Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
With the short legislative session in full swing in Olympia, meetings of the Klickitat County Commission have been enlivened by the reports of lobbyist Zak Kennedy. Among other things, at yesterday’s meeting, he described a bill proposing committees that could removed elected sheriffs as “kryptonite,” and he had this to say about the governor’s budget proposal
“They’re robbing every fund they can, moving money around, raising taxes — and they’re still gonna be short. This is gonna be – really come to a head at the end of session. I don’t know, we may see a special session; it’s really hard to say.”
In the morning workshop session, County Administrator Robb Van Cleave floated a possible name for the new department he created, headed by Planning Director Scott Edelman.
“We kind of settled on Community Development as the department name. Just throwing that out there. We’re not officially asking for your blessing on that yet. Right now, Scott’s already got the team lined up and everybody’s working hard. There is a lot going on, and we’re right in the middle of a bunch of it.”
In the formal afternoon session commissioners agreed to raise some fees for the health department, which hadn’t been raised since 2014.
And Chair Ron Ihrig wanted to end confusion about a proposal to put a community center in Trout Lake’s Buler Park. That proposal has been withdrawn, he said.
“We’ve been receiving a lot of emails, calls, and I’d like to just put this to bed. My intention would be Buler Park stays as a park. If anything, I’d like to see us do a little better job in promoting it a lot better.”