🧾 The Emergency Is Over. The Invoices Aren't. North Bonneville, Sept '26

Enjoy the audio edition on Buzzsprout, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.

🕯️ Cabinet of Curiosities: The Whiskey Flat Heist

It's our Halloween month, so every round-up opens with something from the Gorge's cabinet of curiosities. This one is a North Bonneville story about who gets to hold the public record.

In the early 1890s, the seat of Skamania County wasn't in Stevenson. It was down at the Lower Cascades, near today's North Bonneville, in a plain frame courthouse twenty-four feet by forty.

Then, one spring night, a group of young men loaded the county's records into saddlebags and wheelbarrows and hauled them off in the dark. By morning the records were sitting in a rough little building on Whiskey Flat, the Stevenson waterfront. (Not to be confused with the Whiskey Flat across the river. Apparently every landing on this stretch of the Columbia had one.) And Stevenson declared itself the new county seat.

Henry Metzger of Carson called it a move made "unauthorized and under cover of darkness." Some residents took it to court. And the men who did it, Metzger wrote, "got away with it without interference or punishment."

Then came June 1894. The biggest flood ever recorded on the Columbia ran right over the Cascades. It took the old courthouse and most of the town, and the town was never rebuilt. If those records had stayed put, they would have gone down the river with it.

Sources: HistoryLink, "Skamania County Thumbnail History"; Henry Metzger's recollections and Roy Craft's 1983 article on Metzger, Columbia Gorge Museum local history collection.

In North Bonneville, arguments over the public record go back a long way. September's are below.

🏛 North Bonneville September 2026 Round-Up

Agencies Covered: North Bonneville City Council (September 8 and 22) and the North Bonneville Planning Commission (September 1).

The Bottom Line: The council adopted the resolution that ends the city's water emergency and hands contracting back to the council, with no spending cap but a rule that every contractor invoice come with its backup. In the same month it paid a second bill of nearly $14,000 that councilmembers said had no breakdown of the hours, and voted down an independent look at how the city lost its operators.

The Vibe: Quieter at the plant, louder at the table. The public works news was mostly good. The council spent its energy on procedure: who adjourns, who gets a hearing, who can email whom.

No minutes of either September council meeting have been approved yet, so the vote counts below come from the meeting video.

🔎 What Changed

• The emergency is over. Resolution 597, adopted September 8, terminates the state of emergency and returns contracting authority to the council.
• The contractor bill is coming down. The state Department of Ecology agreed that from October 1 the contract operator can work 32 hours a week instead of 40, and city staff can run the weekend lab tests. Expected monthly cost drops from $26,400 to $22,400.
• A master fee schedule is law. Every city fee now lives in one document, adopted as Ordinance 1176.
• The library is open on Mondays. After the city pressed the regional library district, North Bonneville's branch added a third afternoon.
• The planner hands off in October. Skamania County's Josh Neblock takes over from Richard Hall.
• Goats and sheep on East Cascade. The Planning Commission approved a livestock permit, according to Hall.

⚠ What Escalated

• The council paid a $13,918.75 contractor claim 3 to 2 after pulling it from the vouchers for lack of detail.
• A proposal for an independent review of how the city ended up with no operator failed.
• Councilmember Jeff Blakeley asked for a public hearing on complaints made against him, a right state law gives him, and said he would bring complaints of his own.
• The August 25 minutes the council approved record two split votes as unanimous.

🧭 What's Next

• On September 22 the council agreed to put a vote on a new Mayor Pro Tem on its October 13 agenda.
• The city attorney will draft email and communication rules for councilmembers.
• The rewritten zoning code goes to the state for an expedited review, then back to the council.
• The city is negotiating a new library lease, asking for fair-market rent.

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North Bonneville City Council

💧 The Emergency Resolution: Ended, With Strings

The council spent August trying to write the resolution the city's code requires after a mayoral emergency declaration. On September 8 it passed one.

The version that came back had no hard spending cap. The council had asked for a not-to-exceed figure in August, and staff explained why it wasn't there: a cap stops work the moment it's reached, and "if work stops in the middle of the day, we're right back in the emergency situation." In its place is an expected monthly amount.

The numbers came with good news. Staff told the council that the Department of Ecology has approved two changes starting October 1: the contract operator drops to 32 hours a week, based in Cascade Locks and close enough to respond, and city staff can do the weekend lab testing as long as they stay in contact with a certified operator. The weekend before the meeting, a city employee covered the plant for three days and "didn't have to call anyone." The expected bill:

• September: $6,400 monthly oversight plus an operator at 40 hours a week at $125 an hour, for $26,400.
• From October: the same oversight plus 32 hours a week, for $22,400.

Neither figure covers overtime or emergency call-outs.

City Attorney Dan Curtis walked the council through what the resolution does. Section 1 accepts the mayor's declaration. Section 2 opens with the line that matters most: the council "hereby orders the state of emergency terminated, returns the contracting authority to the purview of the city council, and city operations to the status quo." From here on, anything outside the one emergency contract comes back to the council.

The council then amended it line by line.

Amendment one passed 5 to 0: "that all OMT invoices and supporting documentation be included in council packets prior to payment approval."

Amendment two failed. Blakeley moved for an independent review of "the circumstances leading to the emergency, including what recruitment was done, what alternatives were explored, and what was done to retain our remaining operator," and when the council was told, plus an exit interview with the former public works supervisor if he is willing. "This is not about assigning blame," he said. "It's about finding out what happened and make sure that it does not happen again." Someone else at the table asked to add the women who had worked under the former supervisor.

The objections were about cost and about lines. A concern was raised that it edged into personnel, which belongs to the mayor. Curtis said the council could request things of the mayor in a resolution, but cautioned against wording that "does effectively direct staff to conduct an investigation." Councilmember Emily Sabo seconded it "'cause it warrants a discussion," then said she had already spoken with "basically every party" and hesitated to spend more. Another voice at the table asked what policy could possibly follow: "Anybody can quit any job."

Earlier, an exchange over whether the city had ever had four operators got heated enough that the chair cut it off. Blakeley's answer to the policy question was that the city could have had backup in place, like the statewide utility mutual aid network it doesn't belong to, and still could. The review failed. The roll call is only partly audible, but Sabo and Councilmember Ted Salka are among the no votes heard. Curtis noted that leaving it out of this resolution doesn't stop the council from doing it later.

The resolution passed as amended. Four yes votes are heard on the recording, and the fifth is cut off.

Two weeks later a councilmember moved to rescind it, arguing it had been listed on the agenda as a workshop, not an action item, and that the council's rules bar legislative action on anything not published as one. Curtis answered that a resolution concurring in an emergency "is not legislation." Nobody seconded, and the resolution stands.

🧾 The Second Invoice

The contractor's second bill came to the September 8 meeting. It was $13,918.75 for 111.35 hours, and councilmembers said it arrived with no breakdown. That works out to exactly $125 an hour for every hour, the rate for a fully certified operator.

Sabo said August's charges now topped $27,000 for one month: "that just makes me really uncomfortable." A councilmember said the city had been billed 199.35 hours for August, against the contractor's statement to the council in August that the city would see 40 hours a week. Staff said emergencies can't wait: a lift station alarm has to be answered, and only a qualified operator can do it.

The council voted 5 to 0 to pull the claim out of the voucher packet. The rest of the vouchers passed at $38,012.70. Then, with no motion to pay it, the worry was a late fee: "This is all uncharted waters." A motion to pay it anyway, with direction that every future bill be itemized, passed 3 to 2, with Sabo and Blakeley voting no.

One of the two no votes explained later in the meeting: "I don't feel comfortable spending taxpayer money on something that I don't know exactly what it is... I'm also glad that we are paying it because I know that they're helping us." Blakeley asked how to initial a voucher packet with a bill he voted against. Curtis said he could decline to sign, "but the council has approved all of them."

On September 22 the council approved the September oversight invoice, the flat $6,400. Blakeley didn't vote against it, but objected to paying at the start of the month for a service not yet delivered: "there's nothing in the OMT contract that requires us to pay in advance." He wants it back on the agenda. Sabo compared it to a lawyer's retainer. Chief Administrative Officer Taylor Chambers said the contractor had sent a report evaluating the plant and logging its work day by day, which she plans to post on the city website. As of September 22, the backup for the August bill had not arrived.

Blakeley also brought a cost case for hiring the city's own operator now instead of near the end of the contract. At $40 an hour plus benefits against the contractor's $125, he estimated savings of $19,540. Chambers said the council "cannot direct us to open recruitment early, but you can recommend." Others pointed to how hard operators are to find. It stayed a discussion.

The hiring bar is now on the record. Asked by Salka, Chambers said the plant needs an operator certified at Group 2 in both water and wastewater, and the permit requires a Group 1 working under them. One current employee may soon sit the operator-in-training test.

Sabo summed up where she stands in her closing comments. "Last month, this company cost us three times as much as an operator did," she said. "When you run out of money for the city, you raise the rates."

In public comment, a speaker praised the contractor's work at public works as "1000% for the better" and asked the council to remember how much sits on the CAO's desk: "She's here to do a job, but she's not here to do everybody's job."

⚖️ Complaints, Hearings and How to End a Meeting

The fight that broke into the open at the end of August turned into procedure in September.

A hearing on request. The September 8 meeting opened with a proposed executive session to "receive and evaluate complaints or charges brought against a public officer." Blakeley asked whether it was about him and asked for it to be public. Curtis read the rule aloud. Under RCW 42.30.110(1)(f), a council can hear complaints in private, but "upon the request of such officer or employee, a public hearing or a meeting open to the public shall be conducted." Blakeley: "I'm requesting the public meeting." The answer was that it would be scheduled. It was not on the September 22 agenda.

Blakeley then asked for a second closed session of his own, saying it was "to address charges that I'm going to make against two counselors and you for what happened at the August 25th meeting." The executive session happened at the end of the meeting and was extended twice. No action was reported from it.

How to end a meeting. Blakeley got a discussion of adjournment added to the agenda. He read the council's rule: the chair may ask whether there is further business and, hearing none, adjourn. Twice in August, he said, that didn't happen. The typed minutes of both meetings now say so. Curtis said a motion to adjourn is most common. When the council came back from executive session on September 8, the chair asked each councilmember whether they had anything else before adjourning.

Email. On September 22 Curtis and Chambers asked whether the council wants written rules on blind-copying councilmembers, the question behind much of August's friction. Curtis described a red, yellow and green scale: a quorum agreeing by email is red, scheduling and flyers are green, and the trouble lives in between, with informational emails that also carry opinion and might prompt replies. Blakeley read from the state's municipal research center handbook: passively receiving an email is not a meeting, but an exchange likely is. MRSC's own guidance says the same. He said a long cost analysis of his never reached his colleagues before the meeting because of the current rules. The answer he got: "It's the job of the counselors to sway each other in the open public meeting in front of the people on the record." The council agreed to have Curtis draft a stricter and a looser set of policies for a study session.

Mayor Pro Tem. On September 22 Salka asked for a vote on a new Mayor Pro Tem at the council's following meeting. Blakeley, who holds the post, asked that any complaint in it be heard in executive session.

📋 The Record Itself

The August 25 minutes don't match the tape. The council approved them 5 to 0 on September 22. They record two votes as 4 to 0: the order to correct the August 11 minutes and the Economic Development Council contract. On the meeting video, the clerk reads each roll call back, and both were 3 to 1. Salka voted no on the first and Blakeley on the second, as we reported in August. The city's own position, stated in the August 25 minutes, is that "the legal record of what happened during the meeting was the recording."

The August 18 meeting did fail on notice. The minutes now say so: "Due to a noticing issue, the meeting was unable to proceed and was adjourned prior to any City business taking place."

Bradford Island dropped off. On August 11 the council voted 5 to 0 to postpone its Bradford Island Superfund item "until the September 8, 2026, Council meeting." It wasn't on the September 8 agenda or the September 22 one. Two more written comments from Mitch Patton, a former member of the Bradford Island Restoration Advisory Board, were logged on September 22. The comments themselves aren't posted with the agenda.

📜 One Fee Schedule, and a Familiar Number

On September 22 the council adopted Ordinance 1176, a master fee schedule. It gathers every fee the city charges into one document so future changes can be made by resolution. Before this, fees were scattered through the code and through ordinances and resolutions that never made it into the published code. Curtis credited his firm's paralegal and legal intern, Mara Powers, with most of the work.

Staff said no fees went up, with two exceptions. The basic fee for processing any application, "previously $5" and set long ago, was raised to what $5 is worth today. And a $100 permit for construction or digging in the public right-of-way, which the code always said would be set by resolution but never was, now exists, matched to what Skamania County charges.

The number is not new. Ordinance 1176 was also the number on April's mayor-pay ordinance, which failed 0 to 4. A failed ordinance never becomes law, so reusing the number isn't improper, but anyone citing "Ordinance 1176" now needs to say which one.

💵 Budget, Audits and a Busy Desk

Chambers's year-to-date report carried one hopeful line. The negative starting balances that have hung over the city's funds all year, including the equipment fund that was spent by January, may be a reporting error. "I have found what I believe is evidence supporting that we did not have negative balances," she said, and she is working with the city's accountant and the state to correct them. If they can't be corrected, the equipment fund is headed for a year-end hole of more than $90,000.

The streets fund shows more than $400,000 unspent, a grant for about half a mile of path. Construction is expected next summer. A councilmember asked why not this summer, since unspent money blocks new grants. Chambers said the engineer had set that timeline.

The state's leasehold excise tax audit has closed, with findings to come. Curtis said the audit's back-pay findings, over leasehold excise tax that hadn't been collected properly, are resolved and the city has the money, though the findings will still appear in the report. The audit also produced an updated Trailhead Taproom agreement, approved 5 to 0. It splits the taproom's seasonal beer garden from its year-round structure so the business doesn't pay rent and excise tax all year on space it only uses in summer.

Chambers also has a state retirement-system compliance audit, four extensive records requests, and the 2027 budget on her desk. "If you need something and it's been several days," she told the council, "please reply again."

📚 The Library: A Win, Then a Rent Talk

In June the branch manager told the council North Bonneville's library was staffed six hours a week. Chambers said the city pushed Fort Vancouver Regional Library hard on that, telling the district people come in wanting the library and find nobody there. "And right afterwards, they opened up on Mondays." The branch now lists three staffed afternoons, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The lease is next. The library pays the city $240 for its space in the city's building, under a contract last renegotiated in 2016. The city has asked for $847.50, based on fair market value. The district has pushed back, and Chambers hopes to settle it before the new year.

🚒 Fire Department

Chief Kalista Hamilton's September 22 report was mostly about gear and people. Engine 8-2 is still out of service, and crews are refitting 8-1, a truck "set up for Vancouver," to do everything. The department got non-expired turnouts and helmets from District 2. She wants the old hand-me-down Vancouver turnouts gone because they likely contain PFAS, the chemicals linked to cancer. A state DNR grant of up to $5,000 opens October 1 with a 50 percent match, and a backup-generator grant for the fire station, now paired with the high school, was due around September 25.

The annual turkey bingo is in doubt. It takes about 15 people for the night, plus a lot of raffle donations, and, as someone added, volunteering is down "in basically every district." Anyone who wants to help, or to be a firefighter, should get in touch with the department.

🧹 Around Town

• Road striping is off until next year. The mayor said the county's new striping contractor is "not going well," so the city is holding off. Staff are painting stop bars, crosswalks and parking lots themselves. A councilmember suggested marking where the stripes are before winter wipes them out.
• A berm on Evergreen Drive. Blakeley asked the city to press the PUD to clear rock and fill it left on the south side of Evergreen Drive after underground work, which blocks mowing.
• Water quality. A resident said her home meter readings run far higher than in Washougal. Staff said the city's water is tested by a professional lab to state standards, "our drinking water is safe," and the 2026 water quality report is on the city's website. Blakeley suggested adding her home to the houses the city samples.
• Burn pile. It stays closed under the state burn ban. Chipping is being considered.
• Teams. Joining council meetings online still only works from the link on the agenda, not the one on the city homepage.

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North Bonneville Planning Commission

🐐 Goats and Sheep on East Cascade

The Commission met September 1 for a public hearing on a livestock conditional use permit. Joey and Kendel McMaster asked to keep goats and sheep on their roughly 8-acre lot at 1455 E. Cascade Drive, which is zoned Timber Conservancy and bordered almost entirely by federal land. The staff report describes a fenced area of about an acre with a shelter, about 1,100 feet from the house, "more than ample for three goats and three sheep." Staff recommended approval with four conditions: the permit can be revoked, nuisance animals can be removed, it can't be transferred, and animals can't be kept within 20 feet of a house or reach into a neighbor's yard. The permit has to be renewed every year.

Hall told the council on September 8 that the permit "passed." The city hasn't posted minutes or a recording of the meeting, so the vote and any added conditions aren't public yet. It's the third livestock permit in the Commission's record since 2024.

🔁 The Handoff

Hall told the council on September 8 that "Josh is taking over my position starting in October." That's Josh Neblock, Skamania County's lead land use planner, under the planning agreement the council approved in July. Hall invited Neblock to observe the September 1 meeting, and the two have been meeting weekly.

The transfer has had friction. On September 22, eight days before the September 30 date he gave for wrapping up, Hall said Neblock still didn't have access to his files and email, "so we're kind of coming up against a time crunch." Chambers said she had asked the city's IT provider to resend the access link that day. County planning staff will run the Commission's October meeting, and Chair Mary Jo Salka will help steer it.

Hall is finishing one last piece himself: the rewritten Title 19 and Title 20, which he plans to send to the state Department of Commerce for an expedited review before it comes back to the council to become law. The Commission's August 4 minutes, now public, show the hearing closed with no public comment and a recommendation to approve the draft "as presented," which the minutes record as "All approved." On the density bonus, the council's August 25 minutes record the Commission's consultant saying it "discussed the 50% bonus, but wanted to see what the Council thought of it." The council set the figure.

"It's just not gonna be the same without you," Commission Chair Mary Jo Salka told Hall on the council's Teams line before the September 22 meeting started.

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🛠 Jargon Buster

• Resolution concurring in an emergency: as the city attorney has described North Bonneville's code, the mayor declares an emergency and acts, and the council then adopts a resolution accepting the declaration and setting rules. The contract itself is not up for a council vote.
• Not-to-exceed (NTE): a hard cap on what a contract can cost. Once it's reached, work stops unless the council raises it.
• Group 1 / Group 2: Washington's certification levels for water and wastewater operators. Higher groups can run larger or more complex systems.
• Leasehold excise tax: a state tax on private use of public property. The city collects it when a business rents or uses city land.
• Livestock conditional use permit: North Bonneville's permission to keep farm animals in town. The Planning Commission decides it after a hearing, and it's renewed every year.

📅 How to Join & Learn More

• North Bonneville City Council meets the second and fourth Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall, 214 CBD Mall Drive, and on Teams. In October that's the 13th and the 27th. Use the Teams link printed on the agenda. Agendas, recordings and minutes are at northbonneville.net.
• North Bonneville Planning Commission meets the first Tuesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall, per its by-laws. Agendas and materials are at northbonneville.net/planning/meetings.
• Public comment is taken at the start and end of every council meeting, in person or on Teams. Written comments sent before a meeting are logged on the agenda.
• Fire department volunteers and turkey bingo helpers: contact the North Bonneville Fire Department through City Hall.