Tenino Mayor Dave Watterson, along with Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders and Thurston County Commissioner Wayne Fournier, spent Saturday morning fielding questions concerning the apparent imminent dissolution of the Tenino Police Department during a town hall inside the Tenino Elementary School’s multipurpose room.
Watterson initially announced the South Thurston County community’s police department was once again on the chopping block during the Tenino City Council meeting on March 11, when he also proposed contracting for policing services with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) in place of having a local police department.
On Saturday, he stressed the city faces bankruptcy if it continues paying for the police department while having to pay off interfund budget loans the city was forced to take out.
“It’s a tough thing to say, but we are looking at being bankrupt this year if we don’t make some severe, significant financial changes. If we can’t make these changes, my plan is to contact a bankruptcy attorney,” Watterson said. “... Bankruptcy would be far more disruptive, far more costly, and far less in our control.”
Nearly 70 attendees filled the room for the town hall, most being Tenino residents. However, some residents from neighboring communities, including Bucoda, Rainier and Lacey, were also there, along with other regional elected officials.
“We spend 95 cents of every sales and property tax dollar on policing. The sheriff contract, if we do that, will not solve every problem,” Watterson said to town hall attendees. “... Next year, we’re going to have to cut some more to get our budget in a sound place. But without these cuts, I don’t believe there’s a path forward.”
While he initially just debuted his proposals for contracting with the TSCO on March 11, Watterson stated he intends to ask the Tenino City Council to vote on a motion approving a TSCO contract at the council’s next regular meeting scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14, at Tenino City Hall.
The interfund budget loans were retractively created after budget misreporting issues between 2021 and 2023 resulted in an estimated $1.6 million from the city’s restricted sewer and water funds being spent on non-sewer and -water items.
Retroactively creating the loans was required, as it is a violation of state law to spend restricted item budget funds on non-item related expenses. The city must now pay back the $1.6 million, plus interest, to its own restricted funds.
Normally, state officials expect loans like these to be paid off within three years, but Watterson explained it could take a decade with the police department remaining.
City struggling with loan repayment
Watterson added even if the Tenino Police Department’s dissolution is approved, other budget cuts will still likely need to be made in order to keep up with loan payments — and this announcement comes as several city staff positions have already been eliminated over the past two years amid other budget cuts.
And if the Tenino City Council chooses to keep the city’s police department next month, there may soon no longer be any officers left at it anyway. Sanders stated two of the three remaining officers at the department already obtained offers to work at departments elsewhere, and the TCSO was working out a lateral transfer contract with the last officer.
“What I will say is the Tenino Police Department — and you guys can give yourselves a round of applause for this — is the most stable I’ve seen in years. So we can give a round of applause to Chief (Robert) Auderer,” Sanders added. “Tenino PD has had some ebbs and flows in the police department. In the last, I don’t know, you’ve been here for three, four years now? The most stable I’ve seen the Tenino Police Department in my career. I started in 2016, it was kind of in its ebb and flow.”
Sanders explained that in the current economy with decades of ongoing inflation, the majority of municipalities similar in size to Tenino in the region have already been forced to dissolve their local police departments as it’s simply too expensive to run them.
“If you look across the state, local police departments are folding. They’re folding like lawn chairs. I don’t know if you guys have paid attention to the economy lately, but it’s not doing super great. Thurston County and my budget just got cut by about $2.6 million last year — The difference is I had a $69 million budget. So I went from 69 to 67, I’m able to weather that storm a little better,” Sanders said.
He added cities in the region that still have local police departments not only have larger populations for property tax revenues, but also generate more sales tax revenues with large retail and grocery stores, which Tenino lacks.
As for the current cost of the Tenino Police Department, the city is spending $733,869.39, according to the 2026 budget available on the city’s website.
While Watterson proposed several different TCSO contract options, the cheapest and most basic contract would be around $200,000, giving Tenino residents the same TCSO services as those in Rainier, a community with a higher population than Tenino.
For $430,000, the City of Tenino could have a dedicated TCSO deputy on patrol within city limits for 10 hours a day, and a contract for 24/7 TCSO presence would cost Tenino around $1.3 million, Sanders added.
Despite the looming reality of the department’s officers about to leave, many attendees still advocated for keeping the Tenino Police Department, citing concerns about response times from the TCSO.
Some residents from Rainier and Bucoda, neighboring municipalities to Tenino’s east and south respectively, countered these concerns, stating they were satisfied with TCSO response times, and frequently saw TCSO vehicles on patrol in the communities.
Tenino City Councilor Linda Gotovac spoke out in opposition to cutting the department, saying she felt other cuts could still be made while preserving the police. According to Gotovac, there are engineering contracts the city has — with Right! Systems, SCJ Alliance, and Gibbs and Olson — which she believes could be renegotiated for cheaper rates.
According to the City of Tenino’s 2026 budget, $10,000 is being spent on engineering planning for tourism, $12,000 for road maintenance engineering and $20,000 on capital improvement projects engineering.
In 2024, Gotovac was outspoken in her support for maintaining Tenino Police Department funding amid a previous suggestion by Watterson of a budget cut to the department in 2024, shortly after the budget misreporting issue was made public, as previously reported by The Chronicle.
Discussion was also held on using grants to keep paying for the Tenino Police Department. But, according to Sanders and Watterson, the current available grant they could apply for only funds an entry-level officer, and only funds the position partially for three years. Sanders added amid current economic conditions, many other grant opportunities are disappearing too.
How Tenino PD ended up on the chopping block
Starting in 2021, misreporting issues resulted in the city’s budget expenditures outpacing revenues by an estimated total of $1.4 million. These issues occurred during the tenure of Fournier, who was Tenino’s mayor from 2015 until 2023 prior to Watterson, when he was elected to his current office as a Thurston County commissioner. During this time, Tenino had other issues with its clerk-treasurer position.
They began in 2020 when former Tenino Clerk-Treasurer John Millard fell victim to a phishing email scam. This led to another state audit which uncovered more than $330,000 of fraudulent automated clearing house payments made by Millard, leading to his resignation.
It also left Tenino without a clerk-treasurer until May 2021, but Millard’s replacement quit less than three months later, citing commuting distance. In September 2021, another new clerk-treasurer was hired, but was ultimately fired by March 2022 after failing to file annual budget reports with the state auditor’s office.
An outside accounting agency was hired in September of 2022 to handle the city’s finances, followed by another clerk-treasurer hired in 2023.
The budget issues were discovered by city staff and Watterson shortly after he took office in 2024. It was discovered an estimated $1.6 million from restricted sewer and water funds had been spent for other city expenses.
The city must now pay back the loan to the restricted funds at a 4% interest rate for a total of approximately $1.8 million.
Watterson’s budget breakdown and proposal from March 11 can be found on the council’s agenda report starting on page 5 at https://tinyurl.com/2a66wbuz on the city’s website. Tenino’s annual budget documents can be found at https://tinyurl.com/4xvbf9uf.
To learn more about Tenino’s previous budget issues, read The Chronicle’s coverage at https://tinyurl.com/3bf8b34p.
