After weeks of contentious debate, the Clark County council voted 2 to 1 Tuesday to display “In God We Trust” in their public hearings room.
Councilor Jeanne Stewart cast the dissenting vote.
“At the first hearing, I saw what seemed to be a conversion of the issue,” Stewart said. “It created unnecessary turmoil and conflict. Sadly, it entered a political realm. A realm where God became a political football, and I find that deeply distressing.”
During a council meeting that at times felt more like a church service, more than two weeks of debate culminated in nearly four hours of public comment. Many were forced to watch the meeting from an overflow room opened for the crowd.
About 80 people spoke, almost evenly split between those for and against posting the national motto on a wall of the chamber.
State Sen. Don Benton doesn’t keep an office in his district, but never let it be said he’s not in touch with what’s happening back home. He goes there often, at public expense.
Taxpayers reimbursed Republican Benton about $120 for each of 17 round trips between Olympia and his home of Vancouver during last year’s 60-day legislative session, more trips to a home district than reported by any other lawmaker. In 2013’s 105-day session, the state paid him to make the drive 35 times. Special sessions added more.
Those trips to Clark County, where he continues to work a county job during session, helped drain an expense account that many other lawmakers use for an office to field constituent inquiries. Benton said while he had a district office earlier in his 20-year legislative career, paid travel home lets him show up in person at places like ceremonies honoring Boy Scouts.
First-graders at Walnut Grove Elementary donned striped Cat-in-the-Hat chapeaus and dined on a breakfast of green eggs and ham Wednesday morning during the annual breakfast celebrating Dr. Seuss, reading and family.
The tradition was started 20 years ago by Mark Matthias, owner of Beaches Restaurant & Bar, to mark the birthday of Dr. Seuss. He had been brainstorming with Jan Redding of Vancouver Public Schools about how to get more parents to visit their children’s schools.
Because it was near the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, the children’s book author, he had an idea. Matthias offered to gather volunteers to make a breakfast of green eggs and ham for the first-graders at one school with a high number of students from families with low incomes. More than half of the parents showed up to eat with their kids.
But Matthias wanted to do more. The next year, he and a group of volunteers made green eggs and ham for three schools. In the third year, they went into five schools.
The Vancouver City Council settled a seven-month debate Monday night on the rise of ride-sharing companies, opening the door for Uber to legally do business in the city.
With unanimous approval, the council agreed to adopt a new taxi code that aims to create a level playing field for the city’s legacy taxi companies — Vancouver Cab, Broadway Cab and Radio Cab — and the new wave of ride-sharing networks, such as Uber and Lyft.
The ride-sharing companies allow anyone with a smartphone to catch a ride with drivers registered through the network, and fares are often a fraction of the cost charged by traditional cab companies.
Uber came to Vancouver in mid-July. Today, the company has hundreds of unpermitted drivers in the Portland-Vancouver area, and dozens of them work primarily in Vancouver, said Brooke Steger, the general manager of the company’s Seattle operation.
Four people from the audience spoke during a public hearing before a city council decision that was capped off with a “reluctantly yes” vote from Councilor Bill Turlay. Most of those testifying Monday supported the move to adopt a new taxi code.
The Vancouver City Council will hold a one-hour workshop to start exploring affordable housing issues and remedies — what can be done to build more and to protect vulnerable tenants from displacement — beginning at 4 p.m. today in the council chambers at Vancouver City Hall, 415 W. 6th St.
Looking at what other jurisdictions have done will be key to getting something done here, councilor Alishia Topper said.
“In my opinion, we are so far behind on this issue,” she said. “To do nothing would be really unforgivable.”
The issue leapt to the fore in December, when so-called “no cause” notices to vacate in 20 days started going out to dozens of households at Courtyard Village Apartments, a complex of buildings at 2600 T St. in the Rose Village neighborhood of central Vancouver. New owner Metropolitan Land Group of Beaverton, Ore., and its local subsidiary, MF Parc Central, are renovating the 151-unit complex and plan to raise the rents.
These are called “no-cause” terminations because, by law, no reason is required. Twenty days’ notice is perfectly legal throughout most of Washington.
