State Rep. Adam Bernbaum, D-24th District, which covers a large portion of Grays Harbor County, spent part of his Monday morning discussing a variety of topics on the KOSW 88.9 FM Morning Show hosted by Tom “Tommy T” Ferguson. Ocean Shores City Administrator Scott Andersen sat in.

Bernbaum is new to the state Legislature and is in his first term after serving as Sen. Kevin Van De Wege’s legislative assistant.

Housing

“I had been working in particular on issues with manufactured housing, meeting with folks in manufactured home parks who had seen significant increases in their lot fees. It’s an issue I have a lot of passion about, that was the core hook,” Rep. Bernbaum said. “The thing I love about politics, it sounds hammy, is that it’s kind of like an opportunity to organize, to volunteer but turned up to 10. Someone has an issue with something in the community, they are having trouble getting in touch with an agency, there’s a benefit they receive from the state and it’s getting cut off, you get to work with them, you get to try to help solve those problems. It feels great.”

Bernbaum said one of his priorities is helping people who live in manufactured home parks as their permanent residence who have seen an exponential increase in their lot fees and can’t afford to move their manufactured home to another location.

“The cost of moving a manufactured home is really high and they have no control over the lot fees. There are some parks in Sequim for example, where the lot fees increased 250% over five years; you can’t budget for that. The cost of moving a home is $20,000, which is more money than most of the people who live in that park have. It forces them to abandon their property or become destitute. It’s a big issue in rural communities, where manufactured home parks are some of the last stocks of affordable housing we have and we should do more to protect them.”

Tax relief for seniors

Ferguson brought up Senate Bill 5020 that promises property tax relief for qualified senior citizens. FastDemocracy.com’s bill summary states, “This bill introduces a new property tax exemption for senior citizens aged 75 and older, exempting them from state and local property taxes regardless of their household income.”

“It sounds like it’s an expansion of the low-income senior property tax exemption to cover all seniors instead of low-income seniors,” Bernbaum said “I think the low-income senior property tax exemption definitely could use some tweaks. One challenge with exempting all seniors is that there are a lot of quite wealthy retirees, in particular, in our neck of the woods. I would want to have a conversation with my county and city counterparts to make sure that a bill like that wouldn’t have backbreaking implications for them. In general, senior citizens on fixed incomes need a lot of support in this state, and I think there’s a lot more we can do to help them.”

Regarding the Property Tax Exemption for Senior Citizens and People with Disabilities, the Washington State Department of Revenue states, “Washington state has two property tax relief programs for senior citizens and people with disabilities. … The exemption program qualifications are based off of age or disability, ownership, occupancy and income.”

Ocean Shores

Recently, Rep. Bernbaum met with Ocean Shores Mayor Frank Elduen, Andersen and Ocean Shores Fire Chief Brian Ritter to discuss a fire break needed along the sand dunes at the city’s beaches.

“It sounds like a really big issue, it’s not something I was aware of prior to that meeting. Ryan (O’Connor), my legislative assistant, has been meeting with (the Washington State Department of) Ecology. I think they have had a handful of meetings to see if there is some opportunity to deal with this issue at the agency level just to see if Ecology can be flexible about getting the city the permission that they need to expand the berm break and if that doesn’t work we’ll look at something legislative in the next session.”

Andersen discussed the fire risk the vegetation and flora, wax myrtle in particular, along the dunes pose.

“It’s a real issue, when they go, they go extremely fast if they’re dried out. Our concerns are not so much on the Fourth of July itself, but around that time period, we’ve had some fairly large fires,” Andersen said. “That growth has gotten extremely thick. It’s like a wall. I’m talking about the Sand Dune Avenue area. What we would like to do is create an extension of the same type of fire break that was put in on hotel row for public safety purposes. If we get a bad wind on a hot sunny day, we could be looking at a situation like we saw in Hawaii and California. It could be bad. The only other break is Ocean Shores Boulevard, and then the only one after that is the Grand Canal. Wax myrtle is extremely flammable when it’s dried out.”

The discussion turned to Ocean Shores’ efforts to combat erosion along the south shore and the new temporary cobble berm that was recently constructed. Andersen detailed those efforts and the drastic effects of erosion and mentioned the need for federal assistance to create long-term solutions. Coastal flooding along state Route 109 was also touched on.

Bernbaum then detailed some of his goals and legislative priorities.

“As a freshman, you don’t have time to work up many of your key priorities in a substantive way and get them through, so the work that you end up doing is largely picking up on projects you have some familiarity with or working on longstanding issues where you take a bill others have worked on and carry it across the finish line,” Rep. Bernbaum said. “For me, this year, there are two such bills. One has to do with slightly expanding our ECEAP (Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program) capacity, that’s Washington state’s early learning program, the equivalent of Head Start. This program serves some of the neediest people in the state. It’s a budget-neutral way of maximizing the state’s investment in ECEAP.

“I’m also working on a prescribed burn pilot program (with) the Nature Conservancy. The bill I’m working on creates a pilot program with the Department of Natural Resources to cover damages in case of escapement. The presence of this program helps incentivize insurance providers to reenter Washington state’s market and provides a bit of comfort to prescribed burn practitioners. Behind the scenes, I try to be an advocate for our district. I’m on the transportation budget team, and the other big call for my time is working on that budget, which has a pretty big hole in it. When there’s a local community issue, I try to pick that up.”

Rep. Bernbaum’s next appearance on KOSW is scheduled for April 23.

You can listen to the complete interview here: https://soundcloud.com/user-203190508/state-representative-adam-bernbaum-3-17-25