Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle made the claims during a March 14 Labor Roundtable event at the Golden Corral in Vancouver
Cade Barker
The Reflector Newspaper
The Reform Clark County Facebook page recently posted an audio recording of Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle effectively saying the City of Battle Ground contributes to her city’s homelessness problems.
McEnerny-Ogle made the claims during a March 14 Labor Roundtable event at the Golden Corral in Vancouver, in a public setting, Reform Clark County stated in its Facebook post. McEnerny-Ogle talked to attendees about a meeting she had previously with Fred Meyer grocery store managers and then proceeded to point blame toward Battle Ground and Camas for homelessness issues in her city.
She said during the recording that there was a person in a managerial role from both Battle Ground and Camas for Fred Meyer in her prior meeting.
“And then I just let them spill their guts and then I pointed to Camas and Battle Ground and I said, ‘You’re the problem,’” she said in the recording by Reform Clark County. “I said, ‘Your cities have passed resolutions to send their homeless to Vancouver for us to take care of.’”
The meeting with Fred Meyer managers pertained to homeless encampments behind one of their store locations that borders Interstate 205 in Vancouver, presumably the location off of Southeast Chkalov Drive, according to the recording.
“The people behind your Fred Meyer here on 205 are probably from Camas and Battle Ground,’” she said. “You sent your homeless for the city of Vancouver to take of. You didn’t take care of them yourself.”
Battle Ground Deputy Mayor Shane Bowman believes it may have been a “little bit of over speaking on her behalf.”
“I’ve never seen anything with numbers or anything saying that these homeless are from Battle Ground or that we’re sending people down there,” he said. “They do have the services. She’s not wrong.”
Bowman said due to Battle Ground having a much smaller number of “on-the-street homeless,” which there are no official numbers for, and a smaller tax base, that funding essential homeless services is not feasible for the city.
“It’s a little disturbing, I guess, to blame us for issues that they’re having down there,” Bowman said. “I mean, we have issues, I’m sure, with people from Vancouver up here on occasion with things. … I just think it’s more of a regional approach to that kind of stuff. The county needs to be more involved, I think. But to say that the small cities aren’t doing their jobs, I think it’s wrong.”
Bowman highlighted the community courts that Battle Ground is starting to help keep people out of the judicial system where they will then cause more of a financial burden in order to help them out. Bowman also pointed out that if the city of Battle Ground, and others of a similar, smaller size, were to open a shelter, the costs would not be reasonable, adding that it’s quite expensive.
He also recalled when a former mayor pointed out that a filing fee with the county directed for funding homeless services gained enough funds to give each homeless individual in Clark County tens of thousands of dollars, but, “most of it gets ate up in a program,” Bowman said. “So that’s the challenge with it. Government can help, but I don’t think government does a very good job of running it.”
Bowman said the city of Vancouver implemented a 0.1% sales tax a few years ago that goes toward affordable housing, which he added almost every Battle Ground resident pays as Vancouver offers a much larger array of retail options.
“We’re partners in it, right?” He said. “And if you’re going to point fingers at us, then you have to point fingers at Portland or anywhere those people come from and it’s tough. But we’re in an election year, too.”
This report was first published by The Reflector Newspaper.
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annie ogle simply must go away. She and the Vancouver city clowncil all need to be shown the door. Vote wisely this coming election!
I agree! This mayor is doing a great disservice to our city.
Are you going to run Susan?? We need strong voices like yours down there very badly.
The biggest problem Mayor Annie has with the so-called “homeless” is that she’s run out of other people’s money to spend on them. Throwing money at “non-profits” to provide “services” is not working. This manic insistence on “housing first” is a big reason why we are where we are. Every vagrant in 100 miles is looking for a Tiny Home or Pod to squat in for as long as possible.
Right now, the single focus of the City is this outrageously expensive 10-year plan for the so-called “bridge shelter” up in the Van Mall neighborhood. It will be a bridge to nowhere for the majority of the “residents” who will have absolutely no reason to ever move out once they claim a squat-spot inside. Portlandia just found out only 14% of their pod-squatters ever leave once they settle in.
The overhead view of the Burnt Bridge Trail area is an atrocity. The HART Team sends a crew down there periodically to remove “solid waste” then allows the same vagrants to move right back in again. According to the latest report, almost 100 tons of solid waste have been removed from homeless camps so far this year.
And I do mean vagrants. Many of these people have been living on the streets for years, enabled by the constant stream of handouts from all kinds of different sources funded by Local, County, State, and Federal tax dollars in ever growing amounts.
As a side note….who is handing out all of the one-,an bright orange tents I see in these illicit encampments?? Another note…the illicit encampment along the fence behind the I-205/Mill Plain Fred Meyer is back and growing daily. I suspect many of them migrated there from the Mill Plain Sound Wall, not Battle Ground.
They say that anything which simply cannot continue will eventually come to a stop. The question is how hard of a stop?? The path we are on right now, with “housing first” has never worked, and will not work no matter how much money gets thrown at it. There will never be enough money to make it work either.
Time for changes in a very big way on Vancouver City Council. That means its time to see some serious campaigns stand up, and start raising money and making themselves known to voters.
Well said! If you build it, they will come. There will always be hands held out, claiming to be needy, as long as the freebies are being handed out.
You cannot spend your way out of homelessness.
Cut off the freebies… all of them! Let the vagrants get cold and wet and hungry. They will then either clean themselves up and find a job, or they’ll pack up and go somewhere else where there are freebies being handed out, or they’ll OD and die. I’m fine with any of the three. It’s called “tough love.”
Vancouver has developed, and financially supports, a homelessness-industrial-complex. There are far too many people making big bucks off the homeless. They don’t want to see homelessness resolved, or their sources of income will no longer exist.