Clark County Close Up

0:30 A trip to the grocery store may seem routine for some, picking out fresh produce, dairy, and meat. But where are those items coming from? And who is looking out for the farming industry? The Clark County Council created the Agricultural Advisory Commission in late 2024 to get feedback from agricultural producers and others associated with agriculture. This was based upon the recognition that agriculture is a significant contributor to the local economy and a high quality of life for Clark County residents. Hello, my name is Bart Katching. I'm a planner with Clark County Community Planning Department. We're the long range planners for the county. One of the first things that this group was tasked with once they were officially seated

1:29 as a commission was to help the county review the agricultural land study, which a consultant was working on for us. And so we spent several meetings focused on that, and that resulted in some formal recommendations to the planning commission and the county council. And now we've stepped back from that and the commission is advising on broader comprehensive plan issues as we are working towards adopting the 2025 to 2045 comprehensive plan. The 13-member commission held a retreat at a recent meeting to discuss priorities and goals for the coming years. My name is Mo McKenna. I'm the co-chair of the Agricultural Advisory Commission in Clark County. Also really protecting agricultural land, thinking about conservation mechanisms that we can put in place to make sure that we're farming long into the future.

2:25 Second was looking at regulatory environment that we're working within and making sure that codes are set up to support farming. We of course want to make sure that we're also protecting the public from a public health perspective and making sure that we're all operating safe operations, but really making sure that code isn't getting in the way of farmers being able to make a living here in Clark County. The final one was really all about economic development. We are, agriculture is an industry. We employ people. We also feed people. And if we're doing a really great job of that, we're doing both of those well. The Agriculture Advisory Commission members include agricultural producers, Clark Conservation District, the Cowlitz Tribe, and others. My name is Joe Zimmerman and my family owns and operates Busy Farms and I am the other co-chair of the Clark County Ag Commission. There's actually an awful lot of young people who want to get into agriculture and that

3:25 presents some incredible barriers. You know, who can they rent from, who can they buy from, who will provide them funding or shall we say lending and all sorts of other issues like that. So it's very important that we do have land holder representation, but it's also important that we have representation from the other side too. Some farming topics discussed include navigating around current challenges, such as moving equipment to the farms. We have folks that are using big machinery and so they have challenges with roundabouts, right? They can't actually make their roundabout turn. It's opened my eyes and I think allowed us to, when we are looking at recommendations to the council, making recommendations that are going to better provide the richness of what is possible here. Commission meetings are held the fourth Wednesday each month from 6 to 8 p.m. at the county's

4:20 public service center and are available in hybrid format. We are only 13 members and 8 producers and we do our best to get out there and know what's happening in the farming community, but we also need the community to come to us. So we definitely want farmers to come to our meetings. There's always an opportunity for public comment. We want eaters to come talk about what they want to see on their, hit their plates in Clark County and we want folks from the farmer's market and the food systems and suppliers and across the chain to come and provide feedback. For more information about the Agricultural Advisory Commission and their meetings, visit clark.wa.gov/communityplanning/agriculturaladvisorycommission.

5:19 The Neighborhood Association's Council of Clark County in Washington honors outstanding public service and local leadership, recognizing dedicated public service and community-focused leaders each year. Let's meet the most recent winners for the Most Outstanding Clark County Employee Award. Hi, my name is Vicki Fitzsimmons, I'm the president of the Sherwood Hills Neighborhood Association and I nominated Eric Lambert for the Clark County Employee of the Year Award for the project at the Salmon Creek Fish Mural and the Sister Knack Neighborhood Association's Council of Clark County. I nominated Eric for the Knack Award to show appreciation to him personally for spearheading the project and making it a reality and to show appreciation for Clark County for sponsoring the Knack program and having a mechanism in place to help neighborhoods get projects up and running.

6:19 I just want to say thank you so much to Eric for your help, your cooperation and your leadership and thank you to Clark County for allowing us to get the mural in place. Eric Lambert, Clark County Public Works Clean Water Outreach Manager. It's really important to me to have been nominated and to have won this award because as a public servant and outreach professional, one of the things I love most is to be connected with the community, to be able to serve the community and so to get that love right back from Knack and all the neighborhood associations, it's a great honor. I think this mural is really important to the Clark County community because it took an ugly looking wall and made it into something beautiful and it wasn't just something that Public Works did. This was really from the community, by the community, for the community and we really appreciate working with you and we look forward to doing more of this type of thing in the future. Hi, my name is Kirk Van Gelder and I play two roles.

7:18 The first one is President of the Prep Still Neighborhood Association and the second one is the Vice Chair of the Neighborhood Association of Clark County. Very important to have nominated Hunter for the Outstanding Employee Award because of his commitment to excellence in his job for county governance. He demonstrates excellence in all that he does. He's outstanding in customer service, community involvement and his nine years of experience in the county has demonstrated a pattern of that excellence. Hunter's roles are pivotal to Clark County in two ways. One is in community safety and the other is in forest sustainability. Thank you Hunter for your professionalism, your expertise, your concern for community members and the forests around us.

8:17 Yeah, so my name is Hunter Decker and I'm the Clark County Forester for Public Works Lands Division. Well, I'm honored to have won the award for the fact that I've grown up here in Clark County my whole life and the, you know, level sense of community pride I think goes back to when I was an Eagle Scout. My role as the forester for Clark County Public Works is important to the community because it protects the environment as well as looking for different ways of protecting the environment through permitting and through the management of our sustainable forest management plan. As the award winner, my message for the community would be thank you knowing that I was, you

9:13 know, awarded and nominated this really gives me a sense of pride to continue to keep helping the community the best I can. For more information, please visit clark.wa.gov/county-manager/neighborhood-associations-council-clark-county. In November 2025, voters elected a 15-member review commission to recommend amendments to the Clark County Charter. Any changes would need to go to a county-wide vote in general election. Recently we spoke with Brandon Erickson, Chair, Duncan Haas, Vice Chair, and Kathy Garber, Secretary of the Charter Review Commission, to get a progress update and discuss what proposals may be on the November 2026 general election ballot.

10:11 Hello, I'm Jim Demmon with Clark County Close-Up. What's your background and why did you decide to run for the Charter Review Commission and Brandon we'll start with you. Well, I'm Brandon Erickson and I've lived in Clark County for 30 years. I live in the Florida area, I represent District 2. I own a consulting engineering firm and I ran for the Charter Review Commission because I love Clark County and I want the Charter to play an important role in improving the lives of Clark County citizens. Okay, Duncan. Duncan Haas, I've lived in Clark County most of my life and I've been in public service for over 30 years and this just seemed like another avenue to keep delivering to the public and trying to help out my community. Great. And Kathy. Well, I retired in January 2025 and I decided after I retired I wanted to volunteer and

11:06 give back to my community and in my capacity as Elections Director I was able to review amendments from the Freeholders and the last Charter Review Commission and I would review them for timelines, proofread them for accuracy, make sure they conform to law and I enjoyed that and I thought after I retired that this would be a great bit that I could continue to give back to the citizens of Clark County. Well, thank you all for your work on this. So Brandon, let's start with you. What is the Charter Review Process? So the Charter Review Process is something that happens every five years where the public elects Charter Review Commissioners to come together, review our charter, decide what's working, what changes might be appropriate, develop those proposed amendments into specific revisions to the charter and then present them back to the public for approval and if

12:03 the public then approves them it formally changes the charter. Okay. So Duncan, when did the Commission start to meet, where do they meet and how can people attend those meetings? Well, we started meeting about the second week of January and we meet every week on Wednesday evenings from five to eight right now and we've continued to meet since then. We have our meetings at the Public Service Center which is right across from the courthouse downtown on 13th and Franklin, it's open public meetings, people can come and sit through them, they can give testimony, we love hearing different opinions from different members of the community or they can also attend remotely and the links are all on our website there. Yeah, and they can also view previous meetings and all that. Yeah, they're all recorded in there for anybody to peruse. Okay.

13:01 And what has been your progress to date? Well, we've made a lot of progress. We came together with no real structure and we were left to ourselves to decide how we would go about our meetings. So first of all, we came together, we adopted our bylaws, we elected leadership, then we started to put together a work plan which defined how we would review and deliberate upon potential amendments and we're in the middle of that right now. Okay. Let's see. Okay. Duncan, the commission has decided to propose charter amendments for both the November 26th and the November 27th general election ballots. Why? And how long will the commission be meeting? So the commission is a two year spot. So we'll be meeting through all of 26 and then up to all of 27.

13:57 At the end of 27, our positions evaporate, if you will, and there'll be a new commission in five years. The nice thing about the commission is there's 15 of us and we have so many different opinions and bring so many different strengths to the unit or to the team that we can't get it all done in one year. There's just too many really good ideas for the community. And so we're trying to break it up over a two year cycle and that plus you don't get too many items on the ballot for the voters to get confused by or not understand or just get fatigued. Okay. So, so Brenda, the commission has developed multiple proposals for consideration for the November 26 election. Can you give us a brief overview of these proposals? Yeah. So one of the strengths of our work plan is that every commissioner had the opportunity

14:51 to introduce their own amendment proposals and we thought that was important. So we started out with 40 proposals and a lot of them have since been discussed. We've winnowed those down to, I think we're down to about 13. Some have been voluntarily deferred to next year. Some have been withdrawn and then there have been a few that just failed to progress through our deliberation process. So of the remaining 13, they deal with changes to how our county elections are handled. They change the powers and authorities that are given to county council. They change some of the resources that are afforded to the Sheriff's office. And also some of them deal with the ethics commission, making some changes to the ethics commission. Okay.

15:49 So, so Duncan has the commission agreed on these proposals for the November 2026 election? If not, what are the kind of the final steps to make sure they're to get them on the ballot? Yeah. So nothing has been determined yet for the ballot. We have a working groups together and so we have different committees that are researching the impact of each amendment on the community. So we can have a bigger picture of, of exactly the impact it's going to have. And so those committees will come back in front of the full commission and they'll give us a proposal or a discussion about what they've learned and what they've come up with. And then the entire commission will vote to either move the amendment forward to the ballot or to hold it off or to defer it. And then in each meeting, people can make public can come and make comments on different proposals and give their input to correct. Yeah.

16:47 In fact, we encourage that we have a specific part on the agenda that's just for public comment because we want, we're, we want to hear from the public, want to hear what their thoughts are on things and it's a really a good time for them. Everybody gets three minutes regardless, and they can come tell us their, their opinions and their wants and their wishes and all that, as long as it's germane to the amendments that are there. Sure, sure. And now onto you. So do you have outreach plans in place for discussing these proposals with the public? We do. We have formed a public outreach committee and we've launched quite a few projects that will help us gather input from citizens. We are putting an online feedback form on our website at clark.wa.gov/charter, where you can give your opinion pro or con on these proposals. We also will have an old school version, a paper version that will be at, at different

17:46 town hall events that we will be holding as well as neighborhood associations and different county events. We will also be doing a social media post that let people know about individual proposals, directing them back to our website. We will be conducting five town halls in the month of May, one in each council district. There will be different times in different locations for each of them. I'm in district two and for district two we'll have it May 17th, it's a Sunday, at 3 p.m. at the Bud Van Cleve meeting room at the Luke Jensen Sports Complex. And we will also be doing a weekly newsletter that will provide a summary of the status on the proposals and what we've done for that week and people can sign up for that email newsletter by contacting us at charterreview@clark.wa.gov.

18:45 Okay. So once you get that feedback from the public, what are the next steps? Sure. So what we're going to do is when we get feedback from them and it's for an individual charter proposal, we will give that input directly to the chair or the sponsor of that proposal. We want to make sure they get it, but we'll also be providing it into the entire commission. Now of course we're pretty well on our way for this year, like you said, we're all into study committee right now, but it's still, there's time to provide your input. But for the proposals for next year, there's plenty of time and we'd really love to hear it from everybody. Okay. So what's the deadline to get items on the November 26th ballot? Sure. So as of April 22nd, all of the active proposals have moved on to study committees.

19:42 We will, on June 17th will be the last day that we have the study committee readings. And then July 8th, we will have a final commission vote on these resolutions. With July 17th, they will go to the prosecuting attorney that will write the ballot title, explanatory statement for the voter's pamphlet, make sure it's legal and conforms to law. And then it will be provided to the county auditor on August 4th, which is the deadline. Okay. Brandon, is there anything else you'd like to share with our viewers? Sure. I would like to let the public know that the charter review commission is working very well together. We have 15 members who have come from across the county representing all five districts. So we have good geographic distribution. We also have a very well balanced range of political backgrounds and ideologies.

20:42 And despite that, we are coming together and working very well together. But because we also do have a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives, when we do have discussions about particular amendments, they're healthy, they're respectful, and it leads to higher quality, more detailed and well vetted proposals. And so I think that the public can have confidence in what we're doing and that what we may ultimately present back to the public has gone through a well-defined, detailed and appropriate review process and can have trust and confidence in what we put forward. Wonderful. So now if people want to find out more about the charter review commission, where can they check? So they can go to clark.wa.gov/charter. That will provide an overview of the process.

21:40 And they will also be able to connect with any of the charter review commissioners. You can get to their email addresses. You can also email us at charterreview@clark.wa.gov. And like I mentioned before, you can reach out, look at our calendar that will be on our website. It'll tell you where the town halls are. Come to our town hall, come meet us, come discuss your ideas. We would love to hear from you. And please consider coming to a commission meeting. Come watch us in action. Great. Well, thank you all for your service and good luck with this process. Thank you. Jury duty scams are on the rise. You may be told you missed service and owe money, but it's a trick. Don't panic. Don't pay. Here's some useful information to help you stay protected. My name is Joe Johnson. I'm the program manager for Clark County Superior Court.

22:37 One of my duties is managing our jury administration office. We're here today to talk about jury scams that are ongoing in the public. We're seeing an increasing wave of these jury scams that we'd like to provide information on how people can protect themselves. Some things to be aware of, and the most important thing to be aware of, is the court nor law enforcement will ever ask jurors for monetary compensation for missing jury duty or for failing to appear for jury duty or failing to respond to a summons. These scammers are targeting the community at large. They are targeting all demographics. We do see a trend in them being more forceful with younger and older citizens. There are telling signs that you're being scammed. Usually it's initiated by a phone call. The caller identifies themselves as law enforcement, and they provide a real law enforcement officer's name as well as their badge number.

23:32 They also are requesting monetary compensation, which is not something we'll do. They often request unusual forms of payment. This could include things like Bitcoin, gift cards, or money transfers through different stores like Walmart or Fred Meyer. What you should do if you feel that you're being targeted by one of these scams is to collect as much information from the caller as you can without providing much of your own personal information. Hang up the phone and call your local law enforcement or contact our jury administration office to verify these claims. The process of being summons by our jury administration office will involve you receiving a postcard in the mail that has information to access our portal that you can go into and complete your juror summons. It also has information on how to contact our office, parking information, and our location. Our jury administration staff will only communicate with jurors via email if the juror has responded

24:31 to their questionnaire through the online portal. We'll never communicate with jurors via email unless they've done that already or have reached out to us via email. We will also text message jurors, but only after the juror has opted into receiving those text messages. So, if you receive a text message from jury administration and you haven't done that opt-in, you can suspect that is fraudulent. For more information on how to protect yourself against jury service fraudulent communications, please visit clark.wa.gov/superior-court/jury-service-scam. The second phase of the East Fork Lewis River reconnection project will be starting up later this spring. This project is restoring three miles of critical habitat from Lower Daybreak Park to Cemetery Bend. Construction of this project is scheduled for two years and we completed about 70 percent

25:30 of the project during last year's 2025 construction season to help re-establish multi-threaded river channel configuration that used to exist in this portion of the river. The historic floodplain was lost decades ago when the river was confined to a single channel in order to mine gravel. With Clark County acquiring the land in 2024, known as the Richfield Pitch, this set in motion the restoration plans of the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership. Of the seven pits, the four on the south side were filled in 2025. Besides filling the pits and regrading, numerous large woody debris structures were installed. We expected to see flows going across that reconnected floodplain and after the two flood events in December, I walked the site with the project engineer and it was really amazing to see the restoration really responded as we expected. Woody structures really helped to push the water out onto the wider floodplain which

26:26 prevents the river from rising as much as it would if it was in a confined channel. The woody structures also capture leaves and other organic material to create habitat for aquatic insects as well as a place for young fish to feed, hide and rest. To restore and stabilize areas that were disturbed, volunteers planted native plants during the winter. Clark County partnered with the Estuary Partnership to host several community planting events. We had 850 volunteers and students come and plant over 9,100 trees. Native plants that are put in these properties are meant to help cool the streams, improve fish habitat areas for spawning and also include web for insects and birds and nesting areas. In the harder to access areas of the project, revegetation companies planted 150,000 native plants.

27:24 The remainder of the construction work will be completed this year and we expect the construction to be up and running by late May. The focus for this year is going to be on constructing the remaining channels that are on the north sort of east side of the river. Along with filling the three remaining gravel pits, the Daybreak Park Trail will be realigned to allow grading to stop the ongoing bank erosion. What we're seeing on right now will actually become a floodplain bench to allow for more flood capacity and storage as well as some woody debris channels will be put in. The lower Daybreak parking lot and trail will be closed to users during the construction time, but the eastern edge of Daybreak Park that has playgrounds will remain open. After the 2026 construction, there will be more opportunities for community plantings during the winter of 2027.

28:23 For more information on the East Fork Lewis River Reconnection Project, visit estuarypartnership.org/eflr.

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