The Goldendale City Council met last night, and made a couple of major decisions. The first was held over from last meeting. That’s when councilors heard that there were a number of problems at the city’s wastewater treatment plant that the city could no longer put of correcting. Total cost of fixing the problems was $4 million, an amount the Washington State Department of Ecology would be willing to loan the city. At that previous meeting, several councilors urged the staff to pursue grants to reduce the loan amounts, but that was not successful.
Councilor Dave Jones argued the city should accept Ecology’s offer:
“Right here is the plan, as proposed by the team we hired, RH2. It’s obviously signed off by the Department of Ecology, because they want to loan us the money to do this plan. To me, it’s, uh, the bird in the hand. We know this stuff all needs done. Fines could kill us if we don’t get on board and do the right thing here.”
The vote to accept the loan was unanimous. The other item on the agenda was the approval to rezone property near Goldendale Bible Baptist Church from commercial to two-family residential and replace three trailers with three duplexes.