Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
Tuesday’s Klickitat County Commission meeting came in three sections, a morning work session, an afternoon formal session, and in between a nearly two-hour child care workshop that included a presentation by Brenda Profit, the director of Families First Childcare Center and a city counselor in Boardman, Oregon.
She told commissioners that investing in child care may be an expense up front, but it is a money generator in the end.
“Child care actually pays for the investment, because now you put more people to work. More people are paying property taxes; more people are paying sales taxes.”
There was one note of interest on the controversial bill passed by the last legislative session to curtail the power of county sheriffs, and in some cases remove a legally elected sheriff, reported by John Bruce, who is a longtime law enforcement officer and a candidate for Klickitat County Sheriff.
“I just wanted to update you that tomorrow there will be an emergency hearing over in Thurston County against one of the lawsuits against the new law Senate Bill 5974, because the law is supposed to take effect on Thursday. The hearing has to do with getting a stay on it. So we’ll see whether or not next week for filing week we have to do an additional certification.”
Commissioners noted they lost one person in the administrative department and discussed rather than replace that position with a full-time employee, that they would try to resurrect an intern program of fond memory
“They did it for a number of years. It was very popular with the offices and the departments, very productive for the young folks who used it, and they gained a lot of workforce training and experience. It was a very worthy program and was unfortunate that we discontinued it.”
And it feels way too soon for a burn ban, but Jeff Hunter gave commissioners this report in his new role supervising Emergency Management:
“We heard from the fire chiefs on the east side, the three east side fire chiefs, and they would like to put the burn ban on, on May 16th, which is a Saturday, the burn ban will start on the east side of the county. And if there’s. no issue, they will bring forth the resolution next week.”