Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
The subject of striping Snowden Road came up for discussion at yesterday’s Klickitat County Commissioner meeting. Public Works Director Jeff Hunter said the department had received a number of requests, but the standard manual suggests it’s appropriate to edge stripe rural arterials and collectors with an average daily traffic count of 3,000, and Snowden, at last count had 1,331. That wouldn’t preclude the county if it wanted to spend the funds.
But, he added:
“The biggest thing I’ve learned in all my years doing traffic engineering, is you need to be consistent.
If you stripe one road and you don’t stripe another one that has the same characteristics, if something happens out there, then the liability issue becomes bigger because they’re going to say, ‘Well, you striped that. How come you didn’t stripe this?’ “
Another concern is that regulations now require striping must be done with water-based paint, which will have to be redone each year. Hunter agreed to come back next week with more information on what other roads would also have to be striped each year, and what the annual cost will be. The project is not in this year’s budget, and no grants are available for striping
And a new unexpected cost is likely to come the county’s way. Sharon Carter of Senior Services reported that the master software that runs the whole public transportation network is starting to fail.
“In the last months, we’ve had failures in the software, which is extremely debilitating and stressful. Luckily, the ITs were able to troubeshoot and get it functioning again. But tit’s been about six times in the last three weeks and the company has apparently gone out of business.”
She said original software was purchased before she joined the county in 2007 and the last major update was in 2014. It’s critical because it includes the volunteer and paid driver schedules, all the routes and all the clients information.
Much of the afternoon session was focused on data centers. With news that developers are looking at locations in Dallesport and the old aluminum plant site, commissioners considered whether any changes need to be made in ordinances or zoning before an application is filed.
Currently, the only mention of data centers in the county planning documents occurs in a 2023 code interpretation document approved by the County Planning Commission that concludes that data centers would be an outright permitted use in the county’s industrial parks. But, if they want to locate in any industrially-zoned land that’s not in an industrial park, a Conditional Use Permit will be required. That’s not a simple process, as this exchange between Chair Ron Ihrig and Commissioner Lori Zoller shows:
“It isn’t just wide open.You can’t just walk in and lay an application down and get a permit./They still have to go through the environmental process./And for the listening public, it’s not an easy process. Every agency gets notified. They all get to weigh in. The tribe gets notified. They get to weigh in. What we do is kick it into the process so they get a hard look.