Chelan County Commissioners Making Two-Day Sojourn To Stehekin

The Chelan County Commissioners are making a sojourn this week that they hope will become an annual one in the years ahead.

The Commissioners will be joining a contingent of staff members from both the County and Chelan County PUD, as well as the utility's commissioners for a two-day trip to Stehekin on Wednesday and Thursday (May 14/15).

The visit to the remote, unincorporated community at the north end of Lake Chelan is designed to both inform its roughly-100 year-round residents about how the County is planning to assist its needs in the years to come and to receive feedback from the town's inhabitants regarding what the most critical of those needs are.

Chelan County Commissioner Brad Hawkins, who represents Stehekin within District 3, says he's excited to make the trip.

"It's a unique and remote community here in Chelan County that deserves to be represented to the best of our abilities. It is a part of District 3, so I think the community will really appreciate us going up there. This will be my first trip going there as a commissioner."

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During their two-day stay, the visiting group will be touring several facilities in Stehekin and meet with its citizens at three scheduled community events.

Hawkins says one of the chief topics of discussion will be the shortage of private land ownership in and around the small town.

"There's a lot of federal land acquisition through the National Park Service that's going on there right now, and less and less land that's going into private ownership in Stehekin. That's much the same as Chelan County in general, where eighty percent of the land in Chelan County is under some form of public ownership and only twenty percent is in private ownership. Some of the issues we'll be discussing are very unique to Stehekin but others have some similarities to other communities in other areas of Chelan County, as well as the County as a whole."

The commissioner's itinerary includes a Community Meeting at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the Stehekin School where the County and PUD will each field questions from the public. The event will be followed by a potluck and barbecue at 6 p.m.

The following day, commissioners will hold a Bakery Drop-In from 8-9:30 a.m. at the Stehekin Pastry Company where citizens are encouraged to engage in conversations with their elected officials.

The two-day visit will conclude with a workshop on short-term rentals (STRs) at 3 p.m. on Thursday at the Stehekin Community Building.

The workshop will be led by Chelan County Natural Resources Director Mike Kaputa and Community Development Assistant Director Kristen Ryles and cover information regarding a pocket of STRs in the Stehekin area that are currently not governed by the County's recently-adopted rules regarding STRs.

Hawkins says the community is still catching its breath after last year's Pioneer Fire, which surrounded the town for several days and placed its very existence in peril.

Because of this, he says wildfire mitigation and prevention strategies are also expected to be leading topic during the two-day event.

County Commissioners first visited Stehekin three years ago and had hoped to begin returning annually but weren't able to do so in 2023 and were also stymied last year by the Pioneer Fire.