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Work Session: Fireworks

Presentation by county
Presentation Title
A look at laws by jurisdiction
Fire events that fire districts responded to around 4^th of July, and over another hot season week.
Concern for 2025 – 4^th is on a Friday, and likely will be warm and dry.
Lots of data provided, in the presentation and other docs provided on the county council page (linked above).
Last year no structure fires.
Fire Marshalls office not doing enforcement – lack of resources (sounded like no backup from Sheriff’s office for enforcement)
Vancouver fire Department
presentation
Outreach, enforcement.
Confusion because rules are not the same across jurisdictions.
Discussion of what is legal, what is ‘safe and sane’, etc.
Recommend a total ban in the county.
Sue asked about weather metrics that can lead to a ban. Would need more data to answer.
If the council wants to act, needs to act before the 4^th to take effect for 2026.
Wil – wants to study information. Any change would require a public hearing. Sue – come back in a council time after they’ve had a chance to review.
Staff suggests a review of 2025 data in the fall (work session).
Fireworks stand license applications by end of May.
Glen – doesn’t support an outright ban. What reduces fires is less people being irresponsible. Discussion of how to address behavior.
Michelle mentions the school and other organizations that fund raise on fireworks. Also that people would just get fireworks that are more dangerous from the reservations.
Will be at a future council time for discussion.

Work Session: Commission on Aging 2024 annual report & bylaw revisions.

050725-ws_presentation-2025-coa-annual-report-to-county-council.pdf
We’re getting older.
Aging Readiness Plan (ARP), updated in 2023, content and implementation
Issues, lessons learned.
Silver citizen award winners
Bylaw change recommendations start slide 16
Council comments/questions
Glen asked about help for seniors with technology. Looking at that, will be back in the future.
Matt asked about interactions with the comp plan. Aging readiness plan is a supporting plan for the comp plan. Staff is reviewing comp plan updates with the ARP in mind.
Michelle – have they looked into communicating via ‘The Messenger’ (goes to retirement homes?). They are developing a communications plan.
Wil asked about Housing focus. Looking at code that can help, talking to developers as well re: increasing housing that supports again population.
Sue – a lot of apartment buildings are 3 stories so that they don’t need elevators. Incentives to put in elevators?
Another concern is long term care.
They have a booklet on aging in place, Will send to council.

Council Time:

Public Comment

(looks like a full house, All but one are about the Comp Plan agenda item to discuss the RFP for the Agricultural Land study)

In the written submitted testimony there are 26 letters asking council to keep the comp plan on track to meet the deadline and delay the ag study for now. There are 3 asking them to do the ag study. Those three are from 2 real estate agents and one land use lawyer who has skin in this game - Mr. Howsley. 050725-ct-public-comments_0.pdf
Someone from Camas – for the study (Note - Camas no longer asking for growth, and had forest, not ag, so wouldn’t have been helped by this limited ag study)
Janet Hedgepath. Don’t do study – consequences.
Hector Hijosa – don’t do study, don’t delay comp plan
Angie Merrill – Land use planner for city of La Center. Degrade long term economic health of La Center if study not done.
Melissa Fox – La Center city council – ditto.
KC Kasberg – La Center city council – ditto. Refers to an agricultural study. (Sounds like they got taken by someone selling them an inadequate study, because the GMA requires a county wide study, not city wide).
Myrna Lieja – another La Center city council member. Refers to study as well.
Tom Strobehn – La Center mayor. Accuses Sue Marshall of lying.
Mike Palmetto – property owner who paid $13k for an agricultural study.
Joe Zimmerman – Farmer – Ag land productivity and soil quality: we have some of the most productive soil in the world. Farms that are unproductive are so because they have been neglected.
Jason (missed last name) – don’t move forward with the study.
(Missed name) Growth can be accommodated within the UGAs.
Steve Stuart – Ridgefield city manager. Accusing people of mis-information (specifically accusing Friends of Clark County without saying so by saying ‘disappointed in my friends…’).
Matt Cole – Mayor of Ridgefield. Request for a joint work session. Talking about how it matters that they get this expansion.
John Bauer – concern about losing ag land.
Justin Wood – association of Realtors – for the study.
Steve Perkel for LULAC – Need comp plan done on time.
(missed name) get the comp plan done on time. Don’t delay implementation.
Louis Revara – licensed realtor (just filed for La Center Council). For the study.
Diane Dempster – kill the study, save ag land
Carmen
Meridian Green – don’t delay the comp plan, skip the study
McCalley Childs – County code enforcement makes it hard to run an equestrian facility, what happened to task force that was supposed to work on this?
Heidi Cody – Alliance for Community Engagement (ACE) – don’t expand boundaries, don’t delay comp plan.
Noell Laverne (Building Industry Association). Do the study. Somehow implying this will help housing affordability.
Ann Foster – Friends of Clark County, organizer of Farmers Markets, friends of farmers. 2 days at the Home and Garden fair talking to residents, hears you (the council) aren’t listening to people. Poor planning practices of 2 cities puts the county and other cities at risk and wastes $300K, while disregarding highly qualified staff.
Nicky Duke – Hinton Development. Farms as ‘retirement funds’ for old farmers by being sold for development.
Randall Friedman – Camas Mill lands should be cleaned up to unrestricted use, provide jobs and housing. It is important to meet the deadlines. Served by urban services. Study not needed
Debora Kramer – Don’t delay Comp Plan
Sherrie Jones (SW Washington contractors association), talks about Ag land that is not being used for farming.
Ezra Hammer – Land Use attorney for Jordan Ramos. States that study can be done in time. Claims deadline not important, because Seattle is 5 months late and not getting penalized so we’ll be just fine. Says Ridgefield is planning mixed use housing. (This belies something a Ridgefield councilor told a resident that they are planning a fire station there).
Kaley (?) – social worker. Don’t do the study, get the comp plan done on time.
Teressa Hardy – People have turned up. Listen to staff. Work on the cop plan the study can wait.
John Nanney – Trust in county staff – decision should be made based on their expertise not special interests. Talks about impact of higher taxes because of past mistakes (including costs of litigation implied). Delay the land study.
James McCrea – don’t destroy farmland.
Sharon Bucher – Keep farmland, keep the comp plan timeline
Benjamin Davenport. Pause ag study, don’t delay comp plan.
Babrak Amiri – Supports resource study. Those sites have no economic use as farms. Had a tree farm abandoned years ago. Referred to the study done by consultants for landowners.
Bob Smith – do the study. Landowner in the would-be expansion area. “its grass growing land, not crop land’. Mentions water availability.
Olivia Zimmerly – move forward with the ag study. Owns property in the expansion area.
Kimberly
Dennis Zimmerly – for the study. Landowner.
Eric – for the study. History lesson given. Mentions that the basin is closed to new water rights.
Jeanine Parker – Attorney for city of La Center. La Center’s intent is using it for employment, not sprawl.
Eric Golimo – Builder. This is a study, it doesn’t de-designate any ag land. Claims that keeping them ag would lead to sprawl as growth leap frogs over them (that isn’t how growth works).
Julia Trevor – Delay the study
Jude Wait – Don’t undermine the investment you’ve made, delay the study, needs to be done w ag commission, with a lot of public input.
(Sue announces Matt Little has left for an appointment and will be online as much as he can)
Don Steinke – talks about ag land ownership as a tax dodge and or speculation. Don’t do the study.
Justin Burger – Concerned about spending $300K for a study. Last time we were out of compliance it cost $10 million. Doing this will feed the cycle of land speculation and loss of farmland.
Bob Mintern (?), representing the Mavin family. Landowners in the zone. they did a study (their property only), have no water rights. Family owned property for 60 years, have never farmed, don’t intend to farm. Why is he talking about Camas? I thought they already decided not to grow.
Linda Conoway – Northwest Wild Fish Rescue – Urge to delay study.
Jackie Lane – Ridgefield and La Center know how long a study takes, and should have asked for it a couple years ago.
Mike (missed) – delay the study get the plan done on time.
Wendy Cleveland – Sierra Club – Vote against doing the study. Council supposed to represent all of us.
Steve Hornstien – Land Use attorney. Again trying to tell the council that deliberately being late is no big deal.
Mary Goody – Takes Hornstein to task for accusing people of speaking from misinformation.
(its 3:30 – 2.5 hours of testimony)

Old business

2025 Comprehensive Plan Update. See below for the copy of the updated schedule that was shared online (screen shots, doc was not posted)
Prior schedule: Copy of Copy of 2025_Project-Timeline_Review_2025-0104 SE Edits v4.xlsx
Oliver talking about assumptions.
Combining Council and Planning Commission hearings.
Final EIS November 15^th.
Optimistically going to be a month late?
Matt - can the RFP be drafted so de-designation info can be delivered early.
Chris Cook (atty) – Past studies have been faulted for not being county wide, so a partial study would not be compliant.
Matt asks about the process of selecting consultant. “I’ve been receiving misinformation about bias”, wants to assure the public that process will result in good result. Oliver explains the process. Will come back to council to award contract. (Sounds like a reference to something Sue said last week regarding a company that charged landowners for studies that do not meet the GMA requirements as they were not county wide, noting that they should be disqualified for conflict of interest having represented the landowners).
Wil asked about timing – RFP is going out today for 3 weeks.
Sue – Asked about information provided about Seattle missing their date, and status.
Chris Cook – cites statute. Only counties that are in compliance are eligible. There is an exception that covers Seattle having to do with critical areas ordinance. That exception does not apply to Clark County.
Discussion of what can cause us to be out of compliance.
Matt – there were 3 responses to the last round, is there any way to shorten the time. They were not reviewed, and no can’t reduce RFP Response time from 3 weeks.
Sue – Does the county being out of compliance affect the cities – Chris Cook: cities are not liable/ not deemed to be non-compliant unless someone files and appeal against a city and the board finds they are.
Kathleen Otto asked about the request for a joint work session.
Glen – we should include all cities.
Kathleen asks that if they do this that the county not make any changes that would further impact the comp plan. Mentions that Oliver and staff have been meeting with the cities monthly for the last couple of years so there HAS been collaboration.
Michelle open to talk to the cities
Matt – also supports, don’t exclude any cities.
Kathleen – timing? There are a lot of work sessions on the calendar. Any urgency?
Wil – what’s the rush? They got what they want.
Michelle – accuses council of talking ‘behind their back’ about cities when they are not present but refuses to clarify with Sue calls her on it.
Kathleen will ask all the cities for what they want to discuss, within the broader context of the comp plan update. Will solidify agenda and schedule in next couple of months.
Sue notes that a city had a quorum during these meetings (4 Ridgefield councilors showed up last week – which is an Open Public Meetings Act, OPMA, violation. not sure about today). Kathleen said they’d have to notice.
Sue moves to delay study (which would have to come back to a Tuesday meeting for a vote), given the impact to the schedule and risk involved. Cost, won’t be a good product, and likely be challenged. Only she and Wil were for it so fails.
Glen states that he took notes – 27 people wanted to proceed, 27 did not. Every single one of the ‘for’ speakers had a vested interest in this going forward. Claims that nobody who spoke against it lives in Ridgefield or La Center. (See below for my count, he is being disingenuous)
Councilor reports
Matt – has been working on a bill for $ for wetlands conservation, has been introduced in the senate. $50 million for grants that county can apply for.
Glen – powered wheel chairs at parks event for people to understand what it feels like to use one in our parks.
Michelle – RTC meeting last night, John Ley attended. Asked that Tri-met come talk to C-Tran about their plummeting ridership and financial problems.
Policy updates
Board of health - Prenatal care access work plan. Proposed policy action roundtable on June 9^th, want a couple councilors to attend. Sue is interested,
Federal funding – as proposed 42% cut to HUD, 43% cut to rental assistance programs. Jordan goes over a very long list of programs that could be impacted.
Can council engage with community partners and draft a letter to federal legislative delegation? Yes. Jordan will come back with a draft after talking to ECHO next week.
Bigfoot resolution: 050725-policy-update-draft-bigfoot-resolution.pdf Council is supportive, will come back at a Tuesday meeting, will invite the school class that pushed for it to participate. Sue will read.
Letter to state delegation for their work.

my count of public comment:

28 people want County to hold off on the study and get the comp plan done on time.
20 people want the study done who have a dog in the fight. (city, real estate, land owners, land use lawyers).
2 people supported the study who were not clearly identifiable as part of the above group.
2 from Camas wanted the study done. Camas no longer wants to grow their boundary so not applicable.
2 regular speakers who shouldn’t be counted in any group
1 person was testifying about issues for equestrian facilities
In the written submitted testimony there are 26 letters asking council to keep the comp plan on track to meet the deadline and delay the ag study for now. There are 3 asking them to do the ag study. Those three are from 2 real estate agents and one land use lawyer who has skin in this game (Howsley).

screen print of updated plan below:

Acronyms: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1px5oVxYkLWTB7_lMir6ACx6CJ1e-PMpQrXntJbdj3YI/edit?usp=sharing

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