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# 🥬 Dollar Store Showdown - White Salmon August '26 Round-Up
- URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-dollar-store-white-salmon-august-26-round-up/
- Published: 2026-09-04T19:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T19:01:14.000Z
- Description: White Salmon spent August lining up its biggest decisions without making them. Council pulled its dollar store moratorium before anyone spoke, the Tree Board valued one big oak at about $7,000 instead of $1,000, and a storm ratification exposed a shortfall of at least $998,500.
- Author: Dispatch Squatch
- Tags: White Salmon, White Salmon City Council, White Salmon Planning Commission, White Salmon Tree Board

*Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19755874?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.*

## 🏛 August 2026 White Salmon Municipal Round-Up

**Agencies Covered:** White Salmon City Council (August 5, August 13 and August 26), White Salmon Planning Commission (August 26), White Salmon Tree Board (August 10).

**The Bottom Line:** August was the month White Salmon lined up its three biggest decisions without making any of them. Council did plenty of routine business, five unanimous votes on August 5 alone, but the moratorium came off the agenda before it was presented, came back on September 2 with its operative text unchanged, and was voted down. A tree fee recommendation was finished without a vote, and the city formally ratified a storm emergency whose price tag runs roughly a million dollars past the money it has in hand.

**The Vibe:** Procedural, and unusually candid about it. Twice this month a city body said out loud that a rule in front of it did not read the way it was meant to.

### 🔎 What Changed

- The Tree Board finished its recommendation to nearly double the fee a developer pays instead of replacing a tree, from $400 to $700, and to stop calculating replacements by zoning.
- The city put a number on the May 28 storm for the first time in a public document: a preliminary engineering estimate of **$1,998,500**, against **$1,000,000** in emergency funding awarded.
- Three sets of typed minutes finally exist for August, which means the August votes in this round-up are drawn from the city's own record rather than from a recording. The September 2 votes noted below are not: those come from the meeting recording, and the city's typed minutes for that night will not exist until a later packet.

### ⚠ What Escalated

- The small-box discount store proposal moved from a fast emergency moratorium to a slower legislative one, and then straight into a drafting problem: the city's own planner told the commission that one clause would land on her desk to police, and commissioners called the definition confusing.
- The storm funding gap is now an open question on the public record. The city's finance director told Council she was exploring several revenue sources, and, as of Columbia Gorge News' reporting nine days later, had not given an update.
- We went looking for where this language comes from. The national ordinances it resembles are food access measures, and the temporary version Council voted on carries no food access clause. There is also no dollar store in White Salmon.

### 🧭 What's Next

- **It already happened, on September 2.** The moratorium **failed on a 1-4 vote**. The tree fee rose to $700 and the grant application was authorized, both 5-0, and the August minutes described here were approved. We are covering that meeting properly in the September round-up; what follows is August, which is where all of it was decided in substance.
- **September 11, 4 p.m.:** the state grant deadline, now nine days after the authorization it needed.
- **September 14:** Tree Board.
- Still unanswered: the storm shortfall, and what the Community Development Committee does with the drafting problems the Planning Commission sent back to it.

---

## White Salmon City Council

The Council met three times in August and never twice in the same shape: a full regular meeting, a 46 minute special that spent most of itself behind closed doors, and a three minute special that nearly did not happen for want of a quorum.

### 💧 A $2 million storm, and a $1 million grant

On August 5 the Council adopted **Resolution 2026-08-651**, formally ratifying the emergency the mayor proclaimed after the May 28 storm. The vote was 5-0\. Ratification was not a formality: the staff report states plainly that Council ratification "is required for the funding," and the resolution also ratifies the decision to waive competitive bidding under RCW 39.04.280.

The packet is where the story is. It carries a **preliminary engineering estimate of $1,998,500** to restore NE Skagit Avenue and NE Scenic Street, and it records **$1,000,000 in emergency funding awarded**, or "up to $1,000,000" in the words of the Commerce agreement the city accepted the following week, reimbursed against eligible costs only. That leaves a gap of **at least $998,500**, and larger if any cost is ruled ineligible.

The round number has been said out loud. Staff told the August 5 meeting "this project is $2 million." But the estimate to the dollar, and the arithmetic against the grant, appear only in the council report, and the shortfall reached the public first through someone else's reporting.

The Tree Board's own meeting five days later filled in what that money is for. Public Works Director Chris True told the board that water found its level under the asphalt between Skagit and Scenic, washed the road out and destroyed a water main. He also described a separate storm, not the May 28 event, that put about two and a half feet of water over the road at Main and Snowden, with enough sewer infiltration that homeowners were dealing with backwash into their pipes. He also said the closed north end of the bike park will reopen.

The August 13 packet states there is "no required City match" and puts the match at $0\. On the August 5 recording a staff member told Council, "We are also exploring multiple revenue sources, funding options, and I'm working through the analysis of the options that have been presented before us." [Columbia Gorge News reported on August 20](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/white-salmon-city-council-postpones-potential-moratorium-on-small-box-discount-stores/article%5F1b3c2b19-6383-40aa-943d-fc253afd6a43.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) that the grant "will cover roughly half the cost," attributed that line to the city's finance director, and said she had given Council no update on those efforts since.

**Why it matters:** the city has at most one dollar for every two it currently expects to spend on this repair, and the money it does have is reimbursement-based, so White Salmon fronts the cost and claims it back. The agreement runs to June 30, 2027\. There is no second regular Council meeting in August, which is a small fact that shaped several others this month.

### 🛑 The dollar store ordinance that came off the agenda

On August 13 the Council held a 3 p.m. special meeting with one substantive item: a temporary moratorium on new small-box discount stores in the commercial district, numbered **Ordinance 2026-1189** in that night's agenda and packet, and renumbered **2026-08-1189** by the time it came back. It never got presented.

Mayor Marla Keethler asked Council to pull it, citing the level of public comment and interest the proposal had drawn. On the meeting recording she puts a window on it, saying the comment had arrived "in the last 24 hours" and that pulling the item would give more time for public input; the typed minutes record the reason without the timeframe, and [Uplift Local published the same quotation on August 24](https://upliftlocal.news/what-are-small-box-stores-and-where-do-they-belong/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). Ben Giant moved to pull it, Patty Fink seconded, and it carried 5-0\. On the recording one member says, "I think it's a great idea. We're not ready."

She was blunter about it afterwards. [Columbia Gorge News interviewed her on August 31](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/business/center-market-in-white-salmon-is-separate-from-proposed-moratorium-code-changes/article%5F5c613efa-49da-4e2b-aaab-eb9ecbd12f7d.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io): "I made a bad call," she said of the timeline, which had given no room for a public hearing. She also said the volume of comment "signaled to me is, this is a community that is paying attention and has strong views about how this town develops," and that "it's unfortunate that it's getting misconstrued as if this is targeting Center Market."

Two things in the minutes deserve to travel with that vote. First, Council did not just delay the item; it **asked staff to share information and responses relating to the time-sensitive public comments before the ordinance came back**. Second, the ordinance that came back on September 2 arrived with a 29 page national advocacy report attached and reproduced none of that material, though the city's own agenda promises that written comments "will be included in the Council packet and the official record." The comments did reach Council, just not through the packet.

It came back on September 2 unchanged. We compared the ordinance in the August 13 packet against the one in the September 2 packet. Apart from the ordinance number, **the operative text is identical**: every finding, every section, every carve-out. In the three weeks Council bought itself for public input, nothing in the instrument was altered. It also came back the way it arrived, as an **emergency** ordinance. Section 9 had it taking effect immediately "upon adoption by a majority plus one of the councilmembers," which meant it needed four of five votes, not three.

**It got one.** On September 2 the moratorium **failed 1-4**. In the debate, voices at the table questioned whether the situation met the bar for an emergency, called the definition of a small-box discount store vague, and said the measure carried the appearance of reactivity. Cutting the other way, one asked whether the city was foreclosing something residents needed, saying "I don't know of a single affordable store found in White Salmon. It does not exist." That debate deserves more room than an August round-up can give it, and it will lead our September issue. (Vote and quotes here are from the meeting recording; White Salmon's typed minutes for September 2 will not exist until they appear in a later packet.) [Columbia Gorge News covered the postponement on August 20](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/white-salmon-city-council-postpones-potential-moratorium-on-small-box-discount-stores/article%5F1b3c2b19-6383-40aa-943d-fc253afd6a43.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and reported that no date for the hearing or the moratorium action had then been set.

The same meeting approved two grants on consent, 5-0: the **$1,000,000 Commerce Emergency Rapid Response grant** for the storm, and a **$1,000 Washington State Historical Society** grant that offsets traffic control and safety costs from the Fourth of July parade.

Council then went into executive session on potential litigation at 3:04 p.m. It was announced for 20 minutes, extended three separate times, and adjourned at 3:46\. The minutes record who was in the room: Council, legal counsel, and the Public Works Director. No action was taken.

### 🧾 A three minute meeting that almost did not happen

The August 26 special meeting existed to approve one voucher run. It opened without a quorum. "Visually, I can see we do not have a quorum, so we will give it a minute or two before we do roll call," the mayor said on the recording, and the minutes confirm the pause. A third member joined, roll was taken at 12:02, and three of five councilmembers, all attending by Zoom, approved **$341,842.23** in vouchers 3-0\. The meeting adjourned at 12:03.

Nothing in the record says why the other two members were absent, and this round-up is not going to guess. It is worth noting only because it is the second special meeting in five weeks to open short: the July 22 minutes record roll being "delayed briefly while waiting for a quorum" as well.

### 🏘 The appeal that went to a hearing examiner instead of Council

Also on August 5, Council voted 5-0 to send the appeal of the Planning Commission's decision on **WS-SPR-2026.002**, a four unit development at 130 SE Wyers Street, to the city's hearing examiner rather than hearing it itself. The applicant and the other parties of record asked for that, as the code allows.

The minutes are refreshingly blunt about the reasoning. Timing was the primary factor, because there was no second regular Council meeting in August. And staff told Council on the record that **the code does not clearly address whether an applicant's request for a hearing examiner replaces Council review at all**. That is a gap in the municipal code, stated by the city's own staff, sitting inside a routine procedural vote. We covered the underlying decision and the June 24 reconsideration in [June's round-up](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/june-in-white-salmon-an-ev-mandate-a-denied-appeal-and-the-30-rule/).

### ✅ The rest of the August 5 meeting, briefly

- **Vouchers of $280,326.45** approved 5-0, being $129,840.40 in claims and $150,486.05 in payroll.
- **2027 lodging tax grant funding set at $73,675**, which is 100 percent of what the city collected in lodging tax in 2025 ($73,674.52). Staff project about $126,156 will remain in the fund afterward, and note explicitly that this "does not establish a formal reserve policy."
- **Barbara Bailey and Peter Johnson confirmed to the CityLab Board.**
- **Charters Short Plat Alteration approved 5-0** after a public hearing at which nobody testified. The alteration aligns the 2021 short plat's conditions with the developer agreement Council approved in May. The approved stream buffer on Dry Creek is 183 feet; the applicant had asked for 150, which the state Department of Fish and Wildlife would not concur with.
- **A bill of sale accepted 5-0** for the Pucker Huddle Road and Martin Road waterline extension, with the standard two year maintenance bond waived. The matter dates to 2015 and staff described it as cleanup from prior city leadership.
- **Public comment:** Gabrielle Gilbert spoke for expanding local childcare, calling it both economic development and quality of life infrastructure, and flagged the county childcare workshop held August 25.
- Councilmember Rainbolt raised system development charges and their possible connection to wastewater planning and the pending water rate study. On the comprehensive plan zoning update, staff reported work had not yet begun but may start this year.
- A new finance manager, Ronna Canady, started July 27.

---

## White Salmon Tree Board

### 🌳 What a 66 inch oak is worth

The Tree Board met August 10 and finished the job Council gave it in the spring. When staff discovered the tree ordinance's fee-in-lieu amount had been left blank, the city put in a $400 placeholder and told the board to come back with a real number. It has.

The recommendation is **$700 per replacement tree**, and a second, larger change: stop calculating how many replacement trees a removal requires based on the property's zoning, and calculate it from the size of the tree instead, using diameter at breast height.

The board built its case on one tree, the big oak near the entrance to the Hood River bridge: 66 inches through, 76 feet tall, with a 65 foot canopy. Here is what that tree is worth under each approach.

|                                   | Replacement trees required | Fee owed       |
| --------------------------------- | -------------------------- | -------------- |
| White Salmon today (by zoning)    | 2 to 3                     | $800 to $1,200 |
| By diameter, at today's $400      | 10                         | $4,000         |
| By diameter, at the proposed $700 | 10                         | about $7,000   |

Council adopted the $700 fee on September 2 and authorized the grant application the same night, both without dissent. Those tallies come from the meeting recording; the city's typed minutes for that night do not exist yet.

The board also ran the same oak through other Washington cities' schedules: Burien $2,100, Redmond $2,505.31, Covington $3,000, Mountlake Terrace $7,810, Bellevue up to $13,000, and Seattle, which charges by the square inch of trunk removed, roughly $64,000.

The number the board landed on is not a stretch. It is the Burien figure, and [July's round-up already told readers Burien charges $700](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/balcony-solar-tree-credits-and-a-postponed-store-white-salmon-july-26-round-up/) when it walked through Davy Stevenson's comparison of White Salmon's ordinance against seven other Washington cities. The board's own framing is that $700 "remains at the lower end of comparable communities." [Uplift Local's meeting briefs](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/free%5Fnews/uplift-local-meeting-briefs-aug-26-2026/article%5Fe3524c94-f314-4f03-9067-136fda89ceed.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), carried in Columbia Gorge News, are the only other account of this meeting, and they report the September 2 target without a dollar figure attached.

One argument in the white paper is worth pulling out because it explains the whole thing. Even ten replacement trees, at the two inch minimum caliper the board wants to require, replaces only 20 inches of the 66 inches of tree that came out. The current code sets no minimum size for a replacement tree at all.

There is a reason the oak matters beyond its size, and a reason it is not already protected. White Salmon has no heritage trees at all. The city rewrote the rules in February 2025 and the registry has been empty ever since, as [Uplift Local reported that September](https://upliftlocal.news/why-white-salmon-heritage-trees-now-total-zero/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), quoting the city planner: "That inventory is currently zero, because nothing has been nominated."

Part of why nothing has been nominated is how the chapter is built. Under [WSMC 18.41.030](https://library.municode.com/wa/white%5Fsalmon/codes/code%5Fof%5Fordinances?nodeId=TIT18EN%5FCH18.41HETR&ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), anyone may nominate a heritage tree, but "the nomination must acknowledge approval with written consent by the landowner of the ground sustaining the tree, prior to being accepted by the city for review." The code calls the registry a response to a "voluntary nomination process," and a designation can later be reversed by the council at the owner's request, or removed by the owner with the city's approval. Heritage status is something a property owner opts into, not something the city confers over their objection.

That is the obstacle standing in front of this particular oak. A board member has held a nomination for it since at least the spring, and [the board recorded in April](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/liberty-trees-bluff-trail-grants-white-salmon-april-26-round-up/) that putting the job of approaching the landowner on the nominator would discourage nominations on private land. The lot has since acquired a building proposal, which puts the consent the nomination needs in the hands of whoever owns ground a development is now proposed on. The developer does not intend to take the tree down, and the board said so. But nothing in the ordinance protects it unless that consent is given.

**A useful piece of timing:** the lot that oak stands on now has a building proposal on it. The developer does not intend to remove the tree, and the board said so. But the board also treated it as the live example for exactly why it wants the ordinance changed, and agreed to invite the city planner to its next meeting to talk about construction fencing and how the existing protections actually get enforced.

### 🌲 The other asks

- The board agreed the fee belongs in the city's fee schedule rather than written into the tree ordinance, so it can move faster than the code amendments.
- It will ask Council to authorize an application to the state Department of Natural Resources for tree maintenance work, with a deadline of September 11\. The board named no figure on August 10, sketching a ballpark around $20,000 of pruning; the council report that carried the request on September 2 puts the authorization at up to $60,000 with no local match. Note the sequencing: Council had to authorize it on September 2 and the deadline fell nine days later. Funded work is anticipated in the 2027-2028 grant period, so this is not money for this autumn.
- Public Works confirmed that dead tree removal in the city right of way is under way on Lincoln Street, Jewett Boulevard and inside Rheingarten Park, but that street funding does not cover this kind of work. The finance director confirmed the Transportation Improvement Fund is restricted to streets, transit and bicycles, and cannot pay for trees. The board will put a dollar figure in its next budget request instead.
- Asked by a reporter about the trees coming out on the Washington side for the bridge replacement, the board's answer, drafted at the meeting, was that the bridge needs to be built and the cottonwoods do not need saving, but that it is concerned whenever large trees come out and hopes a revised ordinance would let city staff review removal plans and recommend replanting. What it asked the city for was a dedicated budget line for landscaping and maintenance at the new SR-14 interchange and roundabout. Public Works confirmed a post construction landscaping plan exists and that an irrigation meter is in the project's plans.
- After the May storm, the board opened a new line of work on swales and neighborhood stormwater mitigation, and is looking for a cheap public demonstration project.

---

## White Salmon Planning Commission

### 🏪 "You have one banana per shelf"

This is a different instrument from the moratorium Council pulled. The moratorium is a temporary pause. What the commission reviewed is the **permanent code change**, drafted by the Community Development Committee, that would define a "small-box discount store" and prohibit it. Its definition is a chain of conditions, and a store has to meet all of them to be captured: under 10,000 square feet, operating under a common trade name or franchise, primarily selling discounted goods, not a gas station, not a pharmacy, and devoting less than 15 percent of its sales floor to fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy.

The commission's first question was about the wiring. As drafted the tests are joined by "and," which Commissioner Brendan Brown read as requiring a store to be a pharmacy, a gas station and a grocer all at once, and he raised the existing Hi-School Pharmacy against it. Commissioner Adam Elliott agreed the clause is confusingly worded. Brown later called his own example "not well-founded" and withdrew it, but the drafting point stood and staff took it away to fix.

The fresh food clause is a door out, and it is the one the commission got stuck on. City Planner Rowan Fairfield, who would have to administer it, was blunt: "I would not want to be the one who is measuring 15% of the floor area," they said, adding that there is "an administrative burden to that side of it that I don't necessarily want to undertake." A commissioner pointed out that a floor area percentage says nothing about whether the shelves are stocked. Fairfield agreed: "you have one banana per shelf, and... People are really clever at coming with the loophole that's going to get them what they want." The commission had no drafting fix on hand, and Fairfield said they would take it back to the Community Development Committee. On the recording a commissioner's parting position was that the criterion itself should stay, and that the problem is how it is measured rather than whether it belongs.

The second problem was the trade name test. Commissioner Adam Elliott asked what it means for a store that is not a chain: "What if, hypothetically there was one of our neighbors that wanted to... create some little convenience store type atmosphere, but have it be... much more neighborhood friendly? Would that satisfy the requirement?" Commissioner Erika Price read the intent as encouraging local small business. Elliott said he would personally be fine with a locally owned discount store, which is "probably not going to be, you know, drastically discounting their wares and undercutting their neighbors."

Commissioner Brendan Brown pushed the other way, twice. He noted a locally owned store would have less capacity for predatory pricing but the same public health effects. Then he found the loophole: a large chain could use a one-off local name and slip the restriction entirely, so the wording should test for corporate control rather than trademark.

Where this came from is not settled, and the city has given three different answers. Fairfield told the commission it began earlier this spring, in a conversation between the mayor and the Community Development Committee. The ordinance's own recitals say only that "City staff has identified a need" to look at the question. And on September 2 Mayor Keethler told Council she had raised it with that same committee "for quite a few years," predating the current council, tracing it to a 2020 Dollar General proposal near Parkdale, across the river in Hood River County, where residents organised against it. Those are three different starting points, and "earlier this spring" and "for quite a few years" are not the same claim.

One council member said plainly that it had not come up through the council's own priorities. "I'm just wondering where this came from," they said on September 2\. "It wasn't on the stuff that we talked about. There are a variety of planning things that we haven't gotten to this year that council would have liked to have seen."

**None of that can be checked, and that is the part worth sitting with.** The Community Development Committee is credited as the origin of this policy, it drafted the permanent code, and the Planning Commission has now sent the drafting problems back to it. It publishes no agendas, no minutes and no recordings. Its meeting pages on the city's own website are empty shells: we checked the last three, for July, August and September, and every one carries no attachments and no video. Everything the public knows about that committee exists because volunteer Documenters chose to attend. The three sets of notes we hold, from May, June and July, contain no mention of small-box stores, dollar stores or a moratorium at all.

The volume of public comment on a proposed convenience store downtown is what sharpened the effort. That application, a Center Market at 211 N Main, is the subject of [Columbia Gorge News' July reporting](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/center-market-pursues-a-fourth-regional-location-in-white-salmon/article%5F03adfbe1-93c7-4980-808e-bcb077d9f07f.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io): the public works department set out two ways the expected traffic could be handled if the application were approved, and both fall on the applicant. Center Market could fund a right of way upgrade on NE Lincoln Street, including reconstruction, widening and new sidewalks, or help convert NE Lincoln to one way. 

Fairfield said the proposal is "intended to implement the policy direction already reflected in the city's comprehensive plan regarding commercial vitality and the long-term character of downtown." They also told the commission the draft is written as a blanket ban, and that other communities instead bar a new discount store within a mile of an existing one, a route they offered as an option. They also said the code changes are not aimed at a store of Center Market's type, but at dollar stores and similar formats that "run a bit of a predatory model," and they confirmed the pending application for 211 N Main is already submitted and will not be affected. [Uplift Local reported that clarification on August 28](https://upliftlocal.news/white-salmons-small-box-store-ban-wont-stop-center-market/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). One correction to that account for the record: it dates this meeting to August 24\. It was August 26, per the city's agenda, the recording, and the same documenter's own notes.

The commission also finished its read through of the **short-term rental ordinance** for commercial zones, the one it [voted 4-0 in July](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/balcony-solar-tree-credits-and-a-postponed-store-white-salmon-july-26-round-up/) to have staff draft, which replaces the current 30 percent rule with a scaled permit table: one permit for buildings up to five units, two for six to ten, three for eleven to fourteen, and four for fifteen or more. Fairfield called it the last chance to comment, saying "This is my draft of what the commission had discussed and decided on." Nobody had anything further. It goes to the city attorney for "a quick peek," then to a public hearing.

One small, human item: the commission approved the July 8 and July 22 minutes with a single amendment, after Commissioner Elliott pointed out the city had been misspelling his surname in both.

---

## 🧬 Editor's Analysis: Where this language came from

The phrase "small-box discount store" is not a description. It is a term of art, written into municipal zoning codes, and it has a traceable history that explains the shape White Salmon's version takes.

It starts in **Tulsa, Oklahoma**, and the sequence matters more than the date. Tulsa's council defined the term in a **temporary moratorium in September 2017**, then made a permanent rule with Ordinance 23904 in April 2018\. Its test was specific: retail under 12,000 square feet that "continuously offer a majority of the items in their inventory for sale at a price less than $10.00 per item."

Two things about the permanent Tulsa ordinance matter here. It was not a ban. It was a one-mile spacing rule inside a mapped district. And the district was called the **Healthy Neighborhoods Overlay**, whose stated purpose was "greater diversity in retail options and convenient access to fresh meats, fruits and vegetables." A store could step outside the spacing rule entirely by dedicating 500 square feet to fresh meat, fruit or vegetables. Food access was written into the purpose alongside retail diversity, and into the escape hatch, which is the part that travelled. Worth noting for anyone inclined to treat these ordinances as uncontroversial: Tulsa's own planning commission voted 7-3 to recommend that the council **deny** it. The council passed it anyway.

The fresh food test then travelled. **Cleveland** codified the version White Salmon's supporting document describes, at Ordinance 816-2020, which passed January 24, 2022\. And here the city's own attachment gets it wrong. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance report bound into the city's September 2 packet says Cleveland prohibits dollar stores unless they are two miles apart **and** devote 15 percent of shelf space to fresh or frozen food. Cleveland's actual code is disjunctive. Fifteen percent of shelf space is one of several **exits** from the ordinance, alongside selling fuel or containing a pharmacy. A store meeting any one of them is simply outside the rule. The criterion is not a burden the store carries. It is the door it can walk through.

That distinction is the whole argument, and it is where White Salmon's two documents part company.

The **permanent code** the Planning Commission reviewed on August 26 keeps the door. Its definition captures a store only if, among other things, it devotes less than 15 percent of sales floor to fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy, and its purpose clause says in terms that "preserving opportunities for access to fresh food" is part of what the chapter is for. Stock the produce and you are not a small-box discount store at all.

The **moratorium**, in both the August and September versions, does not have that clause. It carries only the two exclusions for fuel stations and pharmacies.

That is the shape Tulsa's temporary measure had too. Tulsa defined the term in a moratorium first, and the fresh-food exit arrived afterwards, in the process that made the rule permanent. Nothing in the record shows a White Salmon moratorium draft that carried the food clause and had it taken out, and a fresh-food exit inside a six-month freeze would have defeated the freeze. White Salmon is at the same point in the same sequence. What Council voted on was the shorter definition; the food clause is in the permanent draft behind it.

There is one drafting detail underneath the planner's objections that is worth seeing. Cleveland measures **shelf space**. Tulsa measured **floor area**. White Salmon's permanent draft measures **sales floor area**, and none of the three measures what is actually on the shelf. 

**What the difference actually changes,** stated plainly, because it cuts in more than one direction. With the food criterion in, the rule regulates something the operator controls and can fix: what is on the shelves. Without it, the rule regulates fixed attributes of a business model, its size and its trade name, and an applicant cannot comply by changing the store. It can only build elsewhere or not build. That makes the ordinance blunter and harder to game.

What it means for food access is contested on the record in both directions. The city planner's stated theory is that the prohibition itself protects fresh-food access, by protecting a local grocer's margin from a format that undercuts it. Against that, a council member argued on September 2 that the town has no affordable store at all and that a rule written this way could foreclose one. Both of those are things a city may legitimately weigh. They are not the same thing, and only one of them is what the national research attached to the packet is about.

It is also worth knowing that the food criterion is the expensive half to administer. Cleveland requires a floor and shelf plan at permit, and re-inspection for it to keep meaning anything. That is a real constraint on a planning department of two, and a fair question to put to the city about the permanent draft as it moves.

One more piece of ancestry. The phrase "operates under a common trade name, trademark, or franchise" is not from the small-box family at all. That is **formula retail** language, and Washington's own example of it is 21 years old: Port Townsend adopted a formula retail chapter in 2005 that would very likely capture a dollar store, without ever using the term. White Salmon's definition is a hybrid of the two traditions.

### 🏷 And there is no dollar store in White Salmon

The nearest one is a **Dollar General at 910 W Steuben Street, and it is in Bingen**, not White Salmon. 

Two things follow. First, when residents wrote to the Planning Commission in July opposing the downtown convenience store, several of them cited that Dollar General as an existing amenity, one letter listing "Harvest Market nearby and Dollar General along Highway 14" as reasons the town is already served, despite it not being walkable to White Salmon. The nearest store of the format the ordinance describes is, in the public comment record on a different application, an argument residents used for turning that application down. Second, the Bingen Dollar General was permitted at 9,100 square feet. White Salmon's threshold catches anything under 10,000\. A store of that build would be captured by the rule; the existing one is simply outside the city.

We could not find another Washington city or county regulating dollar stores as a distinct use, and we are stating that carefully: there is no way to full-text search every Washington municipal code at once, so the honest claim is that none has been identified, not that White Salmon would be the first.

## 🛠 Jargon Buster

- **Fee-in-lieu:** money a developer pays instead of doing the thing the code requires. Here, instead of planting replacement trees.
- **DBH, or diameter at breast height:** how foresters measure a tree's size, taken about four and a half feet up the trunk.
- **Moratorium:** a temporary freeze on accepting or processing certain permit applications while a city writes new rules. It applies going forward, not to applications already filed and complete.
- **Vested rights:** once an application is complete under the rules in force that day, those rules generally keep governing it even if the rules change later. This is why timing matters so much in the dollar store fight.
- **Term of art:** a phrase with a narrow, defined legal meaning that is not the same as its ordinary meaning. "Small-box discount store" is one. It is a category invented by planners in 2018, and what it covers depends entirely on the definition a given city writes.
- **Formula retail:** zoning language that regulates businesses by whether they are standardised across many locations, by trade name, signage, decor and merchandise, rather than by what they sell. It is a different tradition from the dollar store ordinances, and White Salmon's definition borrows from both.
- **Dispersal ordinance:** a rule that does not ban a use but requires a minimum distance between two of them, usually a mile or more. This is what most of the cities cited in the national research actually adopted, rather than a prohibition.

## 🗓 How to Join and Learn More

- **White Salmon City Council** meets at 6 p.m. at 119 NE Church Ave and on Zoom. The September 2 agenda carries the moratorium with public testimony, the tree fee resolution, park and facility fee updates, a lodging tax committee recusal ordinance, and the Tree Board's code report.
- **Planning Commission** meets September 9 and September 23.
- **Tree Board** meets September 14.
- Agendas, packets and recordings for all three are posted on the [city's meetings page](https://www.whitesalmonwa.gov/meetings?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io).
- Written comment to Council can be emailed ahead of a meeting and is included in the packet and the official record.

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*Meeting notes for the Tree Board and Planning Commission come in part from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, and are used under CC BY 4.0\. The August 10 Tree Board notes are by Caroline Elliott, edited and fact checked by Swen Carlson; the August 26 Planning Commission notes are by Swen Carlson, edited and fact checked by Emily Harris.* [*Learn more about Gorge Documenters*](https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*. Many thanks as always, as meetings like the Tree Board would have no recorded record without them!*

*Additional Disclosure: the Dispatch's publisher wrote to the White Salmon Planning Commission in support of the 211 N Main application, wrote to Council on the small-box discount store proposal in the days before the August 13 special meeting, and wrote to the Tree Board in July on the fee-in-lieu schedule, a letter reproduced in the Tree Board's own packet. All of that was in her personal capacity as a White Salmon business owner and not on the Dispatch's behalf. Readers may also encounter her in other outlets' coverage of this arc: Uplift Local's August 24 explainer quotes her comments on the moratorium at length.*