Another piece of the puzzle surrounding the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s quest to build a tribal casino near La Center clicked into place last week, after La Center city councilors amended their city’s comprehensive plan and struck language clearly connecting La Center to the “eventual development of the Cowlitz Tribe Reservation adjacent to the city’s corporate limits.”
La Center city councilors tweaked a part of the city’s comprehensive plan that addresses La Center’s plans for its I-5 junction, which sits next to the 152-acre parcel the tribe has earmarked as a future casino site. Originally, the city’s code stated that La Center would “evaluate opportunities to coordinate with the Cowlitz Tribe regarding eventual development of the Cowlitz Tribe Reservation adjacent to the city’s corporate limits, including extension of city sewer service.”
The amended policy strikes that language and, instead, replaces it with the following:
“The (city’s) plan should consider the effects of federal authority over land or resource use within the planning area, including jurisdiction on land owned or held in trust by the federal government.”
The new language reflects a December 2014 decision by United States District judge Barbara J. Rothstein allowing the 152-acre parcel adjacent to the La Center I-5 junction to be taken into federal trust. Rothstein’s ruling paves the way for the federally recognized Cowlitz Tribe to finally have its own reservation land and move forward with plans to build the casino.
La Center city councilors also approved an amendment to a part of the comprehensive plan addressing La Center’s commercial development. The council voted to replace the phrase “where appropriate, commercial development in and adjacent to La Center shall be encouraged …” with “La Center shall cooperate with Clark County to maintain an adequate supply of commercial lands within its designated urban growth area.”
The city’s attorney, Daniel Kearns, told councilors at their regular meeting on Feb. 25, that the former language, particularly the phrase “adjacent to” was problematic, especially in light of an October 2014 order from the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board, which ruled that portions of La Center’s comprehensive plan violated state code.
The city has appealed two parts of the Growth Management Hearings Board’s ruling – that portions of the city’s comprehensive plan are premature because they “extend urban services into rural areas in order to permit urban development,” and that two of the city’s policies, which would allow La Center to evaluate developing land adjacent to the city limits and extending sewer service to land outside the city’s urban growth area “conflict with Clark County’s 20-Year Planning Policy.”
The Thurston County Superior Court will hear the city’s appeal, but any decision on those issues are still several months away, Kearns said.
“We are appealing the premature issue and the conflict with the county’s 20-year growth plan, but, from our view, this one policy (the policy council voted to revise last week) is not as important, so we are going to revise and not appeal,” Kearns told councilors at the Feb. 25 meeting.
The city’s planning consultant, Eric Eisemann, told councilors that the recent federal ruling regarding the Cowlitz land would probably bode well for the city of La Center.
“In light of the decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia … and the impending acquisition of the Cowlitz Reservation site by the U.S. Department of the Interior, staff and consultants believe the (state’s Growth Management Hearings Board) will conclude that it is no longer premature for the city to maintain clear and specific policies and requirements for extraterritorial sewer service to lands owned or held in trust by the federal government …” Eisemann told councilors on Feb. 25.
The city of La Center approved a $14 million sewer agreement between the city and the Cowlitz Tribe in December of 2011. This agreement would allow La Center to provide sewer service to the Tribe’s proposed casino near the La Center I-5 junction.
The Cowlitz casino has attracted controversy in recent years and gained several opponents, including the city of Vancouver; Clark County; a group called Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, which includes business and civic leaders throughout Clark County and the Portland metro area; several neighbors that live near the proposed casino site; the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which operates the Spirit Mountain Casino about 70 miles southwest of Portland; and the owners of three private cardrooms that currently operate within the city of La Center.
In an interview with The Reflector in late December, Bill Iyall, chairman of the Cowlitz Tribe, said his people have been waiting patiently for many years.
“Those who are trying to stop us from building the casino are also closing other opportunities for the Cowlitz, but when the land is taken into trust we will have opportunities to create other revenue streams and job possibilities and move forward with many other programs,” Iyall said. “We had no reservation before this and a tribe without a reservation just doesn’t have the same opportunities.”
Kearns said he expect the federal government to take the land into trust very soon, probably before the second week of March.
