Centralians should expect to pay slightly more in local sales tax after the city council last week approved a state-allowed increase to fund public safety measures.
The Centralia City Council unanimously approved a local public safety sales and use tax of 0.1% within the Centralia city limits during its July 14 meeting. As laid out in state law, the revenue will fund the local criminal justice system, including law enforcement and public defense.
Centralia Police Chief Andy Caldwell pitched the action as a big need for the city and, more specifically, the local police department, especially if the city wants to reach its officer staffing goals.
“This provides us with stability moving into the future of better ways to fund law enforcement,” Caldwell said, “so that we can do better about getting more officers.”
According to Caldwell, the city currently sits at roughly 1.57 officers per 1,000 city residents and would need to bring on as many as three additional officers to reach the city’s goal of staffing 1.67 officers per 1,000 residents. That calculation does not factor in any changes due to annexation.
During a brief council discussion, Councilor Tucker Voetberg urged his fellow council members to approve the tax, adding that preliminary budget outlooks for the city show a need for additional revenue.
“This is something that we need as a city financially to get our budget balanced,” Voetberg said. “And not only that, grow the police force to the number that we want to get to.”
Voetberg also briefly pointed out to the council that the revenue from the tax was not required to be used solely for hiring officers and would also help fund other parts of the local justice system.
Centralia Finance Director Bret Brodersen clarified that city staff would likely recommend the revenue from the tax go, in part, to the police department with other portions going to Centralia Municipal Court and public defense.
“Depending on the jurisdiction, some jurisdictions are using it exclusively for one thing or another,” Brodersen said. “Staff would propose that it be used to help augment the police department, municipal court and help offset some of the indigent defense, public defense that we have to pay for.”
The ability for the city to take on this sales tax just by a vote of the city council is a recent development in the state of Washington and separate from other discussions of a countywide public safety tax. The often-discussed Lewis County Public Safety Tax would collect at a higher sales tax rate and require voter approval.
The Washington state Legislature established the smaller public safety sales tax and a connected grant program specifically for funding officer hiring during the 2025 legislative session in response to calls for more funding for local police officers statewide.
While the tax revenue does not require voter approval, it does come with strings attached at the state level. It requires the Centralia Police Department to meet a number of new standards to pass the tax, including compliance with the Keep Washington Working Act, domestic violence response and more.
“We have to start showing a pathway to corresponding programs. We have to show that we're involved in deescalation,” Caldwell said. “That we not only do we meet standards, but we're trying to achieve best practices.”
According to Caldwell, the department is still in the process of checking all the boxes required by the state, but has been given provisional approval by the Washington state Criminal Justice Training Commission. The department has 180 days from the time it applied in March to reach full compliance.
“I've got 10 more wording tweaks that I have to do to our policy, but we do have the provisional approval,” Caldwell said. “It still goes forward to the state upon your approval. We still start collecting on the approval date, even if I have a little bit more work to do.”
The Centralia Police Department is the first agency in the county to take advantage of the 2025 law.
House Bill 2015 was a hot topic during the 2025 session and was at times a contention point between Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson and majority Democrats. In his first term, Ferguson opened the legislative session by requesting that lawmakers provide $100 million in funding for hiring local level police officers.
The bill didn’t come out quite as some had imagined. Instead of direct funding, it established a $100 million grant program for local law enforcement to hire new officers with a list of eligibility requirements, along with the allowance for a local public safety sales tax.
