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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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In Our View: Cheers & Jeers

City, county council news good, bad; Kiggins Theatre has happy 80th birthday

The Columbian
Published:

Cheers: To several members of the Vancouver City Council. In the wake of a Salary Review Commission decision to greatly increase pay for elected city officials beginning next year, council members Anne McEnerny-Ogle, Alishia Topper, and Jack Burkman said they would decline the pay increase. Topper said she might donate the increase to charity, and Bill Turlay said he would consider a donation after consulting his wife.

In providing a 117 percent raise for the mayor and an increase of about 50 percent for councilors, the salary commission triggered a strong reaction from the public. A petition has been started to place a measure on the November ballot that would give voters the opportunity to rescind the increases. McEnerny-Ogle effectively distilled the issue: “I made a contract with the voters, and part of that contract was the salary.”

Jeers: To Tom Mielke and the state Public Disclosure Commission. The commission fined the Clark County councilor $100 for violating campaign laws in 2014. Mielke was found to have used his county email to advocate against the Clark County charter ballot measure (which was approved by voters) and to advocate against candidate Craig Pridemore (who lost a county council race against Jeanne Stewart).

While Mielke’s actions violated state law, the actions of the Public Disclosure Commission provide little deterrent. The commission took more than a year to decide on this relatively minor case, and the fine amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist. Ensuring free, open, and fair elections requires more stringent enforcement.

Cheers: To the Kiggins Theatre. Vancouver’s downtown movie palace celebrated its 80th birthday this week with festivities that included a showing of “She Married Her Boss” — the same movie that inaugurated the theater in 1936.

As Columbian reporter Scott Hewitt wrote in advance of the celebration: “Fantastic movie palaces with vast screens have mostly surrendered to clusters of tight, anonymous boxes featuring steep ‘stadium seating.’ ” That’s not the case at the Kiggins, which remains a treasure that hearkens to the days when movies were the predominant form of entertainment and Vancouver had about 16,000 residents.

Jeers: To melting snowpack. What happens in the mountains now will affect all of us this summer, and record high temperatures recently led to an early melting of what had been a robust snowpack. In less than a month, the region’s snowpack went from 108 percent of normal to 83 percent.

Scott Pattee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said: “We’re going to have plenty of water this summer, especially in the Lewis and Cowlitz basins, and the main stem of the Columbia is going to be fine.” So, there is no reason to panic about a drought to match last year’s. But questions must be asked about whether reduced snowpack is the new normal.

Cheers: To Clark College. Community colleges have a flexibility that allows them to adjust to the needs of the populace. So it is worth noting that Clark College has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the creation of a Rural Access Mechatronics Program.

The program will help students in remote areas of Clark, Skamania, and Klickitat counties receive training in advanced manufacturing. By integrating mechanical and electronic components, it can help students prepare for work at companies such as Boeing, Insitu, and Vancouver Energy. Modern industry doesn’t always require employees with degrees in, say, mechanical engineering. But the jobs that are available do require more technical knowledge than the jobs of the past, and Clark College is helping students prepare to fill those jobs.

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