For those that could not attend the February 4th north shore visioning workshop presented by the city of Camas, WATCH Camas was watching for you. We’ve archived the video and provided quick links to what staff feels are especially relevant sections from the evening. If you were at the meeting and have photos, video or had any interesting conversations with staff or neighbors, please share your experience with WATCH Camas (you can choose to remain an anonymous source) at watchcamas@gmail.com. Your media or information could be featured in an upcoming news piece from Watch Camas with a detailed examination of this important evening at Camas High School.

HIGHLIGHTS

Opening Comments by Mayor Barry McDonnell (8:52)

Main presentation Starts w/ Camas Senior Planner and sitting Vancouver City Council Member Sarah Fox (10:30)

Main presentation Continues with "STEVE" who is not given a last name or title but is potentially a Camas-paid consultant. (20:09)

"STEVE" goes into detail about the work he's doing with Camas’ children at a separate high school "visioning". He mentions that the children expressed they wanted things like a "commercial core and commercial nodes" as well as "dispersed business areas" (21:37)

A photo from the high school “visioning”

Steve shares that the most popular use for the north shore from the survey was recreation and tourism "by far". He also says Natural Areas scored the highest by "quite a bit" (23:32)

"STEVE" hands off the presentation to "NICOLE" to give instructions for the exercise. Nicole is not introduced or given a title or place of business either. (28:19)

A neighbor asks if citizens can ask questions about the presentation before the exercise (28:28)

Mayor Barry addresses the crowd regarding neighbor's question. Phil Bourquin takes over. (30:51)

"NICOLE" gives the specific instructions for the “visioning exercise” (32:03)

Sarah Fox begins asking groups to present their maps by saying, "already everybody, pens down. It's like a test" (01:07:23)

Sarah Fox and "NICOLE" give instructions for how to vote on "which ones you like best" of the maps made that evening (01:47:42)

Question and Answer session begins - two hours into the presentation on a weekday evening. Many neighbors had left at this point. (01:58:40)

Here, a young child is seemingly forced to read a question about construction of the roundabout from an impromptu script. He looks back to an adult woman repeatedly for approval and she schmiles and nods (02:16:09)

Here, a gentlemen says, "I’ve been working with the city of Camas and Camas Staff for maybe 15 or 20 years, we were involved, as a group, bringing the north shore into Camas, getting it annexed". The gentlemen did not say who he or his group were. (02:28:34)

Many of the North Shore land owners were not shy to announce who they were throughout the evening. It was reported to WATCH Camas that one even stood near citizens as they voted and menacingly commented over their shoulders about how unrealistic the map was while most cast votes for the “vision” with no sticky notes on it. By the same report, that gentleman was later overheard cursing former mayor Shannon Turk saying, "This is all Turk’s fault. She F%$#ed this whole thing up!"

That was about it.

Hands clapped at two hours and 45 minutes in and the remaining folks who’d stayed for Q&A went home. The entire line up of the maps with their votes was never shown on the video and it does not seem to have been made available on the city's north shore website - month's later at this point. Luckily, a neighbor who was ready to #WATCHCamas snapped a picture of the "winning" design.

It was the only map where the citizens refused to place any of the zoning stickers at all and it had the most votes, far and away.

If you were at this meeting and have any photos of the other maps, preferably the entire lineup, please share them here in a comment or email them directly to watchcamas@gmail.com so your neighbors can get the full picture.

Also, there's a lot more detail hidden in the events of this evening. Keep an eye out for a NEW featured story from WATCH Camas that will break down the events of this important February evening in detail.