Bay Doors, Alerting System Failures Plague Longview, WA, Fire Station

The Longview City Council will soon decide whether a public relations firm with a claimed “95% election win record” to handle the fact-based messaging for a voter initiative spinning off the city’s fire department into its own tax district.

The council at an upcoming meeting plans to vote on awarding an $84,000 contract — plus a budget of about $16,000 for advertising, printing and other costs — to Snohomish-based Liz Loomis Public Affairs for “community education and outreach” related to the tax district proposal.

The council was slated to discuss the proposal earlier this month, but it was removed from the agenda at the last minute per a request from city staff. The item has not been placed back on the agenda since.

According to a city staff report in the Sept. 11 meeting packet, Liz Loomis Public Affairs won out in an open bidding process after going through the city’s Request for Qualifications process earlier this summer.

The Request for Proposal and contract followed a proposal Longview Fire Chief Brad Hannig made earlier this summer, seeking to ask voters in the November 2026 election to create a new fire protection tax district to address public safety needs that includes building a long-sought third fire station in Longview to reduce emergency response times.

The contract covers the firm’s $84,000 base rate, plus an additional $16,000 to cover “supplemental expenses” such as media advertising, mailers, flyers and other “educational materials.”

According to an overview document in a council agenda packet provided by the firm, Liz Loomis Communications claims to have a “95% election win record” and a team with “more than 50 years of public-sector communications experience” combined.

Who is Liz Loomis?

Loomis is a former public official who offers strategic communications to local governments and public agencies. Her website lists 93 public agencies across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana as some of her “successes.” Local agencies in the list include Clark Cowlitz Fire Rescue, Clark County Fire Districts 3, 5 and 6 and the city of Battle Ground.

Loomis served as a Snohomish city councilmember and as mayor in the early 2000s, and served as a state Democrat representative for Washington’s 44th legislative district in 2008 before she narrowly lost her seat to a Republican that November.

Loomis then went on to become a state and national speaker on “taxpayer communication” after her time in elected office, according to her resume.

The firm consists of Loomis, along with a communications director and contract staff tasked with “operations, graphic design and content writing.”

“With a 95% election win record, our team brings proven experience along with enthusiasm for this work. In addition to offering strategy and guidance, we gladly take on the logistical load of communication — so that your leadership can stay focused on the community you serve,” the resume document states.

Can taxpayer money be used to influence voter initiatives?

According to guidelines from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission, local governments are not allowed to use “the facilities of a public office or agency” in a ballot measure, but election campaigns are allowed to provide “an objective and fair presentation of the facts to the public.”

The PDC website further holds that it is “not only the right, but the responsibility of local government” to inform the general public of the operational and maintenance issues that laypeople may not know.

That said, the PDC warns against “a marketing or sales effort.” In bold, the website states: “Agencies need to be aware, however, that in no case will the PDC view a marketing or sales effort related to a campaign or election as normal and regular conduct,” the PDC states.

Loomis’ boasting about her track record factored into a complaint to the PDC involving a similar $64,000 contract Loomis secured with the city of Edmonds for messaging services related to a fire district annexation proposal earlier this year.

An opponent to the fire district annexation, Theresa Hutchinson, filed a complaint against the city of Edmonds regarding their hiring of Loomis in February. In it, she cited documents such as the city’s service contract and emails between Loomis and officials to argue to the state agency that “public funds may have been improperly used for advocacy purposes, rather than neutral education.”

The PDC ultimately dismissed the complaint with a warning letter in April. The Public Disclosure Commission deemed the messages between city officials and Loomis about how to persuade voters — such as an exchange on Jan. 17 where Loomis told Edmonds Mayor Mike Rosen, “Let me do my job. We have won five of these projects in the state.” — were “minor” and that the concerning issue “has been cured.”

“The formal written warning will include staff’s expectation that you do not use public facilities to support or oppose a candidate or ballot measure going forward,” states the warning letter to Edmonds officials.

Longview Fire Station

Longview Fire Station 81, located at 740 Commerce Street, is one of two fire stations serving the city. Fire Chief Brad Hannig has proposed to the City Council a voter initiative to spin off the municipal fire department into its own fire district.

The communication plan

Loomis’ proposal for the city of Longview outlines a three-phase process the agency says “will ensure tailored support for Longview.”

The first phase is “Research and Preparation,” which the document describes as assessing “Longview’s communication assets, developing systems and identifying spokespeople.”

The second phase is “Strategy and Planning,” which includes crafting key messages, designing a “communication plan” and building “coalition support.”

The third phase, “Implementation,” includes executing their messaging “across paid, earned shared and owned media while providing responsive public relations support.”

“From start to finish, we handle the logistics — design, approvals, production and dissemination — so your staff can stay focus on leading Longview forward,” Loomis states in the document.

About $1.25 per day

Hannig at the June 12 meeting estimated that for a median price homeowner the increase would pencil out to roughly $1.25 per day, while leading to a projected revenue of $10.4 million per year — an increase of $5.7 million from current rates.

The extra funds, among other purchases, would cover the building of a long-sought Fire Station 83 to be centrally located in the 2700 block of Ocean Beach Highway between Fire Station 81 at 740 Commerce Avenue and Fire Station 82 at 2355 38th Avenue.

Crumbling infrastructure

City documents make it clear that the fire department’s facilities are aging and that the breakdowns are impacting response times.

According to a rundown of capital improvement projects the city’s Public Works Subcommittee discussed on Aug. 20, both fire stations’ bay doors have been “plagued” with breakdowns in part because bay doors were replaced with ones “not rated at the number of cycles necessary for the call volume of LFD.”

Other challenges include only one qualified technician available to service the “mega” doors at the main station at 740 Commerce Ave., and parts for them are becoming obsolete.

“Some damaged doors have been out of service for several months at a time waiting for repair parts, causing apparatus to be backed in and out of the stations at all hours of the day,” the city report states. “Units even responded backwards from the rear of the station, delaying response times.”

Elsewhere, the document notes that Station 81’s alerting system, which 911 dispatchers use to alert firefighters in an emergency call, is “unreliable and outdated.” The system is “cobbled together” with some components more than 30 years old.

“Lacking backup options, vendors have declared the system irreparable and in urgent need of replacement,” the document states.

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