Clark College’s faculty union voted to ratify its contract Wednesday afternoon, drawing 15 months of bargaining and a three-day strike to a close.

The Association for Higher Education, which represents the college’s approximately 400 full- and part-time faculty, voted 257 to 9 in favor of the contract that had been tentatively approved the night before with the Clark College Board of Trustees

Classes will resume Thursday, Clark College spokeswoman Kelly Love reported.

The new contract includes wage increases for full-time faculty, who will see their annual salary bumped by about $10,000 — a little more or less, depending on how long they’ve been employed at the college. The contract also establishes a new payment model for part-time teachers, who for the first time will see their salaries and future increases tied to that of their full-time counterparts.

The results of the vote were announced to thunderous applause at Gaiser Hall. Teachers crowded into the vacant student center while the first snow of the season fell in flurries outside.

“This is a tremendous achievement. This is a tremendous victory for our students and for our college. These pay raises will make a difference in our lives,” said Suzanne Southerland, the union president and a professor in the college’s communications department.

“It’s our strength that closed this college down — and got us a fair contract.”

Early Monday morning, faculty went on strike for the first time in Clark College’s 87-year history. They gathered in picket lines on campus with chants of “Fair contract now,” calling on college leaders to increase wages and reflect the higher pay at Clark County’s K-12 school districts.     

At the heart of the negotiations were salaries for part-time instructors.

Part-time staff could be paid “literally half as much as a full-timer” for a comparable load, Southerland told The Columbian. Part-time faculty were being paid between $2,925 and $3,037 for each five-credit, 12-week lecture course. Full-time faculty had made anywhere between $53,416 to $76,339 per academic year.

Union leaders had pushed for pay parity for part-time faculty. The college had countered with a proposal to incrementally raise part-time faculty salaries over the next five years, eventually bringing them up to 72 percent of a full-time professor’s salary.

Ultimately, the contract ratified Wednesday followed the college’s proposal, but on an accelerated timeline. Effective retroactively to July 2019, part-time adjunct professors will be paid at a rate equivalent to 65 percent of what a starting full-time professor makes under the new contract. That proportion will increase each year, to 72 percent by July 2022.

Additionally, all faculty received a 1 percent wage increase, effective retroactively to July 2018. Full-time staff dropped their lowest pay step, bumping entry-level employees up a level, and each step received another 9 percent wage increase, effective retroactively to July 2019. The new salary range for full-time Clark College professors now starts at $62,049 and tops out at $87,403 for the 2019-20 academic year.

The ultimate goal in the coming years, Southerland said, is to bring adjunct faculty up to approximately 85 percent of what a full-time professor makes for an equal course load.

“The national trend is to exploit part-timers, and we’re trying to turn that around,” Southerland said. “We’re going to keep on going until we get to the mid-80s. I think that’s a reasonable goal.”

The college does not plan to add days of class to the end of winter term, Love said. Because the cancellation lasted for fewer than five days, individual teachers will work with their deans to condense their curriculum and accommodate the three missed days of classes.

“Students need to be back in, they want to be back in,” Love added. She emphasized that the college’s 9,186 enrolled students were not required to have completed any coursework over the duration of the strike, and that their grades would not be impacted.

The end of 2019 saw increased federal funding for Columbia River salmon hatcheries, the latest attempt in a line of legislation to boost the region’s stock of the valuable fish.

A spending package passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December set aside $57.5 million for salmon preservation, including $22 million specifically for chinook and steelhead in the Columbia River.

The allocation to regional programs — part of the Mitchell Act, a 1938 law that helps guide protection and harvest of salmon from the Columbia River Basin — is the largest amount to be set aside for the program in five years.

For Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, the package marks her latest attempt in a series of incremental efforts aimed at boosting salmon runs without resorting to such drastic measures as breaching Columbia or Snake River dams. The congresswoman is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Now that my sea lion bill has been signed into law, I am working with members from both political parties to take the next critical step: protect salmon habitat and increase hatchery production,” Herrera Beutler said in a media release.

“I’m pleased we advanced this funding to bolster salmon in our rivers. Working together, we can protect the precious salmon resources we cherish so much.”

In referencing her sea lion bill, Herrera Beutler was pointing to a piece of legislation she championed during her last term. The bill revised the Marine Mammal Protection Act to permit Washington, Oregon and Idaho governments, as well as select Pacific Northwest Tribes, to kill sea lions in certain circumstances. It was a response to booming populations of Steller and California sea lions gathering and eating salmon at Bonneville Dam and other choke points.

Herrera Beutler introduced the bill in April 2017 and it was signed into law in December 2018.

“We’re not anti-sea lion. We’re just for protecting a Pacific Northwest treasure: salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and other native fish species iconic to our region,” Herrera Beutler said upon the sea lion bill’s passage.

“Simply put, this measure cuts through the bureaucratic red tape, streamlines the permitting process, and allows states and tribes to rapidly respond to remove sea lions from areas they pose the most threat to salmon recovery.”

Different approaches

Cutting through red tape is a difficult task when it comes to responding to immediate challenges in Pacific Northwest river systems.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and the Bonneville Power Administration are currently working on a new environmental impact statement for 14 federal sites along the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The document is set to be completed no later than September 2020. It’s the first such study in 27 years.

The sites are connected in an enormously intricate, delicate web — minor changes to one could cause a domino effect downstream. Adjustments are made slowly and deliberately.

But lately, steelhead and chinook have dominated the conversation around river management in the Pacific Northwest, and the conversation has grown more urgent. Puget Sound orcas, who count on a healthy salmon stock for food, are on the brink of extinction.

One grieving whale memorably carried her dead calf on her head for more than two weeks in 2018, leading Washington Governor Jay Inslee to announce a recovery plan.

Among the governor’s proposed solutions was permitting more water to be spilled over the region’s dams, helping young salmon reach the ocean.

For some, Inslee’s plan doesn’t go far enough. Two tribes, the Yakama Nation and the Lummi Nation, are calling for the removal of three dams along the Columbia River. Removing the Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day dams, they assert, would support salmon recovery and help the dwindling orca population.

Herrera Beutler is adamantly opposed to removing or breaching dams as an option for salmon recovery. Following a proposal from Inslee to study possible breaching of dams in the Snake River, she wrote to Port of Vancouver commissioners reminding them that the cost of such a policy would be “staggering.”

“As you know, the Columbia and Snake rivers account for 40 percent of all hydropower across the United States and generate over 60 percent of energy in the region,” Herrera Beutler wrote. “Those who have called to breach or remove our dams do not have the best interests of Vancouver residents in mind, they do so without proper study or scientific basis.”

The Mitchell Act

Mitchell Act funds have been instrumental in constructing and improving the region’s salmon hatcheries — Abernathy, Skamania, Washougal and Bonneville Hatchery have all received money through the federal program since Congress began annual allocations in 1946.

All told, the budget helps operate 62 hatchery programs in the Columbia River Basin, with an annual release of more than 63 million juvenile salmon and steelhead. Past years have seen Northwest hatcheries receive between $12 million and $22 million.

The program has received its own share of controversy, particularly from fish conservation groups who argue that increasing the stock of salmon raised in hatcheries compromises the wild salmon population. In 2016, the Wild Fish Conservancy filed an injunction against the National Marine Fisheries Service in an attempt to freeze Mitchell Act funds. The group withdrew the injunction the following year.

The Vancouver City Council approved a $3.65 million road work contract at its meeting Monday evening, advancing a project aimed at improving traffic flow on Mill Plain Boulevard west of Interstate 205.

The stretch of road — one of the most heavily traveled in the city, with an average of 39,000 cars daily — will see several upgrades.

“It’s a very busy intersection,” said Streets and Transportation Manager Ryan Lopossa. “We’re very sensitive to how much traffic goes through this area.”

A major part of the plan includes extending the southbound I-205 onramp to build a longer queue for eastbound travelers trying to get on the freeway.

The project will also include extending Northeast 104th Avenue where it forms a T-shaped intersection with Mill Plain Boulevard, looping it around to the east to connect with Southeast 105th Avenue just south of Mill Plain. Crews would also widen Mill Plain Boulevard and cut off access to the thoroughfare from Southeast 107th Avenue.

The plan includes a few more minor changes, as well, with proposals to enhance lighting, pedestrian safety and accessibility; crews will install a short median on Mill Plain Boulevard from Northeast 104th Avenue to just east of Southeast 105th Avenue and new traffic signals at all the impacted intersections.

The $3.65 million contract was awarded to Rotschy Inc., a Vancouver-based general contractor that often partners with the city on transportation and public works construction. Rotschy submitted the lowest bid out of seven companies who bid for the project.

The next step, Lopossa said, will see representatives from Rotschy and the city get together for a preconstruction meeting and an onsite inspection before any work begins.

“Realistically, I think we’re probably still at least a month out before you’ll start seeing some activity out there,” Lopossa said.

A stipulation in the contract will require the company to leave the area open to traffic during construction, but drivers may see some single-lane closures.

Crews will likely start with some of the more minor changes first, Lopossa said, like traffic signals and ADA-compliant ramps. Anything that requires paving — including the extensions of the I-205 onramp and Southeast 104th Avenue — will need to be done during the dry months of July and August.

“The idea is to have this whole thing wrapped up sometime in September,” Lopossa said.

When all is said and done, the entire project should cost $4.6 million.

Right-of-way snarl

The Mill Plain Boulevard project made headlines in May, when city leaders hit a snag on the right-of-way acquisition process.

Moving forward with the proposed changes would have required cooperation from 13 private property owners along the route. One owner had declined to sell part of their parcel to the city, and the city council responded by condemning the holdout property, located at 10605 S.E. Mill Plain Blvd.

When Lopossa spoke with The Columbian last year, he said he was optimistic that he could still work out a deal with the parcel’s owner, United Merchant Corp. The road work project would require a 15-foot strip of land, but the existing structure on the property could remain standing.

On Monday, Lopossa confirmed that the city had been able to strike a deal with United Merchant Corp. It involved a somewhat unusual tool in the right-of-way acquisition toolbox — a land swap.

In exchange for the 15-foot strip of land required for the Mill Plain Boulevard project, the city gave United Merchant Corp. an adjacent parcel. Vancouver had already acquired the parcel, the corporation’s neighbor to the east, through the earlier right-of-way acquisition process, and gave it to the holdout property owner (minus the section needed for the road work).

“We rolled that parcel into the compensation package,” Lopossa said.

The National Weather Service issued a Winter Weather Advisory for Southwest Washington this morning predicting wintry conditions from 10 a.m. today until 4 a.m. Thursday.

Go to www.columbian.com/school-closures for the latest information on school delays.

Total snow accumulations are expected to range from 1 inch or less at low elevations to 1 to 4 inches in the hills, with the highest accumulations above 800 feet.

Winds will gust to near 45 mph near the Columbia River Gorge.

The forecast calls for a chance of snow before 1 p.m., then rain mixed with snow turning to rain as the freezing level rises this afternoon. This afternoon’s high is expected to reach 40 degrees in Vancouver.

The advisory said there is a chance of spotty freezing rain tonight, which could have an impact on the evening commute.

A duplex fire Saturday in Vancouver’s Cascade Highlands neighborhood was the result of an unfortunate succession of Christmas trees set aflame.

Vancouver fire crews responded at 3:24 p.m. Saturday to 1617 S.E. Blairmont Drive for a report of a residential structure fire.

The first fire engine arrived at the address in about six minutes, firefighter Eva Scherer said. A crew doused the fire from outside before entering the building and extinguishing it completely, she said.

The Red Cross responded to assist two people who were displaced, Scherer said. The fire did not extend into the adjoining unit.

A total of seven fire units were involved in the
response.

Vancouver Fire Marshal Heidi Scarpelli said the fire was caused when the occupant of the home tried to dispose of a small, tabletop Christmas tree by burning it in the fireplace.

The small tree quickly caught fire, but the flames got out of control for an indoor burn so the resident grabbed the tree to move it outside. In the process, they spread the flames to a much larger Christmas tree in the living room, Scarpelli said.

The fire was contained to a single room, but it caused about $18,000 in damage, according to the fire marshal.

Scarpelli said fire officials do not recommend people burn their holiday trees in fireplaces or wood stoves.

“Those trees need to be disposed of differently; they consist of extremely combustible materials,” she said.

Vancouver firefighters and law enforcement are at the scene of a structure fire in the Carter Park neighborhood involving a person who barricaded themselves inside the home.

Vancouver fire crews were dispatched at 5:22 p.m. to 3200 Division Avenue for the report of a residential fire.

The first arriving crew told dispatchers that someone had holed up inside the house, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.

Police shut down the roads near the home, which include Division Avenue and 32nd and 33rd streets, according to the scanner traffic. Firefighters were unable to enter the building and stood by with police as they assessed the situation.

Emergency responders told dispatchers about 40 minutes after the original call that one patient was being treated near the scene.

This story will be updated.

A 19-year-old Battle Ground man was sentenced Wednesday in Clark County Superior Court to more than two years in prison for an armed robbery at Vancouver’s Bagley Community Park last year.

Malcolm L. Harper pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree robbery and was sentenced to 25 months imprisonment, according to Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes. Harper originally faced a charge of robbery in the first degree.

Judge John Fairgrieve also imposed 18 months of community service upon release and restitution to the victim, Hayes said.

When police arrived at Bagley Community Park, 4607 Plomondon St., on the afternoon of June 30, Madden Miller told them that two men had robbed him at gunpoint in the woods, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Before the robbery, Zechariah Chiam Maysonet, 19, of Vancouver contacted Miller on Snapchat, asking if he could meet to buy marijuana, according to the affidavit. Miller went to the woods, where he was approached by Maysonet and another man, later identified as Harper, the affidavit said.

Once the deal — less than an ounce of marijuana — was completed, Harper pulled out a black revolver from his pants and pointed it at Miller’s face, according to the affidavit.

Miller gave the men his baseball cap, a cellphone valued at $1,000 and a black wallet, according to the affidavit. With his phone gone, Miller and his girlfriend went to a nearby Taco Bell to call 911.

Police tracked down Harper and Maysonet within a day, court records say.

Maysonet’s trial is scheduled for Feb. 18.

There’s a new undersheriff in Clark County.

John Chapman, previously the chief criminal deputy at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, will take over for Mike Cooke, Sheriff Chuck Atkins said. Cooke is retiring effective Feb. 1.

Chapman joined the sheriff’s office’s leadership when Atkins became sheriff in December 2014, overseeing enforcement operations. He previously worked for the Vancouver Police Department since 1994, most recently as a lieutenant.

“The undersheriff position is like a COO (chief operating officer) in other organizations and critical to moving the sheriff’s mission and vision forward,” Atkins wrote in an email. “I have full faith in John Chapman’s ability to do just that.”

Cooke has been on leave since December, during which Chapman has stepped in on an interim basis. Officials with the sheriff’s office said that Cooke’s leave is nondisciplinary.

Cooke joined the sheriff’s office in 1994 and was most recently a commander before Atkins tapped him as undersheriff in 2014.

“After 31 years of service, it’s time for me to enjoy retired life,” Cooke said.

Cooke said that he plans to live in Clark County for the foreseeable future but currently does not have other further professional aims.

Well, we got the east winds Tuesday night and Wednesday but a little bit late to usher in cold enough air for lowland snow other than snowflakes in the air. Higher elevations received a few inches of the white stuff.

Many of the forecast models behaved the worst I have seen the past ten days. Only the European model was the naysayer most of the time for lowland snow. The cold air couldn’t make it past Puget Sound in the I-5 corridor or the mid-Columbia River Gorge to our east.

Heavy snow fell Wednesday in Port Angeles with 18-20 inches on the ground. That complex low of the coast yesterday bombed with rapid barometric pressure falls and curled up like a cinnamon roll. Temperatures were all over the place in Western Washington with 20s, 30s and 40s. Rain or snow in many places.

It snowed heavily on the northern tip of the Long Beach Peninsula Wednesday afternoon. Coupled with 40 mph east winds and snowflakes the size of silver dollars, it was quite the sight. OK, we don’t have any arctic air, but after the passage of the low off the coast, snow levels will remain low through Friday morning. Locally, we could still see snowflakes falling.

Accumulation will be above 500 feet and the precipitation will be in the form of showers. A heavy shower could bring snow down to sea level shortly. Our crazy weather still abounds until the weekend when we might bump 50 degrees on Sunday. I’m waiting.

So far this month, we have not had a freezing temperature officially here in Vancouver, which is most unusual. The coldest was 33 degrees Wednesday morning. The average mean temperature is still running 4.4 degrees above normal at 45.2 degrees. Rainfall is 2.40 inches as of 4 p.m. Wednesday, 2.50 inches below average.

I don’t see a widespread snowstorm heading our way for a while. I think we will have to see what February brings. Next time I’ll follow my gut rather than those “new and improved” computer forecast models.

We will chat on Sunday with last month’s rainfall.

Rep. Vicki Kraft, R-Vancouver, will hold a town hall meeting from 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday in the Dengerink Administration Building at Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave.

“We will just be completing the first week of the scheduled 60-day legislative session,” Kraft said in a statement. “It’s the perfect time to meet with citizens and listen to their concerns, which I can take back to Olympia.”

“Although we will be dealing with many important statewide issues in the Legislature, from taxes, to homelessness, the car-tab debate and more, I especially want to hear from constituents about those things that matter close to home here in Clark County and most to them,” she added.

The Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II, will hear oral arguments in Vancouver on Tuesday, and the public is invited to attend.

The arguments, taking place outside of the court’s regular Tacoma courtroom, will begin at 9 a.m. in the Clark County Public Service Center at 1300 Franklin St., in the sixth-floor hearing room.

The court travels outside of Tacoma to Southwest Washington at least twice a year to allow interested people an opportunity to view it in action. Attendants will be allowed to ask questions not related to the cases, according to a Washington Courts news release.

The hearings will consist of 15 minutes of arguments for each side of an appeals case. Judges Bradley Maxa, Lisa Sutton and Rich Melnick will hear arguments in the following cases:

State v. Burke — Appeals juvenile court orders denying petitions filed in three separate juvenile court cases to restore petitioner’s right to own or possess a firearm, filed when he was 32 years of age.

Millennium Bulk Terminals-Longview LLC, et al v. Department of Ecology, et al — Appeal from denial of permits to help build coal export terminal in Cowlitz County.

Estate of Brost, Douglas, et al v. Brost — Probate case from Lewis County.

LONGVIEW — Yale Reservoir will be lowered temporarily to reduce the risk that a powerful but rare type of earthquake could damage the dam holding it back, according to federal documents.

PacifiCorp Energy, which operates Yale Dam and two other hydroelectric dams on the Lewis River, proposed lowering the reservoir under 480 feet above sea level — about 10 feet below the level considered “full pool.”

The action is a response to a routine evaluation that identified soil beneath the rock and earthen dam is “likely to liquefy in the event of an earthquake with a recurrence interval in the range of 500 to 1,000 years.”

Company officials and documents do not refer to an earthquake from a specific source, but the notice is an apparent reference to the offshore “subduction zone” megaquakes that rattle the Northwest every 500 years of so. Scientists say the last one occurred in 1700 and estimate there is a 40 percent chance the next will occur within 50 years and could hit magnitude 9, the largest in the world.

An earthquake of that magnitude would damage the dam’s embankment and allow water from its deep, 3,780-acre reservoir to pour over the top, according to a Nov. 27 letter from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to the company.

PacifiCorp spokesman Tom Gauntt said in a statement Tuesday the company is working with “industry experts to develop a remediation plan and implement necessary seismic upgrades by the end of 2023.”

Limiting the reservoir’s maximum level until then will “greatly reduce” the likelihood of water being released from the dam if an earthquake occurs before the upgrades are completed, he said in a prepared statement.

There is no immediate threat of a failure. But lowering the lake may pose problems for boat launches, though the lake from time to time is lowered even further for flood control storage. The reservoir was at 472 feet Tuesday and rose to about 477 feet during last week’s heavy rainstorms.

Gauntt said that PacifiCorp will work to minimize effects on recreation when the reservoir is lowered.

Safety concerns arose during a U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the 67-year-old structure that is part of a federal license renewal process. FERC ordered the lake to be lowered following the USGS evaluation, Cowlitz County Commissioner Dennis Weber said Tuesday.

The USGS study does not, apparently, project how much flooding would occur under the earthquake damage scenario, and the extent of damage would of course depend on how much water was in the reservoir at the time and the nature of the failure. But a rush of water overtopping an earthen dam could potentially cause a catastrophic breach.

Lowering the reservoir level would be a “prudent and acceptable” risk reduction, the FERC letter says. It would be “acceptable” if the reservoir temporarily rises above 480 feet during periods of high runoff for flood control purposes, according to the letter. (It’s federal license to operate the dams requires PacifiCorp to maintain flood storage in Merwin, Yale and Swift reservoirs every winter.)

Yale Dam now is the second dam in the local area to have earthquake-related safety concerns. In 2017, Tacoma Power announced it would keep Riffe Lake 30 feet below full level for several years after learning an earthquake could damage the spillway gates at Mossyrock Dam on the upper Cowlitz River. A failure of those gates could lead to a massive flood downstream. Tacoma Power is still working on engineering a way to reduce the vulnerability of the dam, which at 700-feet tall is the highest dam in Washington.

A member of the Washougal School Board intends to run for state representative in the 18th Legislative District this year.

Donna Sinclair, an adjunct history professor at Washington State University Vancouver, announced Tuesday she will run as a Democrat for the Position 2 seat currently held by Rep. Larry Hoff, R-Vancouver.

“Working families in our region are struggling,” Sinclair said in a news release announcing her candidacy. “I want to make sure they have good-paying jobs, affordable health care and high-quality schools. That is my passion.

“As a state representative, I will carefully guide regional growth without diminishing our quality of life, create jobs, continue improving education, protect taxpayers and business owners, and maintain clean air, water, and rural life ways. We know our region needs affordable housing and better transportation systems. I want to find solutions that meet our many community needs.”

Sinclair, a lifelong Clark County resident, has long roots in the area. Her family came to the Pacific Northwest in the 1850s, and her great-grandparents owned a dance hall in Brush Prairie a century later, not far from her grandparents’ and cousin’s farms.

Sinclair graduated from Evergreen High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in social sciences, history and anthropology from WSU Vancouver, along with a master’s degree in history and a doctorate in urban studies from Portland State University.

Sinclair, a former member of the Washougal Planning Commission, won a seat on the Washougal School Board in 2017 when she received 58.8 percent of the vote over incumbent Jaron Barney.

She has been an east Clark County resident since 2007 and lives in Washougal with her husband, Eugene “Bud” Harris, along with two dogs and three cats.

Four people were displaced, including a woman who was taken to the hospital, following a house fire Thursday in Vancouver’s Cascade Highlands neighborhood.

Vancouver firefighters were dispatched at 11:20 a.m. to the 1200 block of Southeast Park Crest Avenue for the report of a residential structure fire.

The first arriving engine reported that the middle section of a home was on fire, and flames appeared to be spreading to the attic, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.

Fire Capt. Pete Adams said it was quickly determined that the fire had spread into the space above the small, one-story home.

Firefighters breached the front door and saw smoke stretching from the ceiling to about 2 feet above the floor, according to the scanner traffic. They searched the house and found a woman in a back room, behind a closed door. Heat and smoke had not penetrated the door, and the woman was able to walk out of the home, Adams said.

She was transported to a hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening, according to Adams.

The fire captain described the blaze as “stubborn.” It took 23 firefighters about a half-hour to get the fire under control.

One fire crew cut a hole in the home’s garage door and sprayed water inside while another crew doused the attic, according to the scanner traffic.

The house is uninhabitable, Adams said. Red Cross responded to help four displaced residents.

The Vancouver Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating the cause.

Snow closed Washougal schools Thursday, and temperatures are low enough for a dusting in east Clark County early Friday, according to the National Weather Service in Portland.

There was at least a single report Thursday morning of as much as 8 1/2 inches of snow just east of Washougal, said meteorologist Colby Neuman. The same amount of snow fell at Multnomah Falls in Oregon, directly across the Columbia River, so the snowfall total is believable, Neuman said. No other weather spotters in the Clark County community called to report snow, he said.

Lower elevation areas in Camas, to the west, saw rain, Neuman said.

“It was like a hard line between the two (communities),” he said. “The precipitation looks to have stopped around 9:10 a.m.”

Yacolt likely was drenched by a mix of snow and rain. A single spotter reported less than a half-inch of snow had accumulated. Backyard weather stations in Battle Ground relayed temperatures that supported rainfall Thursday morning, according to the weather service.

Early Friday morning, it will be cold enough for a dusting of snow to fall “just about anywhere in Clark County,” Neuman said. Snow is more likely in higher terrain, or the same areas that were blanketed Thursday morning.

Forecasters warned residents in a special weather statement Thursday that the cold temperatures may cause icy roads and spotty snow in the usual Clark County towns — Vancouver, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Washougal, Yacolt and Amboy. Temperatures were expected to dip into the upper 20s and lower 30s Thursday night, the statement read.

“Any moisture on the roadways will likely freeze, creating slick spots. Highest potential will be on rural roads and other less-traveled roadways through forested areas,” the weather service said.

The Hockinson School District announced Thursday that two of its buses would drive on snow routes. No school closures were reported by the time of publication.

Things should clear up later Friday morning, but expect rain in the afternoon and at night in Vancouver and around the county.

Temperatures will warm starting Friday night. The high on Saturday for Vancouver is 45 degrees, with a chance of showers in the metro area through Sunday, and then rain through Thursday.

After more than a decade of sustained economic growth, the question of a recession is becoming increasingly hard to avoid. Not because economists are predicting that one is imminent, but simply because everyone keeps asking about it.

That was one of the big takeaways from the annual 2020 Economic Forecast Breakfast on Thursday at the Hilton Vancouver Washington. Multiple speakers insisted that current indicators don’t point toward a recession this year — but their focus on the topic highlighted an increasing anxiety about the possibility among the business community.

The keynote speaker, Vigor Industrial Board Vice Chairman and founding CEO Frank Foti, touched on a few common concerns he’s heard recently, including an economic slowdown in Europe overall and Germany in particular, continuing trade tensions with China, the impact of Brexit and, more locally, Boeing’s ongoing struggles to get its 737 Max jets back in the air.

Consumer confidence has slipped over the past few months, Foti noted, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are predicting slower growth in 2020, particularly among the world’s top four economies.

Still, all that doesn’t add up to an imminent recession, he said.

“Slow growth is still growth,” Foti said.

Much of his speech focused on Vigor itself, which was one of Vancouver’s most notable business newcomers last year — although, Foti noted, the company already had a small local facility. In February, the shipbuilding and maritime industrial company announced that it would significantly expand its Vancouver footprint by taking over the former Christensen Shipyards luxury-yacht manufacturing facility.

Vigor will use the shipyard to produce a 37-vessel order of new amphibious landing craft for the U.S. Army, along with smaller orders for other Army vessels and commercial passenger craft and work boats.

The size of the former Christensen facility will allow Vigor to consolidate all of its aluminum-boat building operations to Vancouver, Foti said, including some that were originally located in Seattle.

“The opportunity to bring our team together here was the primary driver,” he said.

Vigor is developing a prototype landing craft, Foti said, that will be followed by four more, based on refinements to the first one. Production of the other 32 is expected to kick off in 2023, he said, and the operation is expected to bring hundreds of jobs to the area once it’s fully scaled up.

Foti also discussed the struggle that Vigor and other manufacturing companies have faced to find the right skilled applicants, and the company’s efforts to work with local colleges to create new skill pipelines for students.

Panel speakers

After the keynote, Foti joined Port of Portland Director Curtis Robinhold, Washington Department of Commerce Director Lisa Brown, and Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Policy at Washington State University, for a panel discussion about 2020 trends moderated by Jennifer Baker, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council.

Clayton focused on political trends including the global rise of populist leaders like President Donald Trump, tracing the trend to rising global wealth and income inequality, which he said lead to political anxiety and instability. Populism and political polarization are likely to continue until the underlying causes are addressed, he said.

“Income and wealth is more polarized than it’s been at any time since the 1920s,” he said.

Brown spoke on international trade, including Wednesday’s announcement of a preliminary trade deal with China. She said that deal is pulling the parties back from the brink of further-increasing tariffs, but she said it didn’t resolve the underlying tension.

“Trade is probably our biggest destabilizing international factor right now,” she said.

Robinhold agreed with Brown about the importance of trade, and similarly characterized the China deal as “mostly a detente.” Washington and Oregon are both heavily dependent on exports, he said, so the trade issues will continue to reverberate locally in the coming year.

The event concluded with a presentation from Scott Bailey, the regional economist for Southwest Washington. He began by addressing a question from Baker about how the latest minimum wage hike to $13.50 will impact businesses.

The answer? Not much, he said, because relatively few area employers are paying most of their employees the minimum wage to begin with. And even among those who are, he said, the change amounts to a small payroll expense increase. Using a fast food restaurant as an example, he said the increase would translate into about a five- to 10-cent increase in the price of a burger. But the impact can be much more noticeable for employees on the receiving end, he said.

“That last jump (to $13.50) is a big deal for a lot of people who are really struggling,” he said.

Unemployment

Bailey said Clark County’s unemployment rate is slightly higher than state and national averages, but that doesn’t mean the county is in a bad place — Clark County saw six years of strong employment growth up until 2018, when things tapered off a bit.

“We’re kind of right around that state and national average after being above it for several years,” he said.

Some of the county’s fastest-growing industries in recent years include health, government, food and lodging, construction, retail, finance and corporate offices. That last one is notable, Bailey said, because it points to a shift in the county’s job market away from what was once a much more substantially blue-collar workforce.

The flip side of all that growth has been a widening wage gap in Clark County, he said, with the growth rates of low- and high-wage jobs far outpacing the rate of middle-wage jobs. The county has a persistently large wage gap for workers of color, Bailey said, which will require a proactive response to solve.

“We have deep and profound racial issues in this country and in our communities, and we have to own that,” he said.

Bailey closed with a series of predictions for 2020 — starting with another reassurance that a recession isn’t on the horizon. Job growth and low unemployment rates are likely to continue locally, without any significant impact from the minimum-wage hike. Wages will likely rise, but so will income inequality, he said.

He closed with a message about climate change, which he called climate justice, urging the business leaders in the audience to think about how necessary changes on a wider scale will impact Clark County, especially changes to the transportation and shipping industries.

One of the four candidates for Clark College president has dropped out.

Joaquin Martinez, district vice provost of institutional effectiveness at Miami Dade College, cited personal reasons in removing his name from the list of potential hires.

Candidate Karin Edwards, president of Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus, is at Clark College this week for interviews. She’ll host a public forum from noon to 1 p.m. today in the Foster Hall Auditorium on campus, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.

Candidate Sara Thompson Tweedy, vice president of student access, involvement and success at the State University of New York Westchester Community College, was on campus earlier this week.

Candidate Lamata Mitchell, vice president of instruction and academic operations at Pima Community College in Tucson, Ariz., will be on-site for a student forum from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Foster Hall Auditorium, and for a public forum from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday in the same location.

The candidates’ resumes and biographies are available at Clark College’s website, www.clark.edu/presidential-search.

“We are pleased to have a slate of highly qualified candidates who are excited about the opportunity to lead Clark College into the next decade,” said Paul Speer, the college trustee leading the search process.

Clark College is seeking a new president following the 2019 retirement of Bob Knight, who retired in the midst of an investigation into what the Board of Trustees determined was his inappropriate, discriminatory behavior against women and people of color during his tenure. Knight worked at Clark College for 15 years, 13 as its president. Knight was remembered at his retirement event as contributing to the growth of campuses and degree programs at the Vancouver community college.

The college is slated to select a new president by March.

Melissa Nelson heard gunshots from her classroom at Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School and saw the lockdown alarm on her computer confirming there had been a shooting.

“I immediately knew it was Tiffany Hill,” the second-grade teacher told members of the Senate Law and Justice Committee Thursday in Olympia.

“I remember looking out the window and seeing an ambulance drive away,” she said. “I knew she was in that ambulance before I had any information, because I knew her history and I knew what was going on with her family.”

Nelson was one of a half-dozen people who provided sometimes heart-wrenching testimony about Hill, who was killed Nov. 26 by her estranged husband in front of their three children outside the Hazel Dell school in November.

Keland Hill fled the scene after shooting his wife and mother-in-law. Following a brief police pursuit, he killed himself with a single shot to the head.

The six who testified Thursday supported electronic monitoring legislation sponsored by Sen. Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver, that would allow victims to receive real-time notification via smartphones if their abusers, wearing bracelets, are nearby.

The legislation, Substitute Senate Bill 5149, is expected to be discussed by the Law and Justice Committee next week and could be forwarded to the full Senate for consideration.

Wilson said this is the third session in which she has sponsored the bill, which she renamed “The Tiffany Hill Act.”

In 2018, the Senate approved the bill, but it stalled in the House. Last year, it failed to make it out of committee.

Wilson briefly recounted how Hill was shot after she picked up her kids from school and got into her Toyota Sienna van.

“Her kids were in the back seat,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “When I heard of this tragedy, I just sank in my seat.”

Wilson said electronic monitoring and victim notification is used in several states and in New Zealand. In Illinois, more than 500 domestic violence victims rely on this technology, she said.

“Most live in fear of their lives, every day of their life,” she said. “Tiffany said to many on several occasions that she thought her husband would ultimately kill her. Sadly, she was right.”

Ten years of abuse

The shooting was the tragic culmination of 10 years of abuse, several friends told the Senate committee Thursday.

“My wife, Karina, and Tiffany were like sisters,” Isaiah Knight said. “They quickly forged an unshakable bond and were inseparable.”

Hill eventually confided in them about her abuse, he said. After her husband was arrested and jailed for domestic violence on Sept. 11, Knight said, he and his wife tried to support their friend, including installing cameras at her home outside northeast Vancouver.

Hill regularly checked the county jail’s online roster to see if her husband had been released, he said.

“She wasn’t sleeping, she wasn’t eating,” he said. “Everyone who loved her watched helplessly as this once-vibrant woman withered away from constant fear and anxiety. She always told us, ‘He’s going to kill me. It’s the only way he’ll stop. I know that’s going to happen.’ ”

Knight said that on the day Hill died, he and his wife were home and quickly learned of the shooting from phone calls and Facebook posts.

“No one knew who it was, but everyone feared for Tiffany and the children,” he said. “For as long as I live, I will never forget the look on my wife’s face when she said: ‘It was Tiffany, it has to be. He finally did it.’ ”

Knight said he and his wife went to the school to comfort Hill’s children.

“What I will remember the most are the wails of indescribable agony from their children as the detective told them their father had killed their mother and then killed himself,” he said.

The Knights were given temporary custody of Hill’s three children. They sent their own children to his parents’ home in Oregon for the Thanksgiving weekend, he said, so they could devote their full attention to Hill’s traumatized children.

“Every night, overwhelmed with fear that his father would come back and shoot him and hurt us, Tiffany and Keland’s young son slept in our bed, sobbing himself to sleep while his sisters slept together in the other room, refusing to leave each other,” he said. “All we could do is hold them and love them while stifling our own grief.”

Ongoing strain

Rene Sundby, president of the Sarah J. Anderson PTA, said she and Hill grew close through their work at the school.

“Tiffany was also a board member, but most importantly, she also was my good friend,” Sundby said. “We spent many hours together at that school.”

Sundby said she learned about the history of domestic violence after Hill received a no-contact order against her husband following his Sept. 11 arrest.

“On Sept. 12, I became a survivor of domestic violence by learning her secret,” she said. “She shared with me the secret that he had abused her and had been doing it for 10 years. In North Carolina, he had been arrested for attempted murder, for strangulation.”

Sundby said she and others have been deeply affected by Hill’s death.

“Everyone around them who shares their secret now has become a survivor,” she said. “We are all trying to navigate the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from that day and the months before.”

Nelson said she, too, continues to experience trauma from Hill’s death.

“If I hear sirens at the end of the school day and I’m alone in my classroom, I end up crying hysterically,” she said. “I can’t be alone in my classroom without music on or another person in there.

“This is not the way a school environment is supposed to be. This is not a way to live. But this is the way that we have to live because this bill has not been passed. And we will forever remember Tiffany Hill and love her and care for her, and we will keep fighting for this as long as we have to,” Nelson said.

Police, prosecutor testify

Tanya Wollstein, a Vancouver police detective assigned to domestic violence cases, walked senators through a chronology of events leading to Hill’s death and strongly endorsed the proposed legislation.

“The monitoring and live victim notification proposed in Senate Bill 5149, the Tiffany Hill Act, would have provided Tiffany critical information that might have saved her life and prevented her children from becoming orphans,” she said.

“This type of monitoring has the potential to save many other domestic violence victims from death or serious injury at the hands of their abuser,” she said. “I believe that it’s our duty to provide these victims, who have already suffered greatly, every reasonable chance to leave their abuser.”

Lauren Boyd, the Clark County prosecutor assigned to Keland Hill’s case, also testified in favor of the bill.

“Tiffany’s story is tragic,” she said. “This is what victims of domestic violence look like. This is what victims of domestic violence go through.”

Because of the constitutional right to bail, those charged with domestic violence and related offenses can be released from jail, Boyd said. In Keland Hill’s case, he had a high bail but was able to get out, she said.

Boyd said surveillance video indicated that Keland Hill waited in the back of the school’s parking lot for 30 minutes.

“This technology would have allowed Tiffany to know that he was here, know that she needed to take actions to be safe,” she said.

James Schrimpsher, Algona police chief and vice president of the Washington State Fraternal Order of Police, said the technology would allow authorities to set up electronic exclusion zones for an offender wearing an electronic bracelet.

“This technology is not 100 percent foolproof, but it is good,” he said. “Shouldn’t we be doing all we can do to protect the most vulnerable?”

Parking in western Vancouver is going electronic and feline.

Starting this month, drivers in the downtown and uptown neighborhoods will be able to pay for street parking with a smartphone app linked to a debit or credit card.

Bonus feature — it meows.

Passport’s Parking Kitty app was originally developed for Portland, where it launched in early 2017. Drivers can monitor their parking sessions remotely, receive a meow alert when their meter is low, and add extra time with a few taps of the screen.

Vancouver is planning a soft January rollout. Once fully implemented, all on-street hourly parking spaces will offer the option of being paid for via cellphone. Parking Kitty replaces the city’s Parkmobile app, which had previously been available on a handful of blocks downtown.

“We were aware of Parking Kitty’s success in Portland, and we wanted to bring that same convenience to parkers in Vancouver,” Steve Kaspan, Vancouver’s parking manager, said in a press release. “The ability to pay, receive reminders and add additional parking time, all with your phone, are conveniences we think will be quite useful to our residents and visitors.”

Parking Kitty is still in operation in Portland. In April 2018, PDX Monthly reported that the app had managed 20 percent of Portland’s meter transactions in the year since its launch, or about 2.77 million total parking sessions.

(Why the cat motif? Memorable branding. As Portland Bureau of Transportation spokesman Dylan Rivera told The Oregonian in 2017: “Portlanders are really into cats.”)

The app charges a 10 cent fee per parking session. To try it, look for hot-pink Parking Kitty signs or stickers on the closest parking meter or pay station. According to Kaspan, the city spent Wednesday blanketing Uptown Village along Main Street and the section of 25th Street near Walgreens.

“We plan to see how things go in Uptown, get feedback, and fix any issues on a small scale before moving downtown. If all goes well and weather permits, we could have it citywide by mid-February,” he wrote in an email to The Columbian, adding that the meters and pay stations need to be dry in order to attach the stickers.

Parking Kitty doesn’t allow drivers to circumvent time limits — parking sessions can be extended remotely only up until the time limit on that particular block. Additionally, Vancouver’s coin carriers will still be able to pay to park the old-fashioned way, using the existing meters.

“Vancouver was looking for a way to make paying for parking more convenient, and Parking Kitty does just that,” Sam Warnecke, sales executive at Passport, said in the press release. “We are thrilled to see this local favorite begin to expand to other areas of the Pacific Northwest region.”

The Parking Kitty app is free to download. It can be found in the Apple App Store and Google Play, or managed via web browser at parkingkitty.com.

Clark County will hold a town hall meeting regarding changes to property taxes.

The meeting will take place at 6 p.m. Jan. 28 in the Lewis River Reception Hall at the Battle Ground Community Center, 912 E. Main St., according to a county news release. Representatives from the county assessor’s and treasurer’s offices will explain the changes and answer questions.

Beginning Jan. 1, changes included education property taxes, higher income levels for the Senior Citizens and Disabled Persons Exemption and Deferral programs and graduated Real Estate Excise Tax.

The exemption and deferral programs offer tax relief to qualifying homeowners, and an additional 16,000 people might qualify due to a change in state law, according to the news release. From 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the community center and before the town hall, the assessor’s office will host an outreach event for seniors and people with disabilities affected by the changes.

Those who wish to learn more about the exemption or deferral programs can visit the second-floor joint lobby at the Public Service Center, 1300 Franklin St., Vancouver; call 564-397-2391, email taxreduction@clark.wa.gov or go to the assessor’s office’s webpage.