The city of Ferndale is too reliant on residential growth, and now citizens may pay some for the public policies that created that reliance.
In a wide-ranging meeting with our editorial board last week, Mayor Gary Jensen told us the city has more than 1,600 buildable lots, but had only eight housing starts in January.
For city residents, the slowdown in housing construction has many potential impacts, not many of them good. Perhaps the most significant is that Jensen and the city are likely to ask for increases in sewer and water rates to help pay for the expensive new treatment facility put in place in the 1990s.
The system was built with growth in mind. To cover the costs without raising rates the city has to add more customers every year. Unfortunately, those who served on the City Council at the time the decision was made promised citizens their rates would not increase to pay for the new treatment facility.
Jensen said that was a mistake. The city now faces a tough choice: Either raise rates or continue to take money out of the general fund to cover the costs of the treatment facility. With so many needs in the city — for new and better roads, sidewalks, police officers and other vital city functions — Jensen believes a water and sewer rate increase is the only answer. He told our board that current talks call for increasing rates about 18 percent.
That’s a hefty increase and one few city residents are going to be happy about. Jensen said there is no other alternative.
“We can’t keep going this way,” he said. “We will be bankrupt.”
We find Mayor Jensen’s forthright manner and honesty refreshing. Ferndale residents need a leader who will tell them the truth, no matter how difficult it may be to hear.
The good news is that Jensen and other current city leaders seem to have the right ideas in mind. They know, for example, that for Ferndale ever to get out of the financial crunch it appears to be facing, it needs new retail businesses. Ferndale suffers from a lower-than-average retail sales tax income compared with other cities its size, with so many city residents doing their shopping in Bellingham.
But Ferndale leaders appear to have the right attitude about new retail growth, as well. Rather than just invite all comers and approve all possible projects, the city is creating a building design system that will allow for more Ferndalefriendly designs even if a large mall or mega-box-store is built.
The system, called EAGLE, includes design standards and requirements for environmentally friendly building. Jensen believes the rules will create a positive legacy.
“If we pull off EAGLE and it works, people will look back in 25 years and say we did a good thing,” he said. We agree.
Still, Ferndale is in a tight spot today. Many citizens dream of bigger and better things, such as a new library or bettersupported parks. There simply is no money for such largesse now, and won’t be unless and until new retail development fills city coffers.
We believe Jensen and other city leaders have the right priorities, given the financial crunch. The city needs a new police station, for example, and that is much more important than a parks department. The city also needs to work, slowly but surely, to fix the traffic crunch that streams through downtown on Main Street every morning and evening. Longterm plans for that include a new road to make a better connection between houses in the north of the city and the underutilized Interstate 5 interchange at Portal Way.
We say “slowly but surely” because that is the only method for advancement Ferndale can afford. And we are confident that Jensen is the right man for the measured steps the city must take today.
“New housing was paying a lot of our bills,” Jensen said. “The question is now what are we going to do. We have to be pretty frugal.”