The challenger for Washougal’s top elected position promises to retire from his city job this fall to avoid a conflict of interest.
Earl Scott, a 22-year veteran of the Washougal Fire Department, will run against Mayor Sean Guard in this year’s election. The 54-year-old fire captain said he’d waited eight years to enter politics and picked now as the time because of his impending retirement.
The retirement will give Scott time to listen to Washougal residents, he said, something he doesn’t think happens enough now.
“There are gaps at the council level,” Scott said. “(Council is) instructed to listen to Washougal staff only and take that as gospel. But as a councilor, or as mayor, you need to talk to the people who are being affected.”
Scott will give up a six-figure city salary if he’s elected. In 2012, he earned $119,755, including overtime, making him the seventh highest paid employee in Washougal.
A supporter of Guard during his 2009 election, Scott said he’d become dissatisfied with city services over the past four years.
Scott said he’d like to find ways to lower Washougal’s water, sewer and wastewater rates, which are in the third year of a five-year series of rate increases.
“I don’t think the city has overturned every rock to get a better price or value for what we have,” he said.
Guard called Scott’s assessment “as incorrect as you can get.”
He said city officials have worked to lower the city’s rates. Money from the rate increases will be used to pay for water and sewer infrastructure improvements to meet state and federal requirements.
For one, the city is in talks with the Washington State Department of Ecology to push back the building schedule of a proposed $15 million wastewater plant upgrade.
In February, the city council also voted to use $500,000 from the city’s reserve fund in an effort to put a dent in the planned 20 percent rate increase.
Guard said the current council inherited a number of problems that it’s working to resolve, including the annual increases to water, sewer and wastewater rates.
“I don’t know if you’d see these increases if the city had made the proper adjustments over the years,” he said.
For 2013, Washougal has an operating budget of more than $36 million, while it receives about $31 million in revenue. The city makes up the difference from grants.
Coasting to victory in 2009 over embattled one-term Mayor Stacee Sellers, Guard’s tenure has been free of the sort of financial problems that had previously plagued the city.
In a 2009 accountability audit, the Washington State Auditor’s Office found the city could not account for about $100,000 in revenue from city-sponsored events, violations of city policy regarding expenditures and questionable gifts of public funds.
Guard has also worked to bolster business development and pay for new infrastructure projects.
But Guard’s also had his share of embarrassing missteps.
In 2011, Guard pleaded guilty in Cowlitz County District Court to one second-degree count of misdemeanor impersonating a police officer. The charge stemmed from a 2010 incident on Interstate 5 near Kelso, where prosecutors said Guard used the emergency lights on his city-issued vehicle to blow by slow-moving traffic.
Although he pleaded guilty, Guard didn’t agree to the findings of the case and said he never impersonated a police officer. Prosecutors eventually noted that the car’s emergency lights were on the back of the car, not the front.
Guard said he’d put the incident behind him.
For his part, Scott said he’d work to make the city run more efficiently.
“I see that there’s some reorganization that needs to take place for us to save money,” Scott said.
The mayor’s position comes with a $24,000 salary.
