Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
The icicles of the Klickitat County hiring freeze dripped a bit more yesterday, when commissioners approved hiring some part-time bus drivers for public transit. Senior Services Director Sharon Carter told them that several drivers have procedures coming up and others are nearing retirement. The positions are grant-funded and leaving vacancies empty would not save money.
“I’d actually be worse off, because I’m going to run into overtime, trying to fulfill the contract obligations with fewer people.”
In the morning workshop session, Public Works Director Jeff Hunter said crews were working on brushing roadsides. Occasionally, he said, people would ask them to spare, for example, blackberry bushes.
“What we tell people is, ‘You brush it, or we will.’ What happens if they don’t brush it, then we have areas where we get long grass or brush when you get snow in the road, and it becomes a hazard. So we will work with people. If they want to hand brush their area, that’s fine, but they need to do it before we come through. Because if it’s there, we’ll cut it.”
Hunter also noted the county is also looking ahead to deal with housing for the 3,000 construction workers expected for the Goldendale Pumped Storage project recently approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“We are surveying the property next to the fairgrounds in preparation to look for dollars. Then we’ll start putting together designs to see how many employee housing spots we can get. This will be 10 times what it was back in 2008-and 2009 when the windmills started going in. You couldn’t find an apartment, a motel room, or anything in this town, because everything was taken up.”
And county staff will draft an ordinance to charge wind and solar companies for false alarms. County Administrator Robb Van Cleave explained:
“The example they gave at bargaining was that the deputies are at the other end of the county, and a false alarm goes off on a wind farm, it’s a hour and a half to get there, and then they get there and either the company’s boys are standing around or, you know, the door wasn’t secured. It can take a deputy off the road for hours, and that’s just not a good use of their time.”
As always, the devil is in the details, and the details will be presented with the ordinance at a later date.