Members of the Winlock City Council unanimously voted to enact a six-month moratorium on data center development in the South Lewis County community during a special meeting at Winlock City Hall on Wednesday, Sept. 23.
The moratorium is not meant to stop development of data centers in Winlock entirely, but to allow the Winlock Planning & Park Commission to draft updated commercial and industrial building codes, Winlock Mayor Victoria Marincin said.
The move will give city staff time to set guidelines to allow for data center construction without risking the city’s water supply and possible noise pollution risks.
The special meeting was called as the Lewis County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) asked councilors to select a single nominee to fill a vacancy created earlier this year after former Winlock City Councilor Jeramy Allman was deemed ineligible to hold the seat.
Ultimately, following public interviews of the applicants during Wednesday’s meeting, the council voted 3-0, with Councilor Chuck Camps abstaining, to nominate Lonnie Dowell, whose nomination to the vacancy will now go for approval by the BOCC.
Camps abstained as he took issue with the BOCC asking for a single nominee after the commissioners had already asked for councilors to choose their top three nominees for the BOCC’s appointment process last month.
During an executive session held following the applicant interviews, one meeting attendee cracked a joke about shooting another attendee who spoke during public comment at the meeting’s start, but left after commenting.
Data center moratorium
Concerning the data center moratorium, Marincin clarified it is only a six-month ban to allow city staff time to draft new codes to accommodate their development, along with development of other major industrial projects.
“This moratorium would be a short-term time, so that the planning commission and the council could come together with ordinances to affect not only data centers, but all sorts of heavy-industrial or light-industrial ventures that may come to Winlock,” Marincin said. “We want to get our hands around, and get some guard rails up, for the citizens regarding these.”
Councilor David Anderson stated he supported a temporary moratorium in order to draft new ordinances to create the guidelines.
While she understood the desire for the moratorium, Councilor Alishia Hornburg echoed concerns about enacting a moratorium voiced by Lewis County Planning Commission member Jeff Skutley, who spoke earlier during Wednesday meeting’s public comment period.
“I’m not here to advocate for or against (the moratorium). I’m here to advocate for the proper process, which if we skip, we could be in really deep trouble,” Skutley said. “... The proper process (for data center development) is to go through the planning commission for review and recommendation, public hearing and the SEPA process, which requires review. Just the runoff from a 500-acre building is huge.”
He added electrical demand needed to be considered along with water usage and noise factor, among many other factors. Anderson still supported enacting the moratorium.
“It could be a good fit. It could be not a good fit. But when we don’t take the opportunities, then we’re just not going to play the game. And it could be a winner, and we’re going to lose out on that. So, if we have good policy, good ordinances, to protect what we all want, which is water, infrastructure and other things, then we need to make this happen pretty quick,” Anderson said.
Hornburg ultimately agreed with the need to update city code to accommodate new industrial developments such as data centers, and the moratorium was approved unanimously.
Council vacancy selection process
Prior to Dowell’s nomination by the council to be appointed to the council vacancy by the BOCC, Camps’ concerns revolved around confusion as to why the county had initially asked for three nominees the previous month.
The vacancy on the council has existed since July, when Allman was deemed ineligible for the elected position. While Allman lost his 2025 re-election bid to Thomas Robinson by a vote count of 179 to 280, with one vote for a write-in candidate, it was revealed Robinson himself was ineligible to serve, as he had not been living within Winlock city limits for at least a year.
The position of the county is that since Allman lost the election, a council vacancy should have been declared to start the new year on Jan. 1 — prompting the city’s 90-day process to gather applications from residents interested in being appointed to the council vacancy per state law.
Since no appointment was made by the city in those first 90 days, the responsibility then falls to the BOCC, which has its own 90-day period to collect applications and find a qualified appointee.
Given the matter had already been in the BOCC’s hands since July, Camps questioned whether state law even allowed the BOCC to ask the council to make the nomination choice after the BOCC had already assumed authority in the matter. He was also under the impression that the BOCC would be making the final nomination after the Winlock City Council had made its top three recommendations last month.
“Once the city loses its opportunity to vote for a council seat (appointee), and it goes before the county commissioners, I don’t see anywhere in the RCW, which is 42.12.070, that says the city gets a second chance,” Camps said. “... Once the power is in the county commissioners’ ballpark, if they can’t make a choice, then it goes to the governor.”
Interim Winlock City Attorney Hillary Evans explained that the BOCC was within its right to go about the appointee selection process however they wanted, but added, in her experience, she had never encountered a governing body “that opted out of making a choice.”
“Certainly none that deferred to a different body to make the choice, so I’m not sure what the board of commissioners is doing here,” Evans said.
According to Marincin, the current BOCC process was approved by county staff.
“This has gone through the prosecuting attorney and legal,” Marincin said.
Evans added the Winlock City Council could choose to not make a nomination at all and vote to send the matter back to the BOCC.
Anderson countered Camps’ argument, saying he didn’t view it as the BOCC giving the power back to them, as they still held the ultimate appointment authority over the council’s final nominee.
Camps disagreed, and stated he felt that the BOCC was “failing to perform their duty.”
Following Evans’ advice, Camps motioned for the council to refuse to go forward with the nomination process as he felt it wasn’t the council’s duty. His motion died due to a lack of a second.
Dowell, formerly Winlock’s mayor and a city council member, ultimately won the council’s nomination after the interviews, with Camps abstaining from voting.
The other four applicants the BOCC gave the council to choose from included Eliasi Sanchez, also a former Winlock City Councilor and Planning & Parks Commission member; Evaristo Gomez, a local handyman and former wildland firefighter also recently appointed to the city’s planning and parks commission; Ryan Parmantter, a business consultant and former U.S. Navy corpsman; and Thomas Robinson, a retired production manager for various regional businesses.
Parmantter was the only applicant who did not go through the interview process, as Marincin explained he had reached out prior to the meeting to withdraw his application.
Joking about shooting an attendee
During public comment at the beginning of the meeting, Winlock resident Mike Lowry spoke to share his displeasure about the recent reappointment of all five members of the Winlock Planning & Parks Commission.
Earlier this month, Marincin moved to reappoint all the members after she stated the proper process to be appointed to the commission — mayoral appointment followed by council approval — had not been followed as previously reported by The Chronicle.
Lowry had previously been one of the members on the commission, and though he reapplied, he was not appointed. As for how Marincin chose the new commission members, she stated she chose simply by whoever got their applications in first.
“I’m glad that we have now set a precedent that whatever comes in first, is the person who gets. And I’m glad that the queen, I mean the mayor, doesn’t get to decide on the council position and it’s not all on you. Because there are hardworking people out there that can’t come in anytime, any day, and drop things off,” Lowry said. “So they were left out just because it took them longer to get it in.”
Along with Lowry, the application of Xenia Gomez was also not considered, as it was not one of the first five submitted.
During his public comment, in which he raised other issues as well, an unidentified audience attendee audibly spoke out of order and interrupted him with a comment of “Jesus Christ.”
Lowry left the meeting after his public comment time ended.
Around 45 minutes later, after the council had adjourned for an executive session, a group of attendees was talking in the council chambers while waiting for the council to return.
Initially, discussion revolved around personal matters, until someone brought up Lowry’s comment.
One attendee said they felt Lowry’s jab at Marincin, calling her a “queen,” was disrespectful, followed by another attendee expressing a desire to ban him from attending future meetings, and another saying they would file for a restraining order against him.
Then, an unidentified attendee stated, “I would just take him out back and shoot him.”
The group of attendees then laughed, with one stating, “this section’s getting out of control.”
Then, Winlock Assistant City Clerk Lily Niles chimed in.
“Just a reminder, per OPMA (Open Public Meetings Act), we are still recording,” Niles said.
The Winlock City Council reconvened shortly after to continue their meeting.
