Union urges officials to revamp RFA plan

Two months after voters rejected the formation of a Camas-Washougal regional fire authority, the head of the local firefighters’ union is urging officials to revamp the proposal and get it back on the ballot as soon as possible.

“We need to be able to govern and support ourselves, and the RFA is the ticket,” said Aaron Cliburn, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 2444, the union representing Camas-Washougal Fire Department and East County Fire and Rescue firefighters.

Cliburn wants officials to call for another vote before the first week of August. If they don’t, he said, the cities could begin the process of dismantling the Camas-Washougal Fire Department and unwinding the interlocal agreement that formed the joint fire department over a decade ago.

“By the primary election on Aug. 5, if both cities haven’t passed an ordinance to get this on the ballot, then that is the last offramp (before) the two cities start unraveling,” Cliburn said. “Washougal has already committed to it. … Now, we’re looking for commitment from the city of Camas.”

During the April 22 special election, Camas-Washougal voters weighed in on Proposition 1, a resolution to create a regional fire authority. The separate taxing district would have removed fire and emergency medical service costs from both cities’ general fund obligations and established a new governing body.

The proposed levy rate would have cost taxpayers in Camas and Washougal $1.05 per $1,000 assessed property value and collected enough money to begin building a three-person fire engine crew — a level of service already achieved by every other professional fire agency in Clark County.

The number is still inexpensive compared with other fire agencies in the region, Cliburn said, pointing out that East County Fire and Rescue, the fire district that covers rural areas north of Camas and Washougal, charges its residents $1.50 per $1,000 assessed value for fire protection services.

“$1.05 is really the bare minimum,” he said. “We can’t take any less because we’d be back the next year asking for more.”

‘We looked at everything’

Former Camas City Councilor Bonnie Carter chaired the joint Camas-Washougal Regional Fire Authority committee and said city leaders wanted to set a levy rate that would allow the regional fire authority to be financially stable for the first six years.

“It was very thoughtfully done, and we were keeping it very trim,” Carter said.

If it had passed, the fire authority would have had one of the lowest levy rates for any professional fire agency in the state, Carter said.

Once the committee landed on a levy rate, Camas and Washougal city officials began to figure out how much they could “give back” to taxpayers without the fire department’s burden on each city’s general fund. Washougal was prepared to return all but 17 cents of the $1.05 by 2027, but Camas, which had taken on the fire department’s administrative duties when the two fire departments merged in 2013, had fire department costs that had been enmeshed with many other city departments, including Camas’ human resources, information technology, communications and finance departments.

Carter said Camas City Council members agreed they would give taxpayers a 60-cent reduction on the proposed $1.05 levy rate, meaning Camas taxpayers would have had to pay an additional 45 cents per $1,000 assessed value for the new fire authority.

The numbers made sense to city officials, but Cliburn said he’s since heard from many Camas voters that they were unclear about why Camas taxpayers were going to be on the hook for that additional 45 cents.

In the end, the proposal lost by about 300 votes, with 5,180 “yes” votes (48.6 percent) and 5,486 “no” votes (51.4 percent).

An analysis of the voting precinct data shows that the proposal passed in every Washougal precinct but struggled in Camas’ most affluent neighborhoods.

For instance, in the Camas precinct that includes the Lacamas Shores neighborhood, where homes typically cost over $1.4 million, the “no” votes outweighed the “yes” votes by 157 while voters living in Camas’ less expensive neighborhoods were more likely to support the proposal.

Camas Mayor Steve Hogan said he and City Administrator Doug Quinn found similar results when he looked at the individual precinct numbers.

State law dictates that regional fire authority proposals can only be brought before voters a total of three times.

“It’s three strikes and you’re out,” Hogan said. “So if it fails again, we only have one more chance to get it right.”

Cliburn said firefighters are reluctant to knock on voters’ doors again if the city of Camas is unwilling to lower its tax burden.

“We want to go out on our own merits,” Cliburn said. “But we can’t go out to voters and support another campaign that isn’t fire-only.”

The firefighters’ union president said he still believes forming a regional fire authority is the best path forward.

“Everything else is not efficient, not economical and just kicks the ball down the road another one, two, three years,” Cliburn said.

Hogan has asked for a detailed, itemized account of exactly how much the city of Camas spent on fire and EMS services in 2024.

“Once we have that, we can go to the other side and say, ‘OK. Here are our costs,’ ” Hogan said. “But I’m not in a rush to put this on the ballot.”

Hogan said he would rather take his time and find the best available data about how much Camas spent on fire and EMS services in 2024 than go out to voters too soon.

“We’re not going to wait another two years,” Hogan said, “but we have to take the time to get it right the second time.”

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