> ## 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. # 🗺 Who Actually Plans Stevenson? - August '26 Round-up - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/who-actually-plans-stevenson-august-26-round-up/ - Published: 2026-09-11T07:00:06.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-11T07:00:06.000Z - Description: Stevenson ended a three-year sewer fight on a quiet voice vote, then hit a harder question. The county planner's study says the city does not need more apartment-zoned land. The Planning Commission recommended more anyway, and Council handed its 2027 housing work to the county. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: Stevenson, Stevenson City Council, Stevenson Planning Commission, Skamania County *Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19782422?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.* ## 🏛 August 2026 Stevenson Municipal Round-Up **Agencies Covered:** Stevenson Planning Commission (Aug. 10) and Stevenson City Council (Aug. 20). The Board of Adjustment did not meet, and has not met since June 10. **The Bottom Line:** Stevenson ended a three-year fight over septic systems on a voice vote, with nobody speaking against it, in a meeting that was over before 7 p.m. Then it hit a harder question. The city's own planner works for the county, that planner's research says Stevenson does not need more apartment-zoned land, the Planning Commission recommended more anyway, and ten days later the Council handed most of its 2027 housing work to the county. **The Vibe:** Relieved, and a little disoriented. The room that had been arguing since 2023 finally got its win, and immediately started asking who is actually in charge of planning around here. ### 🔎 What Changed - The **sewer ordinance passed**. Chapter 13.08 was repealed and replaced, the penalty moratorium ended eleven days early, and existing septic systems that work can stay. - The **Planning Commission recommended approval** of the Attwell Road rezone, but only under the R-3 Overlay, a stricter design regime than the applicant asked for. - The city adopted **engineering standards** for public works construction that had not been revised since **1999**. - Council gave the **Mayor authority to settle claims up to $20,000** without a vote, and accepted a **FEMA grant** for last December's storms at a 75 / 12.5 / 12.5 federal, state and city split. ### ⚠ What Escalated - The **city administrator search failed**. In the city's own written words, "the candidate selected for the City Administrator position decided not to take the position." Council paid another **$17,870** to repost the job and keep an interim consultant on. - The **county planner's build-out study** answered the commission's question, and the answer was no: 132 Stevenson parcels are already zoned for multifamily, fewer than 15 percent have any on them, 22 sit empty, and the city "does not have a pressing need for more parcels zoned R3." - The **Planning Commission asked to be put to work**, saying the zoning map and the comprehensive plan no longer agree and nobody left at City Hall remembers why the map looks the way it does. - The **volunteer fire department** says its problem is demographic, not seasonal. ### 🧭 What's Next - **Sept. 14, 6 p.m.:** Planning Commission. Watch for the August minutes, which are the only document that can tell you how the rezone vote actually went. - **Sept. 16:** Council Budget Workshop #2, "Understanding City Revenues." It is on the August agenda but not yet on the city's public calendar, so check before you go. - **Sept. 17, 6 p.m.:** Regular City Council meeting, with a first reading expected on the conditional use permit ordinance and, the mayor hopes, a city administrator. - **Sept. 20:** the deadline to comment on the draft critical areas ordinance that Stevenson and Skamania County are adopting together. Details below. - **Mid-October:** 2027 lodging tax applications due, and the city's new website goes live. Stevenson is switching from ci.stevenson.wa.us to **stevensonwa.gov**; the old address keeps working about a year. - **No date set:** a written traffic plan for the foot of Cascade Avenue, where tour coaches turning around have started tearing up the asphalt and crossing three crosswalks at once. The city is trying to hand it to the Port of Skamania as landlord. - **Dec. 31, 2026:** the state deadline for the periodic update Stevenson is already inside. --- ## Stevenson Planning Commission ### 🏘 The study said no. The commission said yes, with conditions. In July the commission refused to decide a rezone at 201 SW Attwell Road, and [sent staff away to find out how much multifamily land Stevenson already has](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-sewer-rewrite-gets-its-escape-hatch-stevenson-july-26-round-up/). On August 10 the answer came back on City of Stevenson Planning Department letterhead, signed by Josh Neblock, Lead Land Use Planner for Skamania County and the City of Stevenson. He had gone block by block by hand, because his mapping software would not cooperate that day. What he found: - **132 parcels** inside city limits are zoned R-3, multifamily residential. - **Fewer than 15 percent** of them have multifamily units on them. - **12** are courthouses, churches, schools and other public buildings, which he wrote are "likely eliminating them from future multi-family developments." - **22 parcels, 16 percent, are undeveloped.** - And directly across the street from the parcel in question sit **seven empty R-3 Overlay lots**. His written conclusion: "the City has not even remotely approached its potential build out for parcels zoned R3," and "Currently, the city does not have a pressing need for more parcels zoned R3, according to build out potential." The applicants, Roger DuCloo and Traci Boyle-Galastiantz, want to rezone a half acre from Suburban Residential to R-3 so they can retire onto it and add five to seven rental units. R-3 would allow up to ten, an increase of eight over what is allowed today. Two neighbors testified against. Doug Zabel, who lives a few houses down, objected on lot size, street parking and property values, while saying what he could live with: "we're more than willing, like a ADU or duplex possibly, but just this high density on that street along with the parking just seems like a bad setup." Mary Repar argued the rezone would be illegal spot zoning, reading from research she had done herself. That is a legal claim, nobody in the room answered it, so we looked it up. Spot zoning is a real thing in Washington law. It means singling out one small property for a zoning label that clashes with the land around it. But [the state Supreme Court's test](https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1983/48692-1-1.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) has a third part, and it is the part her account left out: the change also has to be out of step with the city's comprehensive plan. Stevenson's plan already marks this parcel for high density housing. The staff report says so in as many words. Her second argument was that nothing about the area has changed enough to justify a rezone. The same case cuts against that one too. The court said a city does not have to show changed conditions when a rezone is simply carrying out the plan it already adopted, because if it did, a new plan could never get built. The court also said not every spot zone is illegal, and that the real question is whether a change serves the public and not just the owner. That call would ultimately belong to a judge, and nobody has yet gone to court. Where the commenter was on solid ground was indeed that good intentions do not bind a piece of land, and she is right about that. "Promises are not legal documents." What could potentially bind it is a contract recorded against the property, signed as a condition of the rezone, spelling out what can and cannot be built there. Washington cities do sometimes use them. The commission reached for a different tool that does some of the same work. It recommended approval anyway, and the way it got there is the interesting part. Commissioners worked out during deliberation that the **R-3 Overlay**, a design overlay running along Rock Creek Drive, would do what a promise cannot. It carries the same density as plain R-3 but adds enforceable rules on building separation, parking, open space, tree retention and design, and several commissioners concluded that on a steep half acre bounded by two rights of way, that means "lucky to get three" structures, nowhere near ten. So the motion was "to approve the application contingent on it being R3 overlay only," and the chair confirmed it back to staff as a recommendation for the rezone "with the restriction of the R3 overlay as the component portion of the restriction." ### 🗺 "Please put us to work on the comp plan" The moment the vote ended, a commissioner opened new business with this: "this case to me, it screams, please put us to work on the comp plan." The problem, as the room described it, is that the comprehensive plan, which says what the city wants someday, and the zoning map, which says what is allowed today, do not agree, and nobody left at City Hall knows why the map looks the way it does. It "has been the map since before 2017." The veteran members could supply only fragments: densities follow elevation, kept close to the river and the sewer; an earlier attempt to merge the city's four residential zones died on loud neighborhood opposition, after which Stevenson gave up on broad rezoning and switched to handling one owner's request at a time. The plan was sold as an umbrella under which the zoning work would follow, and, as one member put it, "I don't believe more than five ever got addressed." The mayor and a councilmember were in the room. The answer: a scoping meeting with the county planner had already happened that week, a work plan would come back "over the next couple month or two," and it should be a joint workshop rather than the commission drafting in a box. The two bodies have met together once, five years ago. ### ⏳ The clock in the room Stevenson is already inside a state-mandated planning update, right now, with a deadline four months away. Skamania County's [Critical Area Ordinance Update page](https://www.skamaniacounty.gov/departments-offices/community-development/planning-division/critical-area-ordinance-update?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) states it plainly: "Skamania County and The City of Stevenson, through an interlocal agreement, are in the middle of a Periodic update required by the State of Washington. This includes Critical Area Ordinance Update, Natural Resource Lands Designations and STEP Housing Requirements." The deadline is **December 31, 2026**, and it is statutory: [RCW 36.70A.130(5)(c)](https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=36.70a.130&ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) names Skamania County "and the cities within those counties." On **July 22** the county and the city gave the state Department of Commerce their 60-day notice of intent to adopt. **Public comments are open until September 20**, and they go to the same planner who wrote the build-out memo, at [Josh.Neblock@Skamaniacounty.gov](mailto:Josh.Neblock@Skamaniacounty.gov). Hold that next to the commission's request, because the two are not the same thing. Skamania is a [partially planning county](https://mrsc.org/explore-topics/planning/gma/growth-management-act-basics?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) under the Growth Management Act, which means protecting critical areas and resource lands is required and a full comprehensive plan rewrite is not. The mandatory work has a deadline, a filed notice, an open comment period and a named owner. The discretionary work, the map the commission says is out of whack, has a promise of a work plan in a couple of months. --- ## Stevenson City Council ### 🏘 The 2027 work plan, and who owns Stevenson's housing rules Ten days later the council received a written 2027 work plan built out of two strategy sessions. No vote was taken: the motion was pulled from the agenda that morning and the item presented as information, though the document itself is headed "2027 Approved Work Plans." Read the owner column and the month makes sense. | Policy project | Why it is on the list | Owner | Council action | | ----------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | -------------- | | Parking in the C1 zone | "Parking requirements are a barrier to development" | Councilmember Adi Elliott / Planning | **Q4 2026** | | ADU Code, phase 1 | "City's ADU code is inconsistent with state law" | **County Planning** | Q1 | | Long-term water supply | "Infrastructure is failing at the Rock Creek water intake facility" | Public Works Director Cody Rosander | Q1 | | Housing Action Plan | "The community needs additional middle housing to accommodate workers and families" | Mayor Jenny Taylor / **County Planning** | Report Q1 2027 | | Capital plan funding strategy | Capital projects drive rates and hookup charges | Rosander | Q3 | | Strategic plan update | Council goals set direction | Taylor | Q2/Q3 | | Development code cleanup | Simplify, modernize, reduce ambiguity | **County Planning** | Q3 | Four of the seven belong wholly or partly to County Planning. That is the same office, and in practice the same planner, that staffs the Planning Commission and wrote the memo telling it Stevenson does not need more R-3 land. There is one genuinely new thing in that table. Downtown parking reform, which has been [circling since June](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/parking-reform-comes-to-stevenson-citywide-round-up-june-26/) and which a councilmember described in July as needing only "somebody to put the words in there," now has a date attached to it for the first time: **Q4 of this year**. The operational list is its own kind of tell: options for outsourcing payroll and benefits, and scoping a replacement for a financial system the city calls "outdated and inefficient." The capital list runs a play structure, a public works shop, city hall maintenance, Bone Road and Ridgecrest water lines, Lasher Street, a Leavens grant application, crosswalks and **fire hall rehabilitation**. ### 🚰 The sewer fight ended quietly The ordinance that has consumed this council since 2023 passed on a voice vote, with two members of the public speaking, both to say thank you. Scott Robinson thanked the council for "all the time and effort and thoughtfulness" put into it. "It's been a hard time for the last, I don't know, year or year and a half on this issue," he said, "but it looks like that cloud is going to disperse." His one ask for next time: before the city draws sewer lines past people's houses, ask them first. Rick Jessel also thanked the council, and gave credit to whoever first suggested a sewer committee. What the new Chapter 13.08 actually does for a Stevenson septic owner: - An existing septic system that was **lawfully approved and still works as designed may keep working**, even when city sewer runs past the property. - Connection is triggered by **failure**, determined by the county health officer or by specific alterations listed in the code. Not by proximity, and not by selling the house. - On a failure you get a written notice stating the basis, the deadlines, the relief available and your appeal rights, then **90 days to respond**, **365 days to connect**, and **90 days to appeal to the City Council**. A timely appeal **pauses every deadline and blocks any penalty** while it is pending. - Connect inside that year and the city **waives the system development charge**, the largest single fee. The clock runs from the day the notice is served, which matters for anyone the sewer reaches years from now. - There is an escape hatch for the case that started all this: if a single-family owner's repair permit is denied only because the law says connect, the council **must** weigh repair cost against connection cost, alongside public health and available help, and may grant relief so the repair can be considered. - You still pay for everything except that waived charge: the pipe, any extension, pumping, permits, inspection, road restoration, easements and decommissioning the old tank. Two caveats. **The ordinance does not yet have a settled number:** the packet's cover memo calls it 2025-1224, the ordinance itself has a blank where the number goes, and when the motion was made a councilmember asked "Do we have the numbers?" and was told "Not yet." And **the text in the packet is not quite what passed.** A councilmember pushed to make a table note mandatory rather than optional, so any new subdivision has to show how sewer would serve every lot, arguing the city should not approve layouts that make future connection impossible. The attorney agreed and said he would write it in after the vote, so until the signed ordinance is published, the public copy and the adopted copy differ. The code also leaves one thing open: **the penalty for failing to connect has not been set.** The council will fix the amount later, capped by state law at no more than a connected customer's bill. ### 💰 The recruitment that failed, and a new delegation The city administrator search collapsed and the paperwork says why. The Prothman amendment's recital: "Following the initial recruitment process, the candidate selected for the City Administrator position decided not to take the position." So the council authorized another **$17,870**: roughly $15,000 for ten more weeks of interim support at about five hours a week, and about $2,870 to repost and re-advertise. That sits on top of a $16,500 recruitment fee and a $12,000 first amendment. The interim consultant, Rachael Fuller, is explicitly not a city employee or officer; she is an independent contractor supplied through the firm, reporting to the mayor, with no authority to sign contracts or spend money. The reposting was said to close around September 6\. The last exchange of the night, on whether next month brings a hire: "Global optimism." Council also handed the mayor **authority to settle litigation claims up to $20,000** without a vote, subject to legal review, existing budget, and a written summary at the next meeting under voucher approval. Anything larger still needs an executive session and an open vote. The city attorney called it long overdue and aimed at small claims, and said it "does not cut out city council." To know when it gets used, watch the voucher section of future agendas. The council also accepted **FEMA** grant agreement D26-124 for the December 5 to 19, 2025 storms, at 75 percent federal, 12.5 percent state and 12.5 percent local, with no total committed until FEMA approves individual project worksheets. The agenda put the funding at stake at about $60,000\. And it adopted **Ordinance 2026-1234**, the city's engineering standards for public works construction, on a second reading with no changes. Those standards were **last updated in 1999**. ### 🚒 The fire department's problem is arithmetic The fire report was the most sobering item of the night, and it was not about this fire season, which has been quiet. It was about who is left to answer the calls. The fire chief tied volunteer firefighting and school enrollment to the same curve, and put the share of the community over 65 at about a third. "Firefighting is a young person's game," he said, and as the town turns "more into a bed and breakfast community, a retirement place," the numbers go one way. He called it a nationwide crisis. Concretely: the department lost its assistant chief and two other firefighters to out-of-state moves this year, and the public works director has stepped into the assistant chief's job. The two of them have taken it to Olympia, meeting with [Rep. Kevin Waters](https://kevinwaters.houserepublicans.wa.gov/about/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), the Skamania County Republican who represents the 17th District. Better news on insurance: with hydrant work and the new engine counted, the chief expects the city and the rural district to hold a fire protection rating of five, "very good for a volunteer fire department." Expect the burn ban to run through October unless real rain arrives. ### What did not happen, and one open question No Sheriff's Office report was given; the undersheriff could not attend and was said to be recovering. The written report in the packet is scanned images with no readable text, so there is no crime or call-volume information from Stevenson this month at all. That is now two months running. The August vouchers were approved, but no check register was included in the packet, so there is no public figure for August spending. At both August meetings Mary Repar pressed the city to comment to the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council on the Cascade Renewable Transmission project, the proposal to run a line down the middle of the Columbia River. "Your land use matters, your community matters in this case," she told the council. The city attorney set the limits: Stevenson can say what its land use rules would allow and little more, because the siting council "does not have to abide by those ordinances," and only a small strip inside city limits is affected. He said it was going out the following week, against an August 26 deadline. --- ## ⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Housing Needs in Stevenson The commission's rezone argument and the council's work plan are the same argument, and it is older than either. In **January 2020** the city, the county and the Port of Skamania paid for a [Housing Needs Analysis](https://www.ci.stevenson.wa.us/sites/default/files/fileattachments/planning/page/2533/housing%5Fneeds%5Fanalysis.pdf?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), and staff read parts of it aloud at the August 10 hearing. It projected Skamania County would add **3,619 residents and need 1,949 more housing units** over twenty years, with **45 percent of that demand** needing to be affordable to households earning under about $90,000\. Using regional federal guidelines it defined middle housing as homes priced **below $368,000**, or two-bedrooms renting under **$1,700 a month**. It mapped 8,746 acres of buildable residential land countywide and found **over 80 percent of it wrongly zoned or unserved by utilities** for that kind of housing. Middle housing, it said, "is only being planned in the City of Stevenson, which accounts for just 8% of the County's buildable residential land inventory." Its recommendations to Stevenson read as a list of the arguments the city has had since: allow one attached and one detached accessory dwelling unit instead of one, raise the size cap from 800 to 900 square feet, drop the extra parking space, permit duplexes in R-1 outright, reduce minimum lot sizes for multifamily, consider merging the R-2 and R-3 zones, and **complete the sewer and water master plan updates before allowing major zone changes**. It also recommended the county and city sign an agreement to work on housing together. The city's own project page for that work now reads, in its status field, [**"On Hold."**](https://www.ci.stevenson.wa.us/planning/project/residential-building-capacity?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) The note underneath says "Project delayed for more public involvement." The distance traveled since is measurable. In 2019 the median home in Stevenson sold for **$337,000**, up 7.3 percent in a year, the fastest rise in the county, and still under the study's $368,000 middle-housing line. Today [Redfin puts the median at about $665,000](https://www.redfin.com/city/17390/WA/Stevenson/housing-market?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) for the three months ending July 2026, on a market thin enough that five homes sold in July. Treat the exact figure with care and the direction as unmistakable. Meanwhile the affordable housing actually being built in Skamania County is being built by somebody else, somewhere else. Columbia Gorge News reported in May that Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation expects to break ground this year on the [Carson Community Land Trust](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/housing-roundup/article%5Fd3b43c20-8bfd-4f0e-88bd-cc87172b1fac.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), fourteen single-family homes on seven acres where buyers own the house and lease the land. It was the only Skamania County project in a roundup of eight Gorge developments. Nothing in Stevenson was on the list. --- ## 🛠 Jargon Buster - **R-3 and the R-3 Overlay.** R-3 is Stevenson's multifamily zone, allowing one dwelling per 2,000 square feet of lot. The Overlay is the same density with design rules attached, mostly about spacing, parking, open space, trees and how buildings look. It does not change how far a building must sit from the property line. - **Concomitant zoning agreement.** A recorded contract between an owner and a city, signed as a condition of a rezone, limiting what can actually be built. It turns a promise into an enforceable one. - **SDC, system development charge.** The one-time fee for hooking up to city water or sewer, meant to buy your share of existing capacity. It is the fee the new ordinance waives for a timely connection. - **STEP housing.** Shelter, Transitional, Emergency and Permanent supportive housing. State law limits how cities may zone against it, and it is part of the update Stevenson is in. --- ## How to Join & Learn More - **Planning Commission:** second Monday, 6 p.m., City Hall, 7121 E Loop Road, and on Zoom. Next: **September 14**. - **City Council:** third Thursday, 6 p.m., same place. Next regular meeting: **September 17**, with a budget workshop listed for **September 16**. - **Meetings, agendas and video:** [ci.stevenson.wa.us](https://www.ci.stevenson.wa.us/meetings?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), with recordings at vimeo.com/cityofstevenson. Written comment must reach City Hall by noon on the day of the meeting to make the packet. - **Comment on the critical areas ordinance before September 20:** the draft, the science memo and the flood chapter are on [Skamania County's update page](https://www.skamaniacounty.gov/departments-offices/community-development/planning-division/critical-area-ordinance-update?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). Comments go to [Josh.Neblock@Skamaniacounty.gov](mailto:Josh.Neblock@Skamaniacounty.gov). - **The sewer ordinance** has its own [city page](https://www.ci.stevenson.wa.us/publicworks/page/proposed-sewer-ordinance?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). Watch for the signed, numbered version.