5 candidates vie to replace Medvigy on Clark County Council

What do a farmer, a nonprofit director, a data engineer, a former city councilor and a real estate agent have in common? Each wants to be the next Clark County councilor representing District 4, which covers the southeast part of the county. Candidates Shannon Roberts, Joe Zimmerman, Matt Little, Dorothy Gasque and Peter Cutile are vying for the office currently held by Gary Medvigy, who did not seek reelection.

Roberts and Gasque were previously elected to office. Gasque was elected to the county’s charter review commission in 2020. Roberts was elected to the Camas City Council in 2019 but resigned in July 2022. Here is what the candidates said about some top issues:

Housing affordability

Housing, and the lack of affordable housing, remains among the most pressing concerns for all the candidates.

Little said the county needs to take the lead in addressing affordable housing as well as homelessness.

“After talking with (Vancouver) Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle, I learned how the county and cities are basically fighting on these issues as opposed to coming together,” he said.

This is the first year the state has required housing targets at different income bands or levels to be included in the growth management plan. That’s proving to be a challenge for some cities.

While Roberts agreed that housing guidelines are needed, she said she didn’t support the income bands model.

“You can’t just draw a line and say, ‘This is it.’ There are always people that will fall through the cracks,” she said. “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want anyone to fall through the cracks… One-size-fits-all never works.”

Gasque, who works as a data engineer, said the county needs to better and more fully track housing data to base decisions on. Although the county has made progress on addressing growth, she said there’s still room for improvement.

“The one thing I’m tired of seeing is half-empty warehouses and business parks when we need housing,” Gasque said.

Rather than a single large home on a large plot of land, she said there is a demand for smaller housing, especially for first-time homebuyers. But Gasque said she understands it is more profitable to build bigger homes, even if there is less demand for them. As long as the land is being used in accordance with zoning and land use regulations, she said the rights of property owners should come before governmental requirements.

“We shouldn’t be telling them what to do with their land. I don’t think it’s the government’s forte to tell people what they can do with their land,” Roberts said.

Cutile also supports property rights. In his voter’s guide statement, he said that he thinks reducing “red tape” and hidden costs around permitting, such as impact fees, could boost the supply of affordable housing.

Little said the lack of affordable housing is partly behind the increase in the number of homeless people in the county. He said homelessness is a common issue between the county and cities and will take joint solutions to resolve.

“A lot of the times, the people who are forced out of their homes because of high costs, it can start in the county. They have to go somewhere,” he said.

He said funds from the mental health sales tax could be used to address homelessness.

One way to increase the number of housing units is to increase housing density. Rather than single-family homes, some cities are looking at ways to encourage developers to build apartment complexes, condominiums, and duplexes or triplexes.

As a family owner of Bi-Zi Farms on Northeast 119th Street, Zimmerman has seen many changes to the county, including the loss of agricultural lands and new housing developments. Like others, Zimmerman said he is also concerned about housing availability.

“I cannot say I have a guaranteed solution. I wish it was just a one-and-done; pass a bill and the problem is solved,” he said. “Clark County needs to build more housing.”

Where will that housing be built and what kind of housing will it be? Zimmerman said people need to understand and accept that housing for the 21st century won’t necessarily be what people are used to or comfortable with.

“There needs to be an emphasis on things like high density — condominiums, apartments. The idea that we’re going to have single-family homes across Clark County is really short-sighted,” Zimmerman said.

Roberts said the county shouldn’t be deciding where different housing types should be built. She said that should be up to the individual cities.

“You have neighborhoods in the suburban areas that don’t want to lose that small-town feel,” Roberts said. “Do we really want to cram so many people in Clark County that we do away with our history and the feel of it?”

However, Gasque said multifamily housing projects will become more important as the county continues to grow. She said getting residents to accept higher housing density will take “working with the cities to make sure that we’re developing densely within the urban growth boundaries.

“Multifamily housing with retail space around it, and office space — that’s the most sustainable way that we can develop,” Gasque said.

Cutile told The Columbian’s Editorial Board that he also supports a “collaborative effort” between the county and cities to address homelessness.

Managing growth

Historically, the county’s growth has been a pendulum, swinging from pro-development to pro-preservation and back again, Little said.

“You end up with this patchwork of unplanned, haphazard growth where you have these single-family homes stuck out in the middle of nowhere,” Little said. “Counties and cities have to stretch their resources to try to get public services there. People have to drive farther for their jobs. There’s more greenhouse gas emissions. It’s just a mess.”

He said tools are available to manage the county’s growth — development credits would be one example — in a way that’s sustainable for decades beyond the 20-year planning period.

Whichever candidate is elected, they will be coming in on the final year of a long and difficult process of updating the county’s 20-year growth plan. How will the candidates ensure they are ready to begin work on the growth plan update?

Roberts said she’s very familiar with the process, having gone through it before with the city of Camas.

“You just do your homework, sit in on the meetings … In addition, you do your own research,” Roberts said.

She said the process begins with what you have, then decide what it needs to look like and look at what will benefit the residents the most.

Gasque said she expects to be ready and up to speed on the work that’s been done if she’s elected.

“I’m tracking the process now. I’ve been looking into the state mandates and reading through public opinion to understand what the community wants,” Gasque said.

She said she’s also looking at the steps needed to get the growth plan update finished by the deadline.

Little said he will be ready to get to work right away as well. He said his professional career has been spent working on natural resource management in the halls of government and through nonprofits.

“I believe I have the skills to be an effective county councilor. I listen. I want to involve the public more in our county decisions,” he said.

As the policy director for Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving wetlands and waterfowl habitat, it’s not a surprise that Little wants to preserve Clark County’s rural lands well into the future.

“I have some new ideas for managing growth in our community that allows us to look way beyond the 20-year planning horizon created by the Growth Management Act,” Little said.

He said he would focus on voluntary incentives, which will help create thriving urban areas where affordable homes are near jobs and services. In turn, that will help preserve rural areas.

Gasque is also interested in preserving rural and agricultural lands, along with timber and recreational spaces. While expanding the urban growth areas for the county or cities could run counter to preserving those lands, she said some cities may have no other choice.

“There’s definitely a lot of pushback on expanding the urban growth boundaries. Vancouver still has a lot of space to expand but if you look at other areas, like Camas, they’ve already gone out to their boundaries. They have nowhere else to grow,” Gasque said.

She said if the boundaries are expanded, she would like to see an agreement that the additional space would be used for denser housing.

At a meeting with The Columbian’s Editorial Board, Cutile, who is a real estate agent, said he thinks county policies can be used to optimize density and minimize expansion of the urban growth boundary. He pointed to permitting as a way the county could reduce costs and red tape, which could allow developers to pass the savings on to buyers.

There’s “more than enough land within the urban growth boundary” to address housing issues, Cutile told the Editorial Board, as long as permitting issues are addressed.

Zimmerman said each city should “come to the proverbial table” and negotiate. For example, if Camas doesn’t want as many low-income housing units as required by the Growth Management Act, perhaps Battle Ground or Ridgefield can trade or exchange housing allocations.

“It’s more about communication. If we can speak with the different municipalities and come to an agreement, I don’t see that being a problem. What we can’t have is Camas or any other city say they just can’t do it,” Zimmerman said.

Primary ballots are due to be mailed to voters next week.