Regional fire authority proposition heads back to voters

A proposal to create a regional fire authority in Camas and Washougal is headed back to voters.

The Camas City Council voted 6-1 on Monday to place the fire authority proposal on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.

Councilor Jennifer Senescu cast the lone “no” vote. She said she would have preferred to have more financial information before agreeing to place the proposal, which failed by 306 votes April 22, on the November ballot.

“It seems irresponsible to put this on the ballot before we know what we’re putting on the ballot,” Senescu told her fellow councilors Monday. “My preference is to have a new plan before we put it on the ballot.”

Camas-Washougal Fire Chief Cliff Free explained that while the regional fire authority proposal voters will consider in November is the same proposal that failed in April, the amount of money each city is willing to return to taxpayers to alleviate the fire authority’s cost of $1.05 per $1,000 assessed property value is expected to change.

Washougal City Council members voted July 14 to place the issue on the November ballot and, if the proposition passes, to lower that city’s property tax levy by 88 cents per $1,000 assessed property value.

Free said Washougal’s 88-cent reduction accounts for everything Washougal taxpayers spend to fund the Camas-Washougal Fire Department.

Under the terms of the interlocal agreement that formed the joint fire department in 2013, the city of Camas was responsible for administering the department and covering about 60 percent of the department’s costs.

In April, Camas officials agreed to return 60 cents from its property tax levy if the regional fire authority proposal passed, but that still left Camas taxpayers on the hook for an additional 45 cents per $1,000 assessed property value to fund the new fire authority.

Former Camas Councilor Bonnie Carter, who chaired the regional fire authority committee throughout 2024, said Camas city officials believed in April that 60 cents was what the city could offer taxpayers without negatively impacting other general fund needs.

“We got a recommendation from the finance director that this was what the city of Camas could easily give back without doing any harm to other departments, without worrying about impacting their level of service, future hiring commitments, projects and workload,” Carter said in June. “That was where the 60-cent giveback came into play.”

For the majority of Camas voters, the cost was too high.

Free said he has talked with the people who organized the opposition campaign that helped sink the regional fire authority proposal in April.

“Their issue was not that it’s becoming … a taxing district with its own controls but that the cost was too great,” Free told Camas city councilors July 7.

Camas Councilor Martin Elzingre sits on the Camas council’s finance committee with Councilors Tim Hein and John Nohr. He said the committee has been poring over the city’s costs related to the Camas-Washougal Fire Department.

“It has been a bit of a slog trying to get the right number,” Elzingre said Monday. “Our intent is to reduce the amount we receive into the general fund by the amount that goes to fire. We’re not intending to hold any of that back. You could disagree with our math, but I think our math is solid.”

Senescu disagreed.

“We say this math is clear, then why wasn’t it clear the first time we rolled this out?” Senescu said Monday. “We said 60 cents … and now we’re going to pick 80 cents? It’s frustrating because the math isn’t clear.”

The finance committee is expected to bring its research back to the Camas City Council on Aug. 4.

Camas officials must decide how much money the city will return to taxpayers if the regional fire authority proposal passes and submit that information to the county by Aug. 15 to be included in the Clark County Voters’ Pamphlet, Nohr said.

If voters fail to pass the regional fire authority proposition in November, the Camas-Washougal Fire Department will begin the process of unraveling and will split into two smaller, city-run fire agencies by the end of 2026, Free said.

Kelly Moyer: 360-735-4674; [email protected]