🌿 Who Pays to Build Near a Wetland? - North Bonneville June '26

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🏛 June 2026 North Bonneville Municipal Round-Up

Agencies Covered: North Bonneville City Council (June 9 and June 23) · North Bonneville Planning Commission (June 2)

The Bottom Line: A new-look Council moved its Critical Areas Ordinance a step closer to the finish line, paid off a firefighter-pension bill that had gone unpaid since 2022, and steered tourism dollars toward summer events, all while running City Hall badly short-staffed. The bigger fights are still coming: how much environmental review to put on future homebuilders, and whether the Council overhauls how it checks the city's bills.

The Vibe: Candid and still finding its footing. This is a council that says out loud, "we're all new here and there's going to be a lot of missteps we make and we'll fix them and move on," while digging out from years of administrative backlog.

🔎 What Changed

• The Council voted 4-0 to send its updated Critical Areas Ordinance to the state with intent to adopt, keeping the city compliant with its grant while leaving room for one more round of edits.
• The city cleared its overdue dues to the Board of Volunteer Firefighters, unpaid since 2022, after the board agreed to waive the interest penalties.
• The Council awarded $6,500 in lodging-tax funds to the North Bonneville Fire Association for two summer events.

⚠ What Escalated

• Councilor Jeff Blakeley pressed a proposal to have councilors formally rotate through a quarterly voucher review. Mayor JB Tennison called it a "waste of time," and the motion died for lack of a second.
• Councilor Blakeley circulated his own cost analysis warning that the state Department of Fish and Wildlife's recommendations could saddle a single property owner with tens of thousands of dollars in studies, reframing the Critical Areas debate around affordability and local control.
• Chief Administrative Officer Taylor Chambers ran City Hall alone for a full week, closing the office for stretches, a symptom of the staffing crunch that also produced the lapsed firefighter dues.

🧭 What's Next

• The Planning Commission holds a public hearing on the draft Title 20 zoning revisions on July 7.
• The Critical Areas Ordinance goes out for a 60-day state comment window before a final adoption vote.
• Councilor Blakeley plans to bring the Bradford Island Superfund cleanup to the Council for discussion on July 28.

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North Bonneville City Council

🌿 Land Use: What Building Near a Wetland Would Actually Cost

The Council picked up the Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) it had continued from April 28, held a public hearing, and voted to send the draft to the state. But the real substance of the night was a question the ordinance forces: if the city tightens its rules, what does it cost an ordinary person to build?

The mechanics matter here, so start with what the ordinance does and does not do. It does not ban building near a wetland, stream, or steep slope, and it asks nothing of an existing home that stays as it is. When Councilor Helms asked whether current homeowners were affected, consultant Paul Dennis of Jackson Civil Engineering first said no: "In terms of demarking wetlands and things of that nature, current homeowners, nope. This would just be developments, future development." But when Councilor Blakeley followed up about a homeowner adding on inside a critical area, Dennis qualified it: small projects could be exempt, while a homeowner taking on a multi-step project would be affected, per the typed minutes. The draft says the same. Its applicability table requires review for any expansion, alteration, or addition to existing construction within a critical area or buffer; work that does not increase the building's footprint is exempt. What the ordinance requires is that anyone proposing new development first identify any critical areas on the property and, if there are any, study them. The cost lives in those studies.

That is where the Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) comes in, and where the "so what" sharpens. Councilor Jeff Blakeley, who received WDFW's five-page recommendation letter the Friday before, wrote a three-day analysis itemizing the studies a property owner could be forced to commission if the city adopted the agency's suggestions. The bill adds up fast:

• Critical Areas Report (wetland delineation, stream ID, habitat and buffer analysis): $4,500 to $8,500
• Habitat Mitigation Plan (inventory, mitigation design, planting and maintenance plans): $20,000 to $50,000 or more
• Biological assessments (nesting bird, amphibian, bat, or fish surveys): $3,500 to $15,000
• Hydrologic studies: $2,500 to $25,000
• Watershed-scale analysis (channel movement, sediment transport, floodplain interactions): $15,000 to $45,000 for a single acre, and $50,000 to $150,000 or more if the study must reach beyond the parcel itself

On top of those pre-construction studies, Blakeley's analysis notes that mitigation projects can carry monitoring obligations that run five to ten years, with annual habitat-performance reports at $3,500 to $8,500 each.

The point Dennis and Blakeley converged on is the affordability trap for a small city like North Bonneville. On a modest infill lot, the studies can rival or exceed the cost of the house itself. "If you're a single property owner just trying to build a house, that can be extremely costly," Dennis said. "It'll cost you right outside being able to build your house. Doing the studies will cost pretty close to what you're trying to build your house for." He singled out two WDFW ideas as the expensive ones: replacing the city's current buffer method with setbacks pegged to tree height, and requiring an avoidance study even from someone who simply wants to build a home, or whose neighbor (not they) has a resource on the adjoining lot. WDFW also floated a 300-foot setback for high-density building; the city's current shoreline setback is 75 feet.

Beyond dollars, Blakeley flagged a control question. WDFW recommends the city adopt its Priority Habitats and Species list "as amended," meaning future state revisions would fold into city code automatically, without a Council vote. "I don't think there was anything in there that I like that they recommended," he said of the letter, before asking Dennis, "are we setting ourselves up for headache if we adopt what you want us to adopt tonight?"

Here is what actually happened, and why it is less dramatic than the debate suggests: Dennis confirmed the draft on the table incorporated Ecology's mostly clarifying comments and did not fold in WDFW's expansive recommendations. City Attorney Dan Curtis reinforced that the city can receive the state's comments without adopting them, the same posture it took on its Shoreline Master Program. On a motion by Blakeley, seconded by Councilor Emily Sabo, the Council voted 4-0 to authorize Jackson Civil Engineering to submit the ordinance to the state "with intent to adopt," which starts a 60-day comment window but locks in nothing.

This is the next beat in a story the Planning Commission opened in February and advanced with its March 12 approval (we covered the 71-page ordinance's introduction in our March North Bonneville round-up), but the Council reframed it. Where the Commission treated the CAO as a technical, grant-driven cleanup that drew zero public comment, the Council turned it into a debate about whether protective rules would price ordinary residents out of building on their own land. The cost figures are one councilor's estimates, not a city study, and the current draft does not adopt the WDFW measures that drive them. But the vote to submit "with intent to adopt" only defers the hard choices: how many of WDFW's recommendations survive, whether the city cedes automatic authority over future species lists, and how to protect wetlands without making a single-family home financially impossible. Those decisions come after the state responds, and they now sit inside a wider Title 20 zoning rewrite bound for a July 7 Planning Commission hearing.

💵 Fiscal Oversight: How the City Checks Its Bills

Continued from May 12, the Council revisited Councilor Blakeley's push for a more formal voucher-review process. Blakeley, who already meets with the CAO to pre-review the bills, said the practice takes little time (he timed his latest session at about eight minutes) and catches errors before they reach a vote. "As a councilor, it's our duty to do this," he said, proposing that councilors rotate the responsibility quarterly, guided by a template so standards stay consistent.

Mayor Tennison pushed back hard, calling the added review "a waste of time" and objecting to it consuming more of the CAO's hours. Other councilors said they already read the vouchers before meetings. CAO Chambers noted she is salaried, carries a city cell phone, and checks email on weekends. Blakeley's motion to put a quarterly rotation system into place failed for lack of a second.

The process friction is not new. In May, an executive-versus-legislative dispute over meeting decorum and agenda-setting flared after Mayor Tennison admonished a councilor by email, part of a still-young council working out its internal rules.

The Council did approve the routine money: on a motion by Councilor Sabo, seconded by Councilor Mary Helms, it approved the May 26 minutes and the June first-half vouchers of $44,465.10 by a 4-0 vote.

🔥 Fire, Firefighter Dues, and Tourism Dollars

Two Fire Association items dominated new business, and both carry a provenance note worth stating up front. The typed minutes record both votes as 4-0. The meeting recording, however, captures Councilor Sabo abstaining on both, explaining, "I want to make it clear I'm only abstaining because I'm part of the Fire Association too. I would be voting yes, it's just a conflict." We report the abstention because it is on the recording and Sabo declared it herself, and note that the official minutes recorded the votes as 4-0.

• Back dues to the Board of Volunteer Firefighters (BVFF): Chief Kalista Hamilton discovered the city had not paid its BVFF dues since 2022. These dues fund pension and disability benefits for volunteer firefighters. The board agreed to waive the interest penalties if the city paid the balance in one lump sum. Per the CAO's verbal report, that meant roughly $1,681.60 in waived interest, about $5,840 in back dues, and 2026 dues of $1,260 (nine participants at $140 each), offset by a $643.20 credit, for a single check near $6,456.80. (These figures come from the CAO's spoken remarks and should be confirmed against a written voucher.) The Council authorized payment on a motion by Councilor Ted Salka, seconded by Councilor Blakeley. Councilor Sabo clarified that the Fire Department had done its part; the lapse happened "at the office level."
• Lodging-tax awards: The Council approved two hotel/motel tax awards to the North Bonneville Fire Association totaling $6,500, on a motion by Councilor Blakeley, seconded by Councilor Helms: $3,000 for the July 11 car show, and $3,500 for a second summer event (the recording refers to Gorge Days). Mayor Tennison explained the funds can only be spent on tourism-related purposes.

Sheriff Summer Scheyer reported no remarkable calls in North Bonneville and shared two developments: she was making a final decision among three "highly qualified" candidates for the county Emergency Manager job ahead of the current manager's retirement, and she had put an offer on a 2010 Freightliner, bought through an earlier grant, to serve as a countywide mobile command unit.

📚 The Library: Used Daily, Open Six Hours a Week

Fort Vancouver Regional Library (FVRL) Branch Manager David Wyatt gave the Council a tour of library services and usage numbers. North Bonneville's branch is staffed just six hours a week, down from twelve before COVID. About 40% of city residents hold a library card, above the district's roughly 37% average. Local visits are up while checkouts are down, tracking a district-wide shift toward digital lending.

Wyatt was candid that expanded local hours are not his call: "not all the decisions get made by me. If I can advocate and make sure that administration based out of Vancouver sees the value in putting more resources into North Bonneville, I believe it will get used." He urged residents to send comments to the district and said the new staffing that gave Stevenson seven-day service should free him to do more outreach here. He plans to bring the Bookmobile to Gorge Days and the July 11 car show.

Chief Hamilton, speaking in public comment, made the case for more hours from the ground: "the internet usage here, like I told him to look at the usage for the library, because it is used here every single day. On the weekends you'll see cars parked out here. You'll see people sitting on the benches. This library gets used." She flagged that seniors at the Hamilton Park Apartments are underserved because many cannot get to Stevenson and cannot easily receive mailed materials.

🚧 Public Works: Blackberries, Faded Lines, and Broken Gear

Two road-maintenance concerns landed via public comment and council discussion, both bumping into the same short-staffing wall.

• Residents Mark and Susan Farrell of Shelly Lane submitted a written comment asking the city to mow and brush an overgrown stretch of E. Cascade Road (Moffett Hot Springs Road) that they say is closing toward a single lane. Staff confirmed the city is responsible to about ten feet beyond the neighborhood gate but is short-handed.
• Councilor Blakeley raised faded road striping from the cemetery down toward the hot springs, warning, "if we don't do it soon, we're going to lose all reference points." He said the city's request last year for roughly $7,000 to buy a new striping machine was denied, and staff is now looking to borrow one from the county or a neighbor.

🏗 Economic Development: Cascade Business Park Nears a Milestone

City Planner Richard Hall told the Council that the EPA had provided its final notification opening a 30-day comment period tied to the Cascade Business Park, the Port of Skamania County's 40-acre industrial site (with an approved 80-room hotel) that we first covered when the Planning Commission weighed the proposal in January. Once cleared, Hall said, it would "free up a little over $1,000,000 in funds that are designated for the next phase of development," potentially as soon as 30 days out. Hall also noted he had been working through findings from a state Leasehold Excise Tax audit and locating archived construction drawings to help the Fire Department document fire-suppression systems.

🗓 The June 23 Meeting: Big Agenda, Thin Record

The June 23 agenda was packed: a proposed contract with the Skamania County Economic Development Council, an interlocal planning-services agreement with Skamania County, a code enforcement officer appointment, a review of the WCIA risk audit, applicants for the vacant Council Seat #3, a budget retreat, and the continued sign-permit discussion. A caution for readers: the recording on file is partial, capturing only the opening roll call and the closing minutes, and no written minutes are posted yet, so the outcomes of those new-business items are not in the record and await the minutes.

What the recording did capture: by consensus, the Council agreed to take up the Bradford Island Superfund cleanup on July 28, with Councilor Blakeley presenting it himself, working in preparation with former Restoration Advisory Board member Mitch Patton, who has brought the issue to the Council a number of times. Blakeley framed North Bonneville's stake in the former PCB and transformer dumping site above Bonneville Dam simply: "we're downstream from it," urging colleagues to "at least listen to that." In closing public comment, a resident backed the idea of sharing planning services with the county or a neighboring city but urged an "exit strategy" clause "in case cohesiveness down the road doesn't jive."

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North Bonneville Planning Commission

🏘 Zoning: The Periodic Review Widens

Meeting June 2, the Commission approved a motion to accept its May 5 minutes and then turned to new business: an introduction to the Periodic Review revisions of the city's Title 20 zoning code, walked through by consultant Paul Dennis. A provenance note: the meeting recording is partial, jumping from the opening motion to the closing comments, so the substance of the zoning walkthrough is not in the record. The 62-page Title 20 working draft is on file as a meeting attachment.

The city's grant-driven periodic review has now grown from the Critical Areas Ordinance alone to the full zoning code. City Planner Richard Hall told the Council on June 9 that both the CAO and the draft zoning code would go to the Department of Commerce for a 60-day review, and that the Commission would hold a public hearing on the zoning revisions at its July 7 meeting. For residents, July 7 is the meeting to watch: it is the first formal public hearing on how the city's zoning rules may change.

🚰 Infrastructure: A Million-Dollar Reminder, and a Regional One

In the June 2 Planning Commission's captured closing discussion, commissioners and staff flagged that the city needs to update its sewer plan and faces a large bill to replace a pair of 50-year-old lift stations. One speaker put it starkly: it is "$1,000,000 that you have to look at and say, well, where's the finances gonna come at this point in time to handle things like that." The Cascade Business Park, with utility extensions already underway, was cited as a demand the city is planning around. (The recording is speaker-unlabeled and machine-generated, so treat these figures as unverified until a written plan confirms them.)

North Bonneville's lift-station problem is not unique; it is the local face of a pressure showing up across the Gorge. Aging or undersized wastewater systems, and the fight over who pays to fix them, run through nearly every agency the Dispatch tracks. Stevenson spent much of the spring reworking a mandatory sewer-connection ordinance tied to a roughly $15 million plant. Klickitat County is holding a public hearing this July on Dallesport wastewater rates projected out to 2034. White Salmon commissioned a Bingen wastewater plant capacity study. North Bonneville itself signed a wastewater-treatment planning contract in 2025 and paid the county PUD to map its underground utilities. The through-line is the same everywhere: the plants and pipes were built decades ago, the replacement costs land in the millions, and small-city budgets have no easy way to absorb them, which is exactly why North Bonneville was, by June 23, chasing grant-writing help for a time-sensitive sewer grant through the Mid-Columbia Economic Development Council.

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⚠️ Editor's Note: Broader Context

• "Intent to adopt" is not adoption. Submitting the Critical Areas Ordinance to the state starts a comment clock; the Council still holds a final adoption vote by ordinance after the state responds. Nothing was locked in on June 9.
• State comments are recommendations. Both the consultant and the city attorney stressed that the city can receive WDFW's and Ecology's comments without adopting all of them, the same posture it took on its Shoreline Master Program.
• The "as amended" question is about control, not cost. Adopting a state species list "as amended" would let future state updates change city rules without a separate Council vote. That is a governance trade-off the Council has not yet resolved.

🛠 Jargon Buster

• Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO): local rules protecting wetlands, streams, steep slopes, and wildlife habitat, updated on a state-required schedule.
• Buffer / setback: the undeveloped distance a project must keep from a stream, wetland, or shoreline.
• BVFF (Board of Volunteer Firefighters): the state board that administers pension and disability benefits for volunteer firefighters; cities pay annual dues per participant.
• CAO (the person): in these minutes, "CAO" also means Chief Administrative Officer, Taylor Chambers. Context tells them apart from the ordinance.

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How to Join & Learn More

• North Bonneville City Council meets twice monthly at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall and online; recent meetings have fallen on the second and fourth Tuesdays. Next up: an expected July 14 meeting and a July 28 meeting (the July 28 agenda is expected to include the Bradford Island Superfund discussion).
• North Bonneville Planning Commission meets next on July 7 at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall, with a public hearing on the draft Title 20 zoning revisions.
• Supplemental meeting materials (sheriff reports, written public comment, late documents) are now posted under a "Supplemental Documents" link on the city's agenda webpage.
• Weigh in on the library: FVRL takes public comment through its website, and Branch Manager David Wyatt said resident comments carry more weight with district leadership than staff advocacy alone.