Months of speculation about how the county would revamp its ordinance on fireworks ended Tuesday when the Clark County commissioners voted to create a zone where discharging fireworks would be limited to two days a year.
Commissioners voted 2-1 to create two separate fireworks zones, one north and one south of Northeast 219th Street. Areas south of the boundary would see restrictions placed on the discharge of fireworks, limiting their use to July 4 but also adding a new day, New Year’s Eve. The dates and times for selling fireworks in all unincorporated areas will remain the same, from June 28 until July 4.
There will be no new restrictions on the sale and discharge of fireworks north of the boundary, and New Year’s Eve will be added as a permissible night to set them off.
Despite the addition of New Year’s Eve, the county won’t allow fireworks to be sold in unincorporated areas in December.
The new ordinance, which will take effect in 2016, will only affect residents living in unincorporated areas. Cities set their own regulations regarding the sale and discharge of fireworks and they differ from what the county allows.
The “unauthorized school bus” reported to be offering rides to Battle Ground students last week was nothing more than a new bus driver and a trainer, according to a statement released Tuesday afternoon by the Battle Ground Police Department.
“The investigation confirmed that the bus in question was a school district bus occupied by a new driver and a trainer who were on legitimate business conducting a bus stop exercise,” the statement said.
Monday night, after reports surfaced on social media of an unauthorized school bus offering rides, Battle Ground school officials alerted parents.
The information reported to the district by concerned parents prompted the district to notify families to ensure safety and err on the side of caution during the investigation.
Sean Chavez, district spokesman, said that no incidents were reported to police or the school district, but that district officials heard about it through parents’ discussing it online.
“It happened last week,” Chavez said. “No one was hurt. No one was picked up.”
The companies seeking to build the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail terminal at the Port of Vancouver have thrown a counterpunch at the developer who argues the terminal will severely curtail his plan to construct a $1.3 billion commercial/residential redevelopment of the city’s waterfront.
In a market analysis commissioned by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies — operating together as Vancouver Energy — Heartland LLC, a Seattle-based real estate advisory firm, says “that under reasonable market input assumptions,” the waterfront project “is not viable as conceived, making an argument about the impacts to value from the proposed terminal irrelevant.”
Waterfront developer Barry Cain, president of Gramor Development — a member, along with local investors, of Columbia Waterfront LLC — called the analysis “trash.” Tesoro and Savage are “working against the waterfront,” he said Thursday. “They’re working against what’s good for the downtown, because what they’re doing is bad.”
The Heartland analysis is available for public review as part of a 2,161-page preliminary draft environmental impact statement submitted by Tesoro-Savage to the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. The companies posted the draft document on their Vancouver Energy website, a decision that has prompted criticism from opponents who say the release is premature in the exhaustive review process.
When the Borders bookstore in east Vancouver closed in 2011, it left an unmistakable void in one of the city’s busiest commercial areas.
Neighboring businesses felt an immediate impact as fewer people ventured into the shopping center off Southeast 160th Avenue near Mill Plain Boulevard. Shoppers wondered what would eventually replace Borders in the anchor location.
More than three years later, the Cascade Highlands neighborhood is still waiting for the answer.
“One of my biggest concerns is that we want to see our local neighborhood thrive,” said Shareefah Hoover, who lives in the area. “When I see a vacancy that has persisted for years, I have to wonder why, especially in such a bustling retail district.”
The Borders closure coincided with the company’s liquidation in 2011. Since then, the space has been occupied by a seasonal Halloween store, which now has its temporary banner hanging over the front entrance.
After journalist David Sheff’s heartbreaking memoir about his son’s struggles with addiction — and with the American health care system — came out in 2008, the author started getting letters.
First there was a little trickle. But before long it was a flood of thousands upon thousands, he said, and they told some of the saddest stories ever.
“We’ve been through hell and no one knows,” is what they said. But in “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction,” they said, Sheff told their stories. Except that some of those tales had a different ending than his hopeful one — with a young man in real recovery, with years of hard-won sobriety now under his belt.
