News From Your Friends

What’s on our Radar – Week of December 8th, 2025

December 5, 2025 in General

Thank you to those donated to us for Giving Tuesday! This Radar is created every week by community outreach staff supported by grassroots community dollars. Our end-of-year fundraising campaign is still active, so if you appreciate this effort, please consider chipping in and donating any amount to FOCC today. You can learn more about our work this year on our website’s home page.

📣 The Clark County Agricultural Lands Study was completed and FOCC needs your help. Check out our Call to Action here.

FOCC’s comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the 2026 Comprehensive Plan Update were submitted and are available here.

  • Last week:
    • The Council approved the proposed parks fee increase to address the parks operating budget deficit while establishing free access days for parks, free parks passes from the library, and two-tiered pricing that prioritizes residents and non-profits for meeting rooms.

    • There was a public hearing on the Greater Clark Parks District Budget for 2026, and the Council approved a 1% levy plus banked capacity increase to address the structural deficit for parks. You can view the presentation here.

    • There was a public hearing on the 2026 Annual Budget. Great notes have been provided by the League of Women Voters’ Observer Corps, including details on tax increases, here.

    • The contract for the Columbia River Economic Development Council (CREDC) was pulled from the agenda, to be considered at a later time.

    • Using Conservation Futures funding, the Council approved the purchase of 23.8 acres along the Columbia River, called the Pederson acquisition, to complete the Lake River Water Trail project. You can check out the presentation here.
  • There was a WA Board of Natural Resources meeting, in which the Dendrophobia and Copperhead timber sales containing structurally complex forest in eastern Clark County were approved to be auctioned off to the timber industry, despite much effort from the forest team at FOCC and opposition to the Dendrophobia sale from the Clark County Council. Look out for a detailed newsletter article on this topic coming soon!
    • There was a Council Time. Items of note:

      • The Portland Bureau of the FBI contract for the continued misuse of Camp Bonneville was moved forward again after already having been voted down. TLDR: The Clark County Council recently voted down the FBI contract for Camp Bonneville, prompting the FBI to lobby for a second chance instead of finally moving on. Per county rules, this was allowed to come back on the agenda at the prompting of 2 councilors (Councilor Little and Councilor Yung).
        The community showed up once again in opposition. Councilor Fuentes noted that there was clear, widespread opposition to the FBI and that the Council had received dozens and dozens of comments. Chair Marshall shared that she believed the public deserved an apology for the constant flip-flopping of the Council. Councilors Little, Yung, and Belkot voted to draw up another 2 year contract for the FBI anyway. Some councilors stated their wish to not allow storage of ammunition there (given the break-in) and for some kind of payment for remediation, but the details were very vague and those elements were not voted on. We’ll be looking out for this contract and will be paying attention to the details. Of course, we’ll let folks know when and how to engage, and be sure to look out for our upcoming newsletter article on this topic soon!
      • Related to Camp Bonneville, there was discussion about the Allen Thomas draft resolution, which will move forward to a Council meeting. Some councilors expressed support for the proposal that Camp Bonneville also be renamed to the Allen Thomas Conservation Area in honor of Thomas’ life, work, and advocacy around Camp Bonneville in particular. There was also a discussion from Councilor Little about a park bench for him. It seems this may come up for more discussion at a later time.
    • There was a Planning Commission work session covering multiple Comprehensive Plan chapters, as well as the Agricultural Lands Study. The Comp Plan chapters reviewed were: Environmental Element, Parks, Recreation & Open Space Element, and the Climate Element.

      In this session, we were reminded at this point that the Clark County Council chose the least aggressive greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target (just meeting the statewide goals) for the draft of the Climate Element policies. Kyle Fadness of the Planning Commission expressed a belief that the weakest target was also too aggressive and wanted to make sure there would not be a consequence for not meeting the climate reduction goal. Jack Harroun laughed when discussing and seemed to oppose the possibility of the county adopting the City of Vancouver goal. There was then discussion about the legal ramifications of not meeting at least the state climate targets. There is still an opportunity to push the Council to a target that’s in line with the scale and urgency of the crisis!

      County staff mentioned that there was a great number of public feedback received at the two ag study open houses as well as via the Comprehensive Planning comments page online. Jack Harroun suggested that the study did not consider water rights, but was corrected by county staff. They pointed out that there is a whole lot of land in Clark County that has water rights but is not designated ag, and so likely should be. There was also word that Ridgefield and La Center may be adjusting density targets to address their proposals to use more land than is needed to meet their population allocations. We will be watching this closely! You can watch the whole work session here.
  • This week:
    • Clark County Parks and Nature is holding an open house regarding public access to Heritage Farm this Thursday, December 11th from 6 to 8pm at Minnehaha Elementary. There will be light refreshments and a kids’ activity table to keep the little ones engaged while you learn about the plans. More info here.

 

 

 

 

 

  • Other Clark County advisory board/commission meetings:

  • Other happenings:

See you next week!
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