Morning Press: C-Tran, Election, Cardrooms, Kitten

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Here’s a look at some of this week’s top stories:

C-Tran board OKs electronic fare system

The C-Tran Board of Directors on Tuesday approved a sweeping electronic fare system that will allow riders to use pre-paid cards and other devices for the first time.

The board authorized a contract with TriMet that will join C-Tran into the e-Fare system that the Portland-area transit agency is already pursuing. The end result will be a shared public transit fare system used across the Portland-Vancouver region. The e-Fare model could begin testing as soon as 2016, with a full roll-out in 2017, according to C-Tran.

The C-Tran board approved the agreement by a 6-3 vote, with Clark County Commissioners David Madore and Tom Mielke and Washougal City Councilor Connie Jo Freeman voting no. Most of the board saw the e-Fare project as a welcome improvement that will give riders more options in a changing landscape.

At the peak of the industry in 2005, Washington was home to 105 cardrooms, which altogether generated more than $302 million in net gambling receipts. Today, fewer than half of them remain and cardroom profits are nearly two-thirds of what they were nine years ago.

The industry entered a downward spiral in 2006 as the state’s new smoking ban went into effect, a change that doesn’t apply to tribal casinos.

Read more about the cardrooms’ decline.

Kitten stuck in car escapes with barely a scratch

As Andrea Duvall climbed into her car at 4:30 a.m. Monday, she thought she heard the faint sound of a cat meowing.

She searched her garage but couldn’t find a cat. As she backed down the driveway, she heard it again.

“I could just hear him cry, he was just mewing away as I drove,” she said.

She woke up her husband and the two searched her car. When they finally gave up and Duvall tried to drive away, they heard meowing yet again.

“He yelled, ‘It’s in your car,'” she said.

This time, they “tore the car apart,” searching the back seat, the trunk and wheel wells. “We couldn’t find him anywhere,” she said.

They finally realized that the small kitten was somewhere under the hood of her 2013 Audi A5. Not knowing what else to do, Duvall drove from her house in Woodland to downtown Vancouver.

Learn more about the kitten’s adventure.

Get ready for the election

Initiative 1351 would make class size smaller, but how?

Battle Ground School District Superintendent Mark Hottowe can get behind the concept of smaller class sizes.

But he can’t support an initiative on the November ballot that aims to do just that — reduce the ratio between students and teachers.

“I think part of the issue is folks may understand the value of the concept, but not go to the second stage of thinking, where you ask the question: ‘Where are we going to put the additional teachers?’ ” Hottowe said.

By Evergreen School District Superintendent John Deeder’s math, if Initiative 1351 were to pass this election, his district would need to build 10 to 12 schools to meet the requirements of the measure; he believes taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

“It’s very difficult for me, or, I think, anybody who is in the education community, to talk about reducing class sizes — obviously, that’s a hot-button issue for a lot of people, especially our teachers,” Deeder said. “However, I think what people are not being told and need to be told is, first of all, most school districts of any size, like Evergreen, would have trouble getting to the class size that is mandated in Initiative 1351.”

Learn more about I-1351.

Madore gives $37,000 to fight charter

A political action committee that opposes an attempt to revamp the structure of Clark County government received an influx of money last week from Clark County Commissioner David Madore.

The commissioner and owner of U.S. Digital contributed $37,000 to the political committee, known as Don’t Lose Your Voice, according to the state Public Disclosure Commission.

The committee, created earlier in the summer, is working to fight attempts to pass a home rule charter, which would change aspects of county government. Among the changes, the charter would restrict some of the commissioners’ duties and lower the commissioners’ pay.