Camas considers pulling out of C-Tran

The city of Camas may consider pulling out of C-Tran if the majority of the transit agency’s board favors light rail on the proposed Interstate 5 replacement bridge, Mayor Steve Hogan said during an Aug. 18 city council workshop session.

Camas Councilor Tim Hein, Camas’ C-Tran board representative, said during the workshop he believes the board will vote Sept. 9 to adopt a motion to reallocate its seats. The reallocation would increase the city of Vancouver’s representatives from three to four and Clark County’s from two to three and decrease the small cities’ (Battle Ground, Camas, Washougal Ridgefield, La Center and Yacolt) from four to two.

Hein said the proposed change would result in the board having enough votes to approve the state of Oregon’s proposal to include light rail in the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program. On Feb. 3, the Camas City Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution opposing the extension of TriMet’s light rail trains from North Portland across a new I-5 Bridge into downtown Vancouver.

“We need to pay attention to how that formation of the board of directors goes and then begin to start thinking seriously about whether we stay in or go out,” Hogan said. “When this goes down, and if this goes down the way it looks like it’s going to go down, should we have some open houses or some town halls or a public discussion of whether or not we should explore possibly pulling out of C-Tran?”

Camas Councilor Martin Elzingre said that if Vancouver “has four (representatives) and Clark County has three, (Vancouver) just needs one person from Clark County” to agree to light rail. Hein said that’s what the city of Vancouver wants.

“It would be almost a slam dunk,” he said. “They’re gerrymandering this.”

Hein said the city of Camas provided $5 million of sales tax revenue to C-Tran but received only $1.9 million from the service in 2024, and the small cities are “providing a disproportionate amount of their sales tax revenue for services that the city of Vancouver is receiving.”

“That is only anticipated to go up with light rail,” he said. “Before us is really a question — if this continues, and the vote changes, and we continue to pay in, is this a service that we should be involved in?”

Hogan said he talked with representatives from the county’s other small cities Aug. 11, and they indicated their concern that the city of Vancouver is going to “stack the deck with proportionality on votes.”

“They hadn’t received these numbers yet, … but it sounded to me as if the other cities were on the same wavelength (as us),” he said. “Paying eight times more for the operating and maintenance of light rail versus the operating and maintenance of C-Tran is going to be a big hit for all the small cities.”

The Washington State Department of Transportation sent a letter to C-Tran officials in June stating that C-Tran’s board is not in compliance with state law because the city of Vancouver and Clark County are underrepresented on the board while the region’s smaller cities are overrepresented. If C-Tran doesn’t come into compliance by Oct. 1, the state warned, it could be ineligible for millions of dollars in state grants.

On Aug. 12, a committee, consisting of six representatives from the small cities, four from the Clark County Council and one from the city of Vancouver, voted 10-1 in favor of pitching a “3-3-3” plan to the state that would fill three C-Tran board seats with city of Vancouver representatives, three with Clark County representatives and three with small city representatives.

The committee also agreed to hold another special meeting Sept. 3 if the state rejects the 3-3-3 plan. The C-Tran board meets again Sept. 9.

Camas Councilor John Svilarich said “the odds that WSDOT will say ‘yes’ are probably pretty slim.”

“I’ll be surprised if we hear back from them because all they have to do is delay, not respond, and we have to take action on Sept. 9,” Hein said. “Somehow, somebody is manipulating this situation in order to get us to where we’re at now.”