3 Questions with Wil Fuentes- Guest Lukas Bardue

Brought to you by the 18th Legislative District with your host Wil Fuentes and our special guest Lukas Bardue running for Clark County Council Dist 1  who talks about community safety, plans that would grow Vancouver more cost effectively, and help the housing crisis and affordability.

Join us as we dive into the hot topics with local politicians and community leaders to give you the facts about what's going on in this country in politics starting at our local level.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Three Questions, sponsored by the 18th Legislative District, Washington State Democrats. I'm your host, Will Fuentes. Folks, I'd like to introduce my next guest, Lucas Bardu. He is the founder and president of Freight Track Services, where he manages complex supply chain and Department of Defense contracts. Beyond his business credentials, he has a decades-long track record of local leadership, including founding Clark County's very first search and rescue dog team. He is a lifelong resident, logistics expert, and a candidate for Clark County Council District One. Lucas, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. It's great to have you. I have a few questions to ask you. Oh, good. Yeah. Which is why you're here. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, Lucas, you're running for Clark County Council District One. Um, just remind us really quick what part of the county uh that covers.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Basically, it covers everything over to um or west of uh uh 205, okay, up to about 45th, just north of the mall, and then all the way up Vancouver Lake.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Okay, so most of the city of Vancouver, and then there's like little pockets of question number one. So, you know, one of the main issues uh in district one in particular is homelessness. So, my question to you, you've said that homelessness and mental health are deeply, deeply connected, right? So tell us more about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

You know, um in my district, a lot of that's controlled by the city, and so um it's uh important that the county help us with the city. But one thing that I would do differently is I would I would focus on policy making for the county. Now I view homelessness and mental health kind of they coincide, but you gotta look at it from two different perspectives. We're we're we're we need to look at preventing homelessness as one way and look at you know getting people off the streets into shelters and then supportive mental health. Um I kind of look at it like okay, they're always on the guard you know when you're homeless already, and you need to to understand that so they need more mental health support. Right. Um, and it's not necessarily efficient to put them in a housing first situation versus a family who is you know struggling to stay in a home. And so that's a different direction of handling the homelessness. And and um, I do we do have programs in place like Share for Housing First, and and um so I I just feel that uh what we need to do again is focus on policy to create a uh a program. Otherwise, we're just kind of like throwing money at situations and and it's not really fixing the problem. And in fact, um while homelessness has reduced in Clark County, um we're seeing a new population pop up. Uh there's four female veterans. We we have not ever seen female veterans that are homeless in the county. Um and and those things by writing some policy, it'll help address those different, you know, uh different uh people that are um popping up in our programs.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

So now you mention that the city is deeply involved in providing um services along with a number of nonprofit organizations, right? Uh those services generally tend to be within the city of Vancouver, right? Uh but we need services beyond that. Um you also mentioned policies. What kind of policies that can be created uh that will allow us to be able to service homeless populations outside uh mostly the downtown core?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I think it's uh kind of adopting some of the um the county adopting some of the policies that the the city has done so well at. Up until recently, the county was just dropping homeless people off in the city. Right that has now since stopped. So something obviously is working well in in the in the city. So if we're adopting those policies and then allowing and enabling the programs to work beyond the cities and then collaborate better. And now we have a program called Echo, correct? Or a meet uh a group called Echo that includes different uh uh facets and different organizations. I'd like to see that expanded to the point where it's everybody who is an organization um has a seat at the table. And it's like having a set of eyes so we see the um the opportunities to help or see the homeless populations and have a better idea of where the real weaknesses are in our uh in our system and to be more collaborative. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

You're referring to Echo, which is any community homes as council, right? Yes. Uh so a number of jurisdictions do sit on it, including law enforcement, uh the the county council, a couple of us do sit on that council as well. Uh and you're absolutely correct that it is important to continue to bring more people from different jurisdictions, right, from different parts of the county to help figure out how we can solve uh a countywide problem. Um another thing that I wanted to mention is uh the heart team. Are you familiar with the heart team, which the city of Vancouver supports, right? Uh and that needs to be expanded as well beyond uh the city of Vancouver boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

And that's what I'm talking about. It's like utilize that organ or that that meeting group to and then build off of it. Yeah. And actually utilize it too to help build policy. Right. So um you have so many people with so much experience within that organization. You have city officials, you have organization leaders, you have um, and you have homeless people in there that actually you can listen to their experiences. Yeah. Um, and that's actually really important is to have the um is to have that experience involved in communication and building policy.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Absolutely. And Echo is currently in the process of recruiting uh two community members with lived experience in homelessness. So that's gonna give them a voice, right? Yes. Uh those of us who haven't experienced uh homelessness and sit on this council uh don't have that that uh lived experience, right? So it's important to be able to hear other other perspectives.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Question number two. Now, this isn't you know uh unique to our region, right? The housing affordability crisis, which is impacting a lot of folks here in our community. How would you address this issue here locally at the local at the Clore County level?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

You know, uh one of the first things I would do is uh is get to the low-hanging fruit, and that's our permitting process. You know, it it if someone buys uh 10 acres of land and they want to develop it, and it takes a year to get it permitted, that's a year of cost that is not necessary. Right. You know, we we with AI, we can easily you know make it much quicker process in order to get permitting done. Um but the other big issue is that we need to focus on growing up as a community, not out. And we are creating um more expense by growing out, and and because if you think about it, we you have 10 people on a mile of sewage line, right? And I'm using sewage line as infrastructure, right? Um ten people versus a hundred people. What's gonna be cheaper? Obviously a hundred people, yes, right? Yeah, having connected to a sew a one mile uh line. Yeah, so growing up is gonna be really important for us, and and also we focus on looking at ways to make it uh building codes cheaper, you know, certain things that we've put in place that we've actually created cost. Is there a way we can make it still safe, but reduce the cost in that process? So that would be one of the things. So growing up is the biggest thing, and having growing up in a way that makes it accessible for people to have public transport as well, and you know, look at the corridors um where uh CTRAN it goes and make it easy for people to get to and from places because if they don't have a car, that's also less expense for them, right? Exactly. Um so growing up instead of growing out.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Some really valid points. Uh, thank you for mentioning the permitting process, which sometimes can take a little bit of long time. And and we at the county we have our department, some of our departments, in fact, most of our departments are understaffed, right? So leveraging technology, you know, to figure out how we can speed things up uh is definitely uh a plus. Uh and then of course infrastructure. Infrastructure is expensive, building roads, building water. Uh anything that goes along with having uh to uh include development is just expensive. Uh and to your point, I like that analogy that you use, right? A hundred people versus 10 people on a mile line of sewage is definitely far.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, let's look at another bring up another issue, right? You know, the county can't afford its parks right now, right? And it's because of that sprawl. Yeah. So if we're growing up, we have more people to use the parks, but we also have the uh more tax base to support those those services and and parks. So instead of uh increasing the tax base without increasing the taxes, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

You grow up. That's exactly it. I think voters would really appreciate that. Um so let's pivot to uh the very last question. Question number three. Lucas, my last question for you is what are some ways that uh we can address public safety issues in the community?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Well, you know, uh we touched on it earlier. Um, one of the things is mental health support. You know, we have a lot of uh uh mental health support and also affordable housing. When people are homeless and they're struggling, they're more likely to steal uh or cause damage to land um or pro people's property. And the mental health piece, you know, with the drugs and drug addiction, people do things that they don't wouldn't normally do when they're on drugs. Right. And a big with that being said, uh a big portion of how we can help that is is build better relationships with our public safety leaders, our police departments, and and um be more collaborative and communicative on that and finding out where our pockets are uh and and and help to address and help support them um with mental health issues. And uh uh, you know, one thing is you know these these camp sweeps, you know, the the police officers really should have a mental health support, right? Right, or more training and mental health uh because it's just not uh it's not a super functional way of handling it, and it doesn't prevent it or doesn't build relationships with the with the homeless population. And so I I know that San Antonio is a model right now in in the country. Okay, so you know, supporting them to understand what that model looks like, yeah, but really going into uh communication with public servants or you know, the again the police department, yeah, or the fire department. And so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Um during a panel conversation that uh we had counsel had with a uh number of law enforcement uh officers uh and leaders from jurisdictions across the county, we learned that on average a police officer uh or a deputy gets about 40 hours of training on how to deal uh with individuals having a mental health crisis. That's it, 40 hours a year. That's right, that's it. They don't get a lot. And here's the reality that that's not their job, right? To deal with mental health crisis. So I heard you mention that um, you know, you said having individuals that really know how to deal with the with folks who are experiencing mental health crisis would be an opportunity. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and so and and that that that's exactly it. That's the I think that's the direction that we we have to look at it from that different from that perspective. So um is there anything else that you want to add? Uh, you know, as we we've come to that conclusion of our three questions. Anything else you'd like to add, Lucas?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Um, no, that I you know, I I've grown up in this community and it's I care deeply about it. You know, I've been here since I was three years old. Wow, and I've seen it it change and I've seen it grow. I mean, I remember uh back in the day, Evergreen uh airfield up on on fourth plane, and and and there was nothing up there. And now we are just a sprawling community that people want to live here, and and it's amazing what a place it is, an amazing place to live in the world. And so I've lived in other places and I keep coming back, and this is my home, and yeah, and uh I just want it to continue to make it a better place and affordable for people to live here.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Absolutely, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Uh, we enjoyed listening to some of your ideas, and I want to wish you the best of luck. Thank you very much. Absolutely, folks. That is our show for today. Don't forget to hit like, subscribe, leave a comment, and hit the notification bell. We will see you next time.