City of Centralia staffers are emphasizing engagement with the homeless population and taking action to improve public safety in the city.
City Manager Michael Thomas provided an update during the Centralia City Council’s Tuesday night meeting on the work the city has done recently. He first addressed concerns that community members have raised about the homeless population and crime in the city, adding that the two are not directly linked and that it is not a crime to be homeless in the community or country.
“I want to draw a distinction between the fact that there are people experiencing homelessness and behaviors that are unsafe or make people feel unsafe. Those are not mutually exclusive but they’re not completely the same thing,” Thomas said. “Things that make people feel unsafe may include vandalism, assault, theft, use of drugs and alcohol in our parks, smoking in the parks, lewd or violent conduct. That, I want to make clear, is not 100% tied to our homeless population. In fact, it’s probably not even 10% of our homeless population. People who exhibit these behaviors can be homeless, and they can also be people with housing. To link the two of them directly is a mistake.”
Thomas used Memorial Day as a starting point for the city’s recent activities. The city’s Memorial Day celebration at George Washington Park allegedly ended with two men shouting at each other and striking each other with axes before police intervened.
The City of Centralia and the Centralia Timberland Library jointly refined trespassing policies for the library property, which Thomas said provides both the library and the Centralia Police Department with more flexibility on how they provide security to their patrons through trespassing individuals. According to Timberland Library Manager Muriel Wheatley, the majority of the homeless population enjoys and desires having access to the library and follows the library’s rules and code of conduct.
The city also repaired the drinking water fountain at the library, which Thomas said had been a burden for library staff for quite some time.
“It doesn’t seem like much, but this was a huge burden to the library to have to provide bottled water to all the patrons, buying and stocking it, providing it, giving it out to everybody. That took away from other duties and activities they could do in the library,” he said.
City staff delineated a handicap parking space at the library, as well.
The city has maintained a surveillance camera at George Washington Park, which Thomas said will remain there for the “foreseeable future.” He stated that police reserve the right to move it to another high-intensity area if necessary. Staff have also been prioritizing maintenance and landscaping needs within the park, as well as public safety through park exclusion orders.
In 2023, the city council approved an ordinance granting authority to the parks director and Centralia police to temporarily or permanently ban individuals and groups from city parks for breaking rules or engaging in criminal activity.
Since 2023, 36 park exclusion orders have been issued, 20 of which were in George Washington Park and six of which were this year, Thomas said. These violations typically include fighting, drinking alcohol, smoking, use of narcotics, vandalism or trespassing. Thomas added that not all of the citations were against the homeless population.
“The parks department says that there was a diversity of people and reasons for those park exclusion orders, but that helps to provide public safety and enjoyment for everybody that uses the park,” he said. “I know people are concerned about, ‘I can’t go to the park,’ but we are following up and making sure that the parks are safe, open and available to everybody.”
Thomas and Councilor Norm Chapman recently toured Gather Church to learn about their operations and how church staff are seeking to engage with the local community, including the homeless population.
City staff have also met with residents in the area of Unity Church to hear and address concerns, comments and complaints about the homeless population in the area, as well as under the viaduct, according to Thomas.
“I’ve learned this morning that our parks and street department jointly went out and mowed all the areas and cleaned up all the trash underneath the viaducts down on Goldberg by the railroad tracks to clean that area and provide an added measure of fire protection, security, code enforcement, etc.,” he said.
Public works, police and code enforcement staff are responding to residents and business owners in the Washington Park and library area and Main Street corridor dealing with issues regarding loitering, littering, vandalism, alcohol and drug use, Thomas said.
“We have responded to complaints to the attorney general’s office, non-emergency line complaints, a couple 911 calls and multiple resident emails that have come to us directly,” he stated. “We’ve addressed each one of those, figured out a solution, and then followed up with the community members afterward to let them know what we’re doing.”
City staff are working to come up with new ordinances regarding loitering, open containers and public intoxication, but Thomas said that process is taking time as staff want to ensure bad behavior is addressed without targeting or criminalizing homelessness.
In terms of housing, the overnight shelter on Kresky Avenue in Chehalis is awaiting approval from the Chehalis City Council. Centralia staff also recently broke ground on the Riverside Garden development project at the end of East Roanoke Street, and Thomas said there are two projects on First Street that are underway or in development. Additional housing projects are planned for North Harrison Avenue, as well as multiple small developments to include a couple of apartments in a property adjacent to the new Chronicle building that formerly housed Umpqua Bank, according to Thomas.
The city has worked with the Riverside Fire Authority and the police department toward a grant to provide a medically trained community resource provider to embed within the fire department.
“This would be a person that would go out and basically take care of somebody who is having most likely a mental health issue or maybe they’re coming off of a high or need something like an epipen,” Thomas said. “This individual would meet with the individual and take care of them, freeing up the first responder, be it fire or EMT or police officer, to take another call. That individual would then stay with that person, give them the help they need initially and then do follow-up service with them over the course of the next few weeks or months. That grant, we submitted it to the state. We hope to find out how much we got to help that process work here in the near future.”
Finally, the city and the police department have spoken to Hope Housing Collaborative of Lewis County to facilitate their safe parking pilot program. Thomas said the police department offered to conduct free background checks for overnight residents, but “they haven’t taken us up on our offer.” He added that, as the program has started in Lewis County, “it’s not as many cars as we had expected initially.”
