Port of Bellingham candidates differ on dredging, airport

This Nov. 3, voters will pick between commercial fisherman Robert “Bobby” Briscoe and Ferndale Mayor Gary Jensen in the race for the open seat on the three-member Port of Bellingham Commission.

The District 3 seat, currently held by Jim Jorgensen, covers most of Whatcom County west of Guide Meridian, stretching from northwest Bellingham to the Canadian border. The race is on all county ballots.

Port commissioner is a nonpartisan office with four-year terms.

The Port of Bellingham was created 95 years ago. The port manages Bellingham International Airport and public waterfront properties from Blaine to Fairhaven, facilitates economic development around the county, and is working to clean up and redevelop the contaminated Bellingham waterfront.

Jensen owns Sullivan Plumbing in Ferndale; Briscoe captains a commercial fishing boat in Southeast Alaska.

Commissioner salaries are based on a calculation spelled out in state law. This year, each commissioner’s base salary is $8,400, and they can each earn up to $13,680 for attending port meetings, based on a $114 per diem.

Fixing woes at the airport

Bellingham International Airport has suffered declining numbers of passengers traveling through its terminal with the recent decline in the Canadian dollar. Typically, about 52 to 55 percent of people who fly out of Bellingham are Canadian.

Additionally, there are fewer flights offered, partly fueled by competition for space at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, which has drawn more resources from Alaska Airlines south of Bellingham.

Briscoe: “The airport is like everything in life, it’s cyclical.”

“You’re going to have your lows and you’re going to have your highs,” Briscoe said. “Delta and Alaska are in an arm-wrestling match. I think once that struggle is over, we’ll see more flights return.”

Briscoe said he’d like to see a direct flight from Bellingham to the East Coast, as well as direct to Alaska.

Though there is the option of pre-booking flights on the port’s dime to guarantee seats until they fill up, Briscoe said Whatcom County doesn’t have the numbers to do that, “unless our Canadian counterparts across the border come around.”

“It’s probably more a matter of waiting out the currency exchange rate,” Briscoe said. “And try to get flights that make more sense locally for what our needs are.”

Jensen: “As a contractor, I’ve gone through a couple waves of up and down in Whatcom County. When you’re down, you step back and say, ‘What can I do differently?’”

“The airport had this phenomenal growth, it was expanding and every flight was full. That’s great.” Jensen said. “Now, you’ve got a new facility, with debt service and a declining base.”

Jensen said the airport needs to shift from the building phase, now that the expansion is complete, into a marketing phase, where the port actively seeks flights.

“We may have to find some of the overflow from Sea-Tac. You’re going to have to have that guy to go out and find that business,” Jensen said. “They haven’t really had to do that before. They’ve had business come to them.”

That person, Jensen said, should be the new airport manager the port is in the process of hiring.

Dredging

A $31 million environmental cleanup of the Whatcom Waterway is underway, a project that includes dredging underwater to remove contaminated sediment. The dredging started in September and is scheduled to continue through early next year.

Briscoe said he was shocked to find out the dredging was approved for this time window, as fish return to the salmon hatchery in Maritime Heritage Park through the fall.

“The problem I have is that people at the state level don’t know what the fish do in front of the streams,” Briscoe said. “In 42 years of fishing I’ve seen an awful lot, and the fish come in and they mill. They don’t go right through to the hatchery.”

Briscoe worries the contaminated sediment will affect the hatchery fish, which are not protected by law the same way as wild runs.

“We should do the dredging when there’s no returns coming, which is the middle of winter,” he said. “I don’t know why they chose this window. I really don’t.”

Jensen said he was frustrated Briscoe posted his concerns calling for an immediate stop of the dredging on Facebook without talking to the port first.

He asked the port to respond to concerns that fish may be hurt by the dredging. Staff sent Jensen and Briscoe an email saying the issue had been studied, and various state and federal agencies had come to the opinion it wouldn’t hurt the fish. The permit does not require dredging be postponed during adult salmon runs.

Turbidity - the cloudiness of water - is limited and monitored during the dredging, and limits kick into place if and when levels get too high, the port’s response says.

“People that want jobs can’t wait for this project to stop now,” Jensen said. “We need to dredge that thing and get our jobs going.”

Port’s role in business

The port’s mission, according to its website, is “to fulfill the essential transportation and economic development needs of the region while providing leadership in maintaining greater Whatcom County’s overall economic vitality through the development of comprehensive facilities, programs and services.”

Jensen: “The port needs more of a marketing arm.”

“You need people to go out there and find you, and say, ‘Your business could fit here,’” Jensen said.

He held up the work Don Wick did over three decades at the Economic Development Association of Skagit County as an example of what the port should strive for.

“Don Wick got up every day and said, ‘I work for all of Skagit County, so if a business doesn’t like Sedro-Woolley, I’m going to find them a location in Burlington, or in Anacortes.’” Jensen said, “He’s just connected everywhere. We’ve never had that.”

Briscoe: “We’re supposed to be the economic engine for the entire county,” Briscoe said. “What I would envision is all our businesses in the county, be they farms, smaller businesses, once a month or once every couple months, we would have a time when they could gather with the Port of Bellingham and share their concerns and the port can help them expand their businesses.”

To bring outside businesses here, Briscoe said the port should work on the north terminal and increasing barging and shipping.

“The main thing I see is getting our north terminal functional again,” he said. “We need stability of industry that will be here for a long time, so our children and grandchildren can stay here.”

On transparency

Currently, commission meetings are held at 3 p.m. the first and third Tuesday of every month, with a live broadcast on the port’s YouTube channel, where the videos are archived for later viewing. At various times, people have criticized the port’s meeting time, and asked for meeting times to be moved to the evenings, like other public governing bodies in the area.

Both Briscoe and Jensen said they think meetings should be in the evening, most, if not all, of the time. They agree the port needs to do a better job of interacting with and reaching out to the public.

Jensen: “The truth and the facts are something that you never have to be afraid of,” Jensen said. “You’ve got to get away from that thing of being afraid of the public.”

Briscoe: “Information seems to be a little bit hard to get if you’re the public,” Briscoe said. Afternoon meetings are “accommodating to port staff and folks there, but sometimes I feel it’s not accommodating to folks that want to give their input.”

Forums

For more from Briscoe and Jensen, attend a voter forum or watch one of the recorded debates.

To watch the Sept. 29 League of Women Voters forum that the two participated in, visit the City of Bellingham YouTube page. (The port debate begins about 39 minutes in.)

The Blue Green Waterfront Coalition of Whatcom County will host a forum with the two candidates at 6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 22 at Old City Hall, 121 Prospect St.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Port of Bellingham candidates differ on dredging, airport."