Clark County Close Up

0:30 A Comprehensive Growth Management Plan is a long-range policy guide for how a jurisdiction plans to manage growth and development with respect to the natural environment and available resources. Clark County's Comprehensive Growth Management Plan is meant to guide population and employment growth for the next 20 years. The county is required to develop and implement a comprehensive plan per the state law. You often hear about the Growth Management Act. The Growth Management Act, also known as GMA, was passed in 1990. That requires land use planning to manage growth in the entire state of Washington. The comprehensive plan contains

1:27 14 elements comprised of existing conditions, goals and strategies to accomplish the plan's goals. Mandatory elements include housing, transportation, economic development and parks. There are also optional elements such as schools and historic preservation. Climate recently was added as a mandatory element and Clark County needs to address resilience and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice in our comprehensive plan for the first time. That is significant. Similarly, if you develop and if you have, say for example, transit corridors, you can put the majority of your development, maybe apartments and

2:23 all the high intensity development along your transit corridors, thereby reducing, providing opportunity to reduce vehicle my travel. Several community forums have generated public input. Residents can still send in questions or give comments before a final decision is made by the county council this fall. We are now entering what I may call the last stage or phase in the process, which is the adoption process, which will also provide additional opportunity for the public to participate. Again, I'm very grateful and thankful for those that have participated. You can participate by showing up at a hearing or coming out in an open house or sending us comments. The comprehensive plan is now in the adoption

3:21 phase. Next steps include a Planning Commission public hearing on August 20th, resulting in a final recommendation to county council. The details of how to attend or submit comments will be posted on the Planning Commission web page at least 15 days prior to the hearing, so you can see all the materials and read it and prepare you to give your testimony or your written comment. The Planning Commission will then deliberate and forward their recommendation to the Clark County Council. The Clark County Council will then hold their own hearing to consider the recommendation of the Planning Commission. The hearing of the council is tentatively scheduled on October 6th with final adoption ordinance on October 13th.

4:21 For the latest information about the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan update, including upcoming public hearings, check out the website at clark.wa.gov/communityplanning/2025update. To submit a comment about the plan, visit clark.wa.gov/communityplanning/compplancomments. So people in Clark County should really be paying attention to the weather this time of year. National Weather Service posts what the weather conditions are. They have fire watches, fire warnings, and fire alerts. People need to understand that as things get drier, wind conditions pick up here in Clark County, that increases the possibility that we could have a small fire spread very quickly. So I'm Scott Johnson. I'm the Emergency Manager

5:17 for Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, and we're here to talk about wildfire safety. In Southwest Washington, the most common cause of wildfire is human caused. They're generally either caused by negligence, people being in the outdoor area and not realizing how dry the conditions are, so you can have motor exhaust, you can have a cigarette, you can have a campfire that gets out of hand. Those are generally the most common causes of wildfires here in Southwest Washington. They can be prevented by people being aware that we're in drier, hotter conditions and understanding that even negligence can cause a fire. Sure, as we get farther in the summer and we go farther and farther of rains, things on the ground, fuels become drier, they have less moisture, they combust quicker, wind can drive that fuel and that fire faster on a dry, low, humid day than it does on a cooler, more humid day. So those type of conditions can make a small fire spread very quickly. So the first

6:14 thing that somebody should do if they see smoke or they see wildfire, ensure their own safety and call 911. Know where they're at, as close to the locations they can give us, whether that's map coordinates, road intersections, or an actual address. Knowing the location and then reporting smoke or wildfire are the most effective things that people in Clark County can do to ensure their safety and the whole community's safety. Homeowners that live here in Clark County in the wildland-urban interface should really look at defensible space. That's the area immediately around their home where it's most susceptible to wildfire either starting or spreading. There's plenty of resources available online. Look under defensible space or call any one of the fire districts here in Clark County that they may live in and they can provide very specific information on how to create defensible space. Generally it means making sure that anything that can rapidly burn, firewood, tree overhangs, dead grass, is removed from around the immediate area around your home. So what I'd like everybody to think about having a wildfire evacuation plan, first go

7:12 to cressa.wa.gov. Sign up for public alerts. That's how we let you know if there's danger in your area. Second of all, have an evacuation plan for you and your family. Know how you would leave your home if you got a notification to leave or evacuate. Have a go kit. Have emergency supplies, a little bit of emergency cash, and the ability to quickly get out of your home safely if you get an evacuation notice. My name is Patrick Kasha. I'm the emergency management coordinator for Clark County Public Works. Public Works has utilized its knowledge specifically with the road crews that have a really good knowledge of the routes and roads within the county to establish evacuation routes and they work with law enforcement to do that. During a wildfire event or any type of road closure, it's very important that local residents understand the importance of not going into a closed area. Even though it may look safe for them to proceed, those road blockades are put up for a reason and

8:08 something may be past that blockade and they may get into a danger area where they can't evac out of it. Public Works just wants to make sure the Clark County community understands when there are road closures, whether they're wildfires or floods, it's imperative that they pay attention to that and don't enter into those dangerous areas to stay safe and that's what we want. We want to create a safer community for Clark County and it starts with just paying attention to those signs and knowing where to go and where not to go. For more information, please visit cressa.wa.gov.

8:49 Studies of the county jail found the 42-year-old structure needs serious expansion and renovation to effectively serve the community for the next 30 plus years. Recently, we spoke with the Director of Jail Services, David Shook, to learn what options are available and the potential costs. Hello, I'm Jim Demmon with Clark County Close-Up. Thank you so much for meeting with us. Thank you for inviting me here. Let's start with some quick background information. When was the main jail built? Our main jail here in Clark County was built in 1984 with 300 beds. 300 beds, okay. What is the jail bed capacity today? Today we have 519. They've added different spaces, they've added more bunks, we've actually opened up HPOD which was a minimum security area and so today we have 519 beds available.

9:44 Okay, now what is the expectation of the bed needs over like the next 30 years? Sure. Yeah, so in corrections it's really difficult to have a person in every bed, right? Because not everybody gets along and so you have to have a fluctuation of that. There's this general rule of an 80/20 in newer facilities that might be an 85/15 where 15% of your beds are vacant, right? And so you can move the population around depending on behavior, depending on violence or concerns for their own welfare, things like that. And so as we continue to look, the many studies that we've done, whether it was in CFAC in 2018/2019 or even previous, it started with 1,200 beds and I think the number is somewhere around 850 to 890-ish and we're in that same realm or ballpark with our own studies that we've done since 2023. So again, that's an estimated for the next 20 to 40 years depending, depends on the law

10:41 and justice system, depends on the courts and the prosecutors, law enforcement, their activities and how efficient our system is with getting individuals accused of crimes through the system. So that's the number that we're targeting in our projects and estimates and moving forward for the next many decades. So since the jail was built in 1984, how have correction services and best practices changed and does the current jail meet those standards? Yeah, so our current jail, we've got things stacked in every corner and crevice and location throughout the jail because there's just not enough space. Corrections practices have changed because of ADA and constitutional lawsuits and other things that have said you can't treat people that way. You have to serve them this way or you have to provide them the same

11:35 services that any other citizen on the outside of the facility would be. And so what we've done is we've moved different locations around the building to add more medical service. We've moved different groups into different spaces because we need a bigger space for the inmate population. And so because our inmate population is more sick today, whether it's mental illness or medical conditions, is a lot of those basic needs for us as our first priority, right? There's an epidemic with fentanyl, right, and overdoses, and that's incredibly dangerous. And so the amount of death that happens for somebody who comes into a correctional facility and then is released again after you've not been taken fentanyl and all those different things is incredibly high. When we first started in 2023, we would have an overdose and it would take one or two doses of Narcan, which is a medication

12:29 that will reverse the opioid effects. I just recently heard 10 doses here with the strength of this fentanyl, right? And so in 2023, we had 17 overdoses of inmates and no deaths and five officers who were impacted or affected by that drug and, again, having to give them the same medication. And so, again, medical care, some of those basic needs of our human population are the things that we're mostly focused on today because our housing is older style, right? It's a very dark and daint and really it's a jail. It is a true jail. But that also affects mental health issues. It affects my officer population who's having to spend 16 hours a day sometimes in this jail. And so, again, as the population has gotten sicker, as our staff are having to do more to care for this population, and our

13:26 job is really to get them through the criminal justice process, to help them get to the courts, help them get to the professional visitors who show up, and then get them out the door whenever the courts tell us it's time to go, whether it's off to another institution or whether that's out the door because they've been released from whatever efforts at the criminal justice involvement. So, yeah, it's really changed over the decades for sure. Okay. And what's the status of the Jail Work Center? Yeah, so the Jail Work Center was built in 1999, 2000. Originally, they wanted to have 400 beds down there. They ended up with 200 beds. And this is over by the port property? Yes, this is down by the lower river road on the port. Anyways, probably about five or six years ago, and really when COVID happened, a lot of our lower level criminals were released and said, because of COVID, we had to not have so many inmates. The other part to that

14:26 is we had less staff, we had a lot of vacancies from whether it was just attrition or we weren't able to hire folks. And so the less staff you have, the more you have to consolidate your inmate population because, again, you need to have security. That's one of the very first priorities for us, right? And so that inmate population that was down cooking and doing different industry jobs, we didn't have. The other parts of that is work release. That became less and less of a priority. And so, again, when we moved back to the jail, that inmate work center down there was closed down and we were using it for other administrative reasons. We actually use it as a training center right now. We've got staff down there. They're mostly down there all the time. However, a couple of years ago, we started looking at this build for the larger jail. And when we were at Washington County, we talked about a, hey, how could we build a pod like this on our work center property? And there was some estimates and we're like, gosh, this might be a doable thing to help with this

15:24 phasing of a larger project. And so, again, about eight months ago or so, we started building that. It's about two thirds of the way done. It's expected to be finished by the end of this year. And sometime in January, we're going to go down and kick the tires and check it out, make sure everything's working the way it is, train the staff on the facility and how the efforts are there. And then sometime in the first couple of months of 2027, we'll have 64 new beds to add to this correctional system here. And these would be for lower threat individuals? Medium security. So there's minimum, medium and maximum security. And this is that middle level. We need more of those types of jail spaces and beds for the type of population that we're having today. So, OK, now the county council recently held a work session where members discussed either a partial or full jail remodel in funding options for facilities

16:23 and staffing. What direction did the council give you regarding what type of facility? Partial or full? Yeah, so again, the partial and full options in this renovation is the difference of about 150 or 175 beds. It doesn't take away some of the critical things like a new Sally port and booking space for officers to more efficiently come in and come out of the facility. Oftentimes they get stuck in that process and they're there from a half an hour to an hour and a half sometimes. So we want to get them back out to the community to do their job. And so making that a little larger, adding an acute mental health ward and a place for a better detoxification and observation unit for those that are experiencing that in the medical ward. Those are some of the things that we're adding. And then a transitional housing. We have 62 percent of our population

17:19 that are in for less than 72 hours. Right now, we have to send that population up into general population. So contraband and other issues happen where we want to be able to house them separately and let them get through that initial process, determine whether they're going upstairs or they're going out with pretrial release opportunities that they may have. And that will help with a lot of that initial transitional efforts. So when we were talking about what's the difference between a partial and a full, the partial takes care of all that critical stuff, does that remodel, adds the courts, all the things. And then that full is that north parking lot. It's actually building just general population housing in there. And it's set up in a way that we could do that in the future. And so my recommendation after listening to some of the market surveys and talking to the county manager and really listening to the population about taxing and monies and the economy and all that stuff

18:16 is this is still a dire need for this community, right, for public safety. But we need to be able to have this conversation. And so that partial is what I recommended and the county manager agreed with that we should recommend the council. So they had a work session. We shared that information. We shared the information. We got back from our market survey with the public and the initial thumbs up. And there's one more work session, I think July 12th or 13th. And then the council is going to make a final vote on July 21st. And again, the initial thumbs up is working towards a partial build, right, which will take care of all those really critical needs for us. How would this enhance the safety of the public staff and inmates? So what it will do is the facility will be built differently. It'll be remodeled in a way that makes it safer for staff. It puts the right inmates in the right spaces, right. So again, we don't have to add everybody into the same spots. Because we have 21 individual

19:15 living spaces today, it's harder for our staff to manage them because they're in smaller little slices where we could manage them either directly or indirectly, right, we could be in them right now we have a remote management style where housing towers are actually not just next to the window. And we can hear and see what's going on. But there's a hallway in between. So we have anywhere from 80 to 120 inmates that officers are paying attention to. And that makes it difficult when you're in this siloed effort where you can't really see and hear effectively. And so creating some of these safer spaces, putting the right inmates in the right types of housing in the first place, because you actually would have somewhere to put them. That's what's going to create some of the more safe opportunities. Right now, inmates, if they have to go from their housing cell to their housing unit down to court, our officers have to escort them, right, we have gangs and other issues in our facility where they have fight on site kinds of orders from their groups. And again, everything

20:14 is that way where if we did more than independent, we had virtual reality court appearance places in in location, right, it's less movement of that general population. So safety, that way, it's opening up more lights and having more environmental opportunities for the population to be able to not be in such a dark and cold environment, but to be able to hopefully affect their mental health and some of the things they're experiencing. Again, when inmates come, we we have to care for their safety. That's one of the first priorities, care for our own officer safety, and then the well being of everybody. So it's, it's a lot of different competing efforts there and, and how we change this location and the main jail as it is, make it more effective for our staff to manage this inmate population. So what is the cost range of this, the the preferred alternative? And what fund financing

21:13 options are available? And if this project goes to the if this project goes to the ballot, is the county considering it for this November's election? Yeah, so partial billed is about $364 million. The full bill that I think was 392 million, about 14 months ago, when we had some estimate of final numbers, it went up about 20 million in just that 14 months. So again, escalations from all the different things, currently council and again, in those next two work sessions in the final vote on the 21st, they're going to finalize some of the whether it's levy lid lift, whether it's a bond, whether it's some of those things, we have an initial thumbs up from majority of the council to move towards a November of 2026 ballot measure. And again, those will be details will be finalized with the county council and county manager over the next couple of weeks. And, and then we'll have more actual details on what that will look like. So

22:11 now will there be a separate ballot request for law and justice staffing needs on the November ballot? You know, there's that conversation happening right now with the county manager and council, I think the July 12 or 13 is that final date where they're going to talk about the impacts of the sheriff's office getting more deputies on the road, you're right, the impacts of the rest of the law and justice community around us. Vancouver just added some officers, I know the smaller cities are adding officers the most they can. And so those are definitely discussions that this county needs to talk about, right of how do we grow this jail to be the hub that the jail is truly the hub of the law and justice system. We don't control people that show up, we don't control them when they leave, right? That's the courts and the prosecutors. And of course, law enforcement brings folks to us. And, and honestly, there's so many aspects of that, that we're not able to currently do, right probationary service or Department of Corrections, we can't help

23:09 them as much as they would love us to be able to help them for many reasons, right? We're not a part of a regional shuttle system, because we can't be a hub, we used to bring in six to 800 inmates that were not ours, and this community was paying for that somewhere up to $100,000 to $157,000 a year. And again, we wanted to focus locally on our law and justice system and our law enforcement partners. So those are some of the things that we would love to get back to once we have a little more space to do it, because it helps the sheriff and his extradition efforts not having to travel all over the country because they can get on the shuttle systems. And so, again, we're as we're looking forward as counsel in the county management and executive office are working on what those other efforts are for our law and justice partners, I, I'm just gonna let them speak about that. I'm really more about the jail and how that's what we're doing with that. So okay, well, we've recorded

24:05 this interview on July 8. Okay, so people need to stay tuned. So if they want to find out more information about the jail expansion project, where can they check? We definitely have the Clark County government website where the jail has its own website. We have some social media on Facebook and Instagram. And every day, in fact, today we were talking about our, our contact rooms and the lack thereof. And, and what do we do with those? And so again, there's, there's stuff about our jail. So I would ask anybody to join those accounts. And, and again, we'll be having a larger effort to get out to the communities over the next three to five months to share this information as well as make sure that everybody's aware of what's the critical aspect of this. Great. Well, thank you very much and good luck with the effort. Thank you very much, Jim.

25:02 Now that it's summer, pet owners should keep in mind to plan things early, make sure that they have things planned if they're going out of town, if they're taking pets with them, plan stops, plan to not leave the pet alone, especially when it's warm out and make sure that they have accommodations if they're leaving their pet behind, either with a pet sitter or animal boarding, make sure that they have a plan in place before they leave. Hi, my name is Caitlin Daniel. I'm an animal control officer for Clark County Animal Protection and Control. We're going to be talking about animal safety in summer. Some contributing factors to pets in distress are things like sunlight, the temperature outside, how long they're spending in the temperature, as well as your animal's physical ability, animals of better weight tend to manage better in the heat and animals of better physical fitness tend to manage better in the summer. Pets go from distress to heat exhaustion or heat stroke when their internal body temperature reaches over 104 degrees. You'll see the difference from panting to no longer panting and starting to be more shut down. If you notice a pet

25:59 in distress, the best way to cool them down is to get them to a shaded area, an area with air conditioning, adding cool water and a towel to the head and neck area or under the armpits is going to be the quickest way to try to bring the body temperature down. When pets are in cars and it's warm outside, some distress signals to look for are things like panting, saliva, them panicking back and forth, neurological symptoms or generally acting and discomfort. If you see an animal in distress in a vehicle, the fastest way to get a response is to call 911 for animal control, the Sheriff's Department or Vancouver Police. To keep pets safe during the hot summer months, the best thing you can do is to leave them at home and not take them with you on outings. The most common areas we see pets left in cars are places like grocery stores and medical facilities. Oftentimes that takes longer than people expect so leave your pet at home. And now that it's summertime, don't forget to license your pets. It's the easiest way for us to get in touch with you if something happens. For more information on how to keep your pet safe during the hot summer months, please

26:56 visit clark.wa.gov/community-development/animals-and-pets. We're all here to celebrate the grand opening ribbon cutting for Curtin Creek Community Park and the amazing efforts by so many people to make this site a reality. A vision that was decades in the making, the 16 acre Curtin Creek Community Park offers a variety of recreational opportunities for all ages and abilities. This first phase of development includes athletic fields, pickleball courts, a basketball and futsal court, an inclusive playground, a picnic shelter and walking paths. We had a focus on nature play and accessible play and there's a large scavenger hunt panel that welcomes you to the play area and that features native birds that you can see here at the site or

27:50 over in the Gattis Wetlands natural area. Designed with input from the community, the park features pickleball courts and a rugby field. Another unique feature is an art installation. The bottom of the sculpture features glass mosaics that represent native and imaginary birds and then at the top we have an imaginary bird of flight sky dancer and she's ready to take flight. At the eastern end of the park, there are two interpretive points that offer views of the Gattis Wetlands natural area. They feature some signage that shows information about native plants that we've planted in that wetland space and it also shows some information about native animals and birds that you can find in that space as well. Phase one funding of the Curtin Creek Community Park development was provided by Metropolitan Park District Levy, the real estate excise tax, and an $850,000 grant from

28:47 Washington State's Recreation and Conservation Office. The second phase will include additional parking along with adding an additional rugby and soccer field, an additional shelter, and additional trails. And I think the fact that it started in 1999, that it really speaks to the need to have a vision for what you want to see achieved. So, let's keep visioning and let's just keep finding those resources to make it happen because this will be what makes our communities thrive and healthy. For more information about Curtin Creek Community Park, visit the county's website at clark.wa.gov/publicworks/curtincreekcommunitypark.

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