Camas Council split on $6.17M land purchase

Camas City Council members this week narrowly approved a $6.17 million property purchase that will eventually house the city’s public works operations center.

The Council members voted 4-3 in favor of the purchase during their regular meeting on Monday, Jan. 6, with Council members Tim Hein, Leslie Lewallen and Jennifer Senescu casting “no” votes.

In his staff report to the Council, Public Works Director Steve Wall reiterated the need for a new operations center and noted a 2022 report showing that the City’s 30-year-old public works building, located on a 3.7-acre property at Polk Street and Eighth Avenue, next to Oak Park in southeast Camas, was not adequate to serve the growing city and its public works staff.

“The facility houses all the folks who complete the majority of the maintenance throughout the city,” Wall told Council members Monday night.

The facility, originally constructed in 1994, accommodates 50 public works staff, a host of equipment and vehicles, and is, Wall said, bursting at the seams.

“The analysis showed we need additional room to continue to grow and serve the city,” Wall said.

In 2022, the report showed that the City had two options, Wall said — take the existing operations center and remodel it or find a 10- to 12-acre site that could accommodate a new, larger operations center.

Wall said Monday that, even if city leaders chose to remodel the existing building, they would still need to find additional property to build a second operations center.

“We would have a split facility,” he said, adding that the scenario was not ideal, since most public works employees would still need to drive back and forth to the original operations center to complete certain tasks.

“The other option was to find a 10- to 12-acre site where we could eventually get to a point where we could have a consolidated site,” Wall said Monday.

The new operations center would likely serve the City’s needs for another 40 to 50 years, Wall told Council members on Monday.

“We were looking long-term and presented that to Council,” Wall said. “In 2022, the (cost) was $55 (million) to $60 million, including acquisition of property.”

Wall said he and his team looked across the city of Camas to find a flat, buildable parcel large enough to accommodate a new operations center.

“We do have a lot of wetlands, slopes, and critical areas,” Wall said, “so it narrows the focus pretty quickly when you’re looking at that size of acreage.”

Eventually, Wall’s team found three properties off Northeast 232rd Avenue and Weakley Road and negotiated with property owners for more than a year before coming to the purchase agreement Wall presented to the Council on Monday.

“The site is flat, located on an arterial with immediate access to Green Mountain and the North Shore, with suitable access to reach Prune Hill, Grass Valley and (the downtown) areas, and has very limited sensitive lands, if any,” Wall told the Council in his staff report.

The three properties, located in an undeveloped area of Camas, equal 14.4 acres and are owned individually by the Wheeler, Fricke, Kreiter and Hitchcock families, Wall said.

“The Fricke-Kreiter property also allows limited use of the approximately 5-acre Bonneville Power Authority property to the north,” Wall added.

With the Council’s 4-3 vote in favor of the land purchase, the City has agreed to pay $6.17 million for the three properties: $1.9 million for the Wheeler parcel, $2.637 million for the Fricke-Kreiter parcel and $1.63 million for the Hitchcock parcel.

Wall said funding for the land acquisition would come from the City’s utility funds and would ultimately require a utility bond to be paid back by the city of Camas’ utility funds, general fund and other internal funds that support the public works department.

Councilmember Leslie Lewallen asked Wall if he considered the 55-acre Rose property near Lacamas Lake, which the City purchased in 2020, as part of its Legacy Lands acquisitions.

“Did we look at parcels we already own rather than having to purchase more?” Lewallen asked Wall on Monday.

“Yes, we did,” Wall said. “Legacy Lands, in particular, are not necessarily lands we can use for anything other than for parks and open space, unless we were to replace them.”

The city’s finance director, Cathy Huber Nickerson, added that, when the City approached the Rose family about the Legacy Lands purchase in 2020, the family offered a steep discount on the purchase price if the City agreed to preserve the land for recreational purposes.

“It was not to be used for what this purpose is for,” Huber Nickerson said, referring to the operations center.

Councilmember Jennifer Senescu said she was hesitant to approve a $6.17 million land purchase that “will sit there for six to seven years before we can do anything with it” since the City does not yet have funding to design or build the new operations center.

“We’re looking at $80 million to build an ops center out there,” Senescu said Monday. “This is a lot of money. We have a lot of other property … that we own.”

Councilmember Tim Hein also said he would like to see an inventory assessment of all city-owned properties before he would greenlight the $6.17 million purchase agreement.

“My concern is the $6 million,” Hein said Monday. “(Let’s) see if we can sell properties we currently have and still fund this and not go to a bond. I’m not doubting the need or the decision of where to put it, just the timing and funding mechanisms.”

Councilmember Marilyn Boerke disagreed.

“I appreciate Councilor Senescu’s perspective, and we are in a budget crunch,” Boerke said Monday. “If we’d only done this a while ago, we wouldn’t be in this position. And if we’d done this a while ago, it wouldn’t be so expensive.”

Boerke said that, as an administrative employee of the Camas School District, she understands how difficult it is to find flat, buildable land in Camas.

“We’re beyond the need for (a new) operations center,” Boerke said Monday, “so I am in favor of this.”

In the end, Councilmembers Bonnie Carter, John Nohr and John Svilarich agreed with Boerke’s point of view and voted to approve the land purchase.