Whatcom View: Bellingham missing out on job growth

A carefully kept secret is that Bellingham is no longer a particularly important factor in the growth of the Whatcom County economy.

In fact, Bellingham has been an anchor, a drag on the county’s economy, for some time. We’ve been ingenious about devising excuses for that fact (those darned students) but have done precious little to do anything to improve the situation; hence Bellingham’s well documented, and long standing, status as one of the worst economies of any major metropolitan area in the state.

The last Growth Management Act planning process in Whatcom County was based on 2008. Between 2008 and 2013, according to city/county data generated by Whatcom County and Bellingham acting in concert, Bellingham captured only one out of every five new jobs coming to the county.

Job growth over the five years has mostly been seen in the county’s smallest cities, especially Sumas, at Cherry Point, and, in large measure, outside any of the county’s urban growth areas. Partially, that is because Lummi Nation’s efforts to grow its economy has been a rousing success. Between the Silver Reef Casino and Lummi Indian Business Council operations the tribe has been one of Whatcom County’s biggest, albeit almost totally unnoticed by the media, economic success stories. The Lummi Nation is now Whatcom County’s third-largest employer and traffic studies have already been done for a Bellis Fair-sized employment center on what used to be Bellingham’s potential employment land at Slater Road and I-5. In 2012 alone Lummi reports 248 business licenses issued.

So why is Bellingham unable to attract much in the way of jobs growth? It is not the students; Bellingham has always had a high student to non-student population.

As early as 2004 city planning staff pointed to a critical shortage of appropriate land supply for jobs producing zones inside the city. Since then, little or nothing has been done to improve the situation.

Studies done in recent decades by the Port of Seattle point out that Sea-Tac Airport is actually responsible for more jobs and more economic activity than Seattle’s water port. You would think we would learn from that wouldn’t you?

Not in Whatcom County! Resistance to annexation by Bellingham has meant our most valuable jobs-producing land is mostly dedicated to parking lots with sewer and water lines running beneath them but not, by city policy, available for use on the land above. The land is properly zoned to allow Sea-Tac like economic activity but, because the city has stalled annexation of the land for a decade or more, the land remains vacant; usable only for parking lots, gas stations and the like.

And guess what? Our new plans say we will worry about annexation by and by. Meanwhile our jobs are going bye, bye.

Whatcom County and each of its cities are presently going through a review and update of county and individual city comprehensive plans that will shape the county’s future for decades.

The primary purpose of the updates is to review the consequences of what we did in the 2008 process and then adjust city and county plans to “fix” things we may have done wrong seven years ago.

The problem?

Almost no analysis of the consequences of our planning in our most recent comprehensive plan updates has been offered the planning commissions looking at the issues. Instead, those commissions are spoon fed highly selective analysis having little to do with an actual review of how we are managing growth in Whatcom County. Some of the data being offered as “review” actually predates the adoption of growth management plans in Whatcom County.

The consequences?

If we continue to pretend our plans are “working,” we plan for, and will get, continued failure in the form of a moribund economy and the environmental devastation of a commuter county. Bellingham is already asking for an even larger jobs growth number than the one it couldn’t realize last time around but its planning consists of nothing more than doing even more of the things that have failed us all in the past and none of the things that have been demonstrated to result in economic progress in other regions of the state.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Whatcom View: Bellingham missing out on job growth."