Published in the July 24, 2007, edition of the Post-Record

Camas council candidates have varied backgrounds
Camas council at-large race will be narrowed to a field of two after primary

Three candidates will vie for the Camas City Council’s at-large position — Richard
Arnold IV, Clifford Duncan and Don Chaney.

Richard Arnold IV

As the president of the Lacamas Shores Neighborhood Association, Richard Arnold IV is no stranger to mediating disputes, investigating issues and encouraging people to talk to one-another.

Arnold, 64, and his wife Catherine moved to Camas in 1999—11 years after Arnold retired from IBM where he worked for 18 years. After he left IBM, Arnold devoted himself to investments.

Arnold, a friend of mayoral candidate Liz Pike, said he intends to work with his long-time comrade to attract industry and jobs to Camas.

“There will be new plans,” he said. “There will be industry moving in because Liz is going to get them. I will be supportive of that.”

Through his experience with the neighborhood association, Arnold said he also has experience working on budgets and adequately planning for expenditures. He said he wants tax money that is sent to local government to be spent on valued services for which voters see a return.

Arnold said he takes a conservative approach to budgeting. He is concerned about Camas residents who are on fixed incomes and cannot afford increased taxes.

However Arnold said he does realize that many expenditures in the city that are considered essentials—such as fire and police protection, roads, schools and infrastructure—are what give a town its livability.

Having grown up in a small town in Connecticut and watched it change from a bustling community to a bedroom community, Arnold said it motivates him to want to help Camas avoid a similar fate through attracting employers.

“Family wage jobs where you can live in this town and work in this town and be able to afford property in this town—that’s essential,” he said.

In Arnold’s opinion, a city does not attract new employers and residents through tax abatements and doesn’t raise revenues unnecessarily so that it becomes a barrier to people moving here.

Arnold also supports the idea of a community center, but said he does not think it should be subsidized with tax money through taxing districts or compete with private businesses.

“I would like to have a community center of some sort,” he said. “I would like to do it as per need. I think it would be great if we could make the [Crown] Park pool a year-round facility. Do we need a place for the old folks to get together? I think that would be great. Does it have to be at the same facility as the pool? I don’t think so.”

Don Chaney

Don Chaney retires in 2008 after working for the Camas Police Department for 35 years, but he wants to continue to have an impact on the city.

“I hope it’s no secret how much I care about the community,” Chaney said.

Chaney, 60, said his experience as police chief for the past decade has helped him establish skills in dealing with problems with creative solutions.

One of Chaney’s projects in Camas was helping create the work crew program, in which people charged with low-level crimes can serve their time through community service.

Chaney also encouraged the city to establish the “priorities of government” model, an organizational approach that helps each of the departments define their function and needs.

In this introspective process, Chaney said he learned about community members’ priorities and viewpoints on city services.

“I think public safety is pretty important to people,” he said. “But I got some humility because what I learned was in considering all the significant issues, in general people will get more upset and feel more touched by government if their garbage didn’t get picked up or your toilets don’t flush.”

According to Chaney, sustaining quality of life will be a major issue for Camas in the next decade.

In order to accommodate this growth, Chaney said the city should adopt an “it’s not what you want; it’s what you need” mindset, but always strive to look for creative ways to increase the community’s value without a significant expenditure of tax money.

Chaney cited the Camas High School magnet program as an example.

The community center could be another opportunity for the city to weigh the voice of the community, Chaney said. He said he hopes it will someday be a place that pulls all factions of the community together.

“But I think if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it right, and we’ve got to have the confidence and comfort of the people who fund it,” Chaney said.

He said the decision should go to the voters.

“Ultimately the council is elected to represent the people,” he said. “But we need to make sure there is accountability and make sure it’s not an automatic pass-through.”

Chaney’s campaign also includes a component of government accountability.

“Having a government the people can trust is important,” he said. “At the national level, we’ve almost lost the confidence in the government. I hate to see that happening. I know it’s not something that is really tangible, but what we do for the public should be things that sustain our credibility.”

Clifford Duncan

Candidate Clifford Duncan’s familial connection to Camas goes way back. His grandparents settled in the area—and eventually Duncan and his family found their way back when he was starting high school.

Today Duncan, 72, lives with his wife Jacquie.

After serving in the military, working in various fields, Duncan moved back to the area when he retired and today he works as a strategic planning consultant.

Duncan said his focus, if elected, would be to attract businesses and manufacturing entities that would create jobs in the area, insuring public safety, building infrastructure, creating goals and organization; and conservative fiscal management.

He said the biggest challenge in Camas’ future is accommodating the increasing population.

“Growth is inevitable,” he said. “So it’s not going to be a question of ‘Is there going to be growth? but ‘How do we manage it?’ and ‘How do we shape it?”

Duncan said he was inspired to run for council after he got involved with the Downtown Visioning Committee and also because he is an advocate of education.

“I think the things I have done in the past help me bring things to the table to look at the goal or the focus 25 or 50 years out and not get mired in today,” he said.

Duncan said that his priorities are jobs and quality of life “because one without the other is pretty hard to achieve.”

Camas voters are willing to step up to the plate and pay for a higher standard of living and services, Duncan said. Voters help fund services that cater to groups of the population that otherwise would not have that service, for the young and aged—but he said he would encourage the city to study how to derive more funds from grants and foundations.

The community center is an example of a service in which these foundation monies could be used. He would not support a community center being constructed using funds from a special taxing district.

“I don’t think there is a big cry from the public that says the city shouldn’t operate a community center,” he said. “It’s just whether it should be built out of general fund money.”

Duncan also said he would increase emphasis on lobbying the Legislature in order to help with active planning.