CAMAS — Camas-Washougal Hearth Chief Cliff Free has spent the previous a number of months attempting to assist east Clark County residents perceive what’s at stake if Proposition 1, a measure asking voters to approve a brand new regional hearth authority, fails to win voters’ approval within the April 22 particular election.
If the proposition passes, the joint division would proceed to offer hearth companies in a 20-square-mile space throughout the boundaries of Camas and Washougal and emergency medical companies inside a 90-square-mile space surrounding each cities’ borders.
If it fails, the Camas-Washougal Hearth Division would break aside, with every metropolis operating its personal hearth division after 2026.
“I don’t think people are prepared,” Free stated. “And I think it’s hard for new residents to imagine the level of services we had before.”
Camas Communications Director Bryan Rachal stated he and different metropolis employees have been attempting to battle misinformation surrounding the regional hearth authority measure by internet hosting data classes.
“It’s a cut-and-dry issue,” Rachal stated. “We want to retain the services people know and love. If we have to dismantle (the joint fire department) … first-responder service will suffer.”
Clark County will mail ballots for the April 22 particular election on April 4.
The ultimate informational session is 7-8 p.m. April 8 on the Port of Camas-Washougal headquarters, 24 S. A St., Washougal.
Prices and advantages
An interlocal settlement formally merged the Camas and Washougal hearth departments in 2014 and created the Camas-Washougal Hearth Division.
Over the previous few years, as Camas officers have responded to the group’s requires the next degree of staffing on the Camas-Washougal Hearth Division, inequities between what every metropolis can afford to pay have threatened to dismantle the interlocal settlement.
“The funding allocation between the two cities is complicated and has shifted over time, creating disparities between the two cities,” Free stated. “Each city has its own priorities, budgets, budget challenges and pressures within that budget. And each has a seven-person, elected council. In order to make a change, we have to get both cities on board.”
In line with the hearth chief, forming a regional hearth authority would clear up these challenges, as the hearth authority can be “a stand-alone agency” funded by a flat levy fee and ruled by an elected board of commissioners representing an equal variety of residents in Camas and Washougal districts.
“Everybody pays the same effective rate,” Free stated. “It gives us something we can use to do long-term planning, which is very difficult to do right now with the combined department having to deal with both the city of Camas and the city of Washougal.”
The joint hearth authority would be capable of run three-person engine corporations — one thing east Clark County hearth officers have been advocating for since a 2018 Valentine’s Day home hearth rescue resulted in a state advantageous in opposition to town of Camas for conducting the rescue with simply two firefighters on the scene.
“We are the only fire service in Clark County that runs two people on an engine,” Free stated. “If that engine arrives at a structure fire and there is a known rescue, we are (prohibited) from engaging in that rescue unless we have three people suited up.”
To start operating three-person engine corporations in 2027, Free might want to rent 12 firefighters at a price of about $160,000 every. Free stated he would part within the new firefighters to assist maintain the regional hearth authority’s prices as little as doable.
If the poll measure passes, Camas and Washougal taxpayers would pay a flat fee of $1.05 per $1,000 of assessed property worth for hearth and EMS companies.
Every metropolis would then decrease the quantity of taxes it presently collects for hearth and EMS companies. Town of Camas would cut back its property tax by 60 cents and Washougal would cut back its property tax by 81 cents per $1,000 of assessed property worth.
The reductions would imply Camas taxpayers would pay an extra 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed property worth for the regional hearth authority, round $19 a month for the proprietor of a $500,000 dwelling. Washougal residents would pay an extra 24 cents per $1,000 of assessed property worth, or about $10 a month for the proprietor of a $500,000 dwelling.
Residents residing contained in the regional hearth authority’s boundaries would obtain free ambulance transport companies as a substitute of paying insurance coverage co-pays that may be as excessive because the $1,021 the Camas-Washougal Hearth Division presently fees for primary and superior ambulance companies.
Free stated the $1.05 levy fee can be the bottom hearth fee in Clark County and supply taxpayers with a better degree of management.
“We cannot raise those taxes beyond the 1 percent (allowed by the state) without a vote of the people,” Free stated. “If we want to increase staffing, we have to go to the people and say, ‘This is what we’d like to do. This is the amount of money it’s going to cost us.’ If they say, ‘No,’ we stay at the same rate.”
‘No part of it is positive’
If voters reject Proposition 1, the joint hearth division would cut up aside after Dec. 31, 2026.
Free stated the proposed regional hearth authority “is the antidote” to the problems Camas and Washougal officers have had with the interlocal settlement that joined the 2 hearth departments greater than a decade in the past.
“We both depend on each other. If we become two smaller entities, we will have less equipment, fewer economies of scale,” Free stated.
In that case, every metropolis would tackle the extra prices of operating its personal hearth division, and Washougal would nonetheless depend on the Camas hearth division to offer mutual assist and ambulance transport companies.
“We are stronger together,” Free stated. “We are better together.”
