HEADLINES & HISTORY SINCE 1879 Goldendale, Washington
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024
Vol. 145 No. 40
Board shares thoughts on their terms in office
Meeting invokes rarely used RCW
RODGER NICHOLS
RODGER NICHOLS FOR THE SENTINEL
FOR THE SENTINEL
Klickitat County Commissioners held their first town hall in nearly six months on Thursday, September 26. The last scheduled town hall was April 16, and it was canceled because of tensions over the proposed closure of the Klickitat County Jail. In the interim, commissioners decided to take over the jail themselves instead of closing it. Though some people wanted to state opinions rather than ask questions, and many did not identify themselves, the folks who came to the town hall or attended via Zoom were polite and respectful. This may have been helped by Chair Lori Zoller’s announcement at the start of the session that any misbehavior would not be tolerated because this was a meeting for grownups. As expected, jail was still the number one topic at the town hall, though the questions focused more on its effect on budgets and personnel rather than the decision itself. That was the case with Sheriff Bob Songer, who led off the meet-
JORDAN MAYBERRY
REFLECTING ON THEIR ROLES: At last week’s town hall meeting of Klickitat County commissioners, each commissioner shared their views about their time in office. Left to right, Jacob Anderson, Lori Zoller, and Dan Christopher. ing by asking, “Do you plan on cutting my administration—like Loren Culp, for example?” Each commissioner responded. Jacob Anderson: “We give you the budget. Who you decide to hire and how you do it is up to you.” Dan Christoper: “It’s my intention that nobody loses their job. All 16 employes are still working in the jail. Nobody’s losing their job that I know of.” Lori Zoller: “We work very hard to make sure people retain their jobs.” One person said they heard the county takeover of the jail would
cost $8.5 million. Commissioners said the jail operations budget this year was $1.8 million, and next year it looks like an additional $200,000 would be needed to cover rising medical costs. Another questioned why commissioners would contemplate incurring additional financial obligations when facing a multimillion-dollar budget deficit. Anderson was reassuring: “When staff and departments gave their budgets to us, we started at $5 million short,” he said. “Staff worked to get that down to about $2.5 million, and we’re now down to $1.75 million at just two
weeks into the budget. This is net, without having to raise taxes on anyone except for the 1 percent that we take every year that was baked into the budget. But no other sales tax or anything else has been suggested.” He pointed out that since 2009, commissioners had not spent more than they took in. By pessimistically budgeting for higher costs and lower revenues, each year, he said, the county had been able to add money to their reserves. “We have millions of dollars in reserves,” he added. “It gets tight-
See Board page A8
Professor from Goldendale says LEGO helps with dangerous stress LOU MARZELES EDITOR After The Sentinel ran two articles on local LEGO events, a PhD professor in Florida who read them wrote about her own unique academic LEGO experience—and shared her connection with Goldendale. “I have been following the LEGO news posted in the recent issues of The Sentinel,” wrote Dr. Maggie Shields, “and wanted to chime in a smidge. Not only am I a native of Goldendale, I worked with Matt Chiles as a youth group leader in the Nazarene Church. I also grew a love of LEGO I acquired from him. Now, as a professor of nutrition and public health, I have completed research around LEGO.” Chiles was the subject of a feature story last week on his lifelong love of LEGO and his milestone achievements with the popular building blocks. Following are excerpts from Shields’ comprehensive study, done with other scholars, on the benefits of playing with LEGO. Quotation marks are not used for the sake of reading convenience. Building Blocks and Coloring Away Stress: Utilizing LEGO® and Coloring as Stress Reduction Strategies among University Students Journal of Health Education Teaching —Dr. Margaret Shields, William Hunnell, Dr. Melanie Tucker, and Annie Price According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are one of
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CONTRIBUTED
LEGO BOONS: Dr. Maggie Shields writes about the remarkable psychologocal benefits of playing with LEGO blocks. She kept the LEGO scene show above at her office for a long time before moving it to her home. the most common mental health troubles on college campuses. A survey conducted by the Associated Press and mtvU of college students indicated, “80 percent say they frequently or sometimes experience daily stress and 9% have seriously considered suicide in the past year (Anxiety and Depression Association of America [ADAA], 2015)”… The purpose of this study was to examine the perception of stress management through the use of building blocks and coloring intervention. These associations were used to better understand coping strategies among university students. The researchers hypothesized that participating in some creative form of stress reduction strategy (i.e., coloring or building blocks) would positively affect emotional stress during the academic semester. Additionally, it was hypothesized that building blocks were a noninferior form of stress reduction strategy when compared to coloring. Researchers found positive effects of both building blocks and coloring books from the start of the research until the end. While only one question was statisti-
cally significant in the coloring group, indicating a reduced perception of feeling stressed, three of the questions in the building block group showed improvement in the areas of perceived stress, confidence, and coping skills. Of the intervention sessions, researchers found both the building block group and the coloring group were statistically significant, concluding that the use of building blocks for stress reduction were non-inferior to coloring books. Additionally, both groups displayed significantly positive effects on improving positive states of calm while reducing the negative states such as hostility, irritability, and anxiety/worry. This study was conducted using two one-hour blocks per week for one month. Greater participation may have been received were it conducted less frequently and structured longitudinally over the course of a semester. In this manner, a greater number of participants may have been involved. This limitation created a disparity in representing the student population as a whole. Adequate representation of the student body as a whole would include: a greater variety in age ranges,
socioeconomic status, as well as inclusion for veteran status. Stress has been shown to be a risk factor in many diseases and disorders, including suicidal ideation. When managed efficiently, stress can be reduced, thereby mitigating other factors related to stress. Conversely, changing variables such as the environment may increase this risk factor–beginning post-secondary education in an unexplored environment for example. Therefore, the addition of a healthy stress reduction technique becomes paramount to the health of college students. Recommendations Norms of social behavior change in this new environment: parental supervision may be nonexistent as distance may prevent association with a student’s family of origin. This can create the need for establishment of an adoptive family from which fellow students are likely to be drawn. However, this may prove difficult to achieve for students at any age. This same phenomenon can be observed in other diverse populations upon entry into post-secondary education. The lack of social support and stress related
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Clarification on Christopher story The Sentinel’s story last week on Klickitat County Dan Christopher sharing what he thought was dirt on a critic of his stated Christopher said he would come to The Sentinel office with the person who provided him the putative accusatory document. Christopher’s email to The Sentinel was worded in a way that seemed to allow that interpretation, but he says he did not mean to say that. We have updated our story online. All other details in the story are accurate. Some have asked if the critic Christopher was directing his presumptive “dirt” against was his opponent in the current election, Ron Ihrig. It was not.
Klickitat County Commission meetings are nothing if not educational. The September 24 meeting, for instance, shined the light on a seldom-used provision in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW). The events leading up to invocation of the provision began when commissioners returned from their lunch break at 1 p.m. for a public meeting on a binding site plan for the proposed Under Canvas luxury camping operation between Husum and BZ Corner. At the opening of the afternoon session, Commissioner Jacob Anderson was not present, leaving Chair Lori Zoller and Commissioner Dan Christopher a bare minimum quorum. In response to a query from Christopher, Zoller said “Mr. Anderson had to step out for a few minutes,” and started the meeting. As a public meeting, rather than a public hearing, there was no opportunity for public testimony. Associate Planner Lori Anderson gave a brief overview of the project’s history, noting that such camps were not an outright permitted use in the Resource Land zone, but the project was permitted under a conditional use permit. “Today, upon approval of the binding site plan by the Board of County Commissioners,” she said, “the binding site plan will then be filed with the Klickitat County Auditor’s Office, and Under Canvas can then move forward with meeting the construction requirements, as specified in the conditional use permit. Upon completion of all the construction and verification that all the conditions are met, the board will then issue an operating permit, which authorizes them to open their business.” Planning Director Scott Edelman followed that summary, saying he wanted to make one thing clear: “This is not approving or denying the Under Canvas project,” he said. “Through the hearings, examiner, and the courts, the project has already been approved. This is you being the doublecheck of staff’s work to make sure we’ve reviewed the binding site plan, so it meets the approved conditional use permit and meets the conditions that were included in that.” At that point, Zoller asked for a motion to approve the site plan. Christopher said he would not make the motion. So Zoller stepped down and made the motion, only to find Christopher declining to offer a second. Unable to move forward, Zoller sent for Commissioner Anderson. On his return, he revealed that he left in order to recuse himself. He noted he was a former chair of the Husum-BZ Community Council and that he has a personal friendship with a representative of Under Canvas. With no way for a vote to move forward, Planner Rebecca Hail said the county was invoking the doctrine of necessity and quoted the state law, which reads, in its entirety: “RCW 42.36.090: In the event of a challenge to a member or members of a decision-making body which would cause a lack of a quorum or would result in a failure to obtain a majority vote as required by law, any such challenged member(s) shall be permitted to fully participate in the proceeding and vote as though the challenge had not occurred, if the member or members publicly disclose the basis for disqualification prior to rendering a decision. Such participation shall not subject the decision
See County page A8