> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # πŸ–₯ The County That Didn't Pause Data CentersΒ - Klickitat BOCC 7/28 to 8/18 - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-county-that-didnt-pause-data-centers-klickitat-bocc-7-28-to-8-18/ - Published: 2026-08-24T07:00:51.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T07:00:51.000Z - Description: Yakima, Spokane and Skamania all hit pause on data centers this month. Klickitat took up a moratorium request and chose something else. Plus: the county's land use map still dates to 1979, a mental health program that can't open for want of one hire, and $380,000 gone from public health. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: Klickitat Board of County Commissioners, Klickitat County, Levy Scissors *Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19691078?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.* ## πŸ› Klickitat County Commissioners Round-Up: July 28 to August 18, 2026 **Agencies Covered:** Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners (four regular meetings: July 28, August 4, August 11, August 18, plus the July 30 workshop). **The Bottom Line:** In the same three weeks that Yakima, Spokane and Skamania counties all moved to pause data centers, Klickitat took up a moratorium request from Commissioner Todd Andrews and steered toward a policy statement instead. Underneath that decision sits a county whose land use map has not been redrawn since 1979. **The Vibe:** Busy and candid. Fair week ate the calendar, and staff were unusually direct about what the county does not have: no conditional use criteria in its code, no sidewalk standards, no citations written under a year-old enforcement framework, and no one to follow patients after they leave inpatient care. --- ## πŸ”Ž What Changed - The Board **approved the Fahlenkamp rezone** (ZON 2026-01), and in the same motion quietly fixed a county mapping error that has stood since about 1979. - **Supplemental Budget 2026-2 passed** with no public testimony, moving money to the airport, the hospital district and 911 dispatch. - The **August primary was certified**: Klickitat turned out 49.94 percent against a statewide 37.27. - A **jail nurse** is coming, funded through the hospital district, along with a first-of-its-kind pharmacy partnership. ## ⚠ What Escalated - **Data centers.** A moratorium request reached the floor on August 18 and did not become a moratorium. - **Public health lost about $380,000** in expected state money, with more signalled for July 2027. - **Emergency management** is one retirement away from a hole, and the county wants the cities to start paying in. - Members of the public **moved barricades and drove across closed bridges** three times, and the liability landed on the county. ## 🧭 What's Next - **August 25:** two public hearings, on extending the battery storage moratorium six months and on the Recreation Park Ordinance. Also the childcare workshop. - **September 3:** workshop on data centers and the dog shelter. - **September 21 and 28:** Planning Commission takes up the solar and battery ordinance, then a special hearing on shrinking the solar overlay zone. - **September 30:** the county's emergency management coordinator retires. - **November 3:** general election. Ballots mail October 14. --- ## Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners ### πŸ–₯ Data Centers: the county that didn't pause On August 18, under unfinished business, the Board finally discussed the data center moratorium request Commissioner Todd Andrews had submitted the week before. As one commissioner put it on the recording, "Last week we received the moratorium request on data centers from Mr. Andrews. And we had not had discussions on it." The response was an argument against a moratorium and for a policy statement first: "Moratoriums are great, but I also see where they get us into kind of a quagmire that worries me. We can get down that road for a couple of years with the moratorium issues." The stated goal was to have the commissioners "come to kind of like a policy statement of what we believe about data centers and what our direction is," and from there, "head us towards an ordinance rather than a ton of meetings over the next two years." A talking points document was prepared and shared with the other commissioners, the community development and public works directors, the administrator, the prosecutor, and commenter Gabrielle Gilbert. It sits with the Clerk of the Board, and a commissioner noted on the record that the public may look at it. Two things the county wanted the public to understand came out in the same conversation. First, a data center cannot route around the county the way a power plant can: "they don't have the ability to go to [EFSEC](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/tag/efsec/). They deal with green energy. They will not be going to EFSEC around us." Second, in the Board's framing, "this isn't just a free-for-all. There is a [permit system](https://www.klickitatcounty.gov/1710/Data-Center-Information?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and they will go through it, but we'll do our due diligence." ### **⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context** - Klickitat is now the outlier among its neighbors. [Yakima County commissioners passed a unanimous six-month data center moratorium](https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/government/yakima-county-commissioners-pass-six-month-data-center-moratorium/article%5F997dbbc7-7fe0-476a-9d92-73179f958bf7.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) after dozens of residents spoke against the facilities. [Spokane County paused large data center permits on August 18 itself](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/18/public-pressure-helps-persuade-county-leaders-to-p/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), through December 15\. [Kittitas County commissioners are weighing a ban](https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/northwest/kittitas-county-commissioners-to-look-at-data-center-ban/article%5Fb35846cb-e4f5-548c-90f7-73ec724c2975.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). And Skamania County adopted a moratorium the same morning Klickitat declined to. - The pressure is not hypothetical here. [OPB and the Washington State Standard reported on August 3](https://www.opb.org/article/2026/08/03/farmland-klickitat-county-solar-battery-data-centers/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) that the River Turn Energy Center, proposed by Savion Renewable Energy, a Shell Energy subsidiary, has grown to as much as 1,050 megawatts of solar with 800 megawatts of battery storage, on roughly 4,700 acres leased from five landowners on the county's eastern border. Shell Energy declined to confirm whether the power would serve a data center. - The same reporting puts numbers on why landowners are listening. One landowner said developers offered about $10,000 an acre outright, and effectively $20,000 an acre for good solar ground, against wheat worth roughly $50 an acre. - It also names the campaign in local social feeds. "[Make Energy Right Klickitat](https://www.facebook.com/p/Make-Energy-Right-Klickitat-61584774623127/)" is a lobbying effort run by the California firm AMAUTA Public Affairs, working with Savion, aimed at building landowner support for project-friendly rules. - Planning Director Scott Edelman told those outlets the county's approach turns on soil: "If the proposal is on what's considered prime agricultural land that is highly productive, then it'll be encouraged not to use those lands." The Board's own homework is running in parallel. One commissioner has scheduled a tour of the Port of Quincy and invited the hospital district, with an invitation extended to the county's economic development staff and an intent to reach the school district. His account of what Quincy told him, secondhand and self-qualified on the recording ("I don't have my notes"), was of roughly eight data center companies across about twenty buildings, with Microsoft arriving more than twenty years ago. Treat those figures as one commissioner's recollection of another county, not as established fact. What he was actually reaching for was a way of thinking. The question he put to the table was what communities like Quincy, The Dalles and Prineville "looking back 20 years wish they'd have known in the beginning and done different." The answers came from the Board's own memory. Sherman County's first wind deals taught everyone "a lot of lessons about community benefit." As for The Dalles, "the first plant was, they got nothing compared to the 10th plant, you know, because they just learned over time how to negotiate better." At the fair, a commissioner heard the same about Klickitat's own first wind and first solar. "There were lessons learned." ### πŸš› **Why the county reached for the landfill instead of a moratorium** The most revealing moment was not about data centers at all. Asked why standards-first would work, a commissioner pointed at the county's own landfill: Klickitat hired outside counsel to negotiate it, "and I don't think they missed a lot of things," including keeping the landfill gas rights. The result is a [tipping fee](https://www.nationalwaste.com/blog/what-landfill-tipping-fees-really-cost-hidden-markups-and-regional-differences/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) he described as "still the highest tipping fee in the state of Washington, probably it's Oregon too," and a permit under which the host, not the county, runs the transfer stations. Seattle and King County solid waste people, he recalled, complimented Klickitat for having projected twenty-odd years ahead. That is the whole argument in one story. This Board does not think its leverage comes from saying no. It thinks leverage comes from conditions written before the applications arrive, by lawyers the county paid for. Whether that holds when a 1,050 megawatt proposal is already leasing ground on the east line is the open question, and it is the same question we covered when [the county first mapped out how a data center would actually get approved](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/data-centers-come-knocking-kl/) in July. ### βœ‚οΈ Editor's Analysis: the Arithmetic Behind Data Center Decisionmaking I'm taking a second to interject more context into the data center discussion because this is part of a longer term project we're working on to center what we believe is one of the most influential and unspoken factors in this issue nationwide: the difficulties all rural counties increasingly have in making ends meet. We are calling this investigative series the [Levy Scissors](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/levy-scissors/). A county that declines a moratorium looks, from outside, like a county that is not listening. Our own reporting on how Washington taxes property points at a second explanation, and it rests on arithmetic the county cannot change. A Washington county's main tax levy can grow by **1 percent a year**. That is the [statutory limit factor in RCW 84.55](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=84.55&ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), and we explained how it works in [Splitting the Dinner Check](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/splitting-the-dinner-check-a-property-tax-explainer/). One percent does not keep up with what it costs to run a county. Wages, insurance, fuel and software all rise faster than that, in most years by several times. There is exactly one lawful way to grow the base faster, and it is **new construction**. Value that did not exist last year gets added on top of the 1 percent. So the tax code itself pays counties to say yes to large new buildings. Now the arithmetic for Klickitat specifically. The county has levied **the maximum the cap allows in each of the last three years**, with no unused capacity left on the table. On our model of the 2025 levy, holding services flat would take roughly **$141 million in new construction every year**. The county organically produces about **$64 million**. That is a gap of about **2.2 times**, against a statewide median of 1.9\. Only **two of Washington's 39 counties**, Franklin and Kittitas, build enough on their own to keep pace. Kittitas, one of those two, is also among the counties now weighing a data center ban. We are not claiming one explains the other, only that the counties best placed to say no are not the ones under the tightest squeeze. That changes what the choice is. A county in that position is not choosing between money and no money. It is choosing between an unpopular industrial project and a slow, permanent squeeze on the ordinary things this very round-up is full of: a public health department down $380,000, an emergency management job that exists because a grant pays for it, a mental health program that cannot open for want of one hire, and a planning department that says out loud it lacks the capacity to write the sidewalk standards state law expects it to have. But the other half matters just as much, and it cuts against the easy yes. **A single big project is a step, not a slope.** On the same model, a $500 million development buys Klickitat about **six years** of headroom. Then the scissors open again at the same rate, from a higher base. Nothing about one data center, or one solar farm, changes the underlying math. Only a permanent pipeline of new construction does, which means a county that balances its budget this way has to keep saying yes, forever, to whatever comes next. The commissioners' stated preference, for conditions written before applications arrive rather than a stop on the clock, is a response to that trap. Whether it is the right response is a separate question, and one worth arguing with the arithmetic on the table. One correction worth making plainly. A commissioner said that "in July, there were two executive orders from President Trump in regard to data centers," covering water use, electrical impact and community benefits, and that he intended to pull them. The federal record does not line up that way. The permitting order, [which covers data centers above 100 megawatts of new load or $500 million in cost](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/trump-signs-eo-for-data-center-federal-permitting-and-tax-incentives/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), dates from July 2025\. The community benefit and ratepayer piece is [the Ratepayer Protection Pledge of March 2026](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-advances-energy-affordability-with-the-ratepayer-protection-pledge/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), a voluntary commitment by seven AI companies, not an executive order. The distinction matters, because a pledge is not a permit condition. If you took the time to read this out: thank you for helping us to raise the quality of conversation we can have about such a heated topic, and help us find longer term solutions than simply saying no to every individual proposal for what may be many years of questions to come. ### ⚑ Solar, Batteries, and a Shrinking Overlay Zone The [battery storage moratorium](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/special-report-klickitat-countys-solar-battery-storage-ordinance/) expires September 4\. A public hearing on extending it six months is set for August 25 at 1:30 p.m., alongside a hearing on the Recreation Park Ordinance. Staff were candid that the underlying ordinance is late. The solar and battery rules are still with outside legal counsel, who "went a little beyond our initial scope." Comments and a draft are now expected in early September, which puts them at the Planning Commission's September 21 workshop. The Commission then declined to postpone the other half of the work, so it scheduled a special hearing for September 28 on reducing the solar Energy Overlay Zone. Two Planning Commission meetings in two weeks. A commissioner pushed on the length: "we're asking for additional six months. Do we need six months? Do we have to do a shorter moratorium?... Where do we put the skids on this?" Staff answered that six months is the safer request because the Board can lift it early at any time, and that realistically a hearing lands in October or November, "possibly even in January." The mechanic underneath deserves attention, because it compounds. As the draft ordinance is written, the county keeps its solar prohibition area *and* allows industrial scale solar only inside the Energy Overlay Zone. In Edelman's words, that means "there'll basically be a prohibition everywhere throughout the county except in the EOZ for solar, and a double prohibition in the prohibition zone." Shrinking the overlay zone therefore shrinks the only ground where industrial solar is allowed at all. We covered the Planning Commission's move to shrink it [in July](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/data-centers-come-knocking-kl/); this is the next beat. There is also an open legal question the county has not answered yet: whether it can charge green energy projects a fee. Prosecutor Rebecca Cranston is running that as a separate question to outside counsel. The Planning Commission drafted the ordinance so that a fee must be paid if the Board charges one, deliberately leaving the fee itself to a separate policy. ### **πŸ›  Jargon Buster** - **BESS**: Battery Energy Storage System. Big grid batteries, usually built beside solar or wind, as "load-balancing" infrastructure to save energy when generation is high (when it's sunnier or windier) to be disbursed later when additional usage is needed. - **EOZ**: Energy Overlay Zone. The mapped area where large energy projects are allowed. An overlay sits on top of existing zoning rather than replacing it. - **Moratorium**: a temporary hold on accepting or processing applications. Under state law a county can adopt one immediately and hold the public hearing within 60 days. - **Tipping Fee:** a landfill tipping fee is a charge paid by waste haulers or generators to drop off waste at a disposal site, typically calculated per ton. ### πŸ—Ί The Comprehensive Plan, and a Map From 1979 Long-range planner Evan Evangelopoulos gave the Board its first comprehensive plan update since January, and it contained the most quietly striking fact of the month. The county's land use plan dates from 1979\. It lists designations such as "rural center" and "community center," but as Evangelopoulos explained, each one appears on the map as nothing more than a dot. No boundaries. Redrawing it is the core of the current phase of work. That is not an abstraction. On July 28 the Board approved the Fahlenkamp rezone, roughly 57 acres from General Rural to Suburban Residential just south of Goldendale. While working the file, staff found that about 40 adjacent acres, the Old American Way plat commonly known as the Heron property, have been zoned Suburban Residential since zoning was enacted around 1979 while carrying a farm-and-forest comprehensive plan designation the entire time, one that does not permit that zone. (The designation's exact name is not in the typed record we hold; it appears only on the recording.) The Board fixed a 47-year-old error in the same motion it used to approve the rezone. Edelman: "we're correcting a form of previous error." The update work itself has hit a wall worth reporting. Phase two was designed as two community meetings per character area, and there are 15 character areas. Evangelopoulos called that "an impossibility," compounded by plain community fatigue: attendance fell at the second meeting in both Bickleton and Roosevelt, the Roosevelt follow-up drawing five or six people. The fix is to replace the first meeting with a survey. Surveys are live now for Alderdale and Dallesport, with meetings targeted for September and early October. Commissioners pushed back on whether a survey can be representative, and the exchange was a good one. What if only three come back? How do you avoid people saying afterward that they never knew? Evangelopoulos accepted the duty is shared between the county and the community councils, and said they could roll back to in-person meetings, which has already happened once. Two details are worth carrying. The county is writing ten elements where the state requires two. And the state's own "circulation" element is being used for something concrete: pushing growth onto existing street grids instead of new dead-end subdivision roads, and making sure neighborhoods have more than one way out. A commissioner tied that directly to the fire and evacuation discussions in Bickleton. ### πŸ— Two Code Gaps the County Names Itself Under a new standing code enforcement report, Director Edelman told the Board about two holes in county code that he described in liability terms. The county has **no conditional use criteria** written into its code. Decisions run on "past practice of past reports." The criteria staff apply are standard, but they are not codified, and Edelman's concern was that the county could be liable "if somebody could challenge our decisions we make." The county also has **no sidewalk standards**. They were once in Title 12 and are gone. Edelman cited two state requirements: that the county must find safe routes are provided for children who walk to school before approving any short plat or subdivision, and that counties must maintain standards ensuring the safety of children walking to school. On the second, his words were "and we don't." Today the Planning Commission can require sidewalks only on "precedent based on precedent, not on the actual code." It has become urgent because a 23-lot subdivision is coming in Trout Lake, close to a school. Both are listed as placeholders. As Edelman put it, "we don't have the capacity to take these on now." The new enforcement report itself is a good-government artifact worth naming. It highlights top cases, deliberately keeps names out and focuses on locations, and uses a color code in which orange means "accountability for me," flagging dates Edelman has slipped since the last version. Asked two direct questions by a commissioner, he answered both plainly: the fee and fine schedule is still unwritten, "number two on my desk for some time now," and on whether any citation has been issued under the framework, "No, not yet." ### 🩺 Health: A Program Built, Funded, and Closed The August 18 Board of Health session produced the hardest findings of the window. Public Health Director Erinn Quinn reported that the department "did lose about $380,000 of state funding that we were expecting." She believes it can be absorbed without service changes through the end of 2026, with longer-term conversations after that, and said the state is still signalling possible further shortfalls in July 2027\. This is the local number under a state shortfall we first covered when [the county braced for a $400,000 public-health cut in June](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/county-cuts-care-as-jail-fills-the-gap-klickitat-bocc-6-9-6-23/). Quinn also volunteered a leading indicator that had nothing to do with her budget. On-site septic permits have fallen to roughly 2021 levels, at a time of year she would expect to be busy, and she flagged it deliberately "as a point of economic development and building and expansion in the county." Then the behavioral health program gave the Board its first full picture of itself, and two gaps came with it. The first: a mental health outpatient program has been designed and cannot open. In the manager's words on the recording, "I have that developed. We just have not been able to recruit a staff member to be able to open the program yet." One hire stands between the county and an operating program. The second follows from it. Nobody follows people after they leave inpatient care. The crisis team joins discharge planning as advocates, "but we do not have anything to support them past that when they are discharged and back in the county." Medicaid supplies some case management, but "it's not local, they don't have our resources, so that's not optimal." The summary offered to the Board was blunt: "ideally it's a role of case management to assist with that. But right now, that's not available." A commissioner put the stakes in both registers at once, humane and fiscal. This is a vulnerable population whose needs have to be met "to reduce our costs in this county," and the pattern to break is people "reoccurring in a crisis and then going through the system." July was the program's busiest month of the year to date. For scale: six designated crisis responders cover the hospital emergency rooms at KVH and Skyline, the county jail, and every school in the county, 24 hours a day, all year. Designated crisis responders are the only people in Washington who can compel someone into treatment. The county contracts a secure transport company to move detained clients, because, as the Board was told, "in the state of Washington there's a huge issue with transportation right now." Two things could close the loop. The unfilled position is one. The other is Skyline Health's six-person outpatient pilot, about a third complete, which uses therapists already licensed and working locally but blocked from seeing certain patients by reimbursement rules. Skyline's representative told the Board that if the counseling piece works, it "develops a center of gravity where the hospital could reasonably consider" hiring a psychiatrist, "and that would potentially be available to the entire county, not just Skyline." ### πŸ”’ The Jail Nurse, and a Pharmacy Across the Street The routine-looking memorandum the Board approved on July 28 turns out to buy something specific. Health Care Authority money, passing through Klickitat Valley Health, is lined out to put a nurse in the county jail, to be hired as a contract position. The scope goes past medical care. The nurse is expected to strengthen substance use assessments, help with policies and procedures, and do case management. That last piece rests on a mechanic most readers will not know: when you are booked into jail, you lose your medical insurance. So a core task is re-enrolling people in Medicaid before they are released, so coverage exists on the outside. Alongside it, the jail has partnered with the Goldendale Pharmacy to deliver medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder. Public Health's account of how that came together is the kind of thing rural government does well and rarely gets credit for. After "hitting wall after wall after wall" with agency after agency, "all we had to do is call across the street." As far as they know, that type of partnership "has not been done in other areas." On August 4 the Board also watched Jail Administrator Bill Frantz present a Life-Saving Medal and a letter of commendation to Corporal Cooper, for an incident on July 15 in which Cooper detected an inmate attempting suicide by ligature, removed the ligature, called emergency services and monitored the inmate until medical staff arrived. Frantz used the moment to push back on how corrections work is seen: it is "often a thankless profession," and the jail is "not a dark, dingy, corrupt place." ### πŸ’΅ Money: A Clean Supplemental and a Budget Season Starting Supplemental Budget 2026-2 passed on August 4 with no public testimony, adopted as Resolution 06126. The budget manager described it at the hearing as $766,613 across three requests, none of which draw on the general fund or reserves: $100,000 for the Columbia Gorge Regional Airport and $400,000 for Klickitat Valley Health, both from restricted economic development funds approved through KCPEDA and the Board in June, and $266,613 from the 911 communications fund for the contract dispatcher agreement the Board approved back in January. Those amounts come from the recording. The typed minutes record the resolution without dollar figures, so treat the breakdown as the budget manager's spoken account until the resolution itself is public. Budget season is now scheduled. Department proposals were due August 11\. Commissioners receive them September 1, meet September 10 to decide who they need to see, and start taking departments and elected officials on September 24\. Every Thursday in October is reserved for budget workshops. Two details stand out: the budget memo this year asked departments for goals covering people, operations and technology, because "quite a few departments are having some mandates in regards to technology, especially with the court system." And the budget manager is asking for the same or a little more from landfill revenue into the general fund, noting "that hasn't really been upped in the last couple of years." Smaller items with real numbers: juvenile BECCA funding rebounds from just over $14,000 to about $35,000\. The NORCOR agreement to house juvenile detainees rises from the mid-$60,000s to about $74,000, but locking in beds costs $178 a day against $220 as-needed. Accounts payable warrants ran $185,448.07 on July 28, $799,349.31 on August 4 and $446,955.53 on August 11, all three from the adopted minutes. The August 18 figure, $374,412.83, comes from the recording; those minutes were not adopted until after this went out. ### 🚧 Public Works: Barricades, Bridges and a Retirement Three times this summer, members of the public moved barricades and drove across closed bridges while crews were working on them. Public Works reported "three episodes at three of, I think, the four bridges that we closed." The consequence is not abstract. "The county now has assumed any liability for the last two bridges we've done. It's no longer on the contract\[or\]." Staff believe the epoxy under the decks had already cured, so no damage was done. Had it not, "we'd have found out who drove across it because they'd been stuck in the middle." The barricades are there to protect the crews working underneath. In the director's words, "somebody could have got hurt real bad." On the Lytle Bridge, someone drained a water-filled barrier. The likely fix next time is concrete jersey barriers, which cost more, need equipment to place and remove, and raise their own emergency-access questions. Cameras came up and nobody liked them. Elsewhere, and per the same verbal report, two federal bridge grant applications went in: one for the Lyle overpass carrying 7th Street over the tracks, where girders are deteriorating, and one for a bridge the director named as Byerland, whose east abutment has rotated under heavy loads. Neither bridge name appears in the typed record we hold, so treat the spellings as provisional. Bridge joint work resumes in October with no further closures. Striping phase two begins September 21\. The courthouse exterior project is nearly finished. Dallesport and Wishram cleanups are set for September 11 and 12, and September 19. And the county is about to lose a function. Its emergency management coordinator retires September 30\. The position is budgeted at three-quarters time, worked at half time, and is mostly grant funded. It holds the state emergency operations and FEMA contacts, and it is the reason Klickitat expects roughly $200,000 in winter storm reimbursement, having been among the first counties in the state to finish its paperwork. A hiring freeze exemption to backfill has been submitted. The grant cycle is nominally annual, but the county is still working the 2025 cycle "because they keep shutting FEMA down." The administrator also wants to revisit the interlocal agreement under which the county supports the cities. ### ⚠️ Editor's Note: this is a two-county story. Skamania County told North Bonneville on August 11 that it can no longer subsidize city emergency management as costs escalate, and needs the cities to buy in. Klickitat is arriving at the same conversation from the other direction, through a retirement and a grant-funded position. Same squeeze, two counties, one week. ### πŸ—³ Elections: The Primary, Certified Auditor Heather Jobe certified the primary on the morning of August 18 and reported to the Board that afternoon. Turnout came in at 49.94 percent, against a statewide average of 37.27\. "We squeaked in just under 50 percent," she told the Board. "A little lower than we had hoped, but better than we feared." Of 8,276 accepted ballots, 76.9 percent came back through drop boxes, ahead of the state's 68.94\. Of 118 rejected ballots, 92 were rejected for arriving too late. Her advice was characteristically direct: mail early or use a drop box, and "for the love of all things holy, do not go on Facebook the day after the election and complain that you didn't get your ballot. It is too late at that point for anybody to help you out." In the local races, Dwayne Matulovich finished well ahead of Tony Warren in the sheriff's race, with John Bruce third. In Commissioner District 2, incumbent Lori Zoller led Andy Kallinen, with Gene Klejeski third. Assessor, Auditor, Clerk, Treasurer and Prosecuting Attorney were all unopposed. The Lyle fire district proposition passed strongly. The vote counts below are the [August 10 tally reported by Columbia Gorge News](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/county/preliminary-election-results-for-klickitat-and-skamania-counties/article%5F3be0c6f4-06b2-484d-8b0a-9819ae7259df.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), taken before the county certified on August 18, so treat them as close to final rather than official: Matulovich 4,597, Warren 2,148, Bruce 1,286; Zoller 1,147, Kallinen 758, Klejeski 662\. We are not printing percentages, because the published ones do not reconcile with their own vote totals. One point of order the Auditor fielded more than once: the commissioner race was district-only in the primary, but the entire county votes it in November. The same is true of the PUD race, and that one deserves more than a passing line. In Public Utility District No. 1, Commissioner District 3, challenger [Logan B. Siebert](https://ballotpedia.org/Logan%5FB.%5FSiebert%5F%28Klickitat%5FCounty%5FPublic%5FUtility%5FDistrict%5F1%5FCommissioner%5FBoard%5FDistrict%5F3,%5FWashington,%5Fcandidate%5F2026%29?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) finished first, ahead of incumbent [Dan G. Gunkel](https://ballotpedia.org/Dan%5FG.%5FGunkel%5F%28Klickitat%5FCounty%5FPublic%5FUtility%5FDistrict%5F1%5FCommissioner%5FBoard%5FDistrict%5F3,%5FWashington,%5Fcandidate%5F2026%29?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), who has sat on the board since 1990\. Former county commissioner Dan Christopher was third. On the same August 10 count that is Siebert 1,219, Gunkel 878 and Christopher 387\. Both advance, and since ballot order in the general goes to the top vote-getter, Siebert appears first. A sitting PUD commissioner of thirty-six years being out-polled by a challenger is worth watching in a county where the PUD, not the Board, decides who pays for new transmission. The general election is November 3 and ballots mail October 14\. Added to the ballot: district court judges, a permanent levy for the EMS district, Supreme Court position 4, and an initiative to repeal the millionaire's tax whose language, as of August 18, was still tied up in court. ### πŸ—£ Public Comment **Gabrielle Gilbert** appeared at every meeting. She organized the August 25 childcare workshop, bringing in Garfield County and the state Department of Commerce, and spent the window pressing Commerce on rural representation, which she called "a polite blast." Her argument is that rural communities are missing from the table where economic decisions get made, and that childcare belongs inside economic development rather than beside it. On August 18 she thanked Commissioner Andrews for "addressing the AI data centers and the attempt for a moratorium," and made one sharp criticism of the county's own paperwork: "when you start with your documentation that you can compare an AI center to an Amazon warehouse, that is problematic in its language. And that needs to get corrected." **Rodger Nichols**, calling from The Dalles, asked the sharpest fiscal question of the window. The Woods Creek Bridge has been repaired, the county paid for it, and the energy developer whose equipment prompted the work is due to reimburse. Nichols wanted to know when, and then this: "how much interest are you charging them for fronting the money for them for now four months and who knows beyond that?" A bill has gone out and been revised, and a commissioner said he would follow up. The developer's name is not clearly audible on the recording, so we are not printing it. Also heard: **John Bruce** on Klickitat Canyon Days and the Trout Lake Fair; **Andrew Smith** on the dog pound; **Cathy Moco** on a strong fair weekend; and **Assessor Billi Bare**, with value notices going out around mid-September, new e-notices to cut postage, and physical inspections starting late August across Centerville, the east side of Dalles Mountain Road, and down to Alderdale through Roosevelt. The county must physically inspect every parcel once every six years. ### πŸ• The Dog Shelter, Still Unbuilt The shelter came up at three of the four meetings and has not moved, which is itself the story. Public Works asked to extend the grant into next year in order to build, and undertook to compile the risks of proceeding. Sheriff Bob Songer and Karen Elings brought the Board a document. But the objections raised on August 4 are the ones to watch: the proposed budget has nothing in it for veterinary care or food, only utilities, and commissioners want to know how many hours the shelter would actually be staffed for the money. Siting would put it near the new fuel station at the north end of the fairgrounds, where power and water are available but sewer is the biggest cost. And the county has no dog licensing at all, which is why one floated funding idea is having vet clinics sell licenses and keep part of the fee. The Board agreed to hold a working session with Public Works, then bring in the Sheriff's Office, and to advertise it, because as one commissioner put it, "there's other people that are concerned about it." It joins data centers on the September 3 workshop. ### πŸŽͺ And the County Fair Fair week dominated the calendar and, by the county's own count, went well. Thursday attendance was slightly down on last year, Friday up, and Saturday up considerably, with roughly 900 day passes sold through the gate in a single three-hour shift. Commissioners served over 500 people at the fair dinner, with homemade rolls, and a running argument about who gets the potatoes. One detail carries further than the fairgrounds. Wasco County cancelled its fair because of fire, and Klickitat's board chair called to offer the Klickitat fairgrounds for the following week, pens and setup left standing so Wasco would not have to build or tear down. The message that came back: "you know who your friends are when you're up against it." The Wasco County Fair ultimately [moved to Hood River County Fairgrounds](https://kval.com/news/local/wasco-county-4-h-ffa-fair-find-new-home-after-grasshopper-fire-disruption-central-oregon-hood-river-local-community-farm-animals?teaserSource=trending&ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). We're grateful so many different counties stepped up to the plate to ultimately ensure that all of the youth participants, volunteers, fairgoers could find a safe place to continue festivities. --- ## πŸ“… How to Join & Learn More The Klickitat County Board of County Commissioners meets **Tuesdays** at the Klickitat County Services Building, 115 West Court Street, Room #201, Goldendale. - **Join by Zoom:** [https://us02web.zoom.us/j/586587651](https://us02web.zoom.us/j/586587651?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) (Meeting ID 586 587 651), or dial 253-215-8782 / 669-900-6833 and press \*9 to raise your hand. - **Contact:** [bocc@klickitatcounty.org](mailto:bocc@klickitatcounty.org), 509-773-4612 - **Agendas, packets and recordings:** [https://www.klickitatcounty.gov](https://www.klickitatcounty.gov/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) - **Elections and ballot information:** [https://www.klickitatcounty.gov/1136/ElectionsVoter-Registration](https://www.klickitatcounty.gov/1136/ElectionsVoter-Registration?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) **Coming up:** August 25, public hearings on the battery storage moratorium extension and the Recreation Park Ordinance, plus the childcare workshop. September 3, workshop on data centers and the dog shelter. September 10, budget discussion workshop. September 21 and 28, Planning Commission on the solar and battery ordinance and the overlay zone.