News - Local News

POSTED: Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Bellingham council candidates talk community involvement, revitalization and preservation

BELLINGHAM - City Council members should engage residents in discussion before council meetings, earlier than they do now and not make up their minds before meetings, candidates for Ward 6 said during an election forum Wednesday, July 8.

Those ideas came out during a Barnstorming for Port Reform event that Port of Bellingham Commission candidates Ham Hayes and Doug Karlberg have had across Whatcom County, inviting candidates for other local races to attend.

It was the first forum of the election season - with three weeks before primary ballots are mailed- in which all three Bellingham City Council Ward 6 candidates were able to discuss issues in a public forum.

About 30 people attended the event at the Cedar Grove Community Center near Lake Padden, listening to Hayes, Karlberg and John Blethen discuss port issues and Whatcom County Council at-large seat candidate Dave Pros chat about growth and more community involvement.

That was the biggest theme of the evening for all candidates: Elected leaders should be listening to residents and not discounting their opinions.

When it comes to Bellingham, the council and city officials should try to engage the public without specific parameters for decisions set prior to discussing community issues, said Fairhaven neighborhood activist Michael Lilliquist.

Lilliquist touted his own work in helping start the Bellingham Citizens' Forum.

At those forums, the microphone might often be handed around until the conversation on an idea is "exhausted," Lilliquist said, but doing that doesn't cut short the process of gathering community ideas. He didn't advocate specifically for that model for citizen input to City Council before official decisions are made on community issues, but said other ideas should be looked into and the discussion should happen "earlier on when the goal isn't so set and maybe differently done so the goal doesn't appear to be so predetermined."

Democratic Party activist and community volunteer Catherine Chambers said council members should do their best to research all of the material provided prior to meetings and not have their minds made up before officially voting on an issue. She told forum participants that she had the "unique ability to listen to people and synthesize their ideas and analyze them and fit them into the context of the discussion."

Chambers, a social worker, said that her background in working in "crisis situations" would make her beneficial as a council member.

Local artist and activist Christopher Morrison argued that there was more to being an elected official than having a night meeting and waiting for the public testify.

"There is a responsibility to go out to the people and various agencies and bring them forward to create new solutions and not just listen to what goes on in council chambers," Morrison said.

In terms of preserving single-family neighborhood character, all three candidates agreed that a landlord licensing program - which is being worked on by city staff - would be good to combat illegal rooming houses and nuisance situations.

The candidates also said they all believed that development within the city - so-called "infill" - was necessary and they supported a proposal that creates nine new types of housing. But they also recognized concerns by some residents about those housing types in their neighborhoods.

Chambers said that infill should be accomplished in the downtown core before spreading to other areas of the city. She had concerns that Western Washington University officials had "abdicated the issue of housing to the community," hasn't built new dorms as they should and haven't done enough to engage the city or the community.

Morrison advocated for more transparency in the process of infill that said specific test projects should be developed in some neighborhoods to see how they go - and then get resident feedback.

Lilliquist said part of the issue may be that residents might believe enforcement of current zoning laws isn't happening so they have concerns about any new regulations being followed properly, either. He said a landlord license should be used to hire more enforcement officers.