Water in Cascade Locks: Move the meeting, please

Adding bubbles to the mix is Monday’s Cascade Locks City Council meeting in which the council considers an official resolution to oppose Measure 14-55. The measure aims to block Nestlé and other large-scale companies from bottling or transporting water from sources within the county, namely Oxbow Springs near Cascade Locks, where the Swiss corporation has attempted since 2007 to site a bottling plant.

Cascade Locks’ council chambers are famously cramped — comment years ago in this space called for the council to either find a new room for its meetings or to expand it.

That’s an opportunity it will have once the County Library District completes its plans to move the library — next door to the council chambers — to Cascade Locks School, which could happen by the end of this year. Not a moment too soon.

Right now the council chambers has room for about 30 community members — and that’s a case of the proverbial sardine can in the best of circumstances.

Meanwhile, we urge the city to either move Monday’s meeting to the gym below, which seats about twice the number as council chambers or, better yet, to the Port pavilion, which seats well over 100.

When an elected body meets in a room that is cramped even without a contentious topic at hand, a situation like the inevitable impassioned crowd we will see Monday calls for giving everyone a reasonably comfortable place to sit, or at least stand. This is an important matter of public process, and it is incumbent on the city to ensure all sides can hear and be heard.