2008 in Review: Economy dominated Clark County news

(Columbian files)

Area gas prices swung wildly over the past year. (Columbian files)

City of Vancouver grounds crews plow the parking lot of City Hall during December’s record-setting snowstorm. (Zachary Kaufman /Columbian files)

The souring economy was chosen as Clark County’s top story of 2008. It’s a broad topic that includes a lot of issues, and their impacts can be measured on all kinds of charts and graphs.

George Kaufer has his own yardstick for gauging the economy: hungry families.

Kaufer is director of FISH, which operates a Vancouver food bank. When the economy started to slump, business really took off for FISH.

“We’ve been setting records since May in the number of people and families needing food and clothing,” Kaufer said.

The economy covers such a wide swath that the overall downturn had no rival when The Columbian’s news staff reviewed the top stories of 2008.

Members of the newsroom filled out ballots that included their picks for the year’s top story, as well as nine other stories (not ranked, but deemed worthy of Top 10 consideration.)

Thirty-three ballots were returned, and 20 voters circled the economy as the year’s No. 1 story; 11 other voters rated the economy as an overall Top 10 story.

The local impact of the presidential race and the Hazel Dell tornado were both pegged on 28 ballots; but the political campaign had the tiebreaker when it was chosen as our No. 1 story on six newsroom ballots; five newsroom staffers thought the tornado was the year’s top story.

The Columbia River Crossing project, with two nods, was the only other topic receiving Story of the Year mention.

No other topic could match the range of economic issues. They include home foreclosures and the housing downturn, which slammed business as well as labor. Sales of new and existing homes dropped by 30 percent. Our work force in the construction trades was undercut when home-building hit a 20-year low.

That was just part of the decline in Clark County’s employment market, as the manufacturing and technology sectors also cut jobs.

The number of Clark County residents unemployed and looking for work jumped to an estimated 18,250 in November. That’s up 1,880 from October, and up 7,130 over November 2007.

That’s a lot of breadwinners, which is illustrated when Kaufer runs the monthly numbers at the FISH food bank.

“We have been helping many more people this year than in the past,” he said. “October was our highest month: There were more than more than 1,600 families” receiving a once-a-month food boxes, compared to 1,200 families in the highest month of 2007.

Things heated up early, as the county’s Democratic and Republican caucuses attracted almost 10,000 presidential partisans in February.

Two prominent Vancouver Democrats became the focus of some intense politicking: U.S. Congressman Brian Baird and Ed Cote, a member of the Democratic National Committee, were among the superdelegates courted by the Obama and Clinton campaigns. A local family — the Palins — had an extra rooting interest in the race when a relative wound up on the Republican ticket.

And when it actually came time to vote, we sure did: The local turnout was 85.31 percent.

The Jan. 10 twister kicked up near Vancouver Lake and left a trail of downed tree limbs and debris as it headed along Sluman Road and 78th Street to Northeast St. Johns Road. During its eight-minute spree, the tornado hopscotched 10 miles into the Hockinson area.

It damaged 134 homes and caused more than $500,000 in property damage, but there were no reported injuries. It was rated near the bottom of the tornado yardstick as an F1, with winds from 90 to 110 mph. The 1972 Vancouver tornado that killed six people was an F3.

The region took a huge step toward building a project that has been widely panned. Environmentalists don’t want a massive crossing at a time of increasing concern about global warming and decreasing vehicle travel. Clark County commuters dislike the prospect of paying more than $1,000 a year in bridge tolls. Others believe a third bridge should be built elsewhere.

Those views didn’t prevent six governments, three from each side of the Columbia River, from coalescing around building a replacement bridge with light rail.

Funding is the biggest challenge facing a project expected to cost $3.5 billion to $4.2 billion including bridge, freeway and light-rail improvements. “I would love to be Santa Claus,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told The Columbian in August, “and I’m not.”

By midyear, a bubble in global oil prices had pushed gasoline prices at local pumps to record highs. As the price of gas topped $4 a gallon, people had some math to do.

For vacationers, that meant recalculating their summer trips on the basis of $100-a-day driving. For businesses, it meant fuel surcharges and delivery fees so customers could pick up part of the higher overhead.

Barring a miracle, the skies over Fort Vancouver will be dark and quiet on July 4, 2009, for the first time since 1962.

The Vancouver National Historic Reserve Trust, which has sponsored Vancouver’s signature fireworks-music festival for the past five years, announced in September it would no longer produce the event after losing its primary sponsor.

With the show canceled, the Vancouver City Council opted to limit fireworks use to four days, July 1 to 4, but allow sales on seven days, June 28 to July 4. The change won’t take effect until 2010 because state law requires a one-year waiting period. Clark County commissioners are expected to discuss fireworks in early 2009, but there is no indication they will follow the city’s lead.

On the same day county voters gave a Democrat a six-point victory in the presidential race — since World War II, only Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan have done better — they re-elected every local Republican incumbent and gave the GOP its first majority on the board of county commissioners in 32 years.

There were some close calls. And primary voters retired Rep. Jim Dunn after he was disciplined by his party for making an inappropriate comment to a female legislative staffer.

Still, Republicans did surprisingly well in a blue year. On the county commission, Marc Boldt coasted to a second term and the unabashedly superconservative Tom Mielke squeaked into office by 209 votes. Mielke said he won because voters resented a Cowlitz Tribe casino developer’s efforts to defeat him. Whatever the reason, his win could mean big changes to the county’s rural areas: smaller lots, fewer rules and more growth.

For more than a decade, Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard and other city backers have dreamed of a world-class waterfront. The city in 2008 moved to make that dream a reality. It committed $15.5 million for rail, road and utility improvements for redeveloping the former Boise Cascade industrial site.

Gramor Development of Tualatin, Ore., and four local investors plan a high-rise community loaded with 3.5 million square feet of condominiums, apartments, offices, hotels, shops and restaurants, along with 10 acres of parks, trails and open space. David Copenhaver, Gramor’s vice president of development, said the waterfront project is based on expectations of what economic conditions will be years from now.

“With the schedule we have, we won’t have any buildings on line until late 2011, 2012,” Copenhaver said in November. “And it’s going to be a different world then.”

More than 14 inches of snow in December gave Vancouver its whitest Christmas ever. According to weather watchers, it was Vancouver’s heaviest snowfall in 40 years. Effects of the Arctic blast will be felt deep into 2009, when school districts have to tweak their schedules to make up for snow days.

If there was any doubt Clark County residents were hurting from an economic downturn in 2008, a pretty good indication came May 20.

Voters in four school districts emphatically rejected a combined $413 million in proposed bond measures that would have paid to construct new schools and make myriad upgrades to current facilities.

The four districts — Evergreen, Ridgefield, Washougal and La Center — tried to convince voters they’d get bargain rates on construction costs during a recession. But with local property values sliding and layoffs starting to rise, their pitch fell flat.

One bright spot: With a frozen home market, fewer incoming residents and students helped ease overcrowding issues, if only temporarily.