🏛 An EV Mandate, a Denied Appeal, and the 30% Rule - White Salmon June '26

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🏛 June 2026 White Salmon Municipal Round-Up

Agencies Covered: White Salmon City Council (June 3 and June 17), Community Development Committee (June 15), Planning Commission (June 24).
The Bottom Line: New homes in White Salmon must now be wired and ready for fast EV charging, the city is bracing for a dry and storm-stressed summer, and a contested four-unit project on Wyers Street is final after the Planning Commission declined to reopen it.
The Vibe: Forward-looking but cost-conscious. Council kept circling one question, "who pays," even while celebrating state champions and Pride.

🔎 What Changed

• Council adopted an EV-ready ordinance (2026-06-1188) requiring Level 2 charging infrastructure in most new homes with off-street parking, on a 5-0 vote.
• The Six-Year Transportation Plan and modernized finance policies (purchasing-card, travel) were adopted.
• The city surplused its cluster mailboxes, committing to no-fee post office boxes as the path to free, equitable delivery.

⚠ What Escalated

• A late-May storm closed Skagit Road and broke a water main near Scenic, as the city heads into a drought summer with conservation reminders coming.
• The July 4th street closure is stuck on a roughly $10,000 traffic-control cost the CDC chair called "ludicrous."
• Planning Commission appointments were pulled to July 1 after a councilor asked to see the applicants' materials first.

🧭 What's Next

• July 1: Council re-votes on the Planning Commission appointments.
• July 8: Planning Commission public hearing on a 211 North Main convenience-store change of use.
• A July Council meeting: the CDC's Hispanic Heritage Month rename and a park-fee resolution come forward.

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White Salmon City Council

(June 3 and June 17)

🔌 Housing & Climate: EV-Ready Homes

• Council adopted Ordinance 2026-06-1188, 5-0. It adds a new section (15.04.037) to the city's existing building-code chapter, requiring "EV-ready" Level 2 wiring in new residential construction with a garage, carport, or designated off-street parking space.
• "EV-ready" means a 240-volt circuit, panel capacity, and conduit. It does not install a charger and does not require anyone to own an electric vehicle.
• The measure came from CityLab, the city's emission-reduction body, and the idea originated with Council Member Patty Fink. Klickitat PUD estimated roughly $50 to $200 to make a typical new house EV-ready.
• Exemptions, granted by the building official, apply when the utility certifies adequate capacity cannot reasonably be provided, or for unique site conditions. Cost alone is not enough. Manufactured homes, affordable housing, and dwellings under 800 square feet are excluded, and a variance path exists.

Public comment. Resident Mark Lemley urged caution, recounting a $6,000 to $8,000 transformer upgrade he had faced for his own garage and warning that transformer supply chains have stretched from three-to-six months before the shortage to "one to two plus years," with prices up sharply since 2020. "I feel like it's premature for us to be doing this at this point in this town," he said. Resident and homebuilder Kate Bennett spoke in support, arguing the wiring costs "four to six times less" to install during construction than to retrofit, and that "access to charging is one of the strongest predictors of whether households adopt electric vehicles at all." She noted most charging happens at home overnight, and that a slower Level 1 outlet adds only 35 to 40 miles overnight. That covers a Hood River round trip, which she put at 10 to 15 miles, but not a commute to The Dalles or Portland, which she estimated at 40 to 70 miles round trip.

The hearing was less about electric cars than about who absorbs cost in a town that badly needs housing. Council Member Doug Rainbolt pushed for a future retrofit program to help existing homeowners, calling it "a missing piece." Council Member Morella Mora asked the night's recurring question, "who is this for, and who's really going to benefit from this," and warned against deterring affordable-housing developers. Council Member Ben Giant said he "bristled" at the idea of adopting the rule simply because building it in is cheaper than retrofitting later, treating any new mandated cost as a serious decision. The city attorney cautioned that the "cannot reasonably be provided" exemption may need tightening to account for transformer supply-chain delays. Patty Fink closed the debate plainly: "It's a first step, Doug. We have to take a first step, and this is the first step." The vote moves the city's long-tracked electrification goal from plan into code.

🚧 Public Works & Water

• A late-May storm closed Skagit Road; groundwater settling triggered a main break that also damaged Scenic. Engineers are investigating a long-term fix, and the road stays closed for safety.
• With Washington in a statewide drought since April, the Mayor said the city will issue summer water-conservation reminders, escalating if reservoir levels drop, recalling last year's reservoir failure that affected Strawberry Mountain.
• Council adopted the Six-Year Transportation Plan (Resolution 2026-05-645), 4-0. Public Works Director Chris True re-prioritized failing roads over smaller resurfacing jobs and added a Dock Grade rail-crossing upgrade.
• On June 17, the Transmission Main Replacement Phase IIA (Tapani Inc.) reached about 70% complete (Change Order No. 3 for $71,016, chiefly a Forester Lane road-failure repair; Pay App No. 5 for $564,963.37). The North Main and Spring Street project (Ajax NW) is about 89% complete (Pay App No. 12 for $37,804.55). The Mayor flagged that storm-damage costs are straining Public Works and Finance, with unfunded street repairs ahead.

🏛 Governance, Finance & Mail

• June 3 consent agenda (5-0): collective bargaining agreements, Resolution 2026-06-646 (AWC RMSA member standards), Resolution 2026-06-647 (surplus property), and vouchers reported at $2,165,805.85.
• That surplus retired the city's cluster mailboxes. After years pursuing an in-city mail route, the city concluded that no-fee post office boxes are the only viable way to give everyone free, equitable delivery (a carrier route would have left residents within a mile of the post office out anyway).
• June 17 consent agenda (5-0): Resolution 2026-06-648 (purchasing-card policy) and Resolution 2026-06-649 (travel and expense policy), both modernized to address 2022-2023 State Auditor recommendations, plus the Tapani and Ajax payments and vouchers reported at $328,914.89.
• The Planning Commission appointments (Nate Loker, Adam Elliott, Erika Price) were pulled from the June 17 consent agenda to July 1, after Council Member Patty Fink asked that applicant materials accompany future confirmations. The Mayor noted the Planning Commission is the city's body: the Mayor appoints, and the Council confirms.

💰 System Development Charges

• The Operations Committee, led by Doug Rainbolt, kept building a System Development Charge model, proposing to allocate costs by water-meter capacity ("equivalent meter units") rather than the state's headcount or square-footage approaches. A preliminary figure of about $12 million was cited for near-term water needs, before counting streets and distribution lines. The committee is gathering GIS data and hopes to bring a model to staff soon.

🎉 Community & Recognition

• The council opened June by honoring Columbia High School's Knowledge Bowl team as repeat 2026 state champions (with retiring coach Omar Sankari), and plans a week recognizing the school's other 1A state champions in boys cross country, boys wrestling, and girls tennis.
• For Pride Month, Ben Giant introduced Columbia Gorge Pride Alliance coordinator Kit Barajas Clasen, who described a month of Gorge-wide programming, free gender-affirming gear, and healthcare and document-change advocacy. On June 17, Morella Mora presented a Juneteenth recognition.
• Council Member Morella Mora was appointed to the Governor's Equitable Housing Advisory Board as a commissioner.
• The city's e-bike lending library (the WSDOT and Climate-Commitment-Act-funded "Gorge Rides" program, 30 bikes shared across White Salmon and Bingen) held a community event June 18.

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White Salmon Community Development Committee

(June 15)

🗓 Heritage Recognitions

• The committee advanced its Hispanic Heritage Month rename toward a final document for a July Council meeting. Morella Mora is updating the language (weighing "Latine" or "Latina/o/x") to honor a community that, in her words, is "not a monolith."
• A proposal to shift Mental Health Awareness Month from April to August stalled. City staffer Jenne Patterson noted May is the national observance and that asking partner agencies to duplicate programming could be a heavy lift, so the committee will gather more input, possibly through a forum.
• For June, the committee opted to bring a short Juneteenth video to Council while continuing to promote Pride programming.

🎆 Events & the $10,000 Closure

• The committee seated a new full member, Tammara Tippel, executive director of the Mt. Adams Chamber of Commerce.
• July 4th planning collided with the city's traffic-control plan: a full street closure runs about $10,000, including roughly $3,300 just for the nine staff needed to manage detours. Chair Ben Giant called that "just ludicrous to me" and the plan "overly robust." The committee is exploring a revised plan and clearer terms for borrowing Public Works barricades. The downtown Halloween event is at risk unless the state re-approves a revised plan by October.

🌳 Parks, Fees & Tourism

• Giant confirmed that zeroing out park reservation fees requires a Council resolution rather than an ordinance; a draft heads to a July Council meeting.
• The committee began weighing tourism-draw events against community events as the White Salmon Business Alliance prepares to become its own nonprofit and join the US Main Street organization, with an eye to lodging-tax grants. Tammara Tippel described her working test for those funds: an activity "needs to bring people who live more than 50 miles away to come here and stay the night and spend their money, period." The city's written rules are looser. White Salmon's 2026 grant guidelines count a tourist as someone who either travels more than 50 miles one way for the day or stays overnight in paid accommodations, and they give priority to proposals that produce overnight stays in White Salmon lodging or draw day visitors from outside Klickitat County.

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White Salmon Planning Commission

(June 24)

🏘 The Wyers Street Project: Reconsideration Denied

• The commission denied a request to reconsider its May 27 conditional approval of WS-SPR-2026.002, a four-unit project at 130 SE Wyers Street. The motion to grant reconsideration died for lack of a second, so the conditioned approval is now final.
• Applicants Juan Chaves and Janae Papazian, with party of record Peter Wright, had alleged three legal errors, including that a staff memo introducing a "single structure" requirement (Condition 12) closed the record before they could respond, and that an alley-paving condition (Condition 4) was imposed without the project-specific findings state exaction law requires. City Planner Rowan Fairfield and the city attorney advised that no obvious legal error had occurred.
• The owners had actually won approval in May, but with conditions they didn't want: a requirement to merge their two-duplex design into a single building, and to pave the abutting alley. Their reconsideration request asked the commission to drop those two conditions, and when the motion to reopen the case got no second, it failed, leaving the conditioned approval final.

🛏 Short-Term Rentals in Commercial Zones

• The commission opened a workplan review of short-term rentals in the Commercial zone. Under the current "30% rule," no more than 30% of a parcel's residential units may be short-term rentals, which rounds a single-family home (one unit) down to zero, even though that same home could be a short-term rental in a residential zone.
• Commissioners leaned toward fixing what they saw as a likely oversight, while keeping a separate rule that bars new rentals from ground-floor commercial frontage to protect Jewett Boulevard storefronts. Citywide, short-term rentals sit around 5% of units against a roughly 10% cap. Commissioners will mark up the code for a future workshop.
• The meeting was the last for Commissioner Michael Morneault after about eight years of service.

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⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context

• White Salmon isn't alone. EV-ready mandates are spreading through state and local codes, and the affordability tension Council debated is live elsewhere. California's 2025 code requires charging at every new multifamily space with no low-income exemption, and a state bill now proposes waiving it for affordable housing until 2036. White Salmon takes the more common middle path, carving out affordable housing, manufactured homes, and the smallest dwellings. Washington's own energy code has required one EV-ready space in most new single-family homes since March 2024, so the city is largely localizing a statewide direction.
• EV-ready is not EV charging. The ordinance requires passive infrastructure (a circuit, panel space, and conduit). No load reaches the grid until a homeowner buys an EV and plugs in. The record-keeping argument came from public comment, not the utility: homebuilder Kate Bennett argued the ordinance would give Klickitat PUD a record of which new homes are pre-wired, letting it plan transformer upgrades ahead of demand rather than being surprised by load after the fact. What KPUD itself told the city, per the staff report, is that demand on its system has been rising steadily but "the risk of creating a sudden or major cost increase to ratepayers is low."

🛠 Jargon Buster

• EV-ready / Level 2: Pre-wiring (a 240-volt circuit, panel capacity, conduit) so a home can add a fast Level 2 charger later without opening up walls. Level 1 is a standard slow wall outlet.
• STIP / Six-Year Transportation Plan: A state-required, yearly-updated priority list of road projects. Being on it is a prerequisite for many grants; adopting it does not commit the city to building anything.
• SDC (System Development Charge): A one-time fee on new development meant to cover its fair share of growth-related infrastructure.
• Exaction: A condition a government attaches to a permit (such as paving an alley). State law and the Burton v. Clark County test require it to be roughly proportional to the project's actual impact.

📍 How to Join & Learn More

• White Salmon meetings are held at 119 NE Church Avenue and on Zoom; recordings post to the City of White Salmon's Vimeo. Agendas and packets are at whitesalmonwa.gov/meetings, and written comment can go to public.comment@whitesalmonwa.gov.
• Next up: City Council on July 1, and a Planning Commission public hearing July 8 on the 211 North Main convenience store.

Community Development Committee coverage draws on a recording from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, used under CC BY 4.0: https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/