Steve Hogan has been elected to be the new mayor of Camas. As the newly elected mayor, some of the things he plans to do are: oversee and provide service to the community that affects students in Camas, communicate with Camas High School (CHS) students, and make Downtown Camas safer.

Jennifer Senescu and Steve Hogan were both running for mayor on election day on November 2, 2021. Most people know that Hogan has experience running enterprises, and he is a long term resident of Camas. 

“I love this city, and I have managed lots of enterprises during my fourty year career, and it seems that small towns are mainly service orientationated organizations” said Hogan.

On the day of the election, Sharon Zigler, an SLP, said “I think it’s important that our mayor is someone we can trust in the community, so someone who has had involvement in different parts of Camas government school district, a longer term resident of Camas, and somebody who will represent us.” Furthermore, she hopes that “whoever becomes mayor will be someone who can be a peacemaker as well.”

“If I were able to vote I would be voting for Steve Hogan because he is more put together in his views and more knowledgeable of what he is talking about,” Kate Danmore, a junior, said.

“I think that these local elections will define our school board policy. Are we going to be able to talk about LGBTQ(IA+) issues in school? Are we going to be able to talk about race issues in school? Are we going to be able to talk about are we going to teach our kids to treat each other equitably? Are we going to teach our kids to have empathy or teach our kids to be hateful?” Aaron Connelly said, a junior at CHS who is taking an AP Government class.

The local government “delivers services to the citizens, lights on the streets, good roads, water, sewer, fire departments, things like that, and I think I can oversee those types of organizations and help it function more efficiently,” Hogan said.

“The local stuff is what affects you. It is how your community is viewed from not just Camas, not just our county, but the world,” Connelly said.

The mayor election definitely impacts the community because they are a keystone in the local government.

For anyone wondering what exactly a mayor does, “they’re very much like the chief executive officer combined with the chief operating officer of a large corporation, except that cities aren’t in business to make money, they’re in business to provide service, so operating as a mayor is running the whole operation, determining who works for the organization, and who does not work in the organization, determining how to deal with the unions, get fair contracts for employees and the citizens of the city, to make sure the operations go smoothly,” Hogan said.

As well as the community, the local government affects students too. “As [students] travel to and from school, [the local government is] in charge of the streets and the lights, we provide the police to enforce the law, we provide health care workers to come if there is any health problem that needs transporting people to a medical facility, as people who set the laws for how the land inside the city limits can be used, we help set aside land that can be used for schools so there will be places where schools can be built and students have a place to go,” Hogan said.

Camas High School had a club involved in communicating with the local government at one point. “[The club] was stopped approximately two or three years ago, and reasons were many, but I do plan to do it again in the future. We have people that have worked within the school system that are on the City Council, and members of the staff and we want to have good partnerships with the school organizations,” Hogan said.

“Both the students and administrators of the school are key to understand and work with. I’d like to work with the school district, I know [they’re] looking for a superintendent, I’ve worked historically before with superintendents but even an intern superintendent would be welcome to work with,” Hogan said.

“It’s about getting the students to do activities with the city, especially with the lake and in the park system. We have a bigger park system than most big cities have, and we have a lake that is one of the jewels of Clark County. If the students could give us understand what science could be monitored, collected and analyzed that could help us understand what 137 years of industrial use of those three lakes and those dams, and feeding water to the papermill has actually done to damage the lake and what we could to do reverse it, and let those students get involved, and I would like to see that happen,” Hogan said.

There are many open jobs in Camas because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the past mayor, according to Hogan. “There are an abnormally high number of jobs open, partially because of the way the national economy has changed coming out of Covid, people are looking at jobs differently, but simultaneously our past mayor quit, and a temporary mayor has been put in place and those two did not want to fill the positions,they are waiting for whoever wins this election to step in and fill the positions,” Hogan said. 

“It will be very competitive. There are other cities vying for the same people. Our fire department people are applying at other fire departments including Vancouver, and other places, there are people switching around because the rates of salaries are going up quickly, so while I’m filling positions, other positions tend to get opened up because somebody moved. and with Covid, people and especially first responders, if they do not get vaccinated, they get dismissed, and so when they get dismissed there is another job opening,” Hogan said.

“I think this is a great city, and we’re lucky to be here. The school system is one of the reasons that people are flocking to be here, and that is causing the houses to be high priced and unaffordable, but it’s a good problem to have, and we need to deal with it as a city,” Hogan said.

Hogan would like to ameliorate communication with the police, and react to crimes quicker.

“I would like to see us do the American rescue plan funds which came from Washington DC to actually put in monitoring devices, so we can more readily identify vehicles and actions that are taking place in the Downtown Camas area,” Hogan said.

“To be honest with you, I have stayed away from the police during the campaign, so if I am elected, afterwards I’ll sit with the detectives and ask them to give me the top three to five suggestions of how we could monitor or react more quickly [to crimes],” Hogan said.

The electoral race of Nov. 2 was very competitive, but Hogan managed to pull through and win the majority of the votes cast by Camas residents, making him the mayor of Camas. Many citizens are hopeful that he will do a great job.