The lone Twin Cities council race with three or more candidates on the Aug. 5 primary election ballot hails from Centralia as three candidates seek to earn the District No. 2 seat currently held by Sarah Althauser.
Ray Chapman-Wilson, Chuck Kifer and Leah Sisemore are in the running for the soon-to-be vacant seat. Following the primary election, the top two candidates will advance to the Nov. 4 general election, when four council seats will be up for grabs.
Only those living within the District No. 2 boundaries are eligible to vote for the primary race. To view Centralia’s district map, visit https://tinyurl.com/382c683e.
Ray Chapman-Wilson
Chapman-Wilson is making his debut on the election ballot as he has no prior elected or appointed experience. He has lived in Centralia for over four years after growing up in California, and he has over 30 years of experience in project management and team building.
He is a semi-retired small business owner and worked as a skills and safety instructor for a small manufacturing team, while he currently works in home renovation part-time.
In Lewis County, Chapman-Wilson has served the local community through helping with peace vigils facilitated by Vietnam War veterans every Saturday at George Washington Park and with Cascadia Cares, feeding hungry families and their pets, according to his campaign biography. Chapman-Wilson campaigned, with support from neighbors, to turn Washington state Senate Bill 5375, which requires members of the clergy to report suspected child abuse or neglect to law enforcement, into law.
In his candidate statement, he said his primary goal is to improve safety, build community and increase prosperity for all Centralia residents if he is elected.
“Any time you raise the prosperity level of anybody in your community, you have a safer and more prosperous community by default. You create a more transparent government,” Chapman-Wilson told The Chronicle.
With that, Chapman-Wilson’s priorities are bringing more access to child care for working families, creating solutions to add more affordable housing and preventing pollution. He also wants to see the creation of a parks and recreation department and encourages the idea of community centers or pocket parks in the city. He described himself as “extremely fiscally conservative” who believes he could help the city better spend its dollars.
“I’m a real stickler for how money is spent. That is the primary responsibility of city council members is to direct how money is spent,” Chapman-Wilson said. “I’m a fiscal conservative, probably to the extreme, so I may be able to squeeze more services out of more buckets of money than we currently have. There does seem to be more opportunities for potential dollars to come in via grant writing, and I’d love to see more of our services contracted within the City of Centralia or within Lewis County.”
Chapman-Wilson said he would work to secure funding and/or grants to help with people experiencing homelessness in the community if he is elected.
“We spend a lot of money arresting people in the area that are experiencing homelessness. It’s not necessarily, in my view, the best use of dollars with re-arresting people and re-incarcerating them,” he said. “That’s very expensive. As best as we can, we can secure maybe some funds or even some ideation around public private partnerships or grant writing to maybe head up some functions that would help the homelessness situation.”
If elected, he hopes to listen to what the community wants and work with those goals in mind.
“I find a high level of worth in how much one can help the other. It’s an ‘All for one, one for all’ mentality. It’s a ‘Live and let live’ mentality,” Chapman-Wilson said. “That guides how I go forward in life.”
Chuck Kifer
Kifer is another first-time candidate for elected office, but he does carry appointed experience in Centralia. He currently serves on the city’s historical preservation commission, planning commission and climate advisory team.
Kifer, a Centralia resident for over 30 years and Centralia College graduate, earned the city’s 2024 volunteer of the year award after working on the Fort Borst Block House repair and donating crew members from his Centralia-based construction company to help.
Through his work in construction, Kifer learned that Centralia has more benefits for its citizens than some of the other communities he worked with, according to his campaign statement.
“I enjoy serving the community, and I find that I’m not alone. There’s thousands of people in this community that are of this like mind,” Kifer told The Chronicle. “It’s the whole spirit of community involvement that I got wrapped up in, and I don’t see that so much in a lot of communities I work with. That’s something that is really unique to Centralia.”
Kifer prides himself on learning about city operations through his service on various commissions and attending nearly every council meeting for two years. He said he shares the direction current councilors have for the future of the city in terms of growth while preserving history and the “small-town vibe.”
One of the primary issues in Centralia he wants to address if elected is homelessness. Through campaigning and service on commissions, Kifer said the topic is at the forefront of many residents’ minds.
“First and foremost, there are people in the community that need the services that are provided. It’s unfortunate to see somebody who has gotten to that state and doesn’t have a way out. Anybody in that situation that wants a way out deserves all the help we can give them,” Kifer said. “There are thousands of compassionate people in the city of Centralia that give freely of themselves to make sure that somebody else can get out of that situation.”
Additionally, Kifer wants to help improve public safety in Centralia’s parks, primarily George Washington Park. He said he has heard from numerous homeowners that loitering from the homeless population is a significant concern.
“Washington Park should be a park for all, but it’s turning into a park for the homeless. I would like to see that turn around. I would like to see kids back in the park, and I want people to feel that it’s OK to go down there without being harassed or getting into confrontation,” he said. “I would like to see a solution to our homeless problem. There’s a lot of people working on that, and I want to be a part of that solution.”
Another issue Kifer will prioritize if elected is traffic in Centralia. He gave an example of a friend who lives in Los Angeles making a joke that “it takes an hour to get from LA to LA.”
“I don’t want to see it take an hour, or even a half an hour, to get from Centralia to Centralia,” Kifer said. “We need to take care of some of the traffic issues. In the planning commission, we’re giving the green light for new developments. These developments are really going to be an attraction for people to want to move here because they crave that small-town vibe, like most of us do.”
Leah Sisemore
Sisemore, previously Daarud, previously served in an at-large position on the Centralia City Council from November 2021 to April 2023 before abruptly resigning. She currently works as a program developer and contract manager in the housing division of the Washington state Department of Commerce, working on housing solutions and homelessness response across the state.
Sisemore also serves on the statewide Office of Community Voices and Empowerment Advisory Committee through the Washington state Health Care Authority. In a statement to The Chronicle, she said her roots are in behavioral health, where she spent 15 years in community mental health, outreach, competency restoration programs, and program development and contract management.
Sisemore also holds various leadership positions within church groups for children and adults, and she previously served as a child and adolescent domestic violence advocate, according to her campaign biography. She earned degrees in criminal justice and behavioral health from Centralia College, and her resumé includes roles as the assistant county planner for Lewis County and as a city planning commissioner in Centralia.
She said, if she is elected, she will focus on addressing homelessness with data-informed, accountable strategies that prioritize outcomes and protect community safety.
“I’ve helped individuals move up and out of homelessness with compassion and accountability. This work is personal to me as I experienced homelessness more than 20 years ago, and today, I work in housing and own a home in Centralia,” Sisemore said. “I know the challenges individuals face, and I know the frustration communities feel when they see their concerns regarding the impacts of homelessness overlooked.”
Sisemore said she is proud to have consistently opposed tax increases and would continue to promote balanced budgets and responsible spending if elected. She aims to preserve affordability by opposing further tax increases and “cutting red tape” for homeowners including high permitting costs and revisiting developer costs and processes for developing in the area.
“Fiscal responsibility includes prioritizing stewardship of city assets and finding actionable solutions to the current spaces our community requires to see open and serving our city,” she said. “I’m not afraid to be the lone dissenting voice when necessary, especially when residents are asking for transparency and real solutions.”
If elected, Sisemore said she will also focus on revitalizing parks and recreation to expand programming to serve more members of the community, including youth who don’t participate in sports, families and seniors with hopes to restore pride in shared spaces. She hopes to support sustainable residential agriculture, including revisiting codes around backyard livestock and exploring city-partnered solutions to address food insecurity.
Additionally, Sisemore wants to restore public trust in local government through “better messaging, increased transparency and leadership that listens with intent and follows through with action.”
Above all, Sisemore said her most important job is being a wife and a mother to five children, all within the Centralia School District with one recently graduating.
“As a wife and mother of five, I am passionate about safety for everyone and the economic health of our community,” Sisemore wrote in her candidate statement. “If elected, I will prioritize safety of residents and responsible spending of taxpayer dollars. Let’s build a more responsible, safe and affordable Centralia — together.”
