Ramsey Hamide looked across the packed shelves and piled boxes of product in the cramped backroom of Main Street Marijuana and stretched out his arms.
“Look at this,” the store manager said, smiling victoriously. “Nonstop, growers are coming, bringing us samples, new products.”
It’s a vastly different world from six months ago, when Main Street, Clark County’s first recreational marijuana store, opened its doors on July 9 to widespread shortages.
For the first few months, Hamide spent days on the road, courting growers across the state and trying to build relationships that would secure at least a modest amount of stock for his mostly barren shelves.
But by November and December, the situation had changed significantly, with growers coming to Vancouver to court him, hawking a wide variety of strains, edibles, lozenges and even some oils and concentrates.
With more than 50 strains of marijuana on the shelves at the three operational stores in Clark County, the Washington market is finally starting to normalize.
But recreational marijuana in Washington still faces challenges. The drug is still illegal federally, which has led to some odd tax complications that could make it hard for Washington businesses to compete with Oregon’s impending legal market. Felony prosecutions for the drug are relatively low, but the black market has continued to thrive through price spikes and shortages of the early months of legalization. Out-of-state challenges and federal law changes could further complicate the situation.
Still, the market is improving and prices are dropping — and the worst uncertainties seem to have passed.
When crews finished repainting both spans of the North Fork Lewis River Bridge recently, it added years of life to the aging structure that carries Interstate 5 across the Clark-Cowlitz county line.
That’s because the paint job was more than cosmetic. Workers use specialized bridge paint that protects the structure and prevents corrosion, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.
But that bridge isn’t the only one in the region that needs work — far from it. Farther south down I-5, near La Center, the East Fork Lewis River Bridge is considered “structurally deficient” on one side, with a sufficiency rating of just 33 out of 100, according to WSDOT.
The East Fork Lewis River Bridge is one of many spans that the state has eyed for replacement. But despite its condition, and its location on a major corridor, the bridge hasn’t climbed high enough on the priority list to receive funding. There’s a limited pot of money for state bridge improvements, said WSDOT area engineer Lori Figone. In the meantime, drivers shouldn’t worry about using the East Fork bridge spans, she said.
“They’re safe to drive on,” Figone said. “If they weren’t, they’d be closed.”
Last month, state transportation officials announced a list of 32 bridges across Washington that will receive a combined $70 million to get fixed or replaced. None are in Clark County.
C-Tran’s busiest transit center is poised to get busier.
A planned expansion to Fisher’s Landing Transit Center will add as many as 200 parking spaces to the east Vancouver facility. The hub has about 590 spaces now, which are routinely 90 percent full on weekdays, according to C-Tran. That’s enough to cause problems for the people who use the park-and-ride lot regularly, or deter them entirely, said Katie Nelson, C-Tran’s capital projects coordinator.
“It’s been really causing an inconvenience for a lot of riders, especially when they’re in a hurry,” Nelson said.
C-Tran has started the development application process with the city of Vancouver. Construction could happen in 2016, with the $4 million expansion completed that same year, according to the agency.
Fisher’s Landing, which opened in the late 1990s, is served by seven of C-Tran’s regular bus routes, its paratransit C-Van service, the Camas Connector and Skamania Transit. The facility also has a community room that has been used for C-Tran board meetings and other functions over the years.
The expansion would add 175 to 200 spaces in the vacant space to the south, Nelson said. It will also add other passenger amenities such as new lighting, signs and electric-vehicle charging stations, she said.
The project likely won’t significantly disrupt the existing lot during construction, but it may affect how C-Tran operates the facility once the expansion is complete, said C-Tran spokesman Jim Quintana.
More parking spaces will mean more riders using the buses that serve the facility now, Quintana said. Service changes are up to the C-Tran Board of Directors, but the agency will have to consider whether more buses will be needed to accommodate Fisher’s Landing Transit Center once it grows, he said.
Sally Sellers is sewing to great lengths to show her creative prowess as a math nerd.
Yes. Sewing.
Like other math nerds ringing in the new year — at least those in the United States — she is eagerly awaiting a once-a-century phenomenon: A very special Pi Day, March 14, 2015, or 3/14/15 for those countries that use the month/day/year date format.
But she is honoring the day, which represents the first five digits of the mathematical constant pi — ? — in her own way.
Sellers has been working for nearly a year on a special project that will create a long line of fabric squares that represent as many digits of pi as possible. The first three digits are 3.14.
She’s been actively taking submissions for the project from people across the U.S. and the world. And she hopes to display it proudly in Vancouver for the first time on this year’s Pi Day.
“I just thought ‘why not?'” Sellers said. “The worst thing would have been if we only got to 10 numbers, but even then, so what? And so far we’ve gotten about 250, and more keep coming.”
Sellers is planning to continue taking contributions through Feb. 14, at which point she will begin the serious sewing undertaking.
But even after this year’s display is over, she may continue the project to see how long her strip of numbers can go.
“It will be like a giant ribbon,” Sellers said. “I don’t know where it will be displayed, but I’d love it to be outdoors. The best would be to make one long enough to stretch across the Interstate 5 Bridge, but I don’t think that will happen this year.”
She hopes residents of Clark County will join in the fun. For more information or to sign up to participate, visit Sellers’ website, www.thepiproject.org.
When Erika Corral was placed into foster care, she was a 15-year-old with heavy emotional baggage.
Since she became a ward of the state, Jeff Lightburn, a volunteer with the Clark County Court-Appointed Special Advocate Program, has served as one of the few reliable allies in her life, including when she faced a criminal charge in Juvenile Court. The charge was later dismissed.
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As her “CASA,” he spent time learning about her life, meeting the adults in it and representing her interests in the court system, both in her dependency case to determine where she would live and in her legal troubles in the juvenile system. Now 18, she no longer needs a court advocate, but she still considers Lightburn to be her mentor and confidant.
“When someone stays beside you regardless of what you’ve done, it makes you feel maybe you can change and be better and open up,” she said. “I am on my way.”
Corral was fortunate to have a court advocate. Of more than 600 minors in the county’s child welfare system because of abuse or neglect, less than half of them have a court advocate to give them a voice in court proceedings, said Wendy Lenz, interim director of CASA. The program, operated by YWCA Clark County, is seeking additional volunteers to serve as court-appointed special advocates. The next training begins Jan. 8.
“The CASA’s input and their eyes and ears on families involved in dependency court is extremely important,” said Clark County Court Commissioner Carin Schienberg. “They probably meet with the family more often than the social worker has the ability to do. Sometimes when it’s a long dependency case, the most stable person in a child’s life is a CASA.”
The court advocates are required to undergo a background check and about 30 hours of training over a six-week period, Lenz said. They work with an experienced court advocate to learn more about their role and later are able to choose a case, which could include one child or several children.
A new “sobering center” in Clark County’s Center for Community Health aims to be a place where people can spend up to 12 hours safely returning to their senses.
It’ll also be a smarter use of resources, officials say. That’s because people whose substance abuse lands them behind bars or the hospital emergency department are famously costly for taxpayers. But jail and hospital are often the only options for police, emergency medical technicians and other first responders called in to handle someone who’s in a drug- or booze-fueled crisis.
“Now they’ll have this new option,” said Jared Sanford, executive director of Lifeline Connections, a nonprofit agency that contracts with Clark County and Washington to provide intensive substance abuse and mental health treatment here at the community health building, 1601 E. Fourth Plain Blvd. near Interstate 5.
Lifeline has offered a range of services here for years, with one ideally leading to the next: from “medically monitored” five-day physical detoxification to 30-day cognitive and behavioral treatment to 90-day outpatient counseling and support. But those programs require reservations and scheduling, and they’re often full to capacity. “We do turn people away from detox,” said Sanford.
Meanwhile, the free, first-come, first-served sobering center will open for business today.
