No hard feelings

The Vancouver City Council is set to renew the contracts of its hearings examiners.

And it’s even re-giving the job to Sharon Rice, an attorney from Shoreline who smacked down the city’s emergency moratorium that tried to stop biomass.

Of course, the city had the last laugh on that one, with economics and general public ill will against the project convincing the Clark County Board of Commissioners and private partner Schneider Electric to shelve plans.

Rice and hearings examiner pro tem, Joe Turner, both will get another one year contract.

“Planning and Code Compliance staff has been satisfied with the performance of the examiners over the past year,” the staff report read.

Rice will keep her rate of $145.00 per hour, and Turner gets $160.12 per hour. Rice conducted six land use hearings and three code compliance appeal hearings in 2011, while Turner was not assigned any cases.