Vancouver Mayor Timothy Leavitt
Alan Sylvestre / OPB
Vancouver, Washington, is a growing city. And it has its growing pains.
Homelessness, the need for affordable housing, and increased demand for public safety and other services go up as more people find their way to Washington’s fourth-largest city.
Vancouver’s mayor will address these and other issues Thursday in his annual State of the City speech. But Tim Leavitt agreed to talk to us first, and he joins us from our Vancouver bureau.
Q&A with Tim Leavitt
Geoff Norcross: Let’s talk about police staffing first. Earlier this year, Chief James McElvain said Vancouver needs dozens more officers. Is he going to get them?
Tim Leavitt: Good question. The council is committed this year to engaging with our community, creating a community resource team to address the operations of our police department and learn and study about the staffing needs, the programs that our police department provides, and then make recommendations to the Vancouver City Council for consideration and implementation that ideally will bolster the staff of Vancouver police, so that our chief and his men and women of the department are able to implement some of the programs that have fallen to the wayside in past years due to budgetary restrictions.
GN: And one issue that your police officers and you, as a city leader, have to deal with: homelessness. Last fall, your city lifted the ban on citywide camping, which is something Portland had to do earlier this year. Obviously, that is a short-term solution to the problem. From your vantage point, what is the long-term solution to homelessness in Vancouver?
TL: It's a very difficult issue to deal with, Geoff. And it's not just an issue for the city of Vancouver. But our community needs to face this challenge, and work together and figure out how we're going to get our arms around it.
The council last year implemented some changes in local policy to better help renters when it comes to eviction notices and notices of increases in rent. But there's much more than we can do, and there are options. There are tools available, whether it's a ballot measure that is put forward to the voters of Vancouver to create a new revenue source, to additional changes in our local ordinances and incentives that we might provide to developers to create and build more affordable housing in our community.
GN: Yeah, it sounds like you're dealing with many of the same issues Portland is: homelessness, affordable housing, police staffing levels, growth management, development. How is it different in Vancouver? What makes the issues unique to your city?
TL: I think in many ways Portland has programs in place that are doing - by some perceptions - a mediocre job in addressing the homelessness issue. The good news for Vancouver is that, although we've had homelessness populations for ever and a day - and that population is growing in our community - we're able to learn from actions that Portland and other communities around the country - Salt Lake City is held up as a community that's done a very good job of addressing their homelessness and affordable issues - we're able to learn from actions taken by other cities - what's worked, what hasn't - and build upon those and see how they best fit the fabric of our community.
GN: What is your relationship with the leadership of Portland like? Do you communicate with Mayor Hales regularly?
TL: I haven't had recent conversations with Mayor Hales. We try to get together at least once if not twice a year. It's been quite a while since I've spoken with him. I know he's busy with addressing many issues in Portland, and being in constant communication with Vancouver is not at the top of his priority list.
GN: You're in your second term as Vancouver mayor. You have also served on the city council. How would you say your city has changed since you've been in office?
TL: It's really changed quite dramatically, Geoff. It's wasn't that long ago that we were dealing with the Great Recession, and that was right about the time that I came into office. The city council and myself had to make some very difficult decisions in order to ensure that we were balancing our budget, just like every household in Vancouver was dealing with reduced revenues. And so there's been quite a bit of change over the past six years while I've been mayor of the city, and much of it has been very good. There's been difficult times, but much of it has been very good.
I'm very proud of where we are today. We've really set a strong foundation to continue to grow and prosper and create the nice livable community that the citizens of Vancouver want and expect.
Tim Leavitt is the mayor of Vancouver, Washington, and his annual State of the City Address is Thursday evening.