open questions are the ones Wright raised: which reaches of Dry Creek are which type, and where an open stream becomes a pipe. Those answers decide what the ordinance actually does to the lots along it.
• A busy December with fewer hands. As of October 20, Loney counted four council meetings left in the year (November 3 and 17, December 1 and 15), with a city attorney leaving at year's end, a vacant council seat, and hearings on the budget, a sewer-rate recode, the critical areas ordinance and a new sales tax scheduled through December 15.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Lodging tax: a tax on hotel and short-term rental stays. In Washington the "basic" 2% comes out of the state's share of sales tax; a "special" tax of up to 2% more is added to the guest's bill. Either way, the money must go to tourism.
• Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO): the city code protecting streams, wetlands, steep slopes, aquifers and flood zones. State law requires every city to have one and to review it on a schedule.
• Regulatory taking: the constitutional idea that a regulation can go so far it amounts to taking property, which requires compensation. The Supreme Court said in 1922 that a regulation "goes too far" can be a taking (Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon), and in 1992 that one leaving land with no economically beneficial use is a taking (Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council). Short of that, courts weigh each case. Whether any Bingen buffer would cross that line is a question nobody has asked a court, and the current draft keeps the existing buffers.
• SCBA: self-contained breathing apparatus, the air tanks and masks firefighters wear inside smoke.
• Operator-in-training (OIT): an apprentice wastewater operator working toward state certification under a licensed operator.

📋 How to Join & Learn More

• Bingen City Council meets the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m., at City Hall and on Zoom. November meetings: the 3rd and the 17th. December meetings: the 1st and the 15th. Agendas, minutes and Zoom links are at the city's Agenda Center.
• Written comment on the Critical Areas Ordinance, the lodging tax, or anything else can go to administrator@bingenwashington.org or (509) 493-2122.
• Gorge Rides e-bike checkouts and the next available bike are on Forth's Gorge Rides site.